LETTERS
CONCERNING THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.
Marshal Blücher to Baron Müffling.
“Wavre, June 18th, 1815.
“Your Excellency will assure the duke of Wellington from me, that, ill as I am, I shall place myself at the head of my troops, and attack the right of the French, in case they undertake anything against his Grace. If, on the other hand, the day should pass over without their making any attack, it is then my opinion that we should jointly attack them to-morrow.
“I beg your Excellency to convey to the Duke my full and firm conviction, that this is the best measure to be adopted in our present situation.
“Blücher.”
General count Gneisenau, the chief of the staff, felt alarmed at the tenor of the above letter, which told plainly the decided manner it was to be carried out. Fearing the Prussian army might be placed in a dangerous situation, should the allies be forced to retire before they could arrive, he wrote the following note:
“General count Gneisenau concurs with the views expressed in the enclosed letter, but entreats your Excellency to ascertain most particularly, whether the duke of Wellingtonhas really adopted the decided resolution of fighting in his present position; or whether he only intends some demonstration, which might become very dangerous to our army.
“Your Excellency will be so good as to acquaint us with the result of your observations on this point, as it is of the greatest consequence that we should be informed of the Duke’s real intention.”
The Prince de la Moskowa to the Duc d’Otrante.
“MONSIEUR LE DUC,
“The most false and defamatory reports have been spreading for some days over the public mind, upon the conduct which I have pursued during this short and unfortunate campaign. The newspapers have reported those odious calumnies, and appear to lend them credit. After having fought for twenty-five years for my country, after having shed my blood for its glory and independence, an attempt is made to accuse me of treason; an attempt is made to mark me out to the people, and to the army itself, as the author of the disaster it has just experienced.
“Forced to break silence, while it is always painful to speak of one’s self, and, above all, to answer calumnies, I address myself to you, sir, as the President of the Provisional Government, for the purpose of laying before you a faithful statement of the events I have witnessed.
“On the 11th of June, I received an order from the minister of war to repair to the Imperial presence. I had no command, and no information upon the composition and strength of the army. Neither the Emperor nor his minister had given me any previous hint, from which I could anticipate that I should be employed in the present campaign; I was consequently taken by surprise, without horses, without accoutrements, and without money, and I was obliged to borrow the necessary expenses of my journey. Having arrived on the 12th at Laon, on the 13th at Avesnes, and on the 14th at Beaumont, I purchased, in this last town, two horses from the duc de Trévise, with which I repaired, on the 15th, to Charleroi, accompanied by my first aide-de-camp, the only officer who attended me. I arrived at the moment when the enemy, attacked by our troops, was retreating upon Fleurus and Gosselies.
“The Emperor ordered me immediately to put myself at the head of the 1st and 2d corps of infantry, commanded by lieutenant-generals d’Erlon and Reille, of the division of light cavalry of lieutenant-general Piré, of the division oflight cavalry of the guard under the command of lieutenant-general Lefebvre-Desnouettes and Colbert, and of two divisions of cavalry of count de Valmy; forming, in all, eight divisions of infantry, and four of cavalry. With these troops, a part of which only I had as yet under my immediate command, I pursued the enemy, and forced him to evacuate Gosselies, Frasnes, Mellet, Heppignies. There they took up a position for the night, with the exception of the first corps, which was still at Marchiennes, and which did not join me till the following day.
“On the 16th, I received orders to attack the English in their position at Quatre-Bras. We advanced towards the enemy with an enthusiasm difficult to be described. Nothing resisted our impetuosity. The battle became general, and victory was no longer doubtful, when, at the moment that I intended to order up the first corps of infantry, which had been left by me in reserve at Frasnes, I learned that the Emperor had disposed of it without adverting me of the circumstance, as well as of the division of Girard of the second corps, on purpose to direct them upon St.-Amand, and to strengthen his left wing, which was vigorously engaged with the Prussians. The shock which this intelligence gave me, confounded me. Having no longer under me more than three divisions, instead of the eight upon which I calculated, I was obliged to renounce the hopes of victory; and, in spite of all my efforts, in spite of the intrepidity and devotion of my troops, my utmost efforts after that could only maintain me in my position till the close of the day. About nine o’clock, the first corps was sent me by the Emperor, to whom it had been of no service. Thus twenty-five or thirty thousand men were, I may say, paralyzed, and were idly paraded during the whole of the battle from the right to the left, and the left to the right, without firing a shot.
“It is impossible for me, sir, not to arrest your attention for a moment upon these details, in order to bring before your view all the consequences of this false movement, and, in general, of the bad arrangements during the whole of the day. By what fatality, for example, did the Emperor, instead of leading all his forces against lord Wellington, who would havebeen attacked unawares, and could not have resisted, consider this attack as secondary? How did the Emperor, after the passage of the Sambre, conceive it possible to fight two battles on the same day? It was to oppose forces double ours, and to do what military men who were witnesses of it can scarcely yet comprehend. Instead of this, had he left a corps of observation to watch the Prussians, and marched with his most powerful masses to support me, the English army had undoubtedly been destroyed between Quatre-Bras and Genappe; and this position, which separated the two allied armies, being once in our power, would have opened for the Emperor an opportunity of advancing to the right of the Prussians, and of crushing them in their turn. The general opinion in France, and especially in the army, was, that the Emperor would have bent his whole efforts to annihilate first the English army; and circumstances were favourable for the accomplishment of such a project: but fate ordered otherwise.
“On the 17th, the army marched in the direction of Mont-St.-Jean.
“On the 18th, the battle began at one o’clock, and though the bulletin, which details it, makes no mention of me, it is not necessary for me to mention that I was engaged in it. Lieutenant-general count Drouot has already spoken of that battle, in the House of Peers. His narration is accurate, with the exception of some important facts which he has passed over in silence, or of which he was ignorant, and which it is now my duty to declare. About seven o’clock in the evening, after the most frightful carnage which I have ever witnessed, general Labédoyère came to me with a message from the Emperor, that marshal Grouchy had arrived on our right, and attacked the left of the English and Prussians united. This general officer, in riding along the lines, spread this intelligence among the soldiers, whose courage and devotion remained unshaken, and who gave new proofs of them at that moment, in spite of the fatigue which they experienced. Immediately after, what was my astonishment, I should rather say indignation, when I learned, that so far from marshal Grouchy having arrived to support us, as the whole army had been assured, between forty and fifty thousandPrussians attacked our extreme right, and forced it to retire!
“Whether the Emperor was deceived with regard to the time when the marshal could support him, or whether the march of the marshal was retarded by the efforts of the enemy longer than was calculated upon, the fact is, that at the moment when his arrival was announced to us, he was only at Wavre upon the Dyle, which to us was the same as if he had been a hundred leagues from the field of battle.
“A short time afterwards, I saw four regiments of the middle guard, conducted by the Emperor, arriving. With these troops, he wished to renew the attack, and to penetrate the centre of the enemy. He ordered me to lead them on: generals, officers, and soldiers, all displayed the greatest intrepidity; but this body of troops was too weak to resist, for a long time, the forces opposed to it by the enemy, and it was soon necessary to renounce the hope which this attack had, for a few moments, inspired. General Friant had been struck with a ball by my side; and I myself had my horse killed, and fell under it. The brave men who will return from this terrible battle will, I hope, do me the justice to say, that they saw me on foot with sword in hand during the whole of the evening, and that I only quitted the scene of carnage among the last, and at the moment when retreat could no longer be prevented. At the same time, the Prussians continued their offensive movements, and our right sensibly retired; the English advanced in their turn. There remained to us still four squares of the old guard to protect the retreat. These brave grenadiers, the choice of the army, forced successively to retire, yielded ground foot by foot, till, overwhelmed by numbers, they were almost entirely annihilated. From that moment, a retrograde movement was declared, and the army formed nothing but a confused mass. There was not, however, a total rout, nor the cry ofSauve qui peut, as has been calumniously stated in the bulletin. As for myself, constantly in the rear-guard, which I followed on foot, having all my horses killed, worn out with fatigue, covered with contusions, and having no longer strength to march, I owe my life to a corporal who supported me on the road, and did not abandon me during the retreat. At eleven at night, I found lieutenant-generalLefebvre-Desnouettes; and one of his officers, major Schmidt, had the generosity to give me the only horse that remained to him. In this manner I arrived at Marchiennes-au-Pont at four o’clock in the morning, alone, without any officers of my staff, ignorant of what had become of the Emperor, who, before the end of the battle, had entirely disappeared, and who, I was allowed to believe, might be either killed or taken prisoner. General Pamphile Lacroix, chief of the staff of the second corps, whom I found in this town, having told me that the Emperor was at Charleroi, I was led to suppose that his Majesty was going to put himself at the head of marshal Grouchy’s corps, to cover the Sambre, and to facilitate to the troops the means of rallying towards Avesnes, and, with this persuasion, I went to Beaumont; but parties of cavalry following on too near, and having already intercepted the roads of Maubeuge and Philippeville, I became sensible of the total impossibility of arresting a single soldier on that point, to oppose the progress of the victorious enemy. I continued my march upon Avesnes, where I could obtain no intelligence of what had become of the Emperor.
“In this state of matters, having no knowledge of his Majesty nor of the Major-General, confusion increasing every moment, and, with the exception of some fragments of regiments of the guard and of the line, every one following his own inclination, I determined immediately to go to Paris by St.-Quentin, to disclose, as quickly as possible, the true state of affairs to the minister of war, that he might send to the army some fresh troops, and take the measures which circumstances rendered necessary. At my arrival at Bourget, (two leagues from Paris,) I learned that the Emperor had passed there at nine o’clock in the morning.
“Such,M. le duc, is the history of this calamitous campaign.
“Now I ask those who have survived this fine and numerous army, how I can be accused of the disasters of which it has been the victim, and of which our military annals furnish no example. I have, it is said, betrayed my country, I who, to serve it, have shown a zeal which I perhaps have carried to an extravagant height: but this calumny is supported byno fact, by no circumstance. But how can these odious reports, which spread with frightful rapidity, be arrested? If, in the researches which I could make on this subject, I did not fear almost as much to discover as to be ignorant of the truth, I would say, that all was a tendency to convince that I have been unworthily deceived, and that it is attempted to cover, with the pretence of treason, the faults and extravagancies of this campaign; faults which have not been avowed in the bulletins that have appeared, and against which I in vain raised that voice of truth which I will yet cause to resound in the House of Peers.
“I expect, from the candour of your Excellency, and from your indulgence to me, that you will cause this letter to be inserted in theJournal, and give it the greatest possible publicity.
“Marshal prince de la Moskowa.
“Paris, June 26th, 1815.”
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