The Peninsular campaigns had, by the process of constantly “pegging away,” to use Abraham Lincoln’s expression during the American Civil War, resulted in sapping the strength of France, and led to the emperor’s deposition. Perhaps it was not the main cause of his fall after all; but it was the one open wound that bled the French to death, when all other districts of Europe were in awe-full peace. The kingdoms and empires of Europe had either successively fallen, or been cowed by the mighty genius of Napoleon. Spain and Portugal, almost the least of these European peoples, had been the only nations who continuously and persistently stood out against his usurpation. It is more than probable that, without England’s aid, even their patriotic stubbornness might have broken down. They wanted active help, practical sympathy, and money. All these England provided, taking the fact that she was not then very rich and populous, without stint. How her efforts to aid in the great aim of crushing the dominance of France, doubtless through motives that were based on natural and national selfishness, were responded to, the whole of the history of the Peninsular War clearly shows. There were only barren honours to the chiefs, utter and cruel ingratitude throughout to the men who, ill fed and scornfully treated, fought the battles of Spanish generals and soldiers, who were hardly worth fighting with or for. Omit England’s part in the great Peninsular struggle, and there is scarcely a single case in which the Spanish or the Portuguese either fought a good fight or played a straight game. In both207 countries France had friends, and in both countries, therefore, were traitors to their own cause, and still more to that of their British allies.
Whatever was the result of the hard work and fighting in the Peninsula from 1808 to 1814, the British certainly owe no debt of gratitude to either Spain or Portugal. The utter ingratitude of both nations towards the insular power who alone of all the nations of Europe gave them practical help, is more than apparent. The Iberian Peninsula was, and is, full of the graves of brave men who fought to save a country that had not the intelligence to save itself. Its coffers were filled with hard-earned British gold, which they had not the grace to acknowledge.
But the long war did one thing. It trained British officers and British soldiers to fight the last great fight in Europe for many a year.
Though the army at Waterloo contained but a proportion of the Peninsular veterans, the glory of the work they had done, the conviction of their own military masterfulness, the memory of what the army had been there, was a great factor in the final struggle against the greatest military power in Europe, when that final struggle came.
The teaching and the glory of the Peninsula made raw soldiers fight at Quatre Bras and Waterloo as brave men should. Peninsular victories had wiped out the remembrance of many years of either only partial success or actual defeat, and had carried the enthusiastic morale all armies should have back to the best days of Blenheim and Ramilies.
Thus things were when the return from Elba was devised, and, “with the violets in the spring,” Napoleon returned to France. At the moment of his return the French army numbered in round numbers about 150,000 men, and this he speedily increased to 200,000, a small body to meet the huge masses that were putting themselves in motion for his destruction. There were the Russians about Poland, numbering 280,000; the Austrians were 250,000 strong; Prussia alone could furnish 200,000 men; and, in addition, there208 were the minor German states, as well as Portugal and Spain. Holland and Belgium were not to be firmly reckoned on in case of disaster, but, stiffened by the British and Prussians, they might find it difficult to avoid casting in their lot with the other nations, and even assume an enthusiasm that possibly was only superficial. To stand, centrally situated, on the defensive, was but to invite disaster; and the time required for the close concentration of the enormous Allied mass could be calculated with tolerable certainty, though railways were not. For a time at least, therefore, the nations east of the Rhine could be disregarded, but those north of the Sambre came under a different category. They were closer, and therefore within striking distance. They could not only be got at quickly, and possibly be defeated, before the eastern armies could arrive to their assistance, but in case the emperor felt compelled to move towards the Rhine, they might assail him in flank, attack his communications, and even capture his capital. Finally, the Brussels road marked the line of junction of two allies who spoke different languages, and who had not fought side by side before. This joint, then, was the element of weakness. If it could be broken through, the French might, like a wedge, split asunder this flank of the coalition, and, if fortune favoured Napoleon, might destroy in detail two of his nearest enemies. Besides, something must be done, and this course would soonest of all carry the war out of France. Across the frontier the British army covered the front from the Charleroi-Brussels road to Ostend, and the Prussians extended the arc eastward to Liège. The former numbered about 106,000 men (of whom about 34,000 were British, and the remainder Germans, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, Nassauers, Dutch, and Belgians), with its base of supply between Ostend and Antwerp; the latter 117,000, with its base on the lower Rhine. Thus the area covered by the troops had a frontage of about 100 miles and a depth of nearly 40. Opposed to them was a compact French army of 125,000 men.
Campaigns of Waterloo (1815) & Marlborough.
On the other hand, the Allies did not care at first to take the initiative, though they were enormously superior in number.209 Each had his own views as to what their great antagonist would do. Wellington had, throughout, made up his mind that the emperor would attack his right and sever his communications with the sea, although such a course would force the concentration of the two possibly undefeated armies. So determined was he that this view was correct, that even on the supreme day of Waterloo he had detached at Halle some 10,000 men to guard the flank that was not even threatened. In his first and last meeting with Napoleon he did not grasp his adversary’s skill. He was planning an invasion of France at the moment the French tricolors were crossing the frontier. On the other hand, Blucher, with the difficult country of the Ardennes between his line of communication and the enemy, was necessarily not so anxious for his outer flank, and was quite prepared to fight opposite Charleroi.
THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
With Napoleon, decision and execution followed rapidly one on the other. The army was quickly and secretly concentrated, and after issuing an address appealing to past glories, in which direct reference is made to the English “prison ships,”44 it crossed the Sambre on the 15th June, and the outposts became engaged; but when night fell, only a portion of the French army were on the north bank of the stream. The staff work had been bad, and an important order was not received in time, because it was sent by one orderly instead of in duplicate by two, and he had a bad tumble. Then began the series of delays which were among the many causes that led later to the emperor’s defeat at Waterloo.
The left wing under Ney was so long in closing up to Quatre Bras, that the British troops at the end of the day outnumbered their opponents, and D’Erlon’s corps had been swinging pendulum-like between the two battlefields of Ligny and Quatre Bras, to be useful at neither. Turning to the Allied side, Blucher had readily gauged the French plan, if Wellington had not. The night sky, reddened with the glare of many fires on the night of the 14th June, had210 warned the advanced corps of Ziethen that a large force lay in front of him, the details of which were told him by the deserter Bourmont, who was received with scant courtesy by the honest old Prussian. “It is all one,” he said in German, when he noticed the white cockade of the Bourbons in the general’s hat, “what a man sticks in his hat, a scoundrel remains a scoundrel”; and so, dismissing him, he carried out the concentration of his army towards Ligny. Here, on the morning of the 16th, the French right wing, under Napoleon’s personal leadership, forced back the Prussians, and after a severe conflict, which lasted till night, drove them back, he thought in the direction of Liège, practically in the direction of Wavre. But when defeated, Blucher’s “noble daring” in deciding on falling back on Wavre rather than Liège, “at once snatched from Napoleon the hoped-for fruits of his victory, and the danger Ligny had for a few hours averted was left impending over him.”
On the other flank, there is much to be said. There seems little doubt that false reports from France had lulled Wellington into a feeling of security for which, as results proved, there was little basis; and to this may be added the somewhat futile demonstrations against his right front.
Even when the passage of the Sambre by the French army was actually known, on the afternoon of the 15th, still he delayed his decision, and merely orders for the concentration of his widely-spread units were issued. When at night the news was confirmed, the general tenor of the orders pointed rather to a concentration at Nivelle than on the Charleroi road; yet he knew by then that imposing masses of hostile troops were north of that place. Had Ney been vigorous and rapid, nothing could have prevented the separation of the Allied armies.
That this was not so, was due to the independent initiative of a Dutch-Belgian general, Perponcher, who assembled his command at Quatre Bras, without orders, only a mile or two from the French bivouac, on the night of the 15th June. Then came the celebrated ball when—
211
“There was a sound of revelry by night, And Belgium’s capital had gathered then Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men; A thousand hearts beat happily; and when Music arose with its voluptuous swell, Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again, And all went merry as a marriage bell; But hush! hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it! No; ’twas but the wind, Or the car rattling o’er the stony street; On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined: No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet To chase the glowing hours with flying feet— But hark! That heavy sound breaks in once more, As if the clouds its echo would repeat; And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before! Arm! Arm! It is—it is the cannon’s opening roar.”
After the ball, the Prince of Orange, anxious for orders, was told by the duke, it is said, to “go to bed”; but he started instead for Quatre Bras, which his chief did not reach until eleven o’clock.
Then the duke rode to Ligny and conferred with Blucher. At this conference he agreed, against apparently his own and Müffling’s opinion, to move to the right rear of the Prussians and act as a reserve, provided he were not attacked himself. To do so he must have moved by the Namur Chaussée, which passes through Quatre Bras. To do so at all, therefore, that point must first be securely held. To have made a flank march in the very presence of the enemy, and to have left his own line of advance, towards which his troops were converging, exposed to danger, would but have been to court disaster. To lend any aid whatever to Blucher, Quatre Bras was his first case. But Herr Delbruck, in his Life of Gneisenau, makes the assertion that the battle of Ligny was only fought on the assumption that 60,000 men would form on their right to strengthen, and if necessary prolong, their line on this side, while Müffling, on the other hand, clearly points out that the promise to come to Ligny was quite conditional—“provided,” to use the duke’s own words, “I am not attacked myself.”
212 Moreover, for the Prussians to fight at Ligny can scarcely be considered optional. Like the action at Quatre Bras, it was unavoidable, unless they retreated at once on Waterloo; for if Wellington were obliged to engage the enemy in order to check his advance and complete his concentration, it was equally Blucher’s only choice to give battle at Ligny so as to enable Bülow to join him. But now comes in a very remarkable statement made by Gneisenau, who was the chief of staff to the Prussian army which Blucher commanded in chief. He was the thoughtful brain thereof, as his chief, old Marshal “Vorwarts,” was the fighting leader. Excellent as the latter was at carrying out with abundant energy a plan entrusted to him, the devising of that plan was given to more able and accomplished students of the art of war. Gneisenau was esteemed one of these, and the Prussian plan of co-operation with Wellington is probably due mainly, if not entirely, to him. This fact must be borne clearly in mind in criticising his comments on the campaign in which he took so prominent a part. Moreover, he was next in command to Blucher, and was thus placed with the object of assuming supreme authority over the Prussian army, should such an eventuality as the temporary or permanent disablement of Blucher render his services necessary. Such an eventuality occurred at Ligny, and the retreat to Wavre was therefore directed by Gneisenau, although the final operations of the Prussian army, which led to so brilliant a result as the battle of the 18th June, were superintended by Blucher himself. Gneisenau’s position, therefore, was difficult and delicate. In supreme command all the honours of victory would be his; acting as second in command, only a reflection of that glory would fall upon him. Some allowance must be made, therefore, for his views with regard to the campaign, if only for the sake of the possible reason that his judgment was embittered by the fact that, in the opinion of the world, to Wellington and to Blucher, not to Gneisenau, the successful issue of the most momentous battle that the world has seen was mainly due.
It is difficult to understand without some such charitable213 assumption the bitterness of his remarks regarding the English Commander-in-chief, which are so prominently brought forward in the fourth volume of his life. Not only does he comment in an almost contemptuous spirit on the early dispositions of Wellington before the hostile armies came into contact, but he accuses him of a want of camaraderie which is foreign to the English character, and with which Wellington cannot fairly be charged.
None the less, the Prussian leader plainly and brusquely considers that he was guilty of culpable slowness in concentrating after the French had attacked Ziethen’s outposts on the Sambre on the 15th June, and charges him with dilatoriness in issuing the necessary orders on the receipt of the intelligence that the Prussian outposts were so engaged, and with want of loyalty to his Prussian allies in not rendering them active assistance at Ligny.
The two first of these may be dismissed without comment. They were matters of opinion, and, rightly or wrongly, Wellington took his own view regarding them, and must abide, like other men, by his acts, and submit to honest criticism. But the last is more serious, for it is not only stated that Ligny would not have been fought, had it not been for Wellington’s asserted promise to help, but that he promised in case of disaster to fall back, with a portion of the army at least, with Blucher to the Rhine. Gneisenau’s charge is both venomous and explicit. He compares his own impression with the want of cordial feeling that undoubtedly frequently existed between the duke and the Spanish generals in the Peninsula; but this is such an ex parte statement as to merit little rejoinder.
The evidence of every officer who shared in the glories and troubles of the Peninsular campaigns bears full testimony to the jealousy, and want even of courtesy, sometimes shown by the Spaniards, both towards the army that was fighting for the deliverance of the country and the chief who commanded it. It was not Wellington only who experienced this difficulty of operating with the Spanish allies of the214 British. Lord Lynedoch45 very fully supports the accusation of incompetency, jealousy, and uncordiality against the Spanish generals. After the battle of Barrosa, his letters and despatches refer frequently to his own difficulties with them; and as a general officer acting somewhat independently of the principal British army, his corroboration of the generally received opinion is valuable and trustworthy.
It is unjust in the extreme to draw any comparison between the want of unanimity that frequently existed in Spain, and the enforced inability of Wellington to come to the assistance of Blucher on the field of Ligny. But Wellington wrote a letter, which is quoted in detail in Herr Delbruck’s Life of Gneisenau, in which this controversy arises. It runs as follows:—
“Sur les hauteurs derriere Frasnes,
le 16 June 1815, á 10 heures et demi.
“Mon cher Prince,—Mon armée est situé comme il suit. Le corps d’armée du Prince d’Orange a une division ici et à Quatre Bras et le reste à Nivelles. La Reserve est en marche de Waterloo sur Genappe, où elle arrivera à midi. La cavalerie Anglaise sera à la même heure à Nivelles. Le corps de Lord Hill est à Braine le Comte.
“Je ne vois pas beaucoup de l’ennemi en avant de nous, et j’attends les nouvelles de votre Altesse; et l’arrivée des troupes pour decider mes operations pour la journée.
“Rien n’a paru du c?té de Binche ni sur notre droit.—Votre très obeissant serviteur,
“Wellington.”
Much capital is made out of this document. It is assumed that Wellington made a promise which he must have known could not be fulfilled. And the still graver charge is implied that the letter was intentionally misleading. It seems scarcely credible that such a view could be maintained, knowing the good feeling that obtained between him and all the Prussian leaders except Gneisenau. Moreover,215 Wellington’s own army was not so good, so homogeneous, or even so numerically superior to that of the French as to render his chance of fighting the emperor single-handed, when his troops were flushed with victory, a successful one. The political feeling of the Belgians, the sympathy undoubtedly felt by many with the French, a sympathy only half concealed in many cases, would be an additional reason for his being very far from desirous of in any way opposing the concentration of the Allied armies.
At the time specified there was, judging from his own statement as to the reconnaissance, little doubt in his mind but that no serious attack would be made on Quatre Bras; and he evidently intended to move to Ligny unless prevented. As to the actual position of his corps, he seemed to have indicated where they might possibly be by the time when the letter was written, rather than where they actually were; the errors in position of the different corps averaging ten miles. He seems to have forgotten, however, that by the after order of 10 p.m. on the 15th June, Picton had been directed to march along the Namur road, only “to the point where the road to Nivelles separates,” i.e. near Mont St. Jean. Clausewitz’s view that the halt there was designedly made until after the interview with Blucher is, as Colonel Chesney remarked, “obviously inconsistent” with the known time of Picton’s appearance with the leading division at Quatre Bras. As a matter of fact, he apparently overrated his power of concentration and the movement of his brigades, though there seems no reason to doubt but what they might have been, on the whole, very nearly in the positions assigned had they moved with ordinary speed.
Be all this as it may, the battle of Quatre Bras began. At the cross roads there, at 2 p.m. on the 15th June, were 7000 Dutch Belgians and 16 guns, against 17,500 French infantry and cavalry and 38 guns, who speedily drove back the outposts at Frasnes, and were pressing them still farther back through the wood of Bossu on the Allied right when the first reinforcements came. These were Pack’s Brigade, composed of the 42nd, 44th, 92nd, and 95th; Kempt’s Brigade,216 of 28th, 32nd, 79th, and 1st, and a Hanoverian Brigade of four battalions, with two more batteries; and thus from 3.30 to 4.30 the Allies numbered 20,000 men with 28 guns, against 18,000 with 44 guns. Now, therefore, Picton, with whom the duke “was barely on speaking terms,” made a counter attack on the left, with the usual result that the fire of the line drove back the enemy’s skirmishers which covered the advance of their columns, and these, broken by fire against their mass and then charged with the bayonet, fell back too. But on the other wing, the right, there was some confusion. The Brunswickers there had fled, both horse and foot, and their duke was wounded. The 42nd in the tall rye grass were somewhat rolled up, as they were not in square, while the 44th, assailed in front as well as rear, faced both ranks outwards, and reserved their fire to twenty paces. So the enemy’s charge swept on across the field from right to left until the 92nd checked it and compelled it to retire. Meanwhile, the Bossu wood on the right was lost, and the French heavy cavalry in vain charged the British squares, but broke up the 69th, whose order to form square had been countermanded by the Prince of Orange. So the fight fluctuated until between 5 and 6 p.m., when the Allied troops now numbered 32,000 men and 68 guns (against 20,700 and 50 guns) by the arrival of the Guards and some Brunswickers. Then the whole force advanced, and victory rested with them. Thus the battle ended at about 6.30 p.m., and at that time, even if D’Erlon had joined Ney, the French left would still have been outnumbered. But Wellington, writes the ablest critic of this momentous campaign, “at dusk, thirty hours after his first warning, had only present at Quatre Bras three-eighths of his infantry, one-third of his guns, and one-seventh of his cavalry. Truly, in holding his own, the great Englishman owed something that day to fortune.”46
This is really the gravamen of Gneisenau’s charge. During the night the Allied right wing was reinforced to 45,000 men, but, short as the distance between the wings was, showing217 how less intimate the connection between the Allied armies was than it should have been, Blucher’s left wing was beaten and in full retreat, and the English general did not know the fact till late.
So retreat was unavoidable, and was begun at 10 a.m. on the 17th. Wellington was to fall back on the known position of Waterloo. Blucher had promised to come with his whole army if he could. Napoleon had despatched Grouchy with 33,000 men to prevent this, and keep the Prussians on the move; but the emperor’s own ill health and failing strength had again caused delay; so Grouchy started late, and Napoleon wasted his time in rest and a review.
The British retreat was well conducted in wretched weather, and despite the heavy ground, there was some rearguard fighting, chiefly by the cavalry on both sides. At length, on the sodden ground about Mont St. Jean, both armies settled down for what rest was possible, and waited for the dawn. Thus the British prepared for battle, with the hope that Blucher, or the certainty that night, would come on the 18th June 1815.
But still, with a firmness that seems degenerating into obstinacy, Wellington persisted in his nervous anxiety for his right flank, as he had done throughout, and stationed some 10,000 men out of his small army at Hal. His excuse that the troops were inferior is futile, for he had battalions of a precisely similar character on the battlefield of Waterloo. He must have known, from the extent of front occupied, that the bulk of the French army were in front of him. He must have guessed that some considerable force had been despatched to keep the defeated Prussians on the move. He knew that the distance of Hal was such as to preclude the possibility of any further considerable detachment from the main French army being made, as it would be entirely isolated from the main battle.
His force was none too strong to hold the position till Blucher came. His centre was weak and reserves were insufficient. By ten o’clock, thinks Shaw Kennedy, “it is difficult to understand how any fear for the Hal road218 could have existed.” None the less he left ten thousand men, under the Prince of Orange, not only unemployed, but likely to remain unemployed.
There, unfortunately for them, were left a brigade of Dutch Belgians and one of Colvile’s Division, that of Johnston, comprising the 35th, 54th, 59th, and 91st Regiments.
Whether Wellington ever rode to Wavre to personally arrange with Blucher as to his co-operation or not, is one of those things which cannot be proved. That it was quite possible, that the distance apart of the two Allied armies was such that it could be easily done, that Wellington, not unnaturally anxious, might have thought of it, all might have been. But it is not proved, any more than the myth that later on he hoped that “night or Blucher might come.” To accept the first part of the wish as true would mean that the retreat of a beaten or at least shaken army through a forest at night was a matter of no difficulty, which is absurd; to assume the latter part is reasonable, inasmuch as the blow so struck must have assailed the French rear. It is probable he did see then the necessity of the Prussian help, and, so seeing, might have tried to ensure it by a personal talk with his stout-hearted ally.
The position selected for the battle lies almost at right angles to the road between Brussels and Charleroi, is about two miles long, and only about three-quarters of a mile from that held by the French. Its folds, of equal height with those held by the French, fairly concealed all the troops but those immediately in front line; its gentle slopes merged easily into those southward of it. On its left were the roads that led to Wavre and Blucher, whose general line of march must inevitably lead to an attack on the village of Planchenoit in rear of the French right wing, and only about half a mile from their line of retreat by the Charleroi road.
The position, finally, had three strong advanced posts: on the right, the Chateau of Hougomont; in the centre, the small farm of La Haye Sainte; and on the left those of219 Papelotte, La Haye, and Smohain; while the right wing, extending towards Braine la Leud, was somewhat strengthened by Merbe Braine in rear of it.
As this is the last and most momentous battle of the long war, it will be well to examine briefly the dispositions made on both sides, for what practically, then as now, were the three lines of battle.
Commencing on the extreme left, where the ground was somewhat flat, and to cover the right hand of the two roads by which the Prussians intended coming if they could, were the brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur, made up of the 10th and 18th Hussars, the 1st Hussars of the King’s German Legion, and 11th, 12th, and 16th Light Dragoons; Perponcher’s Dutch Belgians, holding in advance the farms in front, and with one brigade (Bylandt’s) extended to their right, on the exposed and open slopes of the ridge; Vincke’s and Best’s Brigades; Pack’s, formed of the 1st, 3rd, 1-42nd, 2-44th, and 92nd; Kempt’s, whose right rested on the Charleroi road, having the 28th, 32nd, and 79th, the latter of which detached three companies in advance to hold the knoll of La Haye Sainte, on the east side of the road.
This formed the left wing of the first line. West of the Charleroi road came Ompteda’s, Kielmansegge’s, and Halkett’s (30th, 33rd, 69th, 73rd), the right of which rested where the Mound of the Lion now stands, and Ompteda detached the 2nd light battalion of the King’s German Legion to hold La Haye Sainte in advance; the two Guards Brigades under Byng and Maitland (2nd Coldstream and 2nd and 3rd Foot Guards) extending to the Nivelles road, with Hougomont held in front by the light companies of the division of Guards and some Nassau and Hanoverian troops; and then echeloned back came Du Plat’s Brigade and Adam’s Brigade (the 52nd, 71st, 2-95th, and 3-95th), in advance of which was extended from Hougomont to well the other side of the Nivelles road (which was abattised) the 4th Brigade, composed of the 14th, 23rd, and 51st Regiments. Its right flank was covered by a220 squadron of the 15th Hussars, which linked it to the Dutch Belgians at Braine la Leud.
Thus the first line, often further subdivided into two parts, held the ridge, with a series of advanced posts and advanced troops in front, covered throughout by skirmishers.
The second line, from right to left, was mainly cavalry. Grant’s 3rd Brigade (7th, 13th, 23rd Light Dragoons) to the Nivelles road; Dornberg’s (23rd, 1st, 2nd Light Dragoons and one of the King’s German Legion) to the Charleroi road; the 3rd Hussars of the King’s German Legion; and across the Charleroi road Somerset’s Heavy Brigade (the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards, and the 1st Dragoon Guards), with on its left Ponsonby’s union Brigade, composed of the 1st, 2nd, and 6th Dragoons.
In the third line behind the right was a Hanoverian Brigade in Merbe Braine, and extended as far as the Charleroi road were the Hanoverian Hussars, the Brunswick Corps, Collaert’s Division, and Lambert’s Division (4th, 27th, 46th) when they came up.
The artillery were distributed freely by batteries along the front of the line, and some held in reserve; but there was no concentration of artillery. The proportion of each line seems to have been, out of 50,000 infantry, for the advanced posts, 6000 men; in main or first and second line, 31,000 men; in reserve, 13,000 men. These were formed when in line two, three, or even four deep, and Shaw Kennedy formed Von Alten’s Division, each battalion (or pair of battalions) in column on a front of two companies, whence they at first formed line to re-form column and square when attacked by cavalry. The whole of the front was covered by skirmishers. But it will be noticed again how much stronger t............