Introduction

‘The past is a foreign country’

The Battle of Waterloo has been the subject of thousands of books, pamphlets, magazines and journals. Indeed, 18 June 1815, is the single most documented and discussed day in history – and therein lies the problem. Which amongst this vast assortment are those that can be relied upon to present us with the unbiased truth. It might be assumed that history is a succession of acknowledged facts and that it is the function of the historian merely to gather those facts together and present them to his or her readers in a comprehensible form. This is on the presumption that most contemporary commentators record the event that they are witnessing with a reasonable degree of accuracy and honesty, otherwise historians would have no basis at all to work from. Of course, this is sometimes far from being the case.

Firstly, any conclusions drawn from contemporary comments would have to be tempered by known or assumed prejudice or predisposition. How and to what degree such influences affect the individual can, at best, only be estimated. Added to this is the fact that, as we all know from experience, not everyone witnessing an event will agree in detail on what they have seen. Also, when the mists of time mingle with the fog of war our ability to discern the reliability or otherwise of those witnesses is considerably obscured.

These problems were recognised by Napoleon who knew only too well that his actions would be the subject of much historical examination:

Historical fact, which is so often invoked, to which everyone so readily appeals, is so often a mere word: it cannot be ascertained when events actually occur in the heat of contrary passions; and, if later on, there is a consensus, this is only because there is no-one left to contradict.

In all such things there are two very distinct essential elements – material fact and moral intent. Material facts, one should think, ought to be incontrovertible; and yet, go and see if any two accounts agree. There are facts that remain in eternal litigation. As for moral intent, how is one to find his way, supposing that the narrators are in good faith? And what if they are prompted by bad faith, self-interest and bias? Suppose I have given an order: who can read the bottom of my thoughts, my true intention? And yet everyone will take hold of that order, measure it by his own yardstick, make it bend to conform to his plans, his individual way of thinking … And everybody will be so confident of his own version! The lesser mortals will hear it from privileged mouths, and they will be so confident in turn. Then the flood of memoirs, diaries, anecdotes, drawing-room reminiscences; and yet, my friend, that is history.

In spite of his cynical view of history, or perhaps because of it, Napoleon wrote his own history in the form of his memoirs. Not so Wellington, who steadfastly refused to put pen to paper. His take on history, though, was not dissimilar to that of his great rival. In far fewer words than Napoleon, Wellington famously declared that,

The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.

Wellington’s solution to this was, therefore, that only the official accounts of a battle or campaign should be considered:

The duty of the Historian of a battle … is to prefer that which has been officially recorded and published by public responsible authorities; next to attend to that which proceeds from Official Authority … and to pay least attention to the statements of Private Individuals.

In terms of the Battle of Waterloo, in 1817 Wellington said the following to the British Ambassador to the Netherlands:

The truth regarding the battle of Waterloo is this: there exists in England an insatiable curiosity upon every subject which has occasioned a mania for travelling and writing. The battle of Waterloo having been fought within reach, every creature who could afford it, travelled to the field; and almost every one who came could write, wrote an account. It is inconceivable the number of lies that were published and circulated in this manner by English travellers; and other nations, seeing how successfully this could be done, thought it as well to adopt the same means of circulating their own stories. This has been done with such industry, that it is now quite certain that I was not present and did not command in the battle of Quatre Bras, and it is very doubtful whether I was present in the battle of Waterloo. It is not easy to dispose of the British army as it is of an individual: but although it is admitted they were present, the brave Belgians, or the brave Prussians, won the battle; neither in histories, pamphlets, plays, nor pictures, are the British troops ever noticed. But I must say that our travellers began this warfare of lying; and we must make up our minds to the consequences.

Wellington was equally contemptuous of the efforts of historians to refight the Battle of Waterloo in print and the Duke, who was twice Commander-in-Chief of the Army let alone twice being Prime Minister, held such an unassailable position in the years after the battle, no-one dare question his opinion. The result was that the official, or Wellingtonian version of the battle, was the only one that could hope to be published. The most egregious example of this is the most highly regarded of all the histories produced during the Duke’s lifetime, William Siborne’s History of the Waterloo Campaign. This was first published in June 1844, and remained for a very long time the most accurate and detailed history of the campaign. It sold in large numbers and more than 150 years later it is still in print.

The story behind Siborne’s book began in 1829 when he was commissioned by the then Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, General Rowland Hill, to create a vast scale model of the Battle of Waterloo which would form the centre-piece of the new United Services Museum in London. Siborne populated his diorama with an astonishing 80,000 model figures representing the British, French and Prussian armies at a ratio of one model to two actual soldiers. Siborne chose to portray one moment in time and he decided upon what was defined as the ‘Crisis of the Battle’ at around 19.00 hours, as the Imperial Guard reached the crest of the Mont St Jean.

In order to establish exactly where every regiment was positioned at that particular moment in time, Siborne received permission to write to every surviving officer to solicit information. He had been advised to simply use Wellington’s official despatch as his guide, but Siborne felt he needed more detailed information. Yet he did not see that there would be any conflict with Wellington’s despatch. No-one could contemplate that Wellington, widely regarded as the greatest living Briton, had been economical with the truth. The Duke’s integrity was considered beyond question. If Wellington said that was what happened on 18 June 1815, then that was what happened.

The response to Siborne’s request for information produced a wonderful collection of first-hand accounts. However, this did not impress Wellington. His stated reason was that if Siborne ‘went to one gentleman and said, ‘What did you do?’ [he would reply] ‘I did so and so.’ To another, ‘What did you do? [and he would also reply] ‘I did such and such a thing.’ One did it at ten and another at twelve, and they have mixed up the whole. The fact is, a battle is like a ball; they keep footing it all the day through.’ Wellington believed that Siborne should have chosen the start of the battle for his model as the exact position of all the troops was beyond doubt at that stage.

Wellington’s wish for the start of the battle to be portrayed in Siborne’s model may not have been driven by the desire for historical accuracy, however. In his official despatch from Waterloo the day after the battle, he paid little regard to the efforts of the Prussians. Though Napoleon had to employ increasing numbers of men to hold back the Prussians from mid-afternoon onwards, in his despatch Wellington only mentions them ‘about seven in the evening’.

Siborne, though, was gradually reaching a somewhat different conclusion. He had sent out his circular asking the officers where their units had been at about 19.00 hours, what enemy formations were to their front and what the crops had been like in their vicinity. He also enquired if the officers had any further comments they would like to make regarding the part played by their regiments. He appended a plan of the battlefield and asked the officers if they could mark the positions of their own and the enemy’s units on it. He advised them that they should not worry about making mistakes after such a long period of time had elapsed as ‘by fairly weighting and comparing the data thus afforded me, I shall be enabled to deduce a most faithful and authentic record of the Battle’.

In total Siborne received around 700 replies and gradually he assembled the most comprehensive collection of eye-witness accounts of the battle. He also made contact with the Prussian Minister of War and was given much useful information but received a mute response from the French.

As the replies came in, Siborne would amend the position of the relevant regiments on a map. If the information in one letter contradicted that of another, Siborne went to considerable lengths to resolve the discrepancy. Finally, after some three years, he was ready to finalize the positioning of his figures on the model. Unfortunately what the model showed was that the Prussians, far from being scarcely involved in the action at the time of the ‘Crisis’, were in fact on the battlefield in large numbers. By 19.00 hours, 49,886 Prussians with 123 guns were in action.

This contradicted Wellington’s despatch. The silent figures on the model landscape loudly challenged the great man’s veracity. ‘The result did indeed surprise me,’ wrote Siborne, ‘so greatly at variance was this historical evidence with the general notions which had previously prevailed on the subject’.

Unfortunately for Siborne there had been a change of government since he had been commissioned to start the model and the new administration refused funding. Having started, Siborne was determined to finish the project, using his own money.

In October 1838 the ‘Model of the Battle of Waterloo’ went on display at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly. The model proved to be an immediate success, with around 100,000 people paying 1 shilling each to view it. One person who was conspicuous by his absence was the Duke of Wellington.

Despite the model’s popularity Siborne received little money from the man who put it on display and Siborne, who had spent thousands of pounds on the model, faced the sad prospect of having to sell the model to recoup his losses. Severely short of funds, Siborne even volunteered to change the model in any way that a purchaser might require. He was prepared to sacrifice all the years of painstaking effort to ensure the model’s accuracy rather than face a debtor’s court.

He even wrote to the Army and the Government for help in preserving the model but he knew that one major obstacle stood in his way – the Duke of Wellington.

Siborne was well aware of Wellington’s disapproval of the moment in time that he had chosen to represent, and he knew that he had contradicted Wellington’s despatch so, with his creditors closing in, he felt that he had no choice but to re-arrange the figures on the model to fit Wellington’s version of events in the hope that he would therefore receive some official backing. The only way he could do that was by moving the Prussians further from the action to indicate that they arrived on the battlefield far later than had been established by Siborne. But, limited by the scope of the model, this would have actually meant completely removing the equivalent of 40,000 Prussians from the model. No-one in the Establishment, however, was interested.

Siborne, having accumulated so many first-hand accounts, knew that he was in a unique position to write the first truly comprehensive history of the Waterloo campaign. Having had his fingers burnt with his model, however, Siborne had no intention of stoking the fire of controversy further with his book. It would follow the Wellingtonian version of events. He squared this circle by stating in his History that ‘the evidence I had collected … was of too vague a nature, as regards time and situation [Siborne’s italics] to enable me either to corroborate or to rectify the details with which I had been furnished by the Prussian authorities’. He concluded that ‘according to the original [Siborne’s italics once again] arrangement of the figures upon the model, the Prussian troops distributed along that intervening space, immediately in front of Lobau’s corps, were represented in too forward a position’.

Siborne then went even further in his bid to placate Wellington by writing:

It was only subsequently, when collecting that further information which has enabled me in this present work to describe with such minuteness of detail those brilliant dispositions of the Duke of Wellington, by which he not only defeated the French imperial guard upon his position, but secured the victory.

All this, however, did him no good. He had earlier cast aspersions on Wellington’s honour and he would never be forgiven. The Duke wrote:

It is curious that the Historian of the Battle of Waterloo, Captain Siborne, having discovered that in his capacity of artist he had failed in producing an accurate, and even intelligible, representation of the Battle of Waterloo, on his beautiful and accurate model of the ground, by having listened to every hero of his own tale … the consequences of which have been to render ridiculous and useless that beautiful work … should in his History of this great military event, have fallen into the same error, so far at least to have listened to every individual who chose to tell his own tale, to insert into his work as facts … while he lays aside and unnoticed the authentic [sic] reports by the General Commanding-in-Chief.

Siborne’s embarrassment served as a dire warning to any others that sought to challenge Wellington’s version of events. The result was exactly as Napoleon predicted – the consensus history.

We must, in fairness to Wellington, point out that there was another reason, one not normally associated with Wellington, why he was loth to be drawn into a detailed analysis of the battle – that of not wishing to taint the reputation of any individual officers or individual regiments. This was revealed in a report from Ernst von Vinche, who commanded the 5th Hanoverian Brigade. At one point in the battle, the square formed by the Hildesheim and Peine battalions suddenly retired down the road towards Brussels. Vinche had not ordered the battalions to move and he demanded to know what was happening. It transpired that Major Count von Westphalan, whose command of English was limited, had received an order he did not understand. He was under the impression that he was to take his battalions and ‘assemble the numerous fugitives who were streaming to the rear’.

When Vinche asked for an inquiry into the incident he was told by Sir E. Barnes, the Adjutant-General, that ‘it was the irrevocable intention of the Duke of Wellington that all these kinds of events were to be consigned to oblivion’.

In the heat of battle mistakes are made and people do not always behave as well as might be expected. Wellington understood this and he had no desire to cause anyone any embarrassment. It was far better, in Wellington’s opinion, not to look too deeply into such things. His official despatch lavishes praise; it does not ascribe blame. And that, the Duke believed, was where matters should rest. As John Gurwood, the man who edited Wellington’s collected despatches, observed, when the Duke was pressed about certain incidents during the battle, he would reply, ‘Oh! I know nothing of the services of particular regiments: there was glory enough for us all.’

This was understood by many in the military, including Lieutenant Colonel Henry Murray of the 18th Hussars, who warned Siborne that, ‘too critical an inquiry as of who has the greatest claim to praise engenders a jealously which never should exist between companions in arms’.

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An historian’s interpretation of past events is coloured by the times in which he or she lives. As the historian and author Peter Hofschröer discovered during research for his ground-breaking books on the Waterloo campaign, ‘it was fascinating to observe how the way in which it [the Battle of Waterloo] has been treated has varied according to fashion and the contemporary political circumstances’.

In the nineteenth century Britain was experiencing its greatest era. In the wealthiest and most powerful nation on the planet there was an air of positivity throughout the country, especially amongst the educated classes. The histories of that period sought only to glorify the deeds of its statesmen and its armed forces. In the words of the diligent Francophile historian Andrew W. Fields the British were guilty of ‘insufferable self-congratulation and arrogance in our wallowing in the warm and prolonged afterglow of victory’. In such an environment authors did not question the established versions of events, for such publications would find few readers.

The modern era could not be more different. Now, we actively seek the alternative view. Indeed, merely repeating the standard version of past events would attract little attention. Everyone is looking for a different perspective, even something controversial, to challenge the accepted, or consensus, view of events. In order to be able to achieve this, the historian must be able to call on previously undisclosed information or draw fresh conclusions from the existing evidence. In both instances the historian will select the material which best supports his or her new theory. As Peter Hofschröer concedes, ‘every historian has an axe to grind’. This can lead, perhaps will always lead, to a distortion of the facts.

We are left, therefore, to wonder which histories can be depended upon to deliver the truth, which brings us to the present volume. It is a compilation of documents, from the simplest personal diary to the considered orders of the great commanders. It is history without the complications or the bias of the historian.

The collection is random and eclectic, and draws no particular conclusions, but all the documents were written either during the course of that tumultuous spring and summer of 1815 or subsequently by those individuals that, in one capacity or another, were involved. As David Howarth portrayed so brilliantly in his A Near Run Thing, ‘critical analysis is the essence of military history, and it has an intellectual interest of its own. But it is not the essence of a battle; it does not describe a human experience.’

The purpose of this book is to describe that human experience. But is aim is not just to tell the story of the Hundred Days campaign through the words of those who were there at the time, for this is no new technique, but more to re-kindle the atmosphere of those exciting, if terrifying weeks using the voice of the people – voices that are heard through a selection of varied means including letters, official documents, parliamentary debates and newspaper reports.

As L.P. Hartley famously wrote, ‘The past is a different country, they do things differently there’, and as it is only possible to truly appreciate a different country by visiting it, likewise with the past. For all the brilliant interpretations and insightful analyses of historians, we can only really understand the past if we let the people that inhabit it speak for themselves. This is what we have done.

Yet, even though we have stood aside and allowed the participants to command the field, a note of caution needs to be sounded. One of the officers that replied to William Siborne’s request for information on the ‘Crisis’ of the battle bluntly declared that,

it is fully within my memory that the fog and smoke lay so heavily upon the ground that we could only ascertain the approach of the enemy by the noise and clashing of arms which the French usually make in their advance to attack, and it has often occurred to me from the above circumstances, that the accuracy and particulars with which the crisis has so frequently and so minutely discussed, must have had a good deal of fancy in the narrative.

Another of Siborne’s correspondents wrote that, ‘if ever truth lies at the bottom of a well, she does so immediately after a great battle, and it takes an amazingly long time before she can be lugged out’.

Wellington himself conceded that, in regard to his despatches, he ‘never told a falsehood in them, but I never told the whole truth, nor anything like it. Either one or the other would have been contradicted by 5,000 officers in my army in their letters to their mothers, wives, brothers or sisters and cousins, all of whom imagined they as well understood what they saw as did.’ Well, there have been far more than 5,000 letters, articles and books written on the Battle of Waterloo and yet there remain aspects of the battle that are still in dispute and are contested as fiercely now as the Mont St Jean was 200 years ago.

*

Readers will see that in the remote country of the past some words were spelt differently than today. We see that after the battle the various parties engaged in ‘negotiations’, and instead of show we have ‘shew’. We find not only unusual spellings, but also new words being coined. So, for example, we have ‘massy’ columns in one letter to the Caledonian Mercury, describing the main French attack, and a visitor to Waterloo shortly after the battle used an entirely inexplicable word, ‘notious’ in a letter published in the Chester Chronicle, as well as an account from July 1815 naming the famous farm on the right of the Anglo-Netherlands’ line ‘Haugemont’. One visitor to Waterloo after the battle described the battlefield as varied by ‘inequalities and indulations’ meaning, of course undulations. Favour and favor, honour and honor were interchangeable; capital letters for common and proper nouns were used indiscriminately by some authors even in the same document. If we are to let the people of the past speak for themselves, then we must allow them to do so in their own vernacular, so such spellings, and the often anachronistic grammar, have been left unaltered.