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READING HALL

DOORS OF WISDOM

NAPOLEON
 
 

 

CHAPTER XX.

THE HUNDRED DAYS (1815).

 

On the very night of his arrival at the Tuileries, Napoleon found himself able to reconstruct the official machinery of the Imperial régime. Most of his former ministers hastened to place themselves at his disposal. Maret took up again the post of Secretary of State; Decrès returned to the ministry of Marine; Gaudin to the ministry of Finance. Cambacérès was put in temporary charge of the department of Justice; Caulaincourt, with some show of reluctance, consented to become once more Minister for Foreign Affairs. There were, however, two new appoint­ments of first-rate importance. Davout was placed at the War Office, where it was hoped that the talent for organisation which he had shown during his proconsulate at Hamburg would display itself once more. Carnot became Minister of the Interior; Napoleon had not forgotten the patriotism which the old republican had evinced in 1814, and saw that it would help him to rally the Liberals to his side, if he could once more exhibit their strongest man taking service under the Empire because France was in danger. Carnot in office was a surprise; but it was still more surprising to see Fouche once more Minister of Police. He had presented himself, with his usual cynical impudence, at the reception held at the Tuileries on March 20; and, ignoring his former disgrace, had offered himself as the only man capable of satisfactorily filling the post from which he had been degraded in 1810. Remember­ing how inadequately Savary had worked the machine after the removal of the Duke of Otranto, Napoleon gave the old intriguer the place, though he had no confidence in his honesty or his good intentions.

The Emperor had reconstituted his government before he had been two days in Paris; it only remained that he should force France to recognise it. Except in the south, no serious opposition was made to the restoration of the Empire; the whole of northern, eastern, and central France adhered to the new regime. But things went otherwise on the banks of the Rhone and the Gironde. In those districts the royalist party was in a clear majority among the civil population; and, though the regular troops were known to be disaffected, the partisans of the Bourbons hoped to hold their own. At Toulouse the prefect, the Baron de Vitrolles, kept the white flag flying till April 4, when he was seized and imprisoned by General Delaborde, his levies refusing, at the critical moment, to fire upon the troops of the line. At Bordeaux the Duchesse d’Angoulême and Lynch, the mayor who had opened the gates to Beresford in 1814, gathered several thousand men and defended the passage of the Dordogne against General Clausel (March 29). Civil war would have begun, had not the garrison of the city declared, in unmistakable terms, that it would join Clausel and attack the volunteers if matters went further. The Duchess rode from barrack to barrack, making desperate appeals to the linesmen; they received her with sullen silence, and their officers besought her to fly while there was yet time. Convinced that it was hopeless to resist, she bade her army disband, and sailed for England (April 2).

Only on the Rhone was there any serious fighting. Provence was wholly royalist in feeling; and the Due d’Angoulême had gathered more than 10,000 volunteers and National Guards at Nimes, a force which overawed the few regular battalions which remained in the district. Having boldly resolved to march on Lyons, he beat two small forces of imperialists at Montelimar and Loriol (April 1, 2), and reached Valence; but here his expedition came to an inglorious close. He found General Grouchy in front of him, while news reached him that the regular troops, whom he had left behind, had proclaimed the Emperor at Avignon, Montpellier, and Nimes. His men began to melt away; and on April 8 he signed the Convention of La Palud, by which he and his officers were granted a free departure, and his volunteers were to be pardoned on laving down their arms. Thus ended, for the moment, the resistance of the royalists to the restoration of the Empire. The Vendee remained quiet for a while, though the old leaders were doing their best to stir up the peasantry; and the Ministers at Paris deluded themselves with the idea that the west, no less than the south, was pacified. It was not till May 15 that the Vendean insurrection broke out in force.

But, though Napoleon seemed master of all France on April 10, it was not in France but at Vienna that his fate was to be settled. On the news of his landing, the plenipotentiaries of the Eight Powers had signed a declaration, by which they bound themselves to aid Louis XVIII with all their strength, and announced that Bonaparte, having broken the convention signed by him on April 1, 1814, had placed himself in the position of an outlaw, and, “as the enemy and disturber of the peace of the world,” was given up to the vengeance of Europe (March 13). Four days later, a practical turn was given to this rather turgid piece of declamation, by a treaty in which Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound themselves each to put 150,000 men in the field, and to keep them under arms “till Bonaparte should have been rendered absolutely incapable of stirring up further troubles.” By a supple­mentary clause, the British Ministry engaged to place £5,000,000 at the disposal of her Continental allies, in order to aid them in the rapid mobilisation of their armies.

The Emperor had some hope that these warlike intentions would be affected by his having recovered possession of France with such rapidity and ease. His first care, therefore, was to address pacific over­tures to Austria and Great Britain, the two Powers which he had some hopes of detaching from the Coalition. He declared that he adhered to the terms of the Treaty of Paris, wished for nothing but peace, and was anxious to give every guarantee of his good intentions. But Metternich dismissed his agent Montrond with a blank refusal; and the Prince Regent sent back unopened a letter addressed to him in Napoleon’s own illegible handwriting. The temper of Great Britain was shown by the fact that, when Whitbread and other leading Whigs raised a protest against war in the House of Commons, only 72 votes were given in favour of their resolution, while 273 were against it.

Before April was out, Napoleon had to acknowledge to himself that war against united Europe was the only course open to him. Even while he was sending out the olive-branch to Vienna and London, he had been hurrying forward his military preparations. He was quite aware that he could not face his enemies with an army such as that which had won Austerlitz and Jena, still less with a force so great as that which had invaded Russia in 1812, or defended Saxony in 1813. He was shorn of the numerous auxiliary corps which had been wont to double the strength of his hosts. Was it possible to raise, within the boundaries of France alone, men enough to withstand the victors of 1814 ? Napoleon could count on the aid of a mass of veterans who had been shut up in the prisons of England and Russia during his last two campaigns, and had not witnessed the disaster of Leipzig or the fall of Paris. But, of the levies of 1813 and 1814, an enormous proportion had perished during the campaigns in Saxony and France; and those who remained had little cause for zeal. The actual army which Napoleon took over from Louis XVHI numbered not more than 200,000 men under arms. Of the 114 infantry regiments, some were reduced to one, most to two battalions, and all were weak. Officers to train new units could be found in plenty, among the thousands of veterans on half-pay who were offering themselves; but time to collect, embody, and arm the men would be wanting, if the Allies struck quickly. Moreover—and this shows how the position of Napoleon in 1815 differed from that which he had enjoyed in earlier years—the Emperor hesitated long before he dared let fall the odious word con­scription ; the one popular act of the restored monarchy had been its abolition. In April and May the veterans and the men on leave were called back to their standards, but no call for conscripts was made. It was only a few days before fighting actually commenced that the Emperor ventured to take the step of calling out the class of 1815. This is the reason why, in spite of all his efforts for three months, the regular troops, who had numbered 200,000 in March, had only risen to 284,000 in June. It was the finest army that Napoleon had com­manded since Friedland, for it was purely French, and was composed almost entirely of veterans; but it was too small for its purpose.

The Emperor was well aware of this, and endeavoured to supplement it by auxiliary troops of a different kind. The organisation of the National Guard existed all over France; and, theoretically, all citizens from twenty to sixty years of age were liable to service in it. By a series of decrees, issued in April, it was directed that 326 battalions of this levy should be mobilised and sent to the frontier fortresses. But it was only in the east and the centre of France that the Emperor could carry out this plan; in the north and west the men refused to come forward. The decrees had contemplated the placing in the field of 234,000 National Guards: on June 15 only 135,000 had been collected. In many departments, the prefects reported that an attempt to enforce the levy would lead to open insurrection. Napoleon had formed some other units of secondary value, by embodying, as battalions for land service, the greater part of the men of his navy, by enrolling 26,000 gendarmes and douaniers, and by arming, under the name oijederes, some thousands of the workmen of Paris and Lyons. But in June the total of his auxiliary forces did not exceed 250,000 men; and very few of the corps could have been relied upon for efficient service.

The whole army indeed, line and National Guard, was not numerous cuough for the task of resisting the united hosts of Europe. Napoleon calculated that, if he had been left alone till October, he might have raised 600,000 or even 800,000 men. But he was well aware that this leisure would not be granted him. It was useless to demonstrate that in October, by the aid of conscription, the regular army might have shown 400,000 men under arms, and the force of the National Guard might have been doubled. Time was everything; and of this his enemies were as well aware as himself.

But military problems formed only part of the cloud of cares which beset Napoleon in April and May, 1815. He saw that, if he was to obtain solid support from France, he must abandon his old autocratic methods and pose as a liberal sovereign, ready to consult his people and to meet their desires. Even Louis XVIII had granted the country a Charter and a Constitution. The warmth with which the Emperor had been at first received cooled down unmistakably when it became known that his return meant war with all Europe. He saw that he must put forth some programme which would rouse enthusiasm; and he determined with small hesitation that this programme must take the form of an appeal to the Liberal section of the nation. He must try to rouse the old Jacobin zeal for the rights of man and the liberty of France, to raise the cry of “the country in danger,” to present himself as a dictator elected to save the republic, no longer as the successor of Charlemagne or the anointed of the Pope. Hence the genesis of the Acte additionel, a supplement to the former Imperial Constitution, which gave France a Parliament of two Houses—a nominated Chamber of Peers and an elected Chamber of Representatives. It also proclaimed the liberty of the pres, and announced that the Ministers would, in some degree at least, be responsible to the Chambers. The Representatives were not to be chosen directly by the people, but by small boards of electors previously nominated by the constituencies.

The Acte additionel was laid before the people for acceptance by means of a plebiscite. Registers were opened in every commune; but only 1,500,000 citizens took the trouble to record their suffrages. The number of votes was less than half of those received when the project for the Life Consulate was laid before the nation in 1802. Such as they were, however, they sufficed ; and on June 1 the new Constitution was proclaimed, at a ceremony which the Emperor designated as the Champ de Mai, a term borrowed from Merovingian phraseology. It was a gorgeous, interminable, and hollow affair. The Emperor swore to obey the Constitution; the newly-elected Chambers and the army vowed fidelity to the Emperor. To one of his confidants Napoleon (at a later date) confessed that his intention had been to abolish the House of Representatives as soon as this could safely be done.

Meanwhile he found himself, to his disgust, saddled with a Lower House of the temper which he least desired. Among 629 deputies there were some 40 Republicans, 80 pure Bonapartists, ready to revive auto­cracy when the favourable time should come, and about 500 Liberals of all sorts, whose main desire was to prevent that time from arriving. At the first sitting of the new legislature, two days after the Champ de Mai, Lucien Bonaparte was suggested for election as President of the Chamber; but the representatives ignored the official hint, and chose by an enormous majority Lanjuinais, one of the deputies for the Seine, a convinced Liberal. The constitutionalists were clearly determined that the old administrative regime should never be restored.

But domestic politics were not the worst problem in June, 1815. It was necessary to beat back the approaching armies of Europe, if the Constitution was to have even a chance of trial. Every man in France who looked at the military situation with unbiassed judgment felt himself constrained to doubt whether the breathing-space would be obtained. This was not the view of the soldiery; the rank and file started for the frontier in a state of fierce enthusiasm, such as had not been seen since the days of the Republic. It was the same with the lower ranks of the officers; the thousands who had been eating the bitter bread of half-pay during the reign of Louis XVIII had hastened back to their regiments with a firm determination that they would never again be reduced to such a life. The memory of the slights and the poverty which they had endured made them fanatical adherents of their old master. No army that the Emperor had ever led fought with such truculent fury as that of 1815. But the spirit of the marshals and generals was very different; they knew enough of the strength of the Coalition to make them down-hearted as to the result of the coming campaign. They had thrown in their lot with Napoleon, but doubted their own wisdom, when they saw old comrades like Macdonald and Victor adhering to the Bourbons, and even Berthier refusing to return to France to join the master whose chief of the staff he had been for so many glorious years. Many took the field with a presentiment of disaster; a few who, like Ney, had fatally compromised themselves with the Bourbons, went forth like men possessed, with the vision of the hangman’s rope before them in the event of defeat. Such a prospect might render them capable of acts of desperate courage, but did not strengthen their judgment.

The weakest point in Napoleon’s situation was that he found him­self—what he had never been before, save in 1814—destitute of allies. When he returned from Elba, he had possessed one single supporter— his brother-in-law of Naples. King Joachim felt sure that he would be evicted from his realm before the Congress of Vienna concluded its sessions, and had resolved to link his fortunes with those of the Emperor. By good service in 1815 he might wipe out the memory of his treachery in the preceding year. His plan was to throw himself into the Emilia and Lombardy, hoping to rouse to arms the numerous partisans of the Imperial regime, who detested the restoration of Francis Joseph and Pius VII to their former dominions. Murat took no counsel with his brother-in-law, but rushed forward with mad haste, and commenced the war while Napoleon was still hoping to lure Austria and Great Britain out of the league of the Continental Powers. The reorganisation of the French army had hardly begun, when news reached Paris that Joachim had issued a proclamation calling the Italians to revolt, and had in­vaded the Papal States at the head of 80,000 men. He occupied Rome, Florence, and Bologna, before the Austrians had collected an army to drive him back; and he was able to push on to the line of the Po. But on April 10 serious fighting began. The Austrians were far inferior in numbers, but Murat’s troops were worthless. Their old sovereign, King Ferdinand, once observed of the Neapolitan army, “ You may dress it in blue, or in green, or in red; but, whichever you do, it will run.” Checked at a series of combats in the Emilia, the invaders were pressed back to Tolentino, where Joachim was forced to deliver a pitched battle. The result was that he lost all his artillery and 4000 prisoners ; the rest of his army dispersed (May 3). He could not rally even 10,000 men to defend Naples; and, when the Austrians pressed forward, he was forced to throw up the game and fly in disguise by sea (May 19). A few days afterwards he arrived at Toulon, a penniless refugee. Napoleon refused to see him; he was enraged at the levity with which his brother-in-law had precipitated the war without asking his advice. He even believed (but wrongly) that, if Murat had restrained himself, Francis I might have remained neutral; under this impression he repeatedly declared that the Italian campaign had been one of the main causes of his ruin.

Since, therefore, there could be no subsidiary operations in northern Italy, Napoleon had to cast his eyes along the long eastern frontier of France, from Dunkirk to the Var, with a full knowledge that the enemy might break in at any point; there was no neutral border for a single mile, for even Switzerland had declared its adhesion to the Grand Alliance. Nor could Spain be forgotten; Ferdinand VII was tardily collecting corps of observation behind the Bidassoa and the Muga. It was fortunate for the Emperor that, except on one very short front of forty miles about Saarbrucken and Trier, France was surrounded by States of inferior rank—the kingdom of the Netherlands, Bavaria, Baden, Switzerland, and Sardinia. None of these could deliver an immediate attack with its own unaided resources; and the main hostile armies had to be brought from afar, from Hungary and Bohemia, from Brandenburg and Silesia, from the distant depths of Russia.

There were only two bodies of troops belonging to any of the Great Powers which lay in the immediate neighbourhood of the French frontier. In Belgium, at the moment of the Emperor’s return from Elba, there was a British force of some 10,000 men—the regiments which had served under Graham in Holland during the preceding year. In their company were two or three Hanoverian brigades. Out of this nucleus the British Government proposed to construct an army of 100,000 men. They ordered Wellington to Brussels, where he arrived on April 5, and began sending to him in twos and threes every corps on the home establishment that could be equipped for service. Unfortunately, the larger part of the old Peninsular army had been shipped to America; and, though the Peace of Ghent had been signed, these troops were still beyond the Atlantic. Very few battalions of the veterans of Spain could be put at Wellington’s disposition. But, week by week, his British force was growing; by the middle of June it reached 30,000 men. In addition, a quantity of Hanoverian Landwehr had marched up to the Meuse and the Scheldt. The rest of Wellington’s miscellaneous host was composed of the contingents of Brunswick and Nassau, whose sovereigns, from jealousy of Prussia, had placed their little armies at the disposal of Great Britain, and of the levies of the Netherlands. The Govern­ment of the new kingdom which had been created for the Prince of Orange had been surprised by the return of Napoleon at a moment when its army was still in the making. Its whole regular force amounted on March 1 to only 10,000 men. Since then it had raised and equipped 20,000 more, mostly militia of the rawest sort. The Dutch-Belgian troops were the weakest element in Wellington's army; all the old soldiers were men who had served as conscripts under Napoleon; the rest were untrained recruits. There had always been a considerable French party in Belgium; and most of the Flemings and Walloons disliked their enforced union with Holland. The officers of the Nether- land army were loyal; but too many of the rank and file, partly cowed by the reputation of their former master, partly attracted towards him by old memories, could not be trusted to give a good account of them­selves. British, Germans, and Dutch included, Wellington had 105,000 men under him in June; but, of these, 20,000 were detached to form the garrisons of Antwerp, Ostend, and other Belgian fortresses.

The other army at hand was a Prussian force under General Kleist, quartered partly in the newly-formed Rhine Province, which the Congress of Vienna had given to Frederick William III, partly in eastern Belgium, about Namur and Luxemburg. It numbered only some 30,000 men in March; but the Berlin Government, acting with zeal and rapidity, had sent up three more army-corps from the east in April and May, and given the command to the indomitable Blucher. Early in June, Blucher had 117,000 men in line, four-sevenths of whom were line troops, the remainder Landwehr battalions. The weak part of this army consisted in the newly-raised regiments of Westphalia, Berg, and Rhineland men, who had formerly served either Napoleon or his brother Jerome as conscripts. But the preponderance of the old Prussian regiments in the whole force gave it a homogeneity which Wellington’s host was far from possessing.

It was on the Prussian and Anglo-Dutch armies in Belgium that Napoleon concentrated his main attention; they were close at hand, while the Austrians had far to come, and the Russians had hardly yet crossed their own frontier. Reasoning correctly from the characters of the two generals opposed to him, he concluded that, if he waited much longer, they would attack him. His information from Belgian sympathisers, however, was to the effect that their mobilisation was not yet complete, and that both were awaiting reinforcements. Meanwhile their troops were scattered, the line of their advanced posts covering the whole frontier from the Scheldt to the Moselle. The Prussian cantonments extended from Liege to Charleroi, the Anglo-Dutch from Mons to Ghent. It would probably take three days for either army to mass on the common centre, the line Mons-Charleroi; while six would be required to concentrate them, if the British right or the Prussian left were the point selected for attack.

The Emperor’s whole plan of campaign was based on these facts. He resolved to collect every available man, and to throw himself upon the junction-point of the two hostile armies before they were expecting his approach. Secrecy was all-important, since with three days’ notice the enemy would have time to draw together. But, if only they failed to get wind of his approach, or to discover the e:;act line of his advance, he might hope to catch them in the midst of their process of concentration, and to deal with each separately. To meet them united would be almost certainly fatal, for they outnumbered his own available force almost in the proportion of two to one. It was a risky game; but in the Emperor’s present situation every move was hazardous, and this was the only one which promised great results. If the British and Prussians were crushed, he could hasten down to the Rhine to meet the Austrians and assail them before the Russians began to arrive. If he could but protract the game till September, his new levies would give him 400,000 more men; and with such a force anything might be possible. A crushing defeat administered to Wellington might cause the fall of the British Ministry; a second Ulm might break the spirit of Francis II and cause him to make peace. Prussia would be irreconcilable, but she might be destroyed. Looking forward, the Emperor did not wholly despair; but he knew that he was staking his crown on the chance of gaining the three days that he required.

The total force which the Emperor could employ against Belgium was about 125,000 men. It was 10,000 men weaker than he had intended, for, at the last moment, he had been forced to despatch against the Vendee, which had broken out in open insurrection on May 15, two divisions with a brigade of the Imperial Guard. The Vendeans were beaten ; and their general, La Rochejaquelein, was killed at the combat of St Gilles, near Nantes, on June 4. But it was impossible to recall the missing divisions in time to take part in the invasion of Belgium. The whole force which the Emperor had collected under his own hand was composed of veterans of the regular army. For the defence of the eastern and southern frontiers he had told off comparatively small forces of the line, backed by masses of the National Guard. Only Rapp, who was sent to command the army of the Rhine, had a solid corps of 20,000 regulars and but few of the new levies. In the other divisions—those of the Alps under Suchet, of the eastern Pyrenees under Decaen, of the western Pyrenees under Clausel, of the Var under Brune, of the Jura under Lecourbe—the National Guards formed half, or more than half, of the total force under arms. All these six armies together numbered only 75,000 men. Of the rest of the Emperor’s available troops, about 130,000, mostly National Guards, had been thrown into the fortresses of the east and north.

Napoleon started for the front on June 12. His first and in some ways most important move was carried out with complete success. The five army-corps which were to form the bulk of his army were drawn in from their scattered cantonments, extending from Valenciennes to Thionville, without alarming the enemy. On June 14 the whole force was concentrated on a front of not more than thirty-five miles, just where the French frontier (as it then was) projected most deeply into Belgium. Meanwhile nothing save the vaguest rumours had reached Wellington and Blucher. On June 13 the former wrote to his friend Graham: “ We have reports of Buonaparte joining the army and attacking us. But I judge from his speech to his Legislature that his departure is not likely to be immediate, and I think we are now too strong for him here.” When the Duke was writing these words, the Emperor’s carriage was driving furiously forward from Laon to Avesnes; that night he slept within ten miles of the Belgian frontier. Blucher was of much the same opinion as Wellington; he was busily engaged in drawing out his plans for an advance into France, when the enemy burst across the frontier.

The Emperor had thus secured the three days’ start over the Allies in the matter of concentration which was the necessary preliminary to a successful campaign in Belgium. He had his 125,000 men massed for the stroke, while then- 210,000 were strung out on a front of a hundred miles. It remained to be seen how he would utilise this tremendous advantage. His five corps were commanded by d’Erlon and Reille— veterans of the army of Spain—Vandamme, Gerard, and Lobau. Of the marshals, only three were with the army. Soult acted as chief of the staff, a post which he had never before filled, and in which he showed himself, from lack of experience, markedly inferior to Berthier. Ney, who owing to his conduct in March had been kept in a sort of half-disgrace during the last three months, had been called up at the last moment and placed in command of the left wing—the corps of Reille and d’Erlon. Grouchy, whose reputation had been won as a leader of horse, took charge of the great cavalry reserve.

At dawn on the morning of June 15 the French army passed the frontier and threw itself upon the outposts of the Allies. The blow was delivered on the extreme right of the Prussian army, in and about Charleroi, and just failed to touch Wellington’s extreme left at Mons. On the first day, only the corps of Ziethen was engaged on the side of the Allies; and this force, caught before it could concentrate, and assailed by superior numbers, was driven northward and eastward with considerable loss. By nightfall the Emperor was in possession of Charleroi and the bridges of the Sambre; and Ziethen had fallen back behind Fleurus. Blucher, on hearing of this first assault, had set his whole army on the march westward. At noou on June 16 Ziethen was joined by Pirch’s corps from Namur, and Thiehnann’s from Dinant and Huy; Blucher had thus 90,000 men in hand. His fourth corps, that of Biilow, had not arrived. It had lain at Liege, forty miles from Charleroi, and was still a day’s march from the main army. Blucher, however, had made up his mind to fight without waiting for Biilow, and drew up his host on the hill-sides behind Ligny and St Amand, looking down into the valley where Fleurus lies.

If the position of Blucher was not quite satisfactory at this moment, that of Wellington was much less so. The Duke had received definite details of the enemy’s movements many hours later than ought to have been the case. Ziethen had sent him news that his outposts were attacked early on the 15th, before anything decisive had happened. After this, engrossed in the details of fighting, the Prussian general forgot to keep the British head-quarters informed of the developments of the French advance. It was only about 4 p.m. that Wellington received intelligence from several quarters which showed that the attack in the direction of Charleroi was being made by several army-corps, and was evidently part of a general advance. The Duke immediately ordered all his divisions to concentrate at their head-quarters and to be ready to march at a moment’s notice. But he was still uncertain whether the movement on Charleroi was being carried out by the whole of the Emperor’s army, or whether a second column might not be advancing on the other high-road which leads to Brussels by way of Mons. His ignorance was due to the negligence of Dornberg, the officer commanding the British cavalry-screen on the line Mons-Tournay, who failed to send any report as to matters in his front till night. The Duke had been of opinion that the Mons road presented advantages for the enemy which the Charleroi road did not, and refused to commit himself to a con­centration on his extreme left till he was sure that his left-centre was safe. Hence it was only late in the evening that, reassured on this point, he directed his scattered divisions to concentrate on Nivelles, Braine-le-Comte, and Hal. As they could not move till daybreak on the 16th, he was in the unfortunate position of having no troops on the Brussels-Charleroi road next morning save one Dutch and one Nassau brigade, at Quatre-Bras and Nivelles; while within supporting distance there were only the reserve from Brussels—some 26,000 British, Hano­verian, and Brunswick troops—and one or two brigades at Enghien and Braine-le-Comte. The Duke clearly underrated the rapidity with which Napoleon would push forward when his crown was at stake. That night Wellington remained at Brussels, and attended the Duchess of Richmond’s famous ball. At daybreak he rode out to visit his out­posts, and then to confer with Blucher.

Actual contact between the British and French outposts had been established late in the afternoon of the 15th, when the cavaliy at the head of the Emperor’s left columns struck the pickets of the Nassau brigade under Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar at Frasnes, and drove them back to Quatre-Bras, where the Prince showed fight. Ney, who was in command of this part of the French army, reported the fact to the Emperor, and encamped opposite Quatre-Bras, waiting for his infantry to come up. There were only 4000 men in front of him; and it would be many hours before the Brussels troops, which only started at daybreak on the 16th, could arrive to support Prince Bernard. But of this the Marshal was necessarily ignorant; he could only report that he was in touch with the enemy, who seemed inclined to stand.

Thus, on the morning of the second day of the campaign, the position of the French army was excellent. Blucher had not collected even three-fourths of his army at Ligny till noon ; Wellington would not, till twelve hours were passed, be able to concentrate more than a third of his at Quatre-Bras. The Emperor, however, seems to have overrated his advantage, great as it was. His orders for the 16th directed Ney to drive away whatever lay in front of him at Quatre-Bras, and then to fall upon the flank of the Prussian force at Ligny. This force Napoleon, in his earliest despatches, seems to have estimated at a single corps only. But, as the day were on, he discovered it to be much stronger than he had supposed, and deferred his attack till his whole right wing had come up. Ney, with less justification, behaved in a similar fashion in front of Quatre-Bras, and, before assailing Prince Bernard’s brigade, waited till he had the whole of the infantry of Reille’s corps under his hand. Thus nothing happened on either field of battle till noon was well passed. Wellington, after visiting his force at Quatre-Bras, rode over to Ligny, interviewed Blucher, and told him that he would bring him aid if he was not himself attacked and detained by the French left. The promise was conditional, and could never be carried out, as Ney found full occupation for all the British divisions, as they successively reached Quatre-Bras during the afternoon. The Duke then returned to his onu advance-guard, just in time to meet Ney’s attack, which was delivered a few minutes before his arrival.

Between 2 and 3 p.m. on June 16 the Emperor, having massed in front of the Prussian position the Guard, the corps of Vandamme and Gerard, and all his reserve cavalry, thought himself strong enough to begin. As a matter of fact, he had 20,000 men less than Blucher on the field, and, even when Lobau’s corps came up late in the afternoon, was still in a grave numerical inferiority. But, not fully aware of this, he commenced a vigorous attack upon the line of villages which covered the right and centre of the Prussian position ; their left wing he merely “contained” with the numerous cavalry of Grouchy. This was the commencement of a long and obstinate struggle. The French repeatedly stormed Ligny and the three villages of St Amand; Blucher, perpetu­ally feeding his fighting-line from his reserve, always won them back again. But the Prussians suffered more heavily than their opponents, because their troops were exposed to the preponderating artillery fire of the French, whenever they descended the bare slopes above the villages in their counter-attacks. This was not the sort of battle that the Emperor desired; he had been for some time expecting Ney to appear, in accordance with his orders, behind the Prussian right wing. But no French troops showed in this direction, the Marshal being engaged in a bitter struggle with Wellington at Quatre-Bras, and finding himself unable to spare a man for the turning movement.

The Emperor, however, cared little for the subsidiary action far to his left; he sent orders directly to d’Erlon, the commander of the 1st corps, which formed Ney’s reserve and was just approaching Quatre- Bras at the moment, bidding him draw off eastward and march towards Ligny, so as to fall upon the Prussian flank and rear. D’Erlon obeyed, but, by a slight misdirection in his march, headed for Fleurus rather than Ligny, and therefore came upon Napoleon’s battlefield in such a way as to join the Emperor’s left, rather than to circumvent the Prussian right. Napoleon was for a moment puzzled by the appearance of troops in this direction, and slackened in his attacks on St Amand and Ligny. But, learning that the new-comers were his own missing corps, he recommenced the assault on Blucher’s line. This final attack, however, obtained no support from d’Erlon, who at this juncture received pressing orders from Ney, bidding him return and save him from Wellington’s overpowering numbers. Though he was now in a position to manoeuvre with splendid effect against the Prussian right, d’Erlon turned back and started for Quatre-Bras.

Thus Napoleon had to fight out his battle with no aid from the west. He brought it, however, to a successful conclusion, by dashing the Imperial Guard against the Prussian centre just as night fell. Blucher had used up his reserves, and was unable to withstand the tremendous impact of this mass of veteran troops. He himself charged at the head of his last remaining cavalry brigades, but was repulsed, thrown from his horse, and nearly taken prisoner. He was dragged off the field almost insensible from his fall; and his army at the same moment abandoned all its positions, and rolled back to the villages two miles in the rear of its original position. Blucher had lost more than 20,000 men, including many stragglers from the Berg and Westphalian Landwehr, who ran away and did not stop till they reached Aix-la- Chapelle. The Emperor had also suffered heavily; his losses must have amounted to about 11,000 men, and he had taken few prisoners and only twenty-one guns. Thus Napoleon had won a victory, but not a decisive one. The Prussians shook themselves together at dawn, and retired unmolested in the direction of Wavre, the point at which they could most easily put themselves in connexion with Wellington’s army. This was quite contrary to the suppositions of the Emperor, who imagined the Prussians to be far more disorganised than they were, and thought it probable that they had retired due east, towards then- own base at Liege, while really they had marched north. This false hypothesis had results fatal to its framer on the next day but one.

Ligny, however, in spite of d’Erlon’s mistake, was distinctly a victory; at Quatre-Bras neither party could claim so well-marked a success. Ney, as we have already mentioned, delivered his attack on Wellington’s advance-guard at about 2 p.m., with the whole corps of Reille. The line of the Alfies was at once crumpled up; but, just as it gave way there arrived on the field Picton’s British division, the first of the Brussels reserves to reach the front, and, shortly after, the Duke of Brunswick and his corps. At the same moment Wellington himself rode up. He had just time to deploy his fresh troops, when the French attack pressed up against them. After a fierce struggle, in which the Duke of Brunswick fell, it was beaten off*. Soon afterwards both sides received reinforcements, Kellermann’s cuirassiers joining Ney, while the Duke was strengthened by Alten’s British division from Braine-le-Comte. Ney resumed the attack, dashing his cavalry fiercely against the allied centre. More than one British battalion was broken; and the cuirassiers penetrated as far as the houses of Quatre-Bras. But they were finally driven off, and the allied line reformed itself. Ney, who had now learnt that his master had called off the corps of d’Erlon, his sole reserve, was in a state of desperate fury. Napoleon, by stripping him of half his infantry force, had condemned him to defeat; in his rage, Ney sent to recall d'Erlon, despite the Imperial orders, and so ruined Napoleon’s plan for making Ligny a decisive battle. But the missing corps was too late in its return to Quatre-Bras to save the day in that direction. Long ere its arrival, Wellington assumed the offensive; he had just received Cooke’s division, the British Guards, and with the aid of this reinforcement attacked the French along the whole line. His superiority in numbers was now very marked; he had 32,000 men in hand to Ney’s 22,000, and could not be held back. The enemy, still fighting fiercely, had been forced to return to their original positions when darkness brought the battle to an end. The losses were equally distributed; each side had suffered about 4200 or 4300 casualties.

Looked at from the tactical point of view, Quatre-Bras was a severe check to Ney. But from the strategical point of view the action had served Napoleon’s purpose fairly well, since the Marshal had prevented Wellington from sending a single man to Blucher’s aid. Ligny would have had very different results, if the Duke had been able to crush the containing corps in front of him early in the day, and had then marched for St Amand. The reason why he failed to do so was the lateness of his concentration; he had to fight Ney with the Brussels reserves almost unaided. If his troops from Ghent, Oudenarde, and Ath had started twelve hours earlier, Ney must have been destroyed. During the night, the belated divisions poured in, till nearly the whole army was concen­trated on the morning of the 17th. But it was now too late. The news of Ligny had arrived; and the Duke saw that the Emperor would infallibly join Ney before the day was out. He resolved to draw back at once from his advanced position, and to seek a junction with Blucher before he again gave battle. Early in the morning he sent word to the Prussian head-quarters that he would stand on the position of Mont St Jean, if he were promised the help of one of Blucher’s army-corps.

Napoleon was slow to move during the morning of June 17. He was fatigued by the long running fight on the Thursday and by the battle on the Friday; but this fact does not wholly account for the strange lethargy that seems to have seized him on this day. He spent the morning in talking politics with his generals, in driving round the battle­field of the previous day, and in reviewing his victorious troops. Every moment was of importance to him, yet he squandered seven precious hours before he made a move. Not till about noon did he issue the orders which were to govern the rest of the campaign. He directed Grouchy to take charge of the corps of Vandamme and Gerard and half the reserve cavalry—some 33,000 men, when the losses of Ligny were deducted—and to follow the Prussians in whatever direction they had retreated. He was to keep in touch with them at all costs, and to discover whether they were retiring towards their base, or showing any signs of moving towards Wellington. Napoleon himself intended to join Ney with the Imperial Guard, the rest of the reserve cavalry, and the corps of Lobau. Owing to the late hour at which the orders were given, neither of the columns got away till 2 or 3 p.m.

Meanwhile, owing to the Emperor s tardy start, the whole Prussian army had slipped away unmolested; and the French cavalry had not even discovered the route which it had taken. Much time was lost in seeking for Blucher on the road to Namur. At nightfall, Grouchy knew that some of the Prussians must be moving on Wavre, which would bring them in the direction of the British, but was still uncertain whether their main body was or was not retreating eastward in the direction of Liege. For this he cannot be seriously blamed; the responsibility lies partly with the Emperor for losing time in the morning, partly with the two cavalry generals, Pajol and Excelmans, who had shown gross care­lessness in letting the enemy slip away and failing to find him again. Delayed by heavy rain, which fell all through the afternoon and evening, Grouchy’s infantry did not reach Gembloux till nightfall. They had covered less than ten miles in the day; the Prussians had covered twenty, and were safely concentrated at Wavre, where they were joined by Bulow’s intact corps, which had at last got up from Liege to the front.

In this part of the field Napoleon had practically lost twenty-four hours—one of the three precious days which he had gained by his rapid concentration and his vigorous advance. Things went almost as badly for him in its western portion. Wellington had begun to withdraw his army from Quatre-Bras at 10 a.m. on June 17. Owing to his late start from Ligny, Napoleon came on the ground only when the last of Wellington’s infantry was far advanced on the route to Mont St Jean; a mere cavalry screen under Lord Uxbridge remained in his front. Recovering his energy when it was too late, the Emperor drove in the British cavalry, and pursued it fiercely throughout the late afternoon. But he could neither catch it nor do it any serious harm; at the defile of Genappe, indeed, Uxbridge turned back and broke the leading brigade of the Imperial horsemen by a downhill charge of the Life Guards.


After this he was not so severely pressed; the same heavy thunderstorm which had delayed Grouchy did much to check the Emperor’s pursuit. It was nearly 7 p.m. on the 17th before the head of the French army reached the front of the position of Mont St Jean, where Wellington had been arranging his army as it came up. A reconnaissance in the rain showed the Emperor that his enemy was standing ready to receive him; and he halted to allow the rest of his troops to arrive. So long was his column that much of the infantry did not reach the front till after midnight, and at least one division only on the following morning. The troops were much fatigued by their long tramp in the rain, and had outmarched their commissariat; there was no proper distribution of rations either that night or the next day. They bivouacked in the mud of the fields, drenched through, fireless, and half-starved.

Wellington’s position on that night was an anxious one, in spite of the fact that he had carried out his retreat without loss or disorder. All now depended on the Prussians; he had sent them, early in the morning, his offer to fight on the battle-ground he had chosen, if he were promised the aid of a single army-corps. If they replied that this was impossible, he would have to retire again, and to sacrifice Brussels, which lay some eleven miles to his rear. It was only after midnight that he received the all-important answer to his proposal. Blucher had been hors de combat on the 17th, owing to the contusions he had suffered at Ligny; and the details of the Prussian movements during that day had been regulated by Gneisenau, his chief of the staff. But at night the indomitable old man had recovered sufficiently to resume command; it was he who received the Duke’s offer, and he promptly accepted it. Certain objections were made by Gneisenau and other generals, who thought that a flank march so near the enemy was full of dangers, and that it was wrong to throw up the safe line of retreat on Maestricht which the army now possessed. This was true enough; but the chance of catching Napoleon in flank and overwhelming him with superior numbers was too good to be lost. Blucher wrote that he would despatch Bulow’s corps to join the English at daybreak, and send after it that of Pirch. His other two corps should follow if not prevented. He knew Grouchy’s exact position, and thought it might be necessary to detach Thielmann and Ziethen to hold him back. Blucher had risen to the full height of the situation; and these orders, once given, decided the fate of the campaign. If they had been carried out with exactitude, they would have ended it with far less expenditure of blood than was actually incurred on June 18. The execution, however, was not equal to the conception; the plan worked, but it worked over-slowly and over-late.

Reassured as to the cooperation of the Prussians, Wellington drew up his army on the hill-side of Mont St Jean, across the two high-roads Nivelles-Brussels and Charleroi-Brussels, which there meet. The position does not at the first sight appear very strong ; the slopes are gentle, and do not rise more than 120 or 150 feet above the level of the valley which divides them from the French lines. There was no cover in front, save at three isolated points. Before the British right lay the farm, orchard, and copse of Hougoumont, surrounded with hedges and walls; in front of the exact centre, on the Charleroi high-road, is the smaller farm of La Haye Sainte; far away on the extreme left lie two other farms, close together, Papelotte and La Haye. All these were occupied: Hougoumont by a brigade of the British Guards; La Haye Sainte by a picked detachment of the German Legion; the other two by Bernard of Saxe-Weimar’s Nassau brigade. The enemy would have to storm them, before he could make any solid lodgement in the British position. But the feature which Wellington regarded as most advantageous in his field of battle was that behind his fighting line the ground stretched away in a broad plateau falling slightly toward the north. Here he could array his reserves completely out of sight of the enemy, and bring them to the front without exposing them to view till the crest was reached. It was the exact converse of the Ligny position, where all the Prussian reserves had been exposed to Napoleon’s eye, and many of them to his artillery, before they were brought into action. Wellington had 67,000 men on the ground. Of these, 24,000 were British; 5800 belonged to the King’s German Legion, of Peninsular fame; 11,000 were Hanoverians. There was the Brunswick corps, reduced to 5500 men by its losses at Quatre-Bras ; two Nassau brigades (Kruse and Saxe-Weimar) over 6000 strong; and finally 14,000 Dutch- Belgians. These last were the weak point in the line; horse and foot had behaved feebly at Quatre-Bras, and did not redeem their reputation at Waterloo. It was a motley array at best, but, with Blucher due before noon, all seemed safe; the Duke knew it would be more than a mere morning’s work to wear down his stubborn British and German infantry. It was probably in reliance on the early arrival of his ally that Wellington had left, far out on his right, a day’s march from Mont St Jean, a force consisting of a strong Dutch-Belgian division, with one British and one Hanoverian brigade, under General Colville and Prince Frederick of Orange. They lay at Hal, on the Mons-Brussels road, nearly 14,000 strong, intended apparently to guard against a turning movement of the French. But it had long been ascertained that Napoleon had no detached corps to the west; it was a mistake not to call Colville in.

On the low ridge opposite Mont St Jean, Napoleon had arrayed some 74,000 veteran troops, on each side of the farm of La Belle Alliance and the high-road from Charleroi to Brussels. He showed no hurry to begin the battle on the morning of that eventful Sunday, June 18, 1815. Indeed, the rear of his infantry only reached the field after daybreak, and required some hours of rest. Wellington lay quietly in his front, inviting attack: Blucher, so Napoleon supposed, was out of the game. He had news from Grouchy, dated from Gembloux at 10 p.m. on the 17th, to the effect that one Prussian corps had retired on Wavre, but that the rest of the troops defeated at Ligny were heading for Perwez, on the road to Liege, i.e. were falling back towards their base, and leaving Wellington to his fate. The Marshal added that he intended to follow the force that had moved on Wavre, in order to head it off from Brussels and separate it from the British army. This information seemed to guarantee the Emperor against any interference on the part of the Prussians. Grouchy, it is true, learnt more of the facts of the situation on the following morning, and wrote at 6 a.m. to inform his master that the bulk of Blucher’s men had gone to Wavre, not to Perwez. But this despatch did not reach La Belle Alliance till after Napoleon had made his arrangements; and, even if it had arrived earlier, it contained no hint that the Prussians were moving on Mont St Jean.

Napoleon, therefore, gave his weary army a long rest after daybreak, and put off the hour of attack, so that the sodden ground might grow drier and permit of the free movement of his artillery across the fields. It was only about 11 a.m. that his forces were deployed for action. Their array was very simple, as simple as the Emperor’s own plan of battle, which contemplated nothing more nor less than the smashing in of the British centre by a tremendous frontal attack. His army was formed in three lines; in front were Reille’s corps on the left, d’Erlon’s on the right, each with cavalry on the outer wing. The second line was formed of Lobau’s incomplete infantry corps (only 7000 men), with the reserve cavalry, no less than six divisions, deployed on its wings. Last of all came the Imperial Guard, 20,000 strong, the infantry in column on the high-road, the cavalry in line to right and left. It was a magnificent array, and every man was visible from the British position. The Emperor, on the other hand, could not make out much of Wellington’s arrangements. There were visible to him only the four isolated farms on the slope, and above them a line of infantry and guns along the crest; the reserves were out of sight. The Duke had formed a front line of twelve infantry brigades, six British, four Hanoverian, one Nassau, and one Dutch, with two British cavalry brigades on his extreme left, in the direction from which the Prussians were expected to appear. In second line, behind his centre, was the rest of his horse, British and Dutch. The infantry reserve was massed for the most part behind the right wing, because the Prussian aid was expected on the left. Blucher, according to the arrangements made on the preceding night, would form the true reserve of the Duke’s left wing.

Never, in any of his earlier fights, had Napoleon massed such numbers on so short a front; the whole French line was less than three miles long, including the cavalry on its extreme wings. In the tactical dis­position the infantry was used in heavy columns of unprecedented solidity. They were to push their way through the British line by mere force of impact. This arrangement did not please those of the Emperor's lieutenants who had seen the wars of Spain, and remembered the poor exhibition that column-tactics had always made against the English two-deep formation. Soult urged caution; but Napoleon replied in an insulting outburst, “You were beaten by Wellington, and so you think he is a great general. But I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, and the English are bad troops; they will merely be a breakfast for us 1 ” A little later, Reille was asked his opinion of the British infantry; he replied that he thought that, in a good defensive position, they could repel any frontal attack. He hoped that his master would manoeuvre and try flank movements; front-to-front action would be costly and unsuccessful. The Emperor paid no attention ; he was deter­mined to try the effect of assaults by massive columns upon the long red line that crowned the opposite hill-side.

About 11.30 a.m. the French army was at last on the move. After some cannonading, a division of Reille’s infantry pressed in upon the farm of Hougoumont. After some fighting, the copse and orchard were carried; but in the farm-buildings and the garden two battalions of the British Guards held their own, and beat off regiment after regiment as it surged in upon them. This, however, was but a side-issue; the Emperor’s real attack was to be delivered on the other side of the high­road, half a mile further to the east. Here, under cover of the fire of a long row of batteries, eighty pieces in all, d’Erlon’s corps was waiting the order to attack the British left-centre. It was formed in four great columns, each a species of phalanx containing eight battalions, ranged one behind another. This order of battle was extremely unwieldy; but, in many a fight, Continental troops had broken up in panic at the mere approach of such a moving multitude. Just as Napoleon was about to order d’Erlon to attack, he received an unpleasant surprise. It was pointed out to him that masses of troops were coming into sight far to the north-east, on the heights of Chapelle St Lambert, some six miles away. A few hours earlier, the Emperor would have been puzzled to guess what this force could be; but he had received, some little time back, Grouchy’s despatch of the early morning, in­forming him that Blucher, far from retiring towards Liege, was massed at Wavre. The force in the distance must, then, be some fraction of the Prussian army. Soon afterwards a prisoner was brought in, a hussar of Bulow’s corps, who, when questioned, divulged the fact that his general was marching to join Wellington. The Emperor reflected for a moment; then he gave d’Erlon orders to proceed with his attack. Bulow was still far away; Grouchy was probably in pursuit of him; the battle might be won before the Prussians could intervene.

Accordingly, at about 1.30 p.m., the four vast columns forming the 1st corps crossed the little valley that separated them from the British position, and began to climb the opposite hill. One brigade diverged to storm the farm of La Haye Sainte; the rest advanced straight against Wellington’s left-centre. At the head of the slope they came under a hot musketry fire, but continued to press forward. The first troops that they encountered were Bylandt’s Dutch-Belgian brigade, which fled to the rear in disorder. A moment later they came upon Picton’s two British brigades, reduced to little more than half their strength by the losses of Quatre-Bras, but steady as ever. A furious musketry engagement began; the French were five times more numerous, but, owing to their vicious formation, could bring no more muskets to bear than could their opponents. While both sides were blazing into each other at close quarters, and the smoke lay thick around them, there was a sudden rush from the rear; and two brigades of British heavy cavalry—Somerset’s Horse Guards and Life Guards, and Ponsonby's Union Brigade—charged into the thick of the French columns. D’Erlon’s men were caught unprepared, while closely engaged with Picton’s infantry. The unwieldy masses were riven to pieces, hurled down the slope, and chased back to their old position with the loss of two eagles, 3000 prisoners, and several thousands more of killed and wounded. Un­fortunately, the British horse, drunk with the exhilaration of success, failed to check their career, and rode straight into the French lines, sabring the fugitives, till Napoleon flung upon them cavalry from right and left, and swept them home again with fearful loss. Of the 2500 who had charged, a full thousand were left behind dead or disabled. Ponsonby, the commander of the Union Brigade, was killed in cold blood after he had been made prisoner. Picton, too, had fallen in the very moment of victory.

Prudence would now have counselled Napoleon to break off the battle. Bülow had become visible in the nearer distance, advancing slowly towards the French right flank. Lobau’s small 6th corps and two brigades of reserve cavalry had to be detached to the east to intercept him. This reduced by 10,000 men the number available for the attack on Wellington. Moreover, a new despatch was received from Grouchy, alarming because it showed that at 11 a.m. he was still far from Wavre and had no conception of Bulow’s having marched to join Wellington. But Napoleon had no idea of ordering a retreat; he knew that he was ruined if he failed to beat Wellington that afternoon. The British must be crushed at all costs before the Prussians came up in force.

Accordingly, at 3.30 p.m. the Emperor directed Ney to take charge of his front line and resume the attack. The least injured regiments of d’Erlon’s corps marched against La Haye Sainte; a fresh brigade of Reille’s corps went forward to reinforce the baffled assailants of Hougoumont. Little or no progress was made at either point; and the Marshal resolved to have recourse to a new expedient—a great cavalry charge against the front of the British line between the two farms. At about 4 p.m. Ney ordered Milhaud’s two divisions of cuirassiers to charge; they moved up, supported by the light cavalry of the Imperial Guard, forming in all a mass of 5000 veteran horsemen. At the sight of their approach, the fifteen British and Hanoverian battalions forming Wellington’s right-centre fell into squares, and prepared to withstand the shock. The tremendous episode which filled the next two hours was the part of the battle of Waterloo which impressed itself most strongly on the memory of the survivors on the British side. Never, in all the Napoleonic wars, was there so prolonged a whirlwind of cavalry charges as those which filled the later hours of that afternoon. Milhaud’s first onslaught was only the beginning; he breasted the slope, drove the allied gunners from their batteries, and then dashed at the squares. They did not flinch, and their fire blew the squadrons to pieces; then Wellington ordered his own cavalry reserves to advance, and drove the enemy down the slope. But the attacks were renewed again and again; and, in the intervals, the French artillery played upon the British squares with deadly effect. It was their round-shot, and not the swords of the cuirassiers, which made such havoc among the battalions of Wellington’s centre.

When Milhaud had failed to break a single British square, and his corps was hopelessly disorganised, Ney called up the rest of the reserve cavalry from the second line, Kellermann’s two divisions of cuirassiers; they were followed by the heavy squadrons of the Guard. This splendid veteran cavalry, 5000 strong, fell upon the crippled squares; Milhaud’s scattered brigades reformed themselves, and fell in as supports to the new attacking force. There followed an hour of confused melee; the horsemen rode through the line of squares and even to the very rear of the British position, charging every face of the dwindling blocks of British and German infantry, but always failing to break in. Yet the stress was so great that Wellington used up all his cavalry, save those of the extreme left wing, in the struggle, and gradually pushed forward into the fighting line the whole of his infantry reserve, save one Dutch-Belgian division, which showed such unequivocal signs of demoralisation that the Duke dared not risk it in the front. The shrinkage in the ranks of the squares was fearful; they were dreadfully mauled by the French artillery during the intervals of the charges, and harassed by the fire of tirailleurs, who crept up close to them and could not be driven off, for to open out into line would have meant utter destruction at the hands of the cavalry. One battalion of the German Legion, ordered by the Prince of Orange to deploy, was absolutely exterminated by the cuirassiers before it could resume its formation.

What, meanwhile, were the Prussians doing? Wellington had ex­pected to be succoured before noon, and had only consented to fight on that understanding. Yet six o’clock had arrived, and no relief due to the Prussian operations was yet perceptible. It is impossible to explain the delay, as has often been done, by the bad state of the roads alone.

The roads were much cut up, it is true; but Wavre is only thirteen miles from Mont St Jean, and it does not take from dawn (3.30 a.m. at that season of the year) till 4 p.m. to cover such a distance. The fact was that there had been bad staff-work and also a certain amount of hesitation at the Prussian head-quarters. If Blücher had ordered his nearest corps, that of Thielmann, to march for the French flank at dawn, it would have been in contact with the enemy at 10 or 11 a.m. What Napoleon -would have done in this case it is idle to guess ; he had not at that time committed himself to the battle with Wellington. But Bulow’s corps, which had two miles further to march than the others, was chosen to lead the column, because it had not suffered at Ligny. It did not start till 6 a.m., was stopped in the streets of Wavre —which it ought not to have passed through—by an accidental fire, and then crossed the march of Pirch’s corps. Both columns were blocked; and it was 1.30 p.m. before Bulow’s leading division finally reached Chapelle St Lambert, where, as we have already seen, it at once attracted Napoleon’s attention. It was 4 p.m. before it got into actual contact with the French. This amazing delay, of nearly ten hours, was due not to Blucher, but to Gneisenau, his chief of the staff, who feared that Wellington might retreat, after committing the Prussian army to the dangerous flank march. So late as 10.30 a.m., Gneisenau wrote to Muffling, the Prussian attache at the British head-quarters, adjuring him to find out if the Duke really intended to fight; and it was not, in fact, till the cannonade of Waterloo was making itself heard all over Brabant, that the Prussian advance was urged on with genuine energy. Then, at last, Blucher had reached the front; and he rode up and down the line of march, calling to his men that “ they must not make him break his word,” and encouraging the infantry to help in dragging the embogged cannon across the miry meadows along the Lasne.

It was only about 4 p.m., just as the great French cavalry charges were beginning, that Bulow’s corps reached the wood of Paris, some two miles from Napoleon’s right flank, and began to interchange shots with the French vedettes. The Emperor, as we have seen, had told off Lobau to “contain” them, which he did in the most skilful fashion. Drawing out his troops at right angles to the main Freuch line, he established himself in a good position, with the village of Planchenoit covering his right, and there fought fiercely for two hours against threefold numbers, for Biilow had over 30,000 men. At last, despite all his efforts, Planchenoit was lost; but the Emperor, who had now turned his attention for a space to this comer of the field, sent the four regiments of the Young­ Guard to retake it. These fresh troops, coming up with a sudden rush, completely cleared the village. It was now 6 o’clock; Bulow’s last reserves had been used up; and it could not be said that he had turned the fate of the battle. The only positive difference that his presence had made was that it had compelled the Emperor to divert against him, first and last, some 14,000 men of his reserves, who might otherwise have been used against Wellington. This was far from the support that the Duke had expected when he offered battle. Fortunately, however, at this moment, more Prussian troops drew near. The corps of Ziethen and Pirch, which had started later and moved even more slowly than Billow, were at last at hand.

But, long before their arrival began to produce effect, Napoleon’s last offensive moves had been made. Seeing that the cavalry attacks had achieved no definite success, and that the British line was still un­broken, Ney made a final attempt to force it with his infantry. While the wrecks of d’Erlon’s corps made one more assault on La Haye Sainte, the infantry of the left-centre—the divisions of Foy and Bachelu, belonging to Reille’s corps—pushed forward, to the east of Hougoumont, to assail the much-tried brigades which had just beaten off the cavalry. Though these divisions were fresh troops, engaging battalions wasted by three hours’ desperate fighting, they were repulsed; once more the column withered away before the deadly discharge of the two-deep line. “'C'etait une grele de morts'' wrote Foy in his diary a few days later. But. a little further to the right, the French achieved at this moment the first real success that they had won against Wellington that day. D’Erlon’s men carried La Haye Sainte at about 6.30 p.m. The buildings had been well-nigh pounded to pieces by the French guns; the gallant battalion of the German Legion which held them had exhausted all its cartridges; and the enemy at last burst in. This was the most dangerous moment of the battle for the allied army. A breach had been made in its front line; and the troops on each side of the gap were utterly exhausted and unable to fill it up. Fortunately for Wellington, d’Erlon’s and Reille’s corps were also at the end of their strength; they were unable to push forward. Ney begged the Emperor to send more infantry; but the moment was not propitious for such a request. Napoleon had nothing left in reserve save the fifteen battalions of his Old and Middle Guard; and he grudged spending them. Moreover he was watching a new’ and dangerous attack of the Prussians on Planchenoit which was just impending. “You want more infantry !” he exclaimed, voulez-vous quefen prenne? Voulez-vous quefenfosse?” And for a critical forty minutes he refused to succour Ney. The only movement that he made was to send two of his precious battalions of the Old Guard to feed the defence of Planchenoit, where Billow, now supported by Pireh's corps, had made a third irruption into the village. Like the previous assaults, it was defeated; the Old Guard swept the street and the churchyard free once more.

But, during this short moment of hesitation on the Emperor’s part, Wellington had found means to repair the damage in the neighbourhood of La Haye Sainte. Ziethen’s corps had at length arrived, and had come into touch with his extreme left. He drew from that quarter his last two brigades of British, cavalry, those of Vivian and Vandeleur, and ranged them in the rear of his depleted centre. The much-tried brigades between La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont were drawn in together, and strengthened by other regiments called up from the right. A solid front was once more displayed to the enemy.

It was at this moment that the Emperor made up his mind to deliver his last blow, and to throw the Guard into the thick of the battle. The alternative of retreat was still open to him; and there were good military reasons for accepting it. But the political reasons against taking this line were too cogent to be resisted. As one of his own generals wrote a few days later, “The Emperor might have re­frained from making his last attack, and could have gone off in good order, without leaving a gun behind. But then he must have repassed the Sambre, after having lost 30,000 of the men with whom he had crossed it two days before. How could he have hoped to take up the campaign against the Russians, the Austrians, and the rest of the Allies, after having been forced to retire with loss from before the English army alone ? In spite of the fearful result I cannot blame Napoleon.” Though a retreat might save the army for a few days, it could only mean ultimate disaster. The Emperor, then, was right to attack; his mistake was that he did not send the Guard to the front en masse, the moment that La Haye Sainte fell.

It was past seven when Ney led out from the French position the last column of assault. It was composed of six battalions of the Middle Guard, arrayed in hollow squares—a curious formation for attack, dictated probably by the fear that Wellington might have cavalry waiting to receive them. Two battalions of the Old Guard followed some distance behind, to act as supports. The remaining five were still held back in reserve near or behind La Belle Alliance. The attack was delivered not directly up the high-road towards La Haye Sainte, but half a mile further west and near to Hougoumont. By chance or design the battalions took a formation en Echelon, with the right in advance and the left somewhat refused. The leading square, that furthest to the east, came up the slope opposite Halkett’s British brigade ; the others were making for the ground held by Maitland’s brigade of the Guards. The moment that they began to ascend the heights, all came under a heavy fire of artillery, for Wellington’s gunners, though often driven from their pieces by the cavalry charges, were still holding their positions. The smoke was dense; and the different units seem to have lost sight of each other and to have fought each its own battle.

The shock was short and decisive. The right-hand echelon first reached the crest, engaged in a close and murderous musketry fight with Halkett’s brigade, and then recoiled. A little later the central force, apparently three battalions, came up against Maitland’s Guards and the British battery beside them. When they were seen looming through the smoke,

Wellington, who was present himself at this point, hade the Guards rise to their feet—they had been lying down to escape the fire of the French artillery—and give one volley, after which they were to advance discharge of a well-formed British line was irresistible. The heads of the French squares went down in one weltering mass; then, when their enemy marched on them, still pouring in deliberate volleys, the survivors broke and fled downhill. The advance of Maitland’s brigade was only checked by the appearance of the last French echelon, two battalions strong, somewhat on their flank. But, while the Guards were reforming to meet this new attack, another force came on the scene. Colonel Colbome of the 52nd, whose corps belonged to Adam’s brigade, the unit next to the right of Maitland, had wheeled his battalion out of the main line, so as to place it at right angles to the advancing French and parallel to their flank. His fire tore away the whole left flank of these two battalions, which broke in helpless disorder and rolled down the slope after their beaten comrades. Their retreat earned with it the two battalions of the Old Guard which were crossing the valley in their support, as well as the half-formed and depleted masses of Beillc’s corps which were lingering under the lee of Hougoumont.

Now, as so often in Peninsular battles, the first point-blank

The cry, “la Garde recule," was already running along the whole French line, when Wellington let loose upon the wavering masses below’ him his last British reserves, the two cavalry brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur. They ci-ashed down the hill-side east of Hougoumont, across the debris of the fight, and fell upon the retreating Imperial Guard and the exhausted and disordered remnants of Kellermann’s and Milhaud’s cavalry. All gave way, almost without resistance; and the French centre was transformed in a minute into a panic-stricken crowd. Wellington had bidden his whole front line to advance in support of the cavalry, but it found no enemy to fight; after ascending to the crest of the French position it halted, and left the pursuit to the Prussians. There was no strength to march left in the remnants of the shattered battalions which had borne the burden and heat of the day.

At the moment when Napoleon’s last attack was repulsed by Maitland and Colborne, Ziethen’s Prussian corps had broken in between d’Erlon’s and Lobau’s troops at the north-eastern point of the French front. The right angle formed by the enemy’s line gave way inwards, and the Prussian cavalry arrived near La Belle Alliance, driving their immediate opponents before them, at the same moment that the brigades of Vivian and Vandeleur reached the same point from the other side.

The last resistance made to the Allies was offered by three squares of the Old Guard near the high-road; they held out for some time, in order to protect the retreat of the Emperor, who had lingered with them -while there was any hope of rallying his centre. Charged without success by both British and Prussian cavalry, these veterans at last retired, and mingled with the flying masses in their rear. The Young Guard in Planchenoit held out almost as long; had they given way earlier, the Prussians would have reached the high-road south of the French position, and cut off" the whole army. But this was prevented by the admirable obstinacy of Lobau’s men, who held their own till night fell, and the main battle had long been lost.

The Emperor’s army, now no more than a helpless horde of fugitives, was chased all night by the Prussian cavalry, and never allowed a moment to rally. After being driven out of seven successive bivouacs, which it had attempted to form, it fled over the Sambre next morning, and crossed the frontier in isolated bands. In the last great battle it had lost all its artillery, more than 250 guns, and about 30,000 men in killed and wounded alone. The prisoners were eomparativelv few, probably not more than 6000 or 7000; but, in manv units of the Imperial army, the actual casualties exceeded 50 per cent, of the men present. Wellington’s army had lost over 13,000 men, of whom 7000 were British. The Prussians reported a loss of over 6000.

It has often been endeavoured to fix the responsibility for the loss of Waterloo upon Grouchy; Napoleon himself, and countless later writers on the French side, have alleged that he had it in his power to intervene effectively in the battle and failed to do so. The answer to this accusation is that the Marshal, like Napoleon himself, had not foreseen Blucher’s bold flank mareli to join Wellington, and acted in strict accordance with his master’s orders. In the first despateh that he received on the 18th, written from the field of Mont St Jean at 10 a.m., the Emperor told him to march on Wavre, pushing before him the Prussians in his front, and at the same time to keep up his communications with the main army and send frequent reports. This was exactly' what Grouchy, long before he received the despatch, had determined to do. His troops were already on the march for Wavre, when the opening guns of Waterloo were heard. Some of his officers urged him to march toward the cannonade: but he refused, saying that his duty was to look after the Prussians. As soon as his advanced cavalry reported the enemv in strength beyond the river Dvle—it was Tliielmann’s corps, left behind to detain him—he made preparations to attack them. When the Emperor’s despatch reached him, he congratulated himself on having foreseem and carried out his master's orders. The critical hours of Waterloo passed while Grouchy was forcing tl)e fords and bridges of the Dvle, slowly driving back Thiehnann, who fought desperately to gain time for his commandcr-in-chicf to reach Wellington. Not till 5 p.m. did the Marshal receive Napoleon’s last despatch, telling him that Bulow had been sighted on the heights of Chapelle St Lambert, and ordering him to turn westward and crush this Prussian corps, which he would catch “ en flagrant del'd." It was far too late for Grouchy to do anything of the kind ; at that hour Billow was attacking Planchenoit; and, even if the Marshal had at 5 o’clock despatched towards the field of Mont St Jean such of his troops as were not already engaged at Wavre, they would not have reached it till long after the fate of the battle had been decided. By 8 p.m. the main struggle was over; and there was much more than a three hours’ march (as the Prussians proved) between the Dyle and Planchenoit. Had Grouchy detached troops in that direction, they would have found the Emperor already routed.

Grouchy fought his way across the Dyle on the 18th, but received no news of the great battle that night. He therefore renewed his assault on Thielmann next morning, beat him by sheer force of numbers, and was about to pursue him northward, when he at last heard of the results of Waterloo. Promptly perceiving the danger that Blucher might cut him off, Grouchy ordered an instant retreat. He executed it in very skilful style, reached Namur just in time to avoid being intercepted, defended that town by a rear-guard action till his main body had got clean away, and escaped to France up the valley of the Meuse. He returned with his 33,000 men intact, thinking that he had deserved well of his country, but found that he was to be made the Emperor’s scapegoat and to have the loss of Waterloo imputed to his stupidity or treason. It was a hard fate; his only crime was that, like Napoleon, he had failed to foresee Blucher’s great flank march.

Napoleon, after ordering the wrecks of his army to rally at Laon, set out for Paris at once, and arrived there in a state of great mental and bodily prostration on June 21. The news of his disaster had reached the capital on the preceding night, and was not generally known till a few hours before his arrival. He did not at first grasp the completeness of his own ruin, and spoke to his Ministers of his intention to continue the war, raise a levee en masse, and defend Paris. He had to be reminded that he was no longer the autocrat that he had been when he returned from Moscow or from Leipzig; and that he would have to reckon not only with the enemy in the field, but with the Chambers at home. The Houses had allowed him to appeal to the arbitrament of the sword; but, after his disaster, it was unlikely that they would continue the struggle against united Europe, merely in order to keep him on the throne. The Allies had proclaimed that they were attacking not France but the Emperor; peace, then, might be secured by his abdication. Napoleon had no intention of throwing up the game; and, for a moment, he contemplated dissolving the Chambers and declaring himself absolute. Deceived apparently by treacherous assurances from Fouche, to the effect that the spirit of the deputies was not so hostile as he supposed, he took no decisive measure on the morning of his arrival. In a few hours it was too late for him to act. The Chambers no sooner met than, at the suggestion of La Fayette, they declared themselves in permanent session, and voted that anyone who attempted to dissolve them would be guilty of high treason. To defend themselves, they called out the National Guards, on whose loyalty they could rely. This move struck the Emperor’s counsellors with terror. Lucien Bonaparte alone dared to advise his brother to collect the few regular troops which were in Paris, appeal to the faubourgs., and disperse the Chambers. But Napoleon’s spirit was broken. He declared that he “would never lead a Jacquerie”; the idea of conducting a civil war at the head of the rabble was hateful to him. That night he made up his mind to abdicate; and when, on June 22, the Chambers sent him word that his choice lay between resignation and deposition, he bowed before the storm, and signed a declaration by which he abdicated in favour of his son. On June 25 he retired to Malmaison.

The Chambers believed that it was now in their power to decree a new Constitution for France, though they were much divided as to its form. They appointed a Provisional Government, of which Fouche and Carnot were the leading members. But already it had been practically settled that the Bourbons should be restored. Immediately after Waterloo, Wellington wrote to Louis XVIII at Ghent, advising him to cross the frontier in the wake of the allied armies. The old King saw the wisdom of this counsel, and, on entering French soil at Cateau Cambresis (June 25), published a proclamation in which he announced that he came to resume his rights, that he should adhere to the Con­stitution of 1814, repair the horrors of war, reward his faithful subjects, and punish the guilty in accordance with the forms of law. Next day he made a triumphal entry into Cambrai, which, after a feeble resistance, had been stormed by the British on the 24th. Within the next few days, all the towns north of the Somme which were not held down by regular troops hoisted the white flag; and a “ royal army ” of 5000 or 6000 irregulars assembled at Arras. The movement spread to Normandy, where the Imperialists were forced to shut themselves up in the larger towns ; and the whole country rose to hem them in. When Louis XVIII had been recognised as legitimate King by the greater part of northern France, it was too late for the Chambers to debate on what form of government they would inaugurate, too late also for the Allies to take into consideration any other plan for dealing with France than that of restoring the status quo of 1814. Several of the Powers were not too well pleased. Prussia, in particular, had intended to extort many things before allowing the King to be restored; and her Ministers were indignant with Wellington for having permitted or rather en­couraged Louis to take possession of his kingdom again.

Meanwhile the British and Prussian armies were advancing against Paris with all speed. Their leaders had agreed that the enemy must not be allowed time to rally. On their approach, the wrecks of Napoleon’s army at Laon, and Grouchy’s corps also, retired into Paris. On June 29 the heads of the Prussian columns appeared on the heights to the north of the capital; Wellington’s army was about a day further off, but within good supporting distance. The Provisional Government sent messenger after messenger to the Allies, requesting them to grant an armistice and stay their advance, now that Napoleon had abdicated. Blucher and Wellington wisely refused; there was no knowing what might happen if the enemy were allowed to rally, and to bring up reserves from the south. Napoleon, from his retreat at Malmaison, was already offering to take command of the army in Paris; and, though this was the last thing that Fouche and his colleagues desired, they were well aware that many regiments would have gone over to their old master if he had invited them to follow him against the Allies. The four days, June 25-29, which Napoleon spent at Malmaison were full of possibilities of danger. The Provisional Government, however, at last succeeded in inducing him to depart; had he stayed a day longer, they would have had either to arrest him or to suffer him to fall into the hands of the Prussians. Blucher had sent off a flying column with orders to seize him, dead or alive, and had expressed his intention of shooting him offhand, as an outlaw, if he were captured. The Prussian cavalry reached Malmaison only a few hours after Napoleon had driven off on the road to the south. His last idea had been to quit Europe and betake himself to the United States; the Provisional Government had eagerly fallen in with the idea, and promised him the use of two frigates then lying at Rochefort. On June 29, therefore, Napoleon disappeared; and several days passed before the Allies ascer­tained his whereabouts. It was only discovered on July 10, when he sent a message to Captain Maitland, commanding the blockading squadron off Rochefort, in which he asked whether he would be allowed to put to sea and sail for America.

Meanwhile, after Napoleon’s departure from Malmaison, the Provi­sional Government was left face to face with Wellington and Blucher; and no suspension of hostilities had yet been arranged. Indeed, there was sharp fighting in front of Paris on July 1. The allied generals, after reconnoitring the strong line of fortifications along the northern front of the city, had determined to cross the Seine, with the object of presenting themselves before its undefended southern side. The brigade of cavalry which formed Blucher’s advance-guard was routed near Versailles by a superior force of French horse; but this did not prevent the Prince from taking up his position on the heights which command Paris on the south. At the same time Wellington occupied positions observing the northern front of the city.

The Provisional Government had now to make its choice whether it would fight or capitulate. There were some 70,000 men of the regular troops within the city, besides the National Guards. Blucher’s and Wellington’s armies united did not much exceed 120,000 sabres and bayonets. But the British and Prussians were only the van of the advancing hosts; it was known in Paris that the Austrians had crossed the eastern frontier on June 23, had beaten Rapp and his small army of the Rhine on June 28, and had shut him up in Strassburg. Their columns were already advancing across Lorraine unopposed. At the same time, the Austro-Sardinian army of Italy had crossed the Alps and attacked Suchet, who, on hearing the news of Waterloo, asked for and obtained an armistice (June 28). If there had been any great national cause to defend, if any appeal to loyalty could have been made, it might have been worth while to fight. But no one knew whether the Chambers and the Provisional Government intended to acknowledge Napoleon II, to proclaim a Republic, to recall Louis XVIII, or to choose some new ruler—for example, the Duke of Orleans. The only persons who knew their own mind were Fouche and a few others, who had determined that the best thing for France and for themselves was to make a prompt submission to Louis XVIII. Further resistance would be useless; it would only irritate the Allies, and lead to the dismember­ment of the realm. It was by arguments of this kind that Fouche won over Davout, who combined the functions of Minister of War and commander of the army in Paris, to face the unpalatable prospect of concluding a capitulation and admitting the King. The two acts must be done simultaneously; for, if the city surrendered before the King was recognised, it would be treated as a conquered place. Blucher was for some time inclined to press matters to extremity, and to offer the Provisional Government nothing save the alternatives of unconditional surrender and a storm; but he was induced by Wellington to accept a capitulation. The French army was to retire beyond the Loire; the allied troops were to enter the city, but to respect all private and public property, except military stores and the works of art which Napoleon had plundered from Italy, Germany, and Spain. The allied generals undertook to make no attempt to arrest or punish any French subject for having borne arms under Napoleon (July 3).

Fouche and Davout had considerable difficulty in inducing the army and the Chambers to accept these terms. But all the military authorities agreed that Paris was indefensible on the southern side, and that the army was too disorganised to make a successful resistance. In face of such statements it was necessary to yield ; and on July 5—6 the French troops marched for the Loire. On July 7 the Allies made a triumphal entry; and on the 8th Louis XVIII returned to the Tuileries. Fouche and Davout had already settled with him the terms on which he was to be received. As soon as the army had left Paris, the Provisional Government recognised Louis as King, and the Chambers dissolved themselves. New Houses, duly summoned by royal writ, were to meet within two months. They actually commenced their session before August was out, and showed themselves “more royalist than the King.

 

CHAPTER XXI.

THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA II.