Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.
Wellington
Old Blucher has had a damned good hiding, and has gone back to Wavre, eighteen miles to the rear. We must do the same. I suppose they’ll say in England that we have been licked; well I can’t help that.
Wellington
Just because you have been beaten by Wellington, you regard him as a great general. I tell you that Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops and this battle will be a picnic ... We will sleep this night in Brussels.
Napoleon
It has been ... the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life ... By God! I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.
Wellington
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won ... I hope to God I have fought my last battle.
Wellington
Prince Clemens von Metternich, Austria’s chancellor, was enjoying a deep sleep on the night of March 5, 1815, when an aide awakened him and handed him a letter. Metternich nodded wearily, tossed the letter aside, and fell back asleep. He did not break the letter’s seal until well after dawn the next morning. What Metternich read horrified him. Napoleon had escaped from Elba and his whereabouts were unknown. Metternich sent messages to representatives of the other Great Powers, Russia, Prussia, and Britain, to gather and decide what to do. Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington represented Britain.
Napoleon got increasingly edgy shortly after stepping foot on the small island of Elba, off Tuscany’s coast, on May 4, 1814. He presided over a tiny court, 1,000 soldiers, and 13,700 subjects. Typically, he embarked on a frenzy of administrative, legal, and economic reforms to modernize Elba, but soon ran out of things to do because he ran out of money. The island’s economy could not generate enough revenue to realize his ambitions and Louis XVIII refused to send him the 1 million francs promised under the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Atop these fiscal problems came rumors that the Congress of Vienna was planning to depose and exile him to a remote island. Other rumors insisted that ever more French people resented the Bourbons and longed for Napoleon to return to lead them. Finally, the allies not only kept his wife and son from joining him, but Empress Marie Louise and dashing Austrian General Adam von Neipperg were said to be lovers.1
Late on the afternoon of February 26, 1815, Napoleon, his staff, and 1,026 troops squeezed aboard 3 small ships and sailed for France. They set foot on French soil near Antibes on March 1. From there Napoleon led his men due north over the mountains. Louis XVIII ordered his commanders to find and destroy Napoleon. The turning point came in a mountain pass half a day’s march from Grenoble on March 7. There 5,000 French troops barred the way. Napoleon deployed his own men then strode alone toward the other line. ‘Soldiers!’ he called out, ‘I am your Emperor. If there is any soldier among you who wishes to kill his Emperor, here I am.’ The soldiers cried ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and surged joyfully around him.2
From there Napoleon’s march was a triumphal procession. Louis XVIII and his entourage packed into carriages and clattered away to their latest exile on March 19. They did not stop running until they reached Liège, close enough to several ports to sail to a more secure site overseas if need be. Napoleon entered Paris on March 20, and immediately began reorganizing his realm’s administration, finances, and military. He received no direct reply to his pleas to the Great Powers for recognition of his rule and peace. However, what they did do convinced him that he had no choice but to prepare France for war.3
At Vienna, the great and lesser powers took little time deciding what to do after hearing the stunning news that Napoleon had escaped. Even before learning where he was, representatives of Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, and Bourbon France declared him an outlaw on March 13. The declaration’s wording was curious:
In breaking the Convention which established him on the Isle of Elba, Bonaparte is destroying the sole legal title to which his existence is attached. In reappearing in France with projects of confusion and disorder, he has placed himself beyond the protection of the law ... The Powers declare that Napoleon Bonaparte is placed outside civil and social relations, and that as an enemy and disturber of the peace ... has rendered himself subject to public prosecution.4
After learning that Louis had fled and Napoleon had retaken France’s throne, Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia reactivated their alliance on March 25. Each would muster at least 150,000 troops to march against Napoleon, a campaign partly underwritten with £5 million of British gold. This would be the seventh and final coalition since 1793 that Britain had entered, helped fund, and tried to lead against France. Castlereagh instructed Wellington that for the alliance to succeed ‘it must be done upon the largest scale ... you must inundate France with force in all directions.’5 The strategy was for five armies to invade France and crush Napoleon by mid-summer. Two armies would march from the Low Countries, with Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington commanding a mixed force of British, Dutch, Flemish, and German troops, and Gebhard von Blücher a Prussian army. In Germany Karl von Schwarzenberg and Michel Barclay de Tolly their respective Austrian and Russian armies for the long march to Paris. Meanwhile, an Austrian army led by Johan von Frimont would invade southeastern France from western Italy.
Wellington wrapped up the diplomacy and planning, and departed Vienna on March 29. Upon reaching Brussels on April 4, he immediately began mobilizing and organizing all available troops and supplies, and receiving reinforcements from Britain. He spent days reconnoitering various paths of advance that Napoleon might take and defensible positions along those ways. He studied Marlborough’s campaigns in the region. King William I named Wellington the commander-in-chief of all Dutch troops on May 3. The same day, Wellington met Blücher at Tirlemont, midway between Brussels and Liège, their respective headquarters. The generals vowed to protect each other’s flank no matter how fierce Napoleon’s inevitable onslaught. If so, they would prevail with their overwhelming numbers of troops, nearly twice as many as the French army beyond the frontier; if not, Napoleon would likely defeat them separately.
Wellington’s planning was limited by the lack of concrete intelligence on the disposition of Napoleon’s corps and thus his probable intentions. He expressed his frustration at:
... the situation in which we are placed at present neither at war nor at peace, unable ... to patrol up to the enemy and ascertain his position ... All we can do is to put our troops in such a situation, as, in case of a sudden attack by the enemy, to render it easy to assemble, and to provide against the chance of being cut off from the rest.6
He recalled that Napoleon:
... took a position in which his numbers, his movements, and his designs could be concealed, protected, and supported by his formidable fortresses on the frontier up to the last moment previous to their being carried into execution. The Allied generals could not attack this position without being prepared to attack a superior army so posted. They could not therefore have the initiative of the operations in the way of attack....The initiative, then, rested with the enemy, and the course to be pursued by the Allied Generals ... was to be prepared in all directions, to wait till it should be seen in what direction the attack should be made, and then to assemble the armies as quickly as possible to resist the attack, or to attack the enemy with the largest force that could be collected.7
The best that Wellington could do was spread his corps across his stretch of the front at strategic junctions so that they could unite rapidly against an attack. He was well aware of Napoleon’s history of launching strategic envelopments. Anticipating that Napoleon might try to hook around his right flank and cut his army off from Antwerp and other seaport supply centers, Wellington deployed Rowland Hill’s corps from Menin nearly to Mons, where William, Prince of Orange’s corps took over and spread nearly to Nivelle. Regiments of the cavalry corps were deployed behind those two front corps, while the reserve corps was quartered in Brussels.
Napoleon, meanwhile, spent two-and-a-half months massing supplies, conscripting troops, and directing regiments to one of eight corps along the frontiers or four corps in the interior. The most important cluster of corps was on the border where Wellington and Blücher were massing their own armies. This was the closest launch pad for an invasion of France. Somehow Napoleon had to destroy Wellington and Blücher before Schwarzenberg and Barclay de Tolly invaded France. If not, the campaign would resemble that of 1814 and end with his overthrow. He designated the five corps on this front the Army of the North and shut the border so that no one could carry word of his troop dispositions to the enemy.
Napoleon left Paris on the night of June 12 and arrived at Beaumont, his initial headquarters, the next afternoon.8 His plan was simple. He would lead his army north in two wings, shatter the hinge between the armies of Wellington and Blücher, then destroy each separately. Doing so was a longshot at best. He was severely outgunned.
On the campaign’s eve, Napoleon’s Army of the North numbered 122,652 troops to the combined armies of Wellington and Blücher that numbered 222,555 men. Napoleon’s army included the corps of Jean Baptiste Drouet d’Erlon’s 20,950-man 1st Corps; Honore Reille’s 25,100-man 2nd Corps; Dominique Vandamme’s 17,150-man 3rd Corps; Maurice Gerard’s 15,700-man 4th Corps; George Lobau Mouton’s 10,300-man 6th Corps; the Imperial Guard’s 20,200 troops; and 21,652 cavalry in 4 corps or attached to each infantry corps.9 Wellington had 92,309 troops, including 68,829 infantry and 14,474 cavalry split among 3 infantry corps and a cavalry corps. William, Prince of Orange, commanded the 1st Corps with 25,233 troops, General Rowland Hill the 2nd Corps with 24,033 troops, Wellington himself headed the Reserve Corps with 20,563 infantry and 912 cavalry, and General John Paget, Earl of Uxbridge the cavalry corps with 10,155 men. Fewer than 1 in 3 of Wellington’s soldiers were British, 28,000 redcoats to 65,000 Dutch, Flemish, and German troops. As in Spain, he grouped British and foreign regiments in the same brigades to ensure balance between his hardened veterans and the mostly green and less reliable foreigners. Blücher’s army numbered 130,246 troops and 304 cannons, with General Hans Joachim von Ziethen’s 32,692-man 1st Corps, General Georg von Pirch’s 32,704-man 2nd Corps, General Johann von Thielemann’s 24,456-man 3rd Corps, and General Graf Bülow von Dennewtiz’s 31,102-man 4th corps.10
Napoleon launched his campaign early on the morning of June 14. Marshal Michel Ney commanded the left wing corps of d’Erlon and Reille, and Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy the right wing corps of Vandamme, Gerard, and Lobau. Ney’s orders were to quick-march due north and pulverize any of Wellington’s forces along the road to Brussels, while Grouchy drove the Prussians eastward away from Wellington. Napoleon and his Imperial Guard would initially advance with Grouchy.
Wellington certainly did not expect Napoleon to attack as soon as he did. He first learned of the French invasion mid-afternoon on June 15. He fired off a flurry of orders to his commanders to converge on Quatre Bras, a strategic crossroads midway between the frontier and Brussels. Then, that evening he famously attended the ball of Charlotte, Duchess of Richmond and her husband Charles Lennox, the duke.11 In doing so, he kept a promise that he had made weeks earlier to her. When Charlotte asked him whether she should hold her ball, he replied, ‘Duchess, you may give your ball with the greatest safety, without fear of interruption.’12
Throughout the ball couriers arrived with the latest information. Wellington eventually:
... said to the Duke of Richmond, ‘I think it is time for me to go to bed likewise,’ and then, while wishing him good night, whispered to ask him if he had a good map in his house. The Duke of Richmond said he had, and took him into this dressing-room. The Duke shut the door and said, ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.’ The Duke of Richmond said, ‘What do you intend doing?’ The Duke of Wellington replied, ‘I have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras; but we shall not stop him there, and if so, I must fight him here,’ at the same time pressing his thumbnail over the position of Waterloo. He then said adieu, and left the house by another way out.13
Wellington left Brussels at dawn on June 16, and reached his troops at Quatre Bras around 10 o’clock that morning. To his surprise, there were no French in sight. He cantered 3 hours to join Blücher at Sombreffe near Ligny. What he witnessed appalled him. Blücher had deployed his troops on front slopes facing the French, who were then deploying, and would be exposed to relentless pounding by French artillery and skirmishers. He whispered to Sir Henry Hardinge, the British liaison with Blücher, that the Prussians would be ‘damnably mauled’ if Blücher did not redraw his troops to relative safety behind the slopes. When Hardinge gently passed on this observation, General August von Gneisenau, Blücher’s chief of staff, was not grateful for the advice, snapping, ‘That is true, but our men like to see their enemy.’14 Wellington returned swiftly to his own army.
The battle of Ligny unfolded exactly as Wellington had feared. Napoleon unleashed an artillery bombardment that devastated the 84,000 Prussians, then marched most of his 68,000 troops at the remnants. Blücher withdrew his battered army that evening, having suffered 18,772 casualties to Napoleon’s 13,721.15 He made a crucial decision to head north to Wavre with three of his four corps, while sending Ziethen’s corps northeast to cover his supply depot at Liège. He was deadset to keep his promise to support Wellington at all costs.
Meanwhile, Wellington reached Quatre Bras just in time to direct the battle. The usually impetuous Ney hesitated from attacking. He was well aware of Wellington’s tactical brilliance, having fought and lost several battles against him in the Peninsula. He assumed that Wellington had concealed overwhelming numbers of troops in the woods and fields around Quatre Bras. In mid-afternoon, Ney launched Reille’s corps in a series of piecemeal attacks that Wellington parried with fresh regiments marching up. In early evening, Wellington counter-attacked with most of his 36,000 troops and 70 cannons that drove back Ney’s 47,000 troops. The duke’s men held their ground at a higher cost of 4,600 casualties than the 4,100 French casualties.16
The battles of either Ligny or Quatre Bras and thus the campaign would have turned out sharply different had not Napoleon and Ney unwittingly got in a tug-of-war over d’Erlon’s corps on the road between them. D’Erlon could have smashed either into Blücher’s right flank or Wellington’s left flank, thus turning Ligny from a limited into a decisive victory or Quatre Bras from a defeat into a victory. Instead, d’Erlon and his men spent the day marching back and forth between the battles without ever firing a shot as he followed the latest order from Napoleon or Ney. Napoleon later insisted that had Ney ‘attacked the English with all his troops, he would have crushed them ... And if after having committed that first error he had not made his second blunder, by preventing the Comte d’Erlon from joining me ... Blucher’s entire army would have been captured or destroyed.’17
Around 7 in the morning of June 17, Wellington read a report of the battle of Ligny. To his staff, he explained: ‘Old Blucher has had a damned good hiding, and has gone back to Wavre, eighteen miles to the rear. We must do the same. I suppose they’ll say in England that we have been licked; well I can’t help that.’18 With his cavalry and light infantry protecting his rear, Wellington withdrew his army 10 miles and deployed most of it along the low ridge a mile south of Waterloo, while posting contingents in two strongholds in the shallow valley below, a walled chateau named Hougoumont that guarded his right and a walled farm complex called La Haye Saint before his center. Although his left flank lacked a similar defense, this did not matter as long as Blücher arrived there on time. All along Wellington ensured that ‘the two armies communicated throughout the night’ of June 17 and throughout the next day.19
Napoleon ordered Grouchy to pursue Blücher with the corps of Gerard and Vandamme, while he led Lobau’s corps to join Ney at Quatre Bras. When Napoleon arrived the next morning, he was enraged to learn that Wellington’s army had disappeared north and Ney’s men were still at the crossroads rather than in hot pursuit. Napoleon ordered Ney to set his men in motion. But a heavy rain began and slowed the pursuit to a muddy slog. He later learned that Grouchy had mistakenly followed Ziethen rather than Blücher, thus leaving Blücher free to join Wellington at Waterloo on June 18.
The armies at Waterloo were evenly matched in numbers if not quality, with Wellington fielding about 73,200 troops and Napoleon about 77,500 troops, although the French had 246 cannons to 157 for the British; man for man, the French army was superior to Wellington’s mongrel army of British, Dutch, Flemish, and German troops in experience and discipline.20
Wellington enjoyed four advantages over Napoleon. First, the rain slowed Napoleon’s advance to a crawl on June 17 and soaked the earth and roads so thoroughly that he could not deploy his troops and begin the battle until around noon on June 18. Second, Napoleon’s stomach was troubling him so that he let Ney handle much of the battle and only issued a half-dozen general orders all day. Third, Blücher was marching his army to the rescue, and Bülow’s corps would assault the French right flank in late afternoon. Finally, Wellington asserted every dimension of his tactical genius at Waterloo, later recalling that ‘I never gave myself so much trouble as I did that day to place the Troops; I went & chose the ground for every Corps myself.’21
A quarter mile from Wellington’s ridge was another low ridge along which Napoleon deployed his troops and cannons. In late morning, the French began cheering and shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ as Napoleon rode among them. A British artillery officer called out to Wellington, ‘There’s Bonaparte, Sire, I think I can reach him, may I fire?’ The Duke was aghast. ‘No, Generals commanding armies have something else to do than to shoot at one another.’22
Around the same time, Napoleon had less chivalrous words for his opponent. Marshal Soult, his chief of staff, cautioned him about Wellington’s prowess. This enraged Napoleon, who snarled: ‘Just because you have been beaten by Wellington, you regard him as a great general. I tell you that Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops and this battle will be a picnic ... We will sleep this night in Brussels.’23
Just before noon, the 84 French cannons in place opened fire. Wellington immediately withdrew his troops behind the ridge. Most balls plopped harmlessly into the sodden earth rather than bounced to wreak havoc through any troops in their path as they would have on dry earth.
Napoleon had Reille send Jerome Bonaparte’s division to capture Hougoumont, a chateau anchoring the right flank. The battle there raged throughout the day. As Jerome’s attacks failed, Reille committed his other divisions to the struggle. Wellington was pleased that Napoleon took this bait. He had carefully placed regiments in and around the chateau, screened by batteries to devastate any attack. He would not have been greatly concerned even if the French captured the chateau because ‘they could not have held it long, as our howitzers completely commanded it.’24
The French guns ceased fire abruptly around 2 o’clock. Napoleon, believing that the British were retreating, ordered d’Erlon to attack. D’Erlon marched his 19,000 men forward in 2 huge columns down into the valley to the right of La Haye Saint and up the ridge. Wellington hurried his regiments back into line as his gunners blasted the vast targets moving slowly, steadily toward them. As the depleted French columns struggled up the ridge, the defenders decimated them with volleys of musket fire. Wellington then delivered the coup de grâce with a cavalry charge that routed d’Erlon’s corps. Napoleon ordered some of his own cavalry regiments to charge. They drove back the British cavalry, then withdrew. A stretch of the valley from ridge to ridge was strewn with heaps of mostly dead and wounded French troops.
A brief lull ensued as the only sound of heavy firing came from Hougoumont. Napoleon ordered several regiments forward to attack La Haye Saint, a walled farm complex a couple of hundred yards before the ridge. Someone pointed out a mass of troops far to the east. The hope that those were Grouchy’s corps was soon dispelled when Prussian flags were clearly seen. Blücher’s advance guard had arrived. Napoleon ordered Lobau to attack with his corps and drive them back. It was then that Napoleon withdrew to the yard of an inn called La Belle Alliance and largely observed, while Ney took over the battle.
As the French artillery reopened fire, Wellington again withdrew his troops behind the ridge. Believing that Wellington was retreating, Ney ordered a cavalry charge. Wellington had his regiments form squares. Captain Rees Gronow observed Wellington enter one of the squares, ‘accompanied by one aide-de-camp; all the rest of the staff being either killed or wounded. Our Commander-in-Chief ... appeared perfectly composed, but looked very thoughtful and pale.’25 For Gronow, the:
... charges of cavalry were in appearance very formidable, but in reality a great relief, as the artillery could no longer fire on us; the very earth shook under the enormous mass of men and horses. I shall never forget the strange noise our bullets made against the breastplates of the cuirassiers ... who attacked us in great fury.26
Ensign Cready recalled that the French cavalry’s:
first charge was magnificent. As soon as they quickened their trot into a gallop, the Cuirassiers bent their heads so the peak of their helmets looked like visors and they seemed cased in armour ... Not a shot was fired till they were within thirty yards when the word – and our men fired away at them. The effect was magical – thro’ the smoke we could see helmets falling ... horses plunging and rearing in the agonies of fright and pain and crowds of soldiery dismounted.
The French cavalry charged repeatedly. ‘There was no difficulty in repulsing them but our ammunition decreased alarmingly – at length our artillery wagon galloped up [and] emptied two or three casks of cartridges into the square.’27 For about 15 minutes there was a tense standoff as ‘our People would not throw away their fire till the Cuirassiers charged, & they would not charge until we had thrown away our fire.’28 When General Colin Halkett sent a courier racing to Wellington with a plea to retreat, the Iron Duke replied: ‘Tell him that what he asks is impossible. He and I and every Englishman on the field must die on the spot which we occupy.’29
Although the French did finally capture La Haye Saint, the Prussians pushed back Lobau and overran Plancenoit, a village on the French right flank. Napoleon ordered his Young Guard to attack Plancenoit; those elite troops captured the village after vicious fighting. Blücher threw in fresh troops that pushed out the Young Guard. The Prussians were now poised to roll up the French right. Ney pleaded with Napoleon to order his Old Guard to attack Wellington’s center, arguing that the enemy was near the breaking point. Napoleon finally agreed. The Old Guard marched across the valley and up the slope. Wellington lined up his regiments and ordered them to open fire. The Old Guard faltered. Wellington ordered his troops to charge with lowered bayonets. The Old Guard broke and fled.
The allied armies converged, routing the French before them. Toward dusk Wellington and Blücher rode forward to joyfully shake hands at La Belle Alliance. Their armies had shattered the French army, inflicting 46,656 casualties, while Wellington’s men suffered 17,000 and Blücher’s 7,000 dead, wounded, and missing.30
Napoleon the general did not impress Wellington. During the battle, the Duke quipped, ‘D–n the fellow, he is a mere pounder after all.’31 Later he explained that ‘Napoleon did not manoeuvre at all: he just moved forward in the old style in columns, and was driven off in the old style.’32 Nonetheless, he admitted that ‘I never took so much trouble about any Battle & never was so near being beat.’33 He generously acknowledged the aid he received from his ally: ‘I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshall Blucher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them. The operation of General Bulow upon the enemy’s flank was a most decisive one.’34 Yet Wellington found in himself the crucial element for the allied victory: ‘I don’t think it would have done if I had not been there.’’35