16

The Battle of Wavre

We have seen that Grouchy played no part in the Battle of Waterloo. So what happened to the Marshal and the right wing of l’armée du Nord? We know that he had allowed the Prussians to escape during the evening of the 17th, though he still seems to have believed that his forces could block the Prussians attempting to move beyond Wavre. After riding up to his III Corps to check on its progress, he sat down to a late breakfast, a little after 11.00 hours, after writing the following despatch:

The I, II, and III Prussian Corps, under Blücher, are marching towards Brussels. Two of these corps marched through Sart-à- Walhain, or passed just to the right of the place; they marched in three columns roughly keeping abreast of each other … One Corps coming from Liège [Bülow’s IV] effected its concentration with those that had fought at Fleurus … It would seem as though they intend to give battle to their pursuers [Grouchy’s force], or finally to join hands with Wellington; such was the reports spread by their officers, who, in their usual boasting spirit, pretend that they only left the field of battle on June 16 [Battle of Ligny] in order to ensure their junction with the English army at Brussels. This evening I shall have massed my troops at Wavre and thus shall find myself between the Prussian Army and Wellington, who, I presume, is retreating before Your Majesty.¹

Around this time the cannons opened fire at Waterloo and their roar could be heard by Grouchy and his men. General Gérard immediately urged the Marshal to cancel his current arrangements and march without delay to the sound of the guns. ‘Marshal, it is your duty to march to the cannon,’ he insisted. Grouchy was not impressed at being told by a subordinate what his duty was and replied:

My duty is to execute the Emperor’s orders, which direct me to follow the Prussian. It would be infringing his commands to pursue the course of action which you recommend.²

Another source provides a slightly longer explanation from Grouchy:

The Emperor told me yesterday that he intended to attack the English Army if Wellington accepted battle. I am therefore not at all surprised by the present engagement. Had the Emperor wished me to take part in it, he would not have kept me away from him at the very time he was marching against the English Army. Anyway, if I take my Army corps along country lanes, soaked by yesterday’s and this morning’s rain, I shall not arrive in time at the place of combat.³

Though, seemingly, he felt he was doing the right thing, Grouchy was conscious that his conduct needed explaining and he wrote the following to Soult on the 19th:

My honour makes it a matter of duty to explain myself in regard to my dispositions of yesterday. The instructions which I received from the Emperor, left me free to manoeuvre in no other direction than Wavre. I was obliged, therefore, to refuse the advice which Count Gérard thought he had a right to offer me. I do ample justice to General Gérard’s talents and brilliant vigour; but you are doubtless as surprised as I was, that a general officer, ignorant of the Emperor’s orders, and the data which inspired the Marshal of France, under whose orders he was placed, should have presumed publicly to dictate to the latter, his line of conduct. The advanced hour of the day, the distance from the point where the cannonading was heard, the condition of the roads, made it impossible to arrive in time to share in the action which was taking place. At any rate, whatever the subsequent events may have been, the Emperor’s orders, the substance of which I have just disclosed to you, did not permit of me acting otherwise than I have done.⁴

After their defeat at Ligny, Blücher’s men had withdrawn to the town of Wavre on the River Dyle. At around 13.00 hours on the 18th the advance units of General Exelmans’ II Cavalry Corps made contact with the Prussian rearguard but Grouchy was not in a position to engage the Prussians with all his force until 15.00 hours.

With the bulk of the Prussian army marching as fast as it could towards Waterloo to join Wellington, General Johann von Thielmann with III Corps was given the task of holding back Grouchy. The French Marshal had around 33,000 men and eighty guns. Thielmann had just 17,000 men and forty-eight guns but his position was a strong one.

The Dyle, normally a shallow stream at this time of the year and easily fordable, was in flood because of the torrential rain of the previous day. The town of Wavre extended for about half a mile along the left, or west, bank of the Dyle. It was connected with a few buildings, effectively a suburb of the town, on the eastern bank by two stone bridges, the larger of which carried the main Brussels–Namur road.

About three-quarters of a mile up-stream, on the Wavre side of the river, was the Mill of Bierges, which was destined to be the scene of the fiercest fighting. Here there was a wooden bridge, carrying a narrow country road. At Limale, a village two-and-a-half miles upstream from Wavre and at Limelette, another village a mile further on, there were wooden bridges across the Dyle. All the buildings along the river had been hastily loopholed by Thielmann’s men and the two stone bridges had been strongly barricaded. Behind Wavre was a hill which could afford good cover for reserves and there were numerous lateral lanes along which troops could easily be moved to any threatened sector.

Thielmann placed his 10th Division and 11th Division behind Wavre, with the 12th Division posted at Bierges, behind the village. The 9th Division was supposed to be the general reserve, but its commander, General Borcke, believing that III Corps was marching with Blücher, had set off to join the main army. By the time Thielmann was aware of Borcke’s departure it was too late to call him back. The loss of Borcke’s nine battalions and accompanying artillery meant that Thielmann now had less than half as many men as Grouchy.⁵

Pushing ahead in front of Exelmans’s cavalry was General Vandamme with the French III Corps. He arrived in front of Wavre some time between 15.00 hours and 16.00 hours. Anxious to prevent the Prussians from joining Wellington, Vandamme attacked Wavre without waiting either for the rest of the right wing to arrive and without even waiting for Grouchy.

‘Wavre was occupied by the Prussians,’ wrote General Baron Pierre Berthezène, who saw that that Grouchy had adopted the wrong course of action and that attacking Wavre was a pointless waste of life:

Its houses were garrisoned by skirmishers. Its bridge was barricaded and swept by the fire of numerous guns which were established on the heights dominating the left bank of the Dyle. General Vandamme attacked the town as soon as he arrived before it, without taking any measure to ensure success. He simply ordered Habert’s division to enter it in column. In spite of the murderous fire of the enemy, this column reached the bridge but when Habert was wounded, it retired in disorder and came to reform at the entrance of the town. This stupid attack cost us five or six hundred men … Besides, the occupation of Wavre could have no influence on the outcome of the campaign.⁶

Captain Charles François of the 30ème Infanterie de Ligne, who had served in the French Army since volunteering in 1792, had a similar opinion of the battle:

The attack was general and directed against Thielmann’s troops. The infantry and cavalry performed prodigies of valour which served only to kill and wound many men … This action had little use and cost us 1100 men. It hardly honours our generals, who seem to be groping their way forward and we heard gunfire all day on our left, in the direction of Waterloo. Unlike my usual self, I was depressed and low in spirits, I was furious.⁷

Grouchy sent a report on the battle to Napoleon from Dinant on 20 June 1815:

It was not until after seven in the evening of the 18th of June, that I received the letter of the Duke of Dalmatia, which directed me to march on St. Lambert, and to attack General Bulow. I fell in with the enemy as I was marching on Wavre. He was immediately driven into Wavre, and General Vandamme’s corps attacked that town, and was warmly engaged. The portion of Wavre, on the right of the Dyle, was carried, but much difficulty was experienced in debouching on the other side. General Girard was wounded by a ball in the breast while endeavouring to carry the mill of Bielge [sic] in order to pass the river, but in which he did not succeed, and Lieutenant General Aix had been killed in the attack on the town.

In this state of things, being impatient to co-operate with your Majesty’s army on that important day, I detached several corps to force the passage of the Dyle and march against Bulow. The corps of Vandamme, in the meantime, maintained the attack on Wavre, and on the mill, whence the enemy showed an intention to debouch, but which I did not conceive he was capable of effecting. I arrived at Limale, passed the river, and the heights were carried by the division of Vichery and the cavalry. Night did not permit us to advance farther, and I no longer heard the cannon on the side where your Majesty was engaged.⁸

Hulot’s Division of Gérard’s IV Corps was ordered to force a passage of the Dyle at the Mill of Bierges, led by Gérard himself. The attack was beaten back, with Gérard being badly wounded. All, though, was not lost, because General Pajol’s I Cavalry Corps had seized the bridge at Limale. The bridge was defended by three battalions of infantry and three squadrons of cavalry, but the bridge, quite unaccountably, had not been barricaded. Pajol sent a regiment of hussars charging across the bridge. So narrow was the bridge, the hussars could only gallop three abreast. They charged directly into the guns of the Prussian infantry and captured the vital bridge. At last the French were across the Dyle.

As soon as he realised that the river had been crossed, Thielmann sent all the troops he could spare to try and drive the French back over the Dyle. It was now dark, but the situation was so critical that neither side could afford to stop fighting. General Stülpnagel led the Prussian counter-attack. The ground, though, was unfamiliar to the Prussians and the darkness was intense and the attack soon lost cohesion and stuttered to a halt.

The difficulty of fighting in the dark was graphically portrayed by Second Lieutenant Mannkopff, who was in charge of the skirmish platoon of the 4th Company of the Prussian 31st Regiment:

We advanced with our skirmishers out in front and a long and determined battle broke out with the enemy voltigeurs in the darkness and amid the man-high corn that covered the fields. This soon became chaotically confused, with man fighting man. In this, my men and I had to face enemy voltigeurs and cavalry sometimes to our front, sometimes to our rear. About midnight, where possible, our skirmishers pulled back to the columns and a bayonet attack was made at the charge. However, because of the darkness and high corn, it was impossible to see and keep order …

Meanwhile, my skirmishers had rejoined the battalion and during this attack suddenly stumbled into a deep sunken road or ditch. At that moment, a volley of small arms fire from the opposite side struck us. However, probably because the other side of the sunken road was higher, the shots mostly went over the heads of our soldiers and unmounted officers, some of them making a loud rattling sound on hitting our bayonets. All our mounted officers were hit, though, including the regimental commander, Major von Kesteloot, and the battalion commander … Shortly after this bayonet charge, we broke off the battle and, without the enemy following up, withdrew to a pine forest close behind us.⁹

As he continued his narrative, Grouchy described the events of the 19th:

I halted in this situation until day-light. Wavre and Bielge were occupied by the Prussians, who, at three in the morning of the 19th, attacked in their turn, wishing to take advantage of the difficult position in which I was, and expecting to drive me into the defile, and take the artillery which had debouched, and make me repass the Dyle. Their efforts were fruitless. The Prussians were repulsed, and the village of Bielge taken. The brave General Penny was killed.

General Vandamme then passed one of his divisions by Bielge, and carried with ease the heights of Wavre, and along the whole of my line the success was complete. I was in front of Rozierne, preparing to march on Brussels, when I received the sad intelligence of the loss of the battle of Waterloo. The officer who brought it informed me, that your Majesty was retreating on the Sambre, without being able to indicate any particular point on which I should direct my march. I ceased to pursue, and began my retrograde movement.¹⁰

Grouchy now had to try to save his corps. He successfully disentangled himself from Thielmann and marched south to Philippeville and then to Mézières, all the time heading for Paris. Whilst this might seem the most obvious and sensible strategy, one of his subordinates, General Vandamme, believed this was the wrong course of action:

In the morning of the 19th when the Maréchal received through a superior officer of the Emperor’s General Staff the news of the loss of the battle of Waterloo, the Maréchal lost his head and asked for advice from his generals on what to do next. General Vandamme certifies that he gave advice to leave the weak Prussian corps of General Thielemann, which had been beaten and which was out of action, behind and to march with two united corps towards Bruxelles, to cross that city and to rest the troops on the heights behind the city near the road to Assche, where the townspeople were supposed to have brought food to them.

From there the march was to have gone on through Alost to Ghent, and then the corps would have directed themselves through Courtrai towards Lille where, protected by the fortresses of the northern department, they would have been able to reform so as to start a new campaign. It is obvious that this march could not have been undertaken without encountering many obstacles, that the continuation of the campaign would have taken a completely different turn by preventing a victorious army from marching towards Paris, and perhaps fixing the theatre of war in Belgium.¹¹

Grouchy may not have changed the course of the campaign, but he had kept his wing of the army intact, which gave Napoleon hope. The Emperor may have lost a battle, but the war might still be won.