Waterloo Part 4

The answer is: that when, upon the day before, the Thursday, Napoleon had made this disposition, and given it as the general orders for that Friday, he had imagined only one corps of Prussians to be before him.

The right wing, with which the Emperor himself stayed, numbering, as we have seen, about 63,000 men, would have been quite enough to deal with that one Prussian corps; and he had sent so large a force, under Ney, up the Brussels road, not because he believed it would meet with serious opposition, but because this was to be the line of his princ.i.p.al advance, and it was his intention to occupy the town of Brussels at the very first opportunity. Having dealt with the single Prussian corps, as he had first believed it would be, in front of Fleurus, he meant that same evening to come back in person to the Brussels road and, in company with Ney, to conduct decisive operations against Wellington's half of the Allies, which would then, of course, be hopelessly outnumbered.

But when Napoleon saw, a little after midday of the Friday, that he had to deal with nearly the whole of the Prussian army, he perceived that the great force under Ney would be wasted out there on the west--supposing it to be meeting with little opposition--and had far better be used in deciding a crushing victory over the Prussians. To secure such a victory would, without bothering about the Duke of Wellington's forces to the westward, be quite enough to determine the campaign in favour of the French.

As early as two o'clock a note was sent to Ney urging him, when he had brushed aside such slight resistance as the Emperor expected him to find upon the Brussels road, to return and help to envelop the Prussian forces, which the Emperor was about to attack. At that hour it was not yet quite clear to Napoleon how large the Prussian force really was. This first note to Ney, therefore, was unfortunately not as vigorous as it might have been; though, even if it had been as vigorous as possible, Ney, who had found unexpected resistance upon the Brussels road, could certainly not have come up to help Napoleon with his whole force. He might, however, have spared a portion of it, and that portion, as we shall see later, would have been most obviously Erlon's corps--the First. Rather more than an hour later, at about a quarter-past three, when Napoleon had just joined battle with the Prussians, he got a note from Ney informing him that the left wing was meeting with considerable resistance, and could hardly abandon the place where it was engaged before Quatre Bras to come up against the Prussian flank at Ligny. Napoleon sent a note back to say that, none the less, an effort must be made at all costs to send Ney's forces to come over to him to attack the Prussian flank, for such an attack would mean the winning of a great decisive battle.

The distance over which these notes had to be carried to and fro, from Napoleon to Ney, was not quite five miles. The Emperor might therefore fairly expect after his last message that in the late middle of the afternoon--say half-past five or six--troops would appear upon his north-west horizon and march down to his aid. In good time such troops did appear; how inconclusively it will be my business to record.

Meanwhile, Napoleon had begun the fight at Ligny with his usual signal of three cannonshots, and between three and four o'clock the front of the whole army was engaged. It was for many hours mere hammer-and-tongs fighting, the French making little impression upon their right against Ligny or the villages to the east of it, but fighting desperately for St Amand and for Wagnelee. Such a course was part of Napoleon's plan, for he had decided, as I have said, only to hold the Prussian left, to strike hardest at their right, and, when his reinforcement should come from Ney, to turn that right, envelop it, and so destroy the whole Prussian army.

These villages upon the Prussian right were taken and retaken in a series of furious attacks and counter-attacks, which it would be as tedious to detail as it must have been intolerable to endure.

All this indecisive but furious struggle for the line of villages (not one of which was as yet carried and held permanently by the French) lasted over two hours. It was well after five o'clock when there appeared, far off, under the westering sun, a new and large body of troops advancing eastward as though to reach that point between Wagnelee and St Amand where the left of the French force was struggling for mastery with the right of the Prussians. For a moment there was no cert.i.tude as to what this distant advancing force might be. But soon, and just when fortune appeared for a moment to be favouring Blucher's superior numbers and the French line was losing ground, the Emperor learned that it was his First Army Corps, under the command of Erlon which was thus approaching.

At that moment--in the neighbourhood of six o'clock in the evening--Napoleon must have believed that his new and rapidly formed plan of that afternoon, with its urgent notes to Quatre Bras and its appeal for reinforcement, had borne fruit; a portion at least of Ney's command had been detached, as it seemed, to deliver that final and unexpected attack upon the Prussian flank which was the keystone of the whole scheme.

Coincidently with the news that those distant advancing thousands were his own men and would turn this doubtful struggle into a decisive victory for the Emperor came the news--unexplained, inexplicable--that Erlon's troops would advance no further! That huge distant body of men, isolated in the empty fields to the westward; that reinforcement upon which the fate of Napoleon and of the French army hung, drew no nearer. Watched from such a distance, they might seem for a short time to be only halted. Soon it was apparent that they were actually retiring. They pa.s.sed back again, retracing their steps beyond the western horizon, and were lost to the great struggle against the Prussians. Why this amazing countermarch, with all its catastrophic consequences was made will be discussed later. It is sufficient to note that it rendered impossible that decisive victory which Napoleon had held for a moment within his grasp. His resource under such a disappointment singularly ill.u.s.trates the nature of his mind.

Already the Emperor had determined, before any sign of advancing aid had appeared, that if he were left alone to complete the decision, if he was not to be allowed by fate to surround and destroy the Prussian force, he might at least drive it from the field with heavy loss, and, as far as possible, demoralised. In the long struggle of the afternoon he had meant but to press the Prussian line, while awaiting forces that should complete its envelopment; these forces being now denied him, he determined to change his plan, to use his reserves, the Guard, and to drive the best fighting material he had, like a spearhead, at the centre of the Prussian positions. Since he could not capture, he would try and break.

As the hope of aid from Erlon's First Corps gradually disappeared, he decided upon this course. It was insufficient. He could not hope by it to destroy his enemy wholly. But he could drive him from the field and perhaps demoralise him, or so weaken him with loss as to leave him crippled.

Just at the time when Napoleon had determined thus to strike at the centre of the Prussian fine, Blucher, full of his recent successes upon his right and the partial recapture of the village of St Amand, had withdrawn troops from that centre to pursue his advantage. It was the wrong moment.

While Blucher was thus off with the bulk of his men towards St Amand, the Old Guard, with the heavy cavalry of the Guard, and Milhaud's cavalry as well--all Napoleon's reserve--drew up opposite Ligny village for a final a.s.sault.

Nearly all the guns of the Guard and all those of the Fourth Corps crashed against the village to prepare the a.s.sault, and at this crisis of the battle, as though to emphasise its character, a heavy thunderstorm broke over the combatants, and at that late hour (it was near seven) darkened the evening sky.

It was to the noise and downpour of that storm that the a.s.sault was delivered, the Prussian centre forced, and Ligny taken.

When the clouds cleared, a little before sunset, this strongest veteran corps of Napoleon's army had done the business. Ligny was carried and held. The Prussian formation, from a convex line, was now a line bent inwards at its centre and all but broken.

Blucher had rapidly returned from the right to meet the peril. He charged at the head of his Uhlans. The head of the French column of Guards reserved their fire until the horse was almost upon them; then, in volley after volley at a stone's-throw range, they broke that cavalry, which, in their turn, the French cuira.s.siers charged as it fled and destroyed it.

Blucher's own horse was shot under him, the colonel of the Uhlans captured, the whole of the Prussian centre fell into disorder and was crushed confusedly back towards the Nivelles-Namur road.

Darkness fell, and nothing more could be accomplished. The field was won, indeed, but the Prussian army was still an organisation and a power. It had lost heavily in surrenders, flight, and fallen, but its main part was still organised. It was driven to retreat in the darkness, but remained ready, when time should serve, to reappear. It kept its order against the end of the French pressure throughout the last glimmer of twilight; and when darkness fell, the troops of Blucher, though in retreat, were in a retreat compact and orderly, and the bulk of his command was saved from the enemy and available for further action.

Thus ended the battle of Ligny, glorious for the Emperor, who had achieved so much success against great odds and after the hottest combat; but a failure of his full plan, for the host before him was still in existence: it was free to retreat in what direction, east or north, it might choose.

The choice was made with immediate and conquering decision: the order pa.s.sed in the darkness, "By Tilly on Wavre." The Prussian staff had not lost its head under the blow of its defeat. It preserved a clear view of the campaign, with its remaining chances, and the then beaten army corps were concentrated upon a movement northwards. Word was sent to the fresh and unused Fourth Corps to join the other three at _Wavre_, and the march was begun which permitted Blucher, forty hours later, to come up on the flank of the French at Waterloo and destroy them.

QUATRE BRAS

Such had been the result of the long afternoon's work upon the right-hand or eastern battlefield, that of Ligny, where Napoleon had been in personal command.

In spite of his appeals, no one had reached him from the western field, and the First Corps had only appeared in Napoleon's neighbourhood to disappear again.

What had been happening on that western battlefield, three to four miles away, which had thus prevented some part at least of Ney's army coming up upon the flank of the Prussians at Ligny, towards the end of the day, and inflicting upon Blucher a complete disaster?

What had happened was the slow, confused action known to history as the battle of Quatre Bras.

It will be remembered that Ney had been entrusted by Napoleon with the absolute and independent command of something less than half of his whole army.[7]

He had put at his disposal the First and the Second Army Corps, under Erlon and Reille respectively--nearly 46,000 men; and to these he had added, by an afterthought, eight regiments of heavy cavalry, commanded by Kellerman.

The role of this force, in Napoleon's intention, was simply to advance up the Brussels road, brushing before it towards the left or west, away from the Prussians, as it went, the outposts of that western half of the allied army, which Wellington commanded.

We have seen that Napoleon, who had certainly arrived quickly and half-unexpectedly at the point of junction between Wellington's scattered forces and those of the Prussians, when he crossed the Sambre at Charleroi, overestimated his success. He thought his enemy had even less notice of his advance than that enemy really had; he thought that enemy had had less time to concentrate than he had really had. Napoleon therefore necessarily concluded that his enemy had concentrated to a less extent than he actually had.

That mistake had the effect, in the case of the army of the right, which he himself commanded, of bringing him up against not one Prussian army corps but three. This accident had not disconcerted him, for he hoped to turn it into a general disaster for the Prussians, and to take advantage of their unexpected concentration to accomplish their total ruin. But such a plan was dependent upon the left-hand or western army, that upon the Brussels road under Ney, not finding anything serious in front of it. Ney could spare men less easily if the Emperor's calculation of the resistance likely to be found on the Brussels road should be wrong. It was wrong.

That resistance was not slight but considerable, and Ney was not free to come to Napoleon's aid. Tardy as had been the information conveyed to the Duke of Wellington, and grievously as the Duke of Wellington had misunderstood its importance, there was more in front of Ney upon the Brussels road than the Emperor had expected. What there was, however, might have been pushed back--after fairly heavy fighting it is true, but without any risk of failure--but for another factor in the situation, which was Ney's own misjudgment and inertia.

Napoleon himself said later that his marshal was no longer the same man since the disasters of two years before; but even if Ney had been as alert as ever, misjudgment quite as much as lack of will must have entered into what he did. He had thought, as the Emperor had, that there would be hardly anything in front of him upon the Brussels road. But there was this difference between the two errors: Ney was on the spot, and could have found out with his cavalry scouts quite early on the morning of Friday the 16th what he really had to face. He preferred to take matters for granted, and he paid a heavy price. He thought that there was plenty of time for him to advance at his leisure; and, thinking this, he must have further concluded that to linger upon that part of the Brussels road which was nearest the Emperor's forthcoming action to the east by Ligny would be good policy in case the Emperor should have need of him there.

On the night of the 15th Ney himself was at Frasnes, while the furthest of his detachments was no nearer than the bridge of Thuin over the Sambre, sixteen miles away. The rough sketch printed opposite will show how very long that line was, considering the nearness of the strategical point Quatre Bras, which it was his next business to occupy. The Second Army Corps under Reille was indeed fairly well moved up, and all in the neighbourhood of Gosselies by the night between Thursday 15th and Friday 16th of June. But the other half of the force, the First Army Corps under Erlon, was strung out over miles of road behind.

To concentrate all those 50,000 men, half of them spread out over so much s.p.a.ce, meant a day's ordinary marching; and one would have thought that Ney should have begun to concentrate before night fell upon the 15th. He remembered, however, that the men were fatigued, he thought he had plenty of time before him, and he did not effect their concentration. The ma.s.s of the Second Army Corps (Reille's) was, as I have said, near Gosselies on the Friday dawn; but Erlon, with the First Army Corps, was not in disposition to bring the bulk of it up by the same time. He could not expect to be near Quatre Bras till noon or one o'clock. But even to this element of delay, due to his lack of precision, Ney added further delay, due to slackness in orders.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It was eleven o'clock on the morning of that Friday the 16th before Ney sent a definite order to Reille to march; it was _twelve_ before the head of that Second Army Corps set out up the great road to cover the four or five miles that separated them from Ney's headquarters at Frasnes. Erlon, lying next behind Reille, could not advance until Reille's last division had taken the road. So Erlon, with the First Army Corps, was not in column and beginning his advance with his head troops until after one o'clock.

At about half-past one, then, we have the first troops of Reille's army corps reaching Ney at Frasnes, its tail-end some little way out of Gosselies; while at the same hour we have Erlon's First Army Corps marching in column through Gosselies.

It would have been perfectly possible, at the expense of a little fatigue to the men, to have had the Second Army Corps right up at Frasnes and in front of it and deployed for action by nine o'clock, while Erlon's army corps, the First, coming behind it as a reserve, an equal body in numbers, excellence, and order, would have taken the morning to come up. In other words, Ney could have had more than 20,000 men ready for the attack on Quatre Bras by mid-morning, with as many men an hour or two behind them, and ready on their arrival to act as a reserve. As a matter of fact, he waited with his single battalion and a few hors.e.m.e.n at his headquarters at Frasnes, only giving the orders we have seen, which did not bring Reille's head columns up to him till as late as half-past one. It was well after two o'clock before Reille's troops had deployed in front of Frasnes and this Second Army Corps were ready to attack the position at Quatre Bras, which Ney still believed to be very feebly held. The other half of Ney's command, the First Army Corps, under Erlon, was still far away down the road.

This said, it behoves us to consider the strategical value of the Quatre Bras position, and later to see how far Ney was right in thinking that it was still quite insufficiently furnished with defenders, even at that late hour in the day.

Armies must march by roads. At any rate, the army marching by road has a vast advantage over one attempting an advance across country; and the better kept-up the road the greater advantage, other things being equal, has the army using it over another army debarred from its use.

Quatre Bras is the cross-way of two great roads. The first road is that main road from north to south, leading from the frontier and Charleroi to Brussels; along this road, it was Napoleon's ultimate intention to sweep, and up this road he was on that morning of the 16th sending Ney to clear the way for him. The second road is the great road east and west from Nivelles to Namur, which was in June 1815 the main line of communication along which the two halves of the Allies could effect their junction.

The invader, then, when he held Quatre Bras, could hold up troops coming against him from the north, troops coming against him from the east, or troops coming against him from the west. He could prevent, or rather delay, their junction. He would have stepped in between.

But Quatre Bras has advantages greater than this plain and elementary strategical advantage. In the first place, it dominates the whole countryside. A patch or knoll, 520 feet above the sea, the culminating point of the plateau, is within a few yards of the cross-roads. Standing there, a few steps to the west of the highway, you look in every direction over a rolling plain, of which you occupy the highest point for some miles around.

Now, this position of the "Quatre Bras" or "Cross Roads" can be easily defended against a foe coming from the south, as were the two corps under Ney. In 1815 its defence was easier still.

A large patch of undergrowth, cut in rotation, called the Wood of Bossu, ran along the high road from Frasnes and Charleroi, flanking that road to the west, and forming cover for troops that might wish to forbid access along it. The ground falls somewhat rapidly in front of the cross-roads to a little stream, and just where the stream crosses the road is the walled farm of Gemioncourt, which can be held as an advanced position, while in front of the fields where the Wood of Bossu once stood is the group of farm buildings called Pierrepont. Finally, that arm of the cross-roads which overlooks the slope down to Gemioncourt ran partly on an embankment which could be used for defence as a ready-made earthwork.

Now, let us see what troops were actually present that Friday morning upon the allied side to defend this position against Ney's advance, and what others were near enough in the neighbourhood to come up in defence of the position during the struggle.

There was but one division of the Allies actually on the spot. This was the Netherlands division, commanded by Perponcher; and the whole of it, including gunners and sappers (it had hardly any cavalry[8] with it), was less than 8000 strong. It was a very small number to hold the extended position which the division at once proceeded to occupy. They had to cover a front of over 3000 yards, not far short of two miles.

They did not know, indeed, what Ney was bringing up against them; Wellington himself, later on, greatly underestimated the French forces on that day. Now even if Ney had had far less men than he had, it was none the less a very risky thing to disperse the division as Perponcher did, especially with no more than fourteen guns to support him,[9] but under the circ.u.mstances it turned out to be a wise risk to have taken. Ney had hesitated already, and was in a mood to be surprised at any serious resistance. The more extended the veil that was drawn before him, the better for the Allies and their card of delay. For everything depended upon time. Ney, as will be seen, had thrown away his chance of victory by his extreme dilatoriness, and during the day the Allies were to bring up unit after unit, until by nightfall nearly 40,000 men not only held Quatre Bras successfully, but pushed the French back from their attack upon it.

Perponcher, then, put a battalion and five guns in front of Gemioncourt, another battalion inside the walls of the farm, four battalions and a mounted battery before the Wood of Bossu and the farm of Pierrepont. Most of his battalions were thus stretched in front of the position of Quatre Bras, the actual Cross Roads where he left only two as a reserve.