Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles. Bernard Cornwell
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the news:
When General von Zieten was attacked before Charleroi on the 15th of June, an event which opened the war, he despatched an officer to me, who arrived at Brussels at three o’clock. The Duke of Wellington, to whom I immediately communicated the news, had received no intelligence from the advanced post at Mons.
Two things are interesting about Müffling’s account. We know that the first clash between Napoleon’s army and the Prussians occurred around 5 a.m., yet Müffling, who has no reason to lie about the matter, is certain that the news does not reach Brussels until 3 p.m., ten hours later. Charleroi lies 32 miles south of Brussels and a despatch rider could easily make the journey in under four hours. Yet it took ten. We do not know why, though Wellington once suggested that ‘the fattest officer in the Prussian army’ was chosen as the courier.
The Prussians insist that General von Zieten, whose troops were being pushed back by the French, sent a message to Wellington early on that morning, but proof that the message was sent is not proof that it was received. A huge amount of ink, temper and recrimination has been spilled over this dispute. Gneisenau later said that the Duke was slow in assembling his army and added snidely, ‘I still do not know why.’ Of course he knew, but his dislike of the Duke would not let him admit that there was a reasonable explanation. The sad thing about this animosity is that Gneisenau and Wellington shared much in common: they were both highly intelligent, hard-working, painstaking, disciplined, intolerant of either foolishness or carelessness, and both were committed to the same goal, the utter destruction of Napoleon’s power, yet Gneisenau insisted Wellington was untrustworthy. And trust is important to the story of Waterloo. The allied campaign was predicated on trust, that Blücher would come to Wellington’s aid and Wellington to Blücher’s, because both commanders knew that their individual armies could not defeat Napoleon’s veterans single-handed. They had to combine their forces to win, and if they could not combine they would not fight.
So why, on that fateful Thursday, did Wellington not concentrate his army? Because he still was not sure where he would have to fight. He received news that French forces were seen close to Thuin, their presence near that town, though close to Charleroi, could have indicated a general advance towards Mons, and there had been that clash between British riflemen and French lancers on the Mons road itself. Wellington’s fear was that Napoleon would attack in the west, and that was why he waited to hear more from his troops at Mons. He is specific about this. When Müffling presses him, urging the Duke to concentrate his forces closer to the Prussians, Wellington explains his reluctance.
If all is as General von Zieten supposes, I will concentrate on my left wing … Should, however, a portion of the enemy’s army come by Mons, I must concentrate more to my centre. For this reason I must positively wait for news from Mons before I fix the rendezvous.
That seems clear enough. Far from betraying his allies or treating their warnings with disdain, the Duke was being cautious because, so far, he had no conclusive evidence that the French attack through Charleroi was the main effort. It could have been a ruse designed to draw his men eastwards while the real attack was launched to his right. So he waited. He had said before the campaign that ‘one false movement’ could open him to a devastating attack from Napoleon, and it seemed preferable to make no movement at all. More messages arrived from Blücher in the early evening, and still the Duke waited because he still feared that attack up the road to Mons. It was not till late at night, while the Duke was in the gaudy ballroom, that he heard from Mons that all was quiet there, and he became convinced that Blücher had been right all along and that the French were making their attack on the Charleroi road. News was arriving thick and fast that evening, and one of the crucial messages came from the Baron Jean-Victor Constant-Rebecque, who was Slender Billy’s Chief of Staff and a good man. He reported that the French had advanced north from Charleroi as far as a crossroads called Quatre-Bras and that he had sent troops to oppose them.
What followed is one of the most famous incidents in the Duke’s life. It was after midnight and the Duke was leaving the ball, and as he was escorted through the hall he turned to the Duke of Richmond and whispered, ‘Have you a good map in the house?’
Richmond took Wellington into his study, where a map was spread on the table. The Duke studied it by candlelight, then exclaimed, ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours march on me!’
Napoleon’s troops were poised to separate the allies. The Emperor’s plans were working.
* * *
The wonderfully named Hyacinthe-Hippolyte de Mauduit was a Sergeant in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard. That made him crème de la crème. He was in the Old Guard, part of the second battalion of the first regiment of Grenadiers. The Imperial Guard was Napoleon’s favourite unit, the shock troops of the French empire. Every man was a veteran, they received privileges, wore a distinctive uniform and were fiercely loyal to the Emperor they guarded. Benjamin Haydon, a spendthrift British painter, caught a glimpse of the Guard just after Napoleon’s first abdication and wrote:
More dreadful-looking fellows than Napoleon’s Guard I had never seen. They had the look of thoroughbred, veteran, disciplined banditti. Depravity, indifference and bloodthirstiness were burnt in their faces; black moustachios, gigantic caps, a slouching carriage and a ferocious expression were their characteristics. If such fellows had governed the world, what would have become of it?
Sergeant Hippolyte de Mauduit was one of these banditti and, while the Duke of Wellington was at the ball, the Sergeant was settling into the courtyard of an ironmaster’s house in Charleroi which was Napoleon’s temporary headquarters.
We busied ourselves cooking food for a morning meal as well as for an evening meal because we had been on the march for nearly eighteen hours without being able to even unhook our cooking pots and everything indicated it would be the same next day … Aides-de-camp and staff officers came and went constantly and in the course of rushing around they often knocked over our piles of muskets.
The soldiers of the Guard had no real idea what was happening. They had marched all day, heard the sound of firing, marched again, and now, like the veterans they were, they were making certain they had food in their knapsacks. But one of the guardsmen had an old map of Flanders and Hippolyte recalls how they crowded round and worked out from the map what the Emperor’s plan might be.
Did Napoleon even have a plan? He had said, often enough, that the best plan was to make contact with the enemy and only then make the crucial decisions. That day, 15 June, the French had made contact with the Prussians. The first fighting had been south of Charleroi, but resistance stiffened once the French crossed the Sambre and pushed north, and what Hippolyte de Mauduit and his companions would have seen on their map was the main road to Brussels running north out of Charleroi. Just a couple of miles out of town that main road crossed a second road, an old Roman highway, and the Prussians, it seemed, were using that second road for their fighting retreat. They were going eastwards, towards distant Prussia, and no one, it appeared, was defending the main road north to Brussels.
The Waterloo campaign is all about roads. Roads and crossroads. The armies needed the roads. Cavalry and infantry could advance across country without roads, though their progress would be painfully slow, but guns and supply wagons had to have roads. To understand the road map north of Charleroi is to comprehend the problems that the three commanding generals faced, and on the night of the Duchess of Richmond’s ball the problems were almost all on the allied side. Napoleon had grasped the situation, and his strategy of dividing the allies was working. Indeed, Wellington’s caution was making it even easier for the Emperor.
The Prussians are not retreating far. On the night of 15 to 16 June, while the Emperor is in Charleroi and the Duke of Wellington is dancing, the Prussians halt at a small village called Sombreffe. There they will make a stand. Why Sombreffe? Because here another road is important, a road which crosses the Roman road and leads westwards, and the British–Dutch army is off to the west. That minor road, usually known as the Nivelles road, crosses the Charleroi-to-Brussels highway at an insignificant hamlet called Quatre-Bras. So if the Prussians retreat any farther east then they