But unexpectedly, and against what Napoleon had imagined possible, the Prussians (D E F), when defeated at Ligny (P), did not retreat upon their base, and have not so suffered from their defeat as tobe incapable of further action. They have marched northward parallel to the retreat of Wellington; and while Napoleon (X Y Z) is at the hottest of his struggle with Wellington (A B C) at Waterloo (W), this eastern or Prussian half (D E F) comes down upon his flank at (R) in the middle of the afternoon, and by the combined numbers and disposition of this double attack Napoleon’s army is crushed before darkness sets in.
Such, in its briefest graphic elements, is the story of the four days.
It will be observed from what we have said that the whole thing turns upon the incompleteness of Napoleon’s success at Ligny, and the power ofretreating northwardleft to the Prussians after that defeat.
When we come to study the details of the story, we shall see that this, the Prussian defeat at Ligny, was thus incomplete because one of Napoleon’s subordinates, Erlon, with the First French Army Corps, receivedcontradictory orders and did not come up as he should have done to turn the battle of Ligny into a decisive victory for Napoleon. A part of Napoleon’s forces being thus neutralised and held useless during the fight at Ligny, the Prussian army escaped, still formed as a fighting force, and still capable of reappearing, as it did reappear, at the critical moment, two days later, upon the field of Waterloo.
The rapidity of Napoleon’s stroke was marred at its very outset by certain misfortunes as well as certain miscalculations. His left, which was composed of the First and Second Corps d’Armée, did indeed reach the river Sambre in the morning, and had carried the bridge of Marchiennes by noon, but the First Corps, under Erlon, were not across—that is, the whole left had not negotiated the river—until nearly five o’clock in the afternoon.
Next, the general in command of the leading division of the right-hand body—the Fourth Corps—gave the first example of that of which the whole Napoleonic organisation was then in such terror, I mean the mistrust in the fortunes of theEmperor, and the tendency to revert to the old social conditions, which for a moment the Bourbons had brought back, and which so soon they might bring back again—he deserted. The order was thereupon given for the Fourth Corps or right wing to cross at Châtelet, but it came late (as late as half-past three in the afternoon), and did but cause delay. At this eastern end of Napoleon’s front the last men were not over the river until the next day.
As to the centre (the main body of the army), its cavalry reached Charleroi before ten o’clock in the morning, but an unfortunate and exasperating accident befallen a messenger left the infantry immediately behind without instructions. The cavalry were impotent to force the bridge crossing the river Sambre, which runs through the town, until the main body should appear, and it was not until past noon that the main body began crossing the Sambre by the Charleroi bridge. The Emperor had probably intended to fight immediately after having crossed the river. Gosselies, to the north, was strongly held; and had all his men been over the Sambre in the early afternoon as he had intended, an action fought suddenly, by surprise as it were, against the advance bodies of theFirst Prussian Corps, would have given the first example of that destruction of the enemy in detail which Napoleon intended. But the delays in the advance, rapid as it had been, now forbade any such good fortune. The end of the daylight was spent in pushing back the head of the First Prussian Corps (with a loss of somewhat over 1000 men), and when night fell upon that Thursday evening, the 15th of June, the French held Charleroi and all the crossings of the Sambre, but were not yet in a position to attack in force. Of the left, the First Corps were but just over the Sambre; on the right, that is, of the Fourth Corps, some units were still upon the other side of the river; while, of the centre, thewholeof the Sixth Corps, and a certain proportion of cavalry as well, had still to cross!
Napoleon had failed to bring the enemy to action; that enemy had fallen back upon Fleurus, pretty nearly intact.[4]All the real work had evidently to be put off, not only until the morrow, but until a fairly late hour upon the morrow, for it would take some time to get all the French forces on to the Belgian side of the river.
When this should have been accomplished,however, the task of the next day, the Friday, was clear.
It was Napoleon’s business to fall upon whatever Prussian force might be concentrated before him and upon his right and to destroy it, meanwhile holding back, by a force sent up the Brussels road toQuatreBras, any attempt Wellington and his western army might make to join the Prussians and save them.
That night the Duke of Wellington’s army lay in its cantonments without concentration and without alarm, guessing nothing. The head of Wellington’s First Corps, the young Prince of Orange, who commanded the Netherlanders, had left his headquarters to go and dine with the Duke in Brussels.
Wellington, we may believe if we choose (the point is by no means certain), knew as early as three o’clock in the afternoon that the French had moved. It may have been as late as five, it may even have been six. But whatever the hour in which he received his information, it is quite certain that he had no conception of the gravity of the moment. As late as ten o’clock at night the Duke issued certain after-orders. He had previously given general orders (which presupposed no immediate attack),commanding movements which would in the long-run have produced a concentration, but though these orders were ordered to be executed “with as little delay as possible,” there was no hint of immediate duty required, nor do the posts indicated betray in any way the urgent need there was to push men south and east at the top of their speed, and relieve the Prussians from the shock they were to receive on the morrow.
These general orders given—orders that betray no grasp of the nearness of the issue—Wellington went off to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in what the impartial historian cannot doubt to be ignorance of the great stroke which Napoleon had so nearly brought off upon that very day, and would certainly attempt to bring off upon the next.
In the midst of the ball, or rather during the supper, definite news came in that the French army had crossed the river Sambre, and had even pushed its cavalry as far up the Brussels road as Quatre Bras.
The Duke does not seem to have appreciated even then what that should mean in the way of danger to the Prussians, and indeed of the breaking of the whole line. He left the dance at about two in the morning and went to bed.
He was not long left in repose. In the bright morning sunlight, four hours afterwards, he was roused by a visitor from the frontier, and we have it upon his evidence that the Duke at last understood what was before him, and said that the concentration of his forces must be at Quatre Bras.
In other words, Wellington knew or appreciated extremely tardily on thatFridaymorning about six that the blow was about to fall upon his Prussian allies to the south and east, and that it was the business of his army upon the west to come up rapidly in succour.
As will be seen in a moment, he failed; but it would be a very puerile judgment of this great man and superb defensive General to belittle his place in the history of war upon the basis of even such errors as these.
True, the error and the delay were prodigious and, in a fashion, comic; and had Napoleon delivered upon theThursdayafternoon, as he had intended, an attack which should have defeated the Prussians before him, Wellington’s error and delay would have paid a very heavy price.
As it was, Napoleon’s own delay in crossing the Sambre made Wellington’smistake and tardiness bear no disastrous fruit. The Duke failed to succour the Prussians. His troops, scattered all over Western Belgium, did not come up in time to prevent the defeat of his allies at Ligny. But he held his own at Quatre Bras; and in the final battle, forty-eight hours later, the genius with which he handled his raw troops upon the ridge of Mont St Jean wiped out and negatived all his strategical misconceptions of the previous days.
From this confusion, this partial delay and error upon Napoleon’s part, this ignorance upon Wellington’s of what was toward, both of which marked Thursday the 15th, we must turn to a detailed description of that morrow, Friday the 16th, which, though it is less remembered in history than the crowning day of Waterloo, was, in every military sense, the decisive day of the campaign.
We shall see that it was Napoleon’s failure upon that Friday completely to defeat, or rather to destroy, the Prussian force at Ligny—a failure largely due to Wellington’s neighbouring resistance at Quatre Bras—which determined the Emperor’s final defeat upon the Sunday at Waterloo.
We have seen what the 15th of June was in those four short days of which Waterloo was to be the climax. That Thursday was filled with an advance, rapid and unexpected, against the centre of the allied line, and therefore against that weak point where the two halves of the allied line joined, to wit, Charleroi and the country immediately to the north of that town and bridge.
We have further seen that while the unexpectedness of the blow was almost as thorough as Napoleon could have wished, the rapidity of its delivery, though considerable, had been less than he had anticipated. He had got by the evening of the day not much more than three-quarters ofhis forces across the river Sambre, and this passage, which was mapped out for completion before nightfall, straggled on through the whole morning of the morrow,—a tardiness the effects of which we shall clearly see in the next few pages.
Napoleon’s intention, once the Sambre was crossed, was to divide his army into two bodies: one, on the left, was to be entrusted to Ney; one, on the right, to Grouchy. A reserve, which the Emperor would command in person, was to consist in the main of the Imperial Guard.
The left-hand body, under Ney, was to go straight north up the great Brussels road.
Napoleon rightly estimated that he had surprised the foe, though he exaggerated the extent of that surprise. He thought it possible that this body to the left, under Ney, might push on to Brussels itself, and in any case could easily deal with the small and unprepared forces which it might meet upon the way. Its function in any case, whether resistance proved slight or formidable, was to hold the forces of Wellington back from effecting a junction with Blucher and the Prussians.
Meanwhile, the right-hand body, under Grouchy, was to fall upon the extremity of the Prussian line and overwhelm it.
Such an action against the head of the long Prussian cordon could lead, as the Emperor thought, to but one of two results: either the great majority of the Prussian force, coming up to retrieve this first disaster, would be defeated in detail as it came; or, more probably, finding itself cut off from all aid on the part of Wellington’s forces to the west and its head crushed, the long Prussian line would roll upbackwards upon its communications towards the east, whence it had come.
In either case the prime object of Napoleon’s sudden move would have been achieved; and, with the body upon the left, under Ney, pushing up the Brussels road, the body upon the right, under Grouchy, pushing back the head of the Prussian line eastward, the two halves of the Allies would be separated altogether, and could later be dealt with, each in turn. The capital disadvantage under which Napoleon suffered—the fact that he had little more than half as many men as his combined enemies—would be neutralised, because he would, after the separation of those enemies into two bodies, be free to deal with either at his choice. Their communications came from diametrically opposite directions,[5]and, as the plan of each depended upon the co-operation of the other, their separation would leave them confused and without a scheme.
Napoleon in all this exaggerated the facility of the task before him; but before we go into that, it is essential that the reader should grasp a certain character in all military affairs, to misunderstand which is to misread the history of armies.
This characteristic is the necessary uncertainty under which every commander lies as to the disposition, the number, the order, and the information of his opponents.
It is anecessarycharacteristic in all warfare, because it is a prime duty in the conduct of war to conceal from your enemy your numbers, your dispositions, and the extent of your information. It is a duty which every commander will always fulfil to his best ability.
It is therefore a characteristic, be it noted, which no development of human science can conceivably destroy, for with every advance in our means of communicating information we advance also in our knowledge of the means whereby the new means of communication may be interrupted. An advantage over the enemy in the means one has of acquiring knowledge with regard to him must, of course, always be of supreme importance, and when those means are novel, one side or the other is often beforehand for some years with the new science of their use. When such is the case, science appears to uninstructed opinion to have changed this ancient and fixed characteristic which is in the very nature of war. But in fact there has been no such change. Underthe most primitive conditions an advantage of this type was of supreme importance; under conditions the most scientific and refined it is an advantage that may still be neutralised if the enemy has learnt means of screening himself as excellent as our means of discovering him. Even the aeroplane, whose development in the modern French service has so vastly changed the character of information, and therefore of war, can never eliminate the factor of which I speak. A service possessed of a great superiority in this new arm will, of course, be the master of its foe; but when the use of the new arm is spread and equalised among all European forces so that two opposing forces are equally matched even in this new discovery, then the old element of move and countermove, feint, secrecy, and calculated confusion of an adversary, will reappear.[6]
In general, then, to point out the ignorance and the misconceptions of one commander is no criticism of a campaign until we have appreciated the correspondingignorance and misconceptions of the other. We have already seen Wellington taken almost wholly by surprise on the French advance; we shall see him, even when he appreciated its existence, imagining it to be directed principally against himself. We shall similarly see Napoleon underestimating the Prussian force in front of him, and underestimating even that tardy information which had reached Wellington in time for him to send troops up the Brussels road, and to check the French advance along it. But we must judge either of the two great opponents not by a single picture of his own misconceptions alone, but by the combined picture of the misconceptions of both, and especially by a consideration of the way in which each retrieved or attempted to retrieve the results of those misconceptions when a true idea of the enemy’s dispositions was conveyed to him.
Here, then, we have Napoleon on the morning of Friday the 16th of June prepared to deal with the Prussians. It is his right-hand body, under Grouchy, which is deputed to do this, while he sends up the left-hand body, under Ney, northwards tobrush aside, or, at the worst, at least to hold off whatever of the Duke of Wellington’s command may be found upon the Brussels road attempting to join the Prussians.
The general plan of what happened upon that decisive 16th is simple enough.
The left-hand body, under Ney, goes forward up the Brussels road, finds more resistance than it expected, but on the whole performs its task and prevents any effective help being given by the western half of the Allies—Wellington’s half—to the eastern half—the Prussian half. But it only prevents that task with difficulty and at the expense of a tactical defeat. This action is called Quatre Bras.
Meanwhile, the right-hand body equally accomplishes the elements of its task, engages the head of the Prussian line and defeats it, with extreme difficulty, just before dark. This action is called Ligny.
But the minor business conducted by the left, under Ney, is only just successful, and successful only in the sense that it does, at vast expense, prevent a junction of Wellington with Blucher. The major business conducted on the right, by Napoleon himself, in support of Grouchy, is disappointing. The head of the Prussian lineis not destroyed; the Prussian army, though beaten, is free to retreat in fair order, and almost in what direction it chooses.
The ultimate result is that Wellington and Blucher do manage to effect their junction on the day after the morrow of Ligny and Quatre Bras, and thus defeat Napoleon at Waterloo.
Now, why were both these operations, Quatre Bras and Ligny, incompletely successful? Partly because there was more resistance along the Brussels road than Napoleon had expected, and a far larger body of Prussians in front of him than he had expected either;but much more because a whole French army corps, which, had it been in action, could have added a third to the force of either the right or the left wing, was out of action all day; and wandered aimlessly over the empty zone which separated Ney from Grouchy, Quatre Bras from Ligny, the left half of Napoleon’s divided army from its right half.
This it was which prevented what might have been possible—the thrusting back of Wellington along the Brussels road, and even perhaps the disorganisation of his forces. This it was which missed what was otherwise certainly possible—the total ruin of the Prussian army.
This army corps thus thrown away unused in hours of aimless marching and countermarching was the First Army Corps. Its commander was Erlon; and the enormous blunder or fatality which permitted Erlon and his 20,000 to be as useless upon the 16th of June as though they had been wiped out in some defeat is what makes of the 16th of June the decisive day of the campaign.
It was Erlon’s failure to be presenteitherwith Neyorwith Grouchy, either upon the left or upon the right, either at Quatre Bras or at Ligny, while each of those two actions were in doubt, which made it possible for Wellington’s troops to stand undefeated in the west, for the Prussians to retire—not intact, but still an army—from the east, and for both to unite upon the day after the morrow, the Sunday, and destroy the French army at Waterloo.
It is upon Erlon’s blunder or misfortune that the whole issue turns, and upon the Friday, the 16th of June, in the empty fields between Quatre-Bras and Ligny, much more than upon the famous Sunday at Waterloo, that the fate of Napoleon’s army was decided.
In order to make this clear, let us first follow what happened in the operations ofNapoleon’s right wing against the Prussians opposed to it,—operations which bear in history the name of “the Battle of Ligny.”
“If they fight here they will be damnably mauled.”(Wellington’s words on seeing the defensive positions chosen by the Prussians at Ligny.)
Napoleon imagined that when he had crossed the Sambre with the bulk of his force, the suddenness of his attack (for, though retarded as we have seen, and though leaving troops upon the wrong bank of the river, it was sudden) would find the Prussian forces in the original positions wherein he knew them to have lain before he marched. He did not think that they would yet have had the time, still less the intention, to concentrate. Those original positions the map upon p.41makes plain.
The 124,000 men and more, which lay under the supreme command of Blucher, had been spread before the attack began along the whole extended line from Liège to Charleroi, and had been disposed regularly from left to right in four corps d’armée.
The first of these had its headquarters in Charleroi itself, its furthest outpost was but five miles east of the town, its three brigades had Charleroi for their centre; its reserve cavalry was at Sombreffe, its reserve artillery at Gembloux. The Second Corps had its headquarters twenty miles away east, at Namur, and occupied posts in the country as far off as Hannut (thirty miles away from Charleroi).
The Third Corps had its headquarters at Ciney in the Ardennes, and was scattered in various posts throughout that forest, its furthest cantonment being no nearer than Dinant, which, by the only good road available, was nearer forty than thirty miles from Napoleon’s point of attack.
Finally, the Fourth Corps was as far away as Liège (nearer fifty than forty miles by road from the last cantonment of the First Corps), and having its various units scattered round the neighbourhood of that town.
Napoleon, therefore, attacking Charleroi suddenly, imagined that he would have to deal only with the First Corps at Charleroi and its neighbourhood. He did not think that the other three corps had information in time to enable them to come up westward towards the end of the line and meet him. The outposts of the First Corps had,of course, fallen back before the advance of the Emperor’s great army; the mass of that First Corps was, he knew, upon this morning of the 16th, some mile or two north and east of Fleurus, astraddle of the great road which leads from Charleroi to Gembloux. At the very most, and supposing this First Corps (which was of 33,000 men, under Ziethen) had received reinforcements from the nearest posts of the Second and the Third Corps, Napoleon did not think that he could have in front of him more than some 40,000 men at the most.
He was in error. It had been arranged among the Prussian leaders that resistance to Napoleon, when occasion might come for it, should be offered in the neighbourhood of the cross-roads where the route from Charleroi to Gembloux crosses that from Nivelles to Namur. In other words, they were prepared to stand and fight between Sombreffe and the village of Ligny. The plan had been prepared long beforehand. The whole of the First Corps was in position with the morning, awaiting the Emperor’s attack. The Second Corps had been in motion for hours, and was marching up during all that morning. So was the Third Corps behind it. Blucher himself had arrived upon the field of battle the daybefore (the 15th), and had written thence to his sovereign to say that he was fully prepared for action the next day.
Indeed, Blucher on the 15th confidently expected victory, and the end of the campaign then and there. He had a right to do so, for Napoleon’s advance had been met by so rapid a concentration that, a little after noon on that Friday the 16th, and before the first shots were fired, well over 80,000 men were drawn up to receive the shock of Napoleon’s right wing. But that right wing all told, even when the belated French troops beyond the Sambre had finally crossed that river, and even when the Emperor had brought up the Guard and the reserve, numbered but 63,000. Supposing the French had been able to use every man, which they were not, they counted but seven to nine of their opponents. And the nine were upon the defensive; the seven had to undertake the task of an assault.
It was late in the day before battle was joined. Napoleon had reached Fleurus at about ten o’clock in the morning, but it was four hours more before he had brought all his troops across the river, and by the time he had done so two things had happened. First, the Duke of Wellington (who, as we shall see later, had come to Quatre Bras that morning, and had written to Blucher telling him of his arrival) rode off in person to the Prussian positions and discussed affairs near the windmill of Bussy with the Prussian Commander-in-chief. In this conversation, Wellington undoubtedly promised to effect, if he could, a junction with the Prussians in the course of the afternoon. Even without that aid Blucher felt fairly sure of victory; with it, he could be perfectly confident.
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The Prussian concentration before Ligny, showing the junction of theFirst, Second, and Third Corps on the morning of June 16th,and the inability of the Fourth Corps to come up in time.
As matters turned out, Wellington found himself unable to effect his junction with Blucher. Ney, as we shall see later, found in front of him on the Brussels road much heavier opposition than he had imagined, but Wellington was also surprised to find to what strength the French force under Ney was at Quatre Bras. Wellington, as we shall see, held his own on that 16th of June, but was quite unable to come up in succour of Blucher when the expected victory of that general turned to a defeat.
The second thing that happened in those hours was Napoleon’s discovery that the Prussian troops massing to oppose him before Ligny were going to be much more than a single corps. It looked to him more like the whole Prussian army. It was,indeed, three-quarters of that army, for it consisted of the First, the Second, and the Third Corps. Only the Fourth, with its headquarters at distant Liège, had not been able to arrive in time. This Fourth Corps would also have been present, and would probably have turned the scale in favour of the Prussians, had the staff orders been sent out promptly and conveyed with sufficient rapidity. As it was, its most advanced units got no further west, during the course of the action, than about halfway between Liège and the battlefield.
Napoleon was enabled to discover with some ease the great numbers which had concentrated to oppose him from the fact that these numbers had concentrated upon a defective position. Wellington, the greatest defensive general of his time, at once discovered this weakness in Blucher’s chosen battlefield, and was provoked by the discovery to the exclamation which stands at the head of this section. The rolling land occupied by the Prussian army lay exposed in a regular sweep downwards towards the heights upon which lay the French, and the Prussian army as it deployed came wholly under the view of its enemy. Nothing was hidden; and a further effect was that, as Napoleonhimself remarked, all the artillery work of the French side went home. If a round missed the foremost positions of the Prussian army, it would necessarily fall within the ranks behind them.
This discovery, that there lay before him not one corps but a whole army, seemed to Napoleon, upon one condition, an advantage. The new development would, upon that one condition, give him, if his troops were of the quality he estimated them to be, a complete victory over the united Prussian force, and might well terminate the campaign on that afternoon and in that place. That one condition was the possibility of getting Ney upon the left, or some part at least of Ney’s force, to leave the task of holding off Wellington, to come down upon the flank of the Prussians from the north and west, to envelop them, and thus, in company with the troops of Napoleon himself, to destroy the three Prussian Army Corps altogether.
Had that condition been fulfilled, the campaign would indeed have come to an end decisively in Napoleon’s favour, and, as he put it in a famous phrase, “not a gun” of the army opposing him “should escape.”
Unfortunately for the Emperor, that one condition was not fulfilled. The 63,000 Frenchmen of the right wing, underNapoleon, did indeed defeat and drive off the 80,000 men opposed to them. But that opposing army was not destroyed; it was not contained; it remained organised for further fighting, and it survived to decide Waterloo.
In order to appreciate Napoleon’s idea and how it might have succeeded, let the reader consider the dispositions of the battle of Ligny.
The battlefield named in history after the village of Ligny consists of a number of communes, of which that village is the central one. The Prussian army held the villages marked on the map by the names of Tongrinelle and Tongrinne, to the east of Ligny; it held Brye, St Amand, and Wagnelée to the east. It held also the heights behind upon the great road leading from Nivelles to Namur. When Napoleon had at last got his latest troops over from beyond the Sambre on to the field of battle, which was not until just on two o’clock in the afternoon, the plan he formed was to hold the Prussian left and centre by a vigorous attack, that is, to pin the Prussians down to Tongrinne, Tongrinelle, and Ligny, while, on the other front, the east and south front of the Prussians, another vigorous attack should be driving them back out of Wagnelée and St Amand.
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The plan can be further elucidated by considering the elements of the battle as they are sketched in the map over leaf. Napoleon’s troops at C C C were to hold the Prussian left at H, to attack the Prussian right at D, with the Guard at E left in reserve for the final effort.
By thus holding the Prussians at H and pushing them in at D, he would here begin to pen them back, and it needed but the arrival on the field of a fresh French force attacking the Prussians along A B to destroy the force so contained and hemmed in. For that fresh force Napoleon depended upon new and changed instructions which he despatched to Ney when he saw the size of the Prussian force before him. During Napoleon’s main attack, some portion of Ney’s force, and if possible the whole of it, should appear unexpectedly from the north and west, marching down across the fields between Wagnelée and the Nivelles-Namur road, and coming on the north of the enemy at A B, so as to attack him not only in the flank but in the rear. He would then be unable to retreat in the direction ofWavre(W)—a broken remnant might escape towards Namur (N). But it was more likely that the whole force would be held and destroyed.
Elements of Ligny.
Supposing that Napoleon’s 63,000 showed themselves capable of holding, let alone partially driving in, the 80,000 in front of them, the sudden and unexpected appearance of a new force in the height of the action, adding another twenty or thirty thousand to the French troops already engaged, coming upon the flank and spreading to the rear of the Prussian host, would inevitably have destroyed that host, and, to repeat Napoleon’s famous exclamation, “not a gun would have escaped.”
The reader may ask: “If this plan of victory be so obvious, why did Napoleon send Ney off with a separate left wing of forty to fifty thousand men towards Quatre Bras?”
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, underNey, up the Brussels road, not because he believed it would meet with serious opposition, but because this was to be the line of his principal 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 Emperorexpected 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 Wagnelée. 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, whichit 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 Wagnelée 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 certitude 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 deliverthat 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 passed 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 illustrates 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, hadwithdrawn 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 assault.
Nearly all the guns of the Guard and all those of the Fourth Corps crashed against the village to prepare the assault, 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 assault 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 theirfire 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 cuirassiers 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 hisfull 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 passed 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 atWavre, 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.
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 milesaway, 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 rôle 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 ofthe 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, andgrievously 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 theEmperor’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 space, 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 mass 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.