After his stunningly successful return from exile that found him back in the Tuileries in March 1815, Napoleon faced a monumental challenge in retaining power. The Congress of Vienna that had met the previous year to shape the new, post-Napoleonic Europe was still in session and the French emperor’s overtures for peace were quickly and disdainfully rejected. By the Treaty of Chaumont, each of the allies pledged to put an army of 150,000 men into the field until he was driven from power. By June 1815 well over 600,000 men were approaching the borders of France, with more following or being mobilised. Napoleon, despite his herculean efforts, could muster fewer than half that number in the front line. To get the better of such overwhelming forces would require almost a miracle; Napoleon set about trying to create one.
Napoleon’s Plans
Given the very real internal and external threats that he faced, Napoleon felt he had little option but to take the initiative and attack his enemies before they could concentrate all their forces against him. What’s more, his forté was certainly the offensive; his military genius was based on audacious and daring enterprises. The only two armies that were fully mobilised and concentrated were the Anglo-Netherlands army of Wellington and Blücher’s Prussians. The former had a strength of about 100,000 men and the latter around 130,000, to oppose to his own 120,000. What’s more, the British lines of communication ran towards Ostend, Antwerp and the sea, whilst those of the Prussians ran towards Liège, Maastricht and Prussia; in opposite directions to each other. Through Gourgaud’s account of the campaign, Napoleon expressed his plan thus:
The Prussian army, having intimation of the enemy’s intentions eight or ten hours before the English, would accordingly be first concentrated. Hopes were even entertained of attacking the Prussians before their four corps were united, or of obliging them to fall back in the direction of Liège and the Rhine, which was the line of their operations; and by thus separating them from the English, to create an opportunity for new operations.
In these calculations, the characters of the enemy’s commanders were much to be considered. The hussar habits of Marshal Blücher, his activity and decided character, formed a strong contrast to the cautious disposition, the deliberate and methodical manner of the Duke of Wellington. Thus it was easy to foresee, that the Prussian army would be first concentrated, and also that it would evince decision and promptitude in hastening to the aid of its ally. If Blücher had had only two battalions ready to act, he would have employed them in support of the English army; but there was reason to believe, that Wellington, unless his whole army was prepared for action, would not attack the French to assist Blücher. All these considerations rendered it desirable, that the attack should be commenced against the Prussian army; it necessarily followed, that it would be first concentrated, which was in reality the fact.1
Napoleon’s aim was undoubtedly to destroy each of these armies in succession, force them away from each other along their lines of communication and then to occupy Brussels. He hoped that such a blow would dissolve the coalition and might even bring peace; after all, the emperor of Austria was his father-in-law and the interest of distant Russia was largely theoretical. To concentrate such an army, he could only cover the rest of his frontiers with very weak detachments, albeit with the grand title of ‘army’. These bodies, too feeble to resist a determined enemy, were designed to impose upon and delay them, buying him time to achieve his key victories in Belgium.
General Carl von Clausewitz, the famous military historian and strategist, in his analysis of the campaign, summed up Napoleon’s situation:
The fundamental concept that Bonaparte adopted for the campaign was to burst forth with an attack on the Allied armies in Belgium and on the Meuse, because they were the first ones present and thus the first ones capable of being brought to battle; because they were the closest and thus the first ones that could be reached; and because they were commanded by the most enterprising leaders and therefore the ones to be feared most. He therefore assembled a disproportionate part of his army against them . . . There was certainly nothing better for him to do: This was indeed the only way – given his extremely difficult and precarious situation – for him to attain a more solid position. Only by splendid victories over Blücher and Wellington, the two generals in whom the Allied sovereigns placed their greatest confidence, and by the total destruction of their armies, could he strike a blow that would cause admiration in France, dismay amongst the Allies, and astonishment in Europe. Only then could he hope to gain time and increase his power by a few more steps, thus becoming more of a match for his opponents. If he failed to gain this victory, or if it did not deter the Allies from immediately invading France, then it would be impossible for him to save himself from a second downfall.2
There is no doubt that if Napoleon had been successful in destroying these two armies, the morale of the allies would have been seriously affected. After their defeat, Napoleon could have turned with part of his army against the next developing threat with a huge moral advantage. It could certainly be argued that the determination of the allies would have been shaken to the point where they were prepared to make an accommodation with France, but at worst it would still buy the emperor considerable time; the time he needed to secure his position. And it is certainly true to say that a great victory would have galvanised the majority of France behind him.
A brilliant victory over the two armies in the Netherlands was therefore Napoleon’s most urgent requirement. To achieve this he needed to destroy them individually, so they could not unite and defeat him using their superior numbers. His strategy therefore had to be to advance in such a way that firstly ensured that an encounter was certain, and secondly ensured that he did not force, or encourage, them to unite. Thus, his march into the Kingdom of the Netherlands was not aimed primarily at capturing Brussels, as many allied leaders and commanders thought, but to engineer a confrontation with Wellington or Blücher in such a way as to give him the greatest chance of destroying their armies one after the other. The capture of Brussels was almost irrelevant if the allied armies remained intact. His march on the capital of the Netherlands, therefore, was almost the bait that he used to force the allies into battle.
Napoleon had four lines of operation from which to choose. He could concentrate at Valenciennes and advance on Brussels via Mons, destroying Wellington before the Prussians could move to his support. He could concentrate at Maubeuge and move on Brussels through Charleroi, striking at the junction between the two allies and defeating them separately. On the right he could descend the Meuse towards Namur and fall on the Prussians, cutting their lines of communication; or he could sweep even further east, again threatening their lines of communication. Wellington clearly feared the first of these options, but Napoleon felt that such a move would merely push the British commander into the arms of the Prussians and he would risk having to fight them concentrated. Napoleon chose to fall on the central point, conveniently marked by the main Charleroi to Brussels chaussée (main road), hoping to destroy Blücher before Wellington could come to his support.
The Swiss strategist Antoine Henri Jomini, who wrote a political and military history of the campaign that was first published in 1839, wrote:
Napoleon’s taking the field, and his first plan, may be regarded as among the most remarkable operations of his life: nine corps of infantry or cavalry cantoned from Lille to Metz, were, by marches skilfully concealed, to concentrate in front of Charleroi, at the same moment with the guard’s arrival there from Paris. These movements were combined with so much precision, that 120,000 men were assembled on the Sambre, as by enchantment, on the 14th June.3
Whilst the concentration was not as faultless as Jomini implies, it was still a remarkable achievement; whilst the allies knew that the French army was assembling in the north, its strike did come as something of a surprise and Wellington in particular, unsure whether the advance on Charleroi was a deception, refused to nominate his own concentration point until he was certain, thus prompting Wellington’s comment on the 15th that Napoleon had stolen a march on him. Although Blücher was able to concentrate more quickly than Wellington, even he was unable to ensure his whole army was concentrated for the first battle.
If Napoleon did not know the exact composition and location of his enemy’s corps, he knew that in general terms the Prussians were cantoned from Charleroi to Liège, and that the Anglo-Netherlands army was distributed between Ath and Brussels, with advance guards towards Mons and Tournay. Napoleon believed that it would take Wellington two days to concentrate his army and Blücher probably more than twenty-four hours. The point of junction of these two armies was on the main road leading from Charleroi to Brussels, and it was here that he planned to strike, hoping to be able to profit from their dispersal and defeat them sequentially. In order to achieve this, success absolutely depended on audacity and celerity.
Allied plans
On 3 May, Wellington and Blücher met at Thirlemont to discuss their strategy to defeat Napoleon. At this time they were both building up their forces with a view to an offensive into France in concert with the other allied armies, probably in July. However, given that this process was still far from complete, and complicated by the mutiny of the Saxon forces that were under Prussian command, their first thoughts were on how to counter a French offensive launched to try and catch them unprepared.
Wellington was certainly a great commander, but he was very much a politicised and politically astute general. He therefore saw his priorities as the need to protect the capital of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Brussels, and to protect the exiled French king, Louis XVIII, who was in Ghent. His conviction was that the French would attack via Mons, and this was based on the premise that Napoleon’s priority was the capture of Brussels.
As Napoleon had three distinct options for advancing on Brussels through the Anglo-Dutch deployment area, Wellington would be unable to cover all of them in sufficient strength. His plan therefore saw his army concentrating well back from the frontier so that he could then deploy it to the threatened route, allowing the French to advance virtually unopposed until this was complete, and giving the Prussians time to march to his assistance. Wellington was therefore trading space, giving up Netherlands territory, for the time required to concentrate his army and receive support.
In contrast, Blücher needed to protect his communications with Prussia. One of the main roads along which he did this was known as the Roman Road that ran comparatively close to the frontier between modern-day Belgium and France. As he also wanted to manoeuvre in coordination with Wellington, his plan was to concentrate forward, around Fleurus and Sombreffe, and to fight a battle there, in order to protect this important route, or to march west and support Wellington along the main road from Namur towards Nivelles that passed through Sombreffe.
By the time of Thirlemont, therefore, both commanders already had their own plans in place, although they were diametrically opposed: Wellington concentrating in depth and Blücher forward. But the priority now was to agree a plan that saw them coordinating their efforts with a view to concentrating an overwhelming force against Napoleon. The intelligence they had available at that time hinted that any French offensive would be focussed on western Belgium rather than the Meuse valley, suggesting that Wellington’s forces would be engaged first. Thus, although at their meeting at Thirle-mont the principle of mutual support was agreed, their expectation was that Napoleon would advance against Wellington. If this had happened, the Prussians could be trusted to move to Wellington’s assistance and the issue of their forward concentration became irrelevant. However, if Napoleon was to attack the Prussians first, or at the junction of the two armies, the fact that Wellington would firstly need to be convinced that any French attack in this area was not a feint, and then need to concentrate his army and march to support the Prussians, suggested that the Prussians were almost inevitably going to be left somewhat in the lurch.
By the end of May, both allied armies were complete and ready to start the campaign. As no threat had developed, when Blücher made an official visit to the Netherlands between 28 and 30 May, all the talk was of an allied offensive into France; all thoughts of coordinating defensive arrangements had been forgotten and the dichotomy between forward and rearward concentrations was no longer an issue. Just a few days before Napoleon launched his offensive, Blücher had written to his wife, ‘We shall soon enter France. We might remain here another year, for Bonaparte will never attack us.’4
The Armée du Nord
In my previous book, Waterloo: The French Perspective, I avoided a unit-by-unit breakdown of the Armée du Nord as this is already available in no end of other excellent books. Instead I attempted to give a comprehensive account of the motivations and morale of the army, as this was to have a great impact on its performance in victory and defeat. This moral component, and its subtle but significant differences within the command structure, is fundamental in understanding the French perspective of this fascinating campaign.
I do not wish to repeat the whole of my previous work and so I refer readers to that book for a full understanding. However, for those that have not read it I would like to recap the key points that it raises.
After Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, the army quickly became disillusioned by the return of the monarchy, which reduced its size, failed to recognise its considerable achievements and replaced experienced, capable officers with those whose loyalty was to the king. A large number of officers were placed on half pay and many of those who were suspected of being too Bonapartist were harassed and kept under observation. It soon became clear to Napoleon that, if he were to make a return to France, he would have the support of the army, but if such a return was to be successful he also needed the support of a fair proportion of the population. Luckily for him, Louis and his court appeared to have learnt nothing during their exile. Instead of embracing the new France that the revolution and imperial rule had brought, they were determined to bring back the old ways, reinstating many institutions of the ancien régime and placing émigrés in key positions of power. In a short time the new king managed to alienate a large proportion of the population. Napoleon’s return in March 1815 was quick and bloodless, thanks mainly to the support of the army that unhesitatingly rushed to his banner. A lieutenant sums up the reaction of the army to Napoleon’s return:
We heard as we were on the march that Napoleon had disembarked in Provence with a small band of men from the island of Elba, and that he was marching directly on Paris . . . and that we also marched on Paris . . . ‘Vive l’empereur!’ At this moment, there was joy, delirium throughout the regiment, everyone cried with pleasure. In a moment the silver fleurs de lys, distributed by M. Le duc d’Angoulême, were broken and strewn on the ground.5
Facing the overwhelming numbers of the allied forces, whose governments refused to acknowledge Napoleon’s right to rule, the emperor immediately set to work reconstituting the army in its old image.
The vast majority of the soldiers had an unconditional love for Napoleon. Lacking education or responsibility to anyone other than themselves, and with a sense of duty that was exclusively to him, it was an uncomplicated decision to cast off the fleur de lys and transfer their loyalty to the emperor without any soul-searching or feelings of guilt or betrayal. This was particularly true for the older soldiers, who still remembered the days of victory before the humiliation of defeat, many of whom had personal grievances with the enemies of France.
The younger soldiers, of which there were many, had experienced only fleeting moments of glory and the final humiliation of invasion. They had vengeance in their hearts and, having spent many hours listening to the stories of veterans, and with the passion of youth, they too wanted their share of sacrifice and glory.
The junior officers, those at the company level, were mostly younger and more impressionable and, like the younger soldiers, they wanted the glory and promotion that came with campaigning. For them, there was little attraction in peacetime soldiering, particularly amongst a veteran army. Here there was also a need to prove themselves, and as their loyalty and responsibility was to their soldiers, with whom they spent much of their time, they too were likely to transfer their loyalty without too much hesitation. Thus for them, the aura and draw of the emperor was as strong as it was amongst the soldiers.
More senior regimental officers, and the more junior general officers, felt themselves in a much more sensitive position. Many, despite their love for the emperor, felt that their sense of honour demanded that, as they had sworn loyalty to the king, they had no option but to serve him until he gave up the throne. Colonel Combe wrote, ‘The return of the emperor in 1815 placed us in a cruel alternative between our feelings for him and our duty to our new sovereign.’6 The dilemma they faced is well described in many other memoirs. Colonel Nöel tells us:
The inhabitants of Dauphiné and the army supported the emperor; but for me, I deplored this event [his return] with all sensible men. I foresaw, and this was not difficult, all the ills that he would attract on France, and the first would be civil war.
I realised exactly what the situation was. My duty was to remain at my post, my self-interest to go to the emperor. I had made my oath to the Monarchy; whilst this government remained the lawful government, I would serve it.7
As the army flocked to Napoleon, Louis fled to Belgium. Many officers now saw this act as releasing them from their oath of loyalty to him, and felt that they were now free to serve Napoleon with a clear conscience. But not only were the middle-ranking officers concerned by their oaths of allegiance, many could also see the possible consequences of Napoleon’s return and the impossibility of emerging victorious against the military might of almost the whole of the rest of Europe.
For the marshals and more senior generals, the decision to join Napoleon or stay loyal to the king was an even more difficult one. Initially, the king had showered those marshals and generals who swore allegiance to him with awards and titles, whilst those who were not prepared to transfer their loyalty so easily went into retirement. Once many of the old émigrés had returned, however, the ‘new’ imperial aristocracy that had been created by Napoleon, including the marshals and generals, quickly found themselves snubbed and insulted. Some of these senior officers stayed loyal to the king and went into exile with him, many retired and refused to serve, whilst others only reluctantly felt they should fight to protect France. It seems comparatively few – those with the most intimate connections with Napoleon – enthusiastically attached themselves to his cause. The implications of these divided loyalties will be examined later.
The soldiers of 1815 were not exclusively the young conscripts with which Napoleon had been forced to fight the campaigns of 1813 and 1814; they were now older, had endured much hardship and were accustomed to war. In the short period of peace after his abdication many tens of thousands of prisoners of war had been released from Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia, and the beleaguered garrisons throughout the German states that had been denied to him in 1814 had also returned. Some of these men were no longer fit to serve, but many others had returned keen to avenge the privations and humiliations they had suffered.
Captain Chapuis commanded a company in the 85th Line:
This regiment only had two battalions, totalling a little more than 900 men; but what you are not aware of is that these men, commanded by the brave Colonel Masson, came from the 3rd Regiment of Tirailleurs of the Guard a few days before our entry into campaign, were proven and resolute soldiers prepared to fight to the finish. At the peace in 1814, most had come from the English pontoons, in which a long and terrible torture had been their fate; they looked forward to the moment when they could come face to face with their torturers.8
The regimental commander of the 22nd Line seemed content with what he saw.
Our regiments are fine and animated by the best spirit; the emperor leads us; we hoped that we would take our revenge with dignity.9
But in the accounts of others we can see just a hint that the spirit of the soldiers went beyond an enthusiasm that was normal in well-motivated troops. General Foy commanded a division in the 2nd Corps and observed, ‘The troops show no patriotism or enthusiasm, but a true rage for the emperor and against his enemies. None of them doubt the triumph of France.’10
The confidence of the troops in the emperor was absolute, as chef d’escadron Lemonnier-Delafosse explains.
Napoleon was at their head. The influence that he had on the spirit and courage of the soldiers was truly incomprehensible: a single word, a gesture, sufficed for their enthusiasm and to confront the most terrible dangers with a blind joy. If he ordered a movement at the wrong time that struck the soldiers as reckless or rash, they said he knew what he was doing, and they dashed forward to their deaths to the cry of ‘Vive l’empereur!’11
We are beginning to see that the army had a much higher number of veterans than had been the case for many years, it had strong morale, absolute faith in the emperor and, despite the short time Napoleon had had to pull it together, it was well constituted: particularly strong in the quality and quantity of its cavalry and artillery. But we are also beginning to sense that there was something extraordinary, something not quite right, about the psyche, or the spirit, of the army.
Certainly, given the negligence it had suffered under Louis, and the little time Napoleon had had to reorganise and motivate it, there were bound to be some significant issues with the army’s cohesion and level of training. Regiments had received large numbers of recalled soldiers and volunteers, and officers returning from retirement on half pay. An anonymous general who fought at Waterloo wrote:
The soldiers, arriving from all directions, knew nothing; they hardly knew their officers and were not known by them. They had much individual élan, but little communal: also the cavalry, which above all was in need of this élan, was itself very good; whilst the infantry, composed of similar elements, and having as much individual bravery, had need of several months of these manoeuvres and of that brotherhood which binds together one type of soldier with another and makes the strength of this arm. Time was lacking to give them this moral advantage which had been present in the highest degree in the troops of the camps of Boulogne, in the campaigns of Austerlitz and Jena, and which already left something to be desired in the campaign of Wagram! Several generals and officers of the headquarters, arrived at the opening of the campaign, were hardly mounted, and they had no knowledge of their troops when they marched on the enemy.12
The lack of cohesion and training that this implies is certainly important, but given the enthusiasm and motivation of the army, this in itself is not sufficient to have made it the fragile instrument that was to fall apart so disastrously at Waterloo. The most significant issue is made very clear in virtually all the writings of more junior officers after the disaster. Captain de Brack of the Imperial Guard Lancers summed up the feeling of the army:
The French army of the Hundred Days was not of the pure imperial sort. Already the few months of peace and the Restoration had changed it; the passive obedience, silent, respectful, confident, had been impaired. Its march, on campaign, was no longer cheerful firmness, heedless of ill, enthusiastic, the first cause of our success. Selfishness and treason circulated in its veins, and it had the feeling of their vile fever.13
This suggests that behind the thin veneer of confidence and homogeneity, there were some far more fundamental problems that were gnawing like a cancer at the heart of the army. Once again, the writings after the battle were quick to identify its cause; Lemonnier-Delafosse again:
Although the entire army was superb and full of enthusiasm, it was necessary to inject new blood into its leadership; but the emperor . . . made the mistake of putting it back under its old leaders.
Most, despite their speeches to the king, had not ceased to speak in support of the imperial cause; but nevertheless they did not appear disposed to serve with the enthusiasm and devotion that the circumstances demanded. These were no longer the men who, full of youth and ambition, were generous with their lives to gain promotion and fame; they were men tired of war, and, having achieved the highest positions, enriched by the spoils of war or the generosity of Napoleon, had no other desire than to enjoy their fortune peacefully in the shadow of their laurels.14
The prevarication and clash of loyalties felt by the officers was not understood by the simplistic approach and attitudes of the soldiers. They remembered the treason of some senior officers before the fall of Paris, the way some of the marshals had forced Napoleon’s abdication and, more recently, the failure of many marshals and senior officers to immediately rally to the emperor, to whom they owed their wealth and rank. Furthermore, the hesitation of many middle-ranking officers to lead their soldiers over to Napoleon on his return was simply not understood. All of this resulted in an increasing distrust of the officers by the rank and file, even before the campaign opened, and festered as the war began and imaginary slights, incompetence and real betrayal became evident. Sergeant Mauduit summed up the feelings of the soldiers, ‘. . . a great fault had been committed, in employing certain commanders, for whom the words ‘glory’ and ‘patrie’ no longer had the same significance as for their subordinates’.15 Later, he goes on to say:
The subaltern officers and soldiers alone, with very rare exceptions, had conserved the sacred instinct for war, the thirst for combat!
Too many of our generals were no longer worthy of commanding such troops; some of them traitors on the inside, spoke against the triumph of our arms; others, incapable, indecisive and lacking spirit, went into battle half-heartedly.16
The result is a clear difference in motivation and spirit between the soldiers and many senior officers. The soldiers were confident and ready to die for Napoleon; yet many of their officers were split in their loyalties between the king and the emperor, wanted peace, foresaw the terrible consequences of fighting virtually the whole of Europe, and yet felt compelled, in spite of all this, to defend their country against foreign invasion. Soldiers did not maintain the same feelings of duty, obligation and honour as their officers and were therefore much quicker in declaring for Napoleon. It was no doubt this that sowed the seeds of suspicion between many officers and the soldiers, who doubted the devotion and loyalty of their superiors. However, it must be taken into account that much of this analysis is based on the testimony of those who wrote on the campaign after their defeat, when many were looking for scapegoats and excuses. There is plenty of evidence to support their claims, but the extent to which this feeling permeated the whole of the army must remain a matter of conjecture.
What is clear from contemporary evidence is that distrust in their officers and perhaps the extraordinary circumstances in which they found themselves, manifested itself in a lack of discipline among the rank and file, of which there are many examples. The distrust turned to growing anger and suspicion as the campaign progressed and the consequences of bad luck, treason and incompetence appeared, to the soldiers at least, to realise their gloomiest predictions. The fact that many of these were the frictions of war that are omnipresent in all conflict were conveniently ignored by the soldiers to justify, in retrospect, their worst excesses and fragile morale.
Colonel Gordon was one of a number of prominent officers who deserted during the first days of the campaign and whose actions served to justify the suspicion of the soldiers. He was the chief-of-staff to General Durutte, commander of the 4th Division in d’Erlon’s 1st Corps. Immediately after his desertion he wrote:
The spirit of the soldiers is terrible, they are maniacs, and I am sure that the first consequence of their rout will be horrible indiscipline and a thousand excesses. Even in France they had started pillaging and speaking loudly of burning property if the army was obliged to retreat. This army is lost . . .17
But how the army saw itself is illustrated by this piece, written by Lieutenant Martin of the 45th Line:
Never had the army set off on its march with more certainty of victory. Of what importance to us was the number of our enemies? We counted in our ranks soldiers grown old in victory, who had spent some years as prisoners which had made them even more formidable. A thousand humiliations added anger to their natural valour. Their faces, burnt by the sun of Spain or the ice of Russia, lit up with the prospect of battle. They surely wanted peace, but they wanted a glorious peace, having reestablished the Rhine as the border of France.18
But perhaps the most objective view of the Armée du nord is given by Houssaye when he writes:
Such was the army of 1815 – impressionable, critical, without discipline, and without confidence in its leaders, haunted by the dread of treason, and on that account perhaps, liable to sudden fits of panic; it was nevertheless, instinct with warlike aspirations and loving war for its own sake, fired with a thirst for vengeance; it was capable of heroic efforts and furious impulses; it was more impetuous, more excited, more eager for the fray than any other Republican or Imperial Army after or before it. Napoleon had never before handled an instrument of war, which was at once so formidable, and yet so fragile.19