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The original book did not have a Table of Contents. The one below was generated automatically during the preparation of this eBook.
Additional notes will be found near the end of this ebook.
WATERLOO INTRODUCTORY WATERLOO CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII CHAPTER IX A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER
WATERLOO
WATERLOO
BY THOMAS E. WATSON
Author of “The Story of France,” “Napoleon,” and “The Life of Thomas Jefferson.”
New York and Washington THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY 1908
Copyright, 1908, by THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
WATERLOO
INTRODUCTORY
The warder of the Tower has his bout with the citizen on the green; Sir Walter Raleigh looks on from above, and the lieutenant’s wife from below and neither of the three—warder, lieutenant’s wife, nor the prisoner, Sir Walter—can agree with either of the other two as to what took place. Inside the Tower three different tales are told. It is reasonably certain that still another version was given when the citizen got back to town and began to talk.
How, then, can any one expect to learn exactly what occurred on Sunday, June 18th, 1815, in front of the village of Mont-Saint-Jean? Many witnesses testify, and the conflict of testimony is utterly irreconcilable. Much of the battle was not seen by Napoleon, and much of it was hidden from Wellington. Every officer who took part in it and who afterward wrote about it contributed something to the story, but what officer could tell it all?
From the day after the battle down to the present time, men and women have studied the field itself, have pored over dispatches, have devoured Memoirs, have eagerly listened to the slightest word which anybody who was in possession of a fact had to say about Waterloo: yet a mystery hangs over the entire campaign.
Did Wellington really believe that he fought D’Erlon’s corps at Quatre Bras? He says so, positively, in his official report of the action. Yet we know that D’Erlon’s corps did not come even within striking distance, at any time during the day. Full of inaccuracies as his account of the battle is, the Duke would never correct the statement; nor could he ever be persuaded to give any other. In fact, whenever the subject was mentioned he grew testy; and curtly referred the questioner to his official report.
On the Prussian side, there was a current of intense feeling against Wellington; but there were such powerful motives for silence that the truth crept out slowly, and at long intervals. At first, Waterloo was claimed to be an English victory. Wellington led the way in this by his slighting reference to “the flank movement of Bülow.” No one would gather from the Duke’s report that 16,000 of the French troops, during the afternoon of the 18th, had been fighting desperately, for several hours to hold the Prussians in check. No one could possibly learn from this report the fact that the French did not give way on the English front until the cannon balls of the oncoming Prussians of Zeiten’s corps were crossing those of the English batteries which swept the approaches to Mont-Saint-Jean. Reading Wellington’s official report of the battle, one would believe that the Prussians arrived after the fight was won—that they had nothing to do but chase the defeated. Only by degrees did the world learn that Wellington entirely disregarded the pledge he had given Blücher at the conference in May; that he wrote Blücher a letter on the morning of June 16th that was full of deception; left his troops widely scattered when the enemy was upon him; gave orders which his lieutenants had the nerve and the wisdom to violate, and was saved from annihilation at the very opening of the campaign by the incredible mistakes of Napoleon’s officers and the heroic gallantry of the Prussians. Lord Wolseley complacently states that Wellington was an English gentleman of the highest type and, therefore, incapable of falsehood. Yet the Duke’s official report states that on the 15th he ordered the concentration of his army at Quatre Bras; and Lord Wolseley demonstrates that the statement was untrue. It was on Nivelles that a partial concentration was ordered, and had the orders been obeyed the campaign would have been wrecked.
Only of late years has it been perfectly clear that at half-past one o’clock in the afternoon of June 18th Napoleon had to divide his army, and to withhold the corps of Lobau which had been ordered to support the great charge of D’Erlon and Ney. Suppose this corps of fresh men had been thrown against the English line when it had already been well-nigh broken. At the time the premature cavalry charges were being made, and the English, in squares, were suffering so terribly from the French skirmishers and artillery, suppose 16,000 men whom Napoleon had sent to drive the Prussians back from Plancenoit, where they threatened his rear, had been in hand to clinch the cavalry charges! How could the English have prevented these fresh troops from pouring through the gap in their line behind La Haye-Sainte?
Only of late years has it been generally known that it was the arrival of Zeiten’s Prussians on his left that released the troops with which Wellington filled this break in his line.
It was only when the Prussians of Zeiten’s corps, breaking through to the right of the French who were attacking the English and to the left of the French who were withstanding Blücher, came thundering on their flank that the French army cried “Treachery! Treachery!” and dissolved in universal dismay.
As to Napoleon, whenever he talked of Waterloo he either confined himself to despairing ejaculations or involved himself in contradictions. He blamed himself for not having reconnoitered Wellington’s position; he admitted that he had not had a good view of the field; he confessed that he had made a mistake in changing his plan of assailing the English right; he denied giving the order for the heavy cavalry to charge, although this order had been carried by his own aide-decamp, Count Flahaut—the father of one or two of Hortense’s queerly mixed brood of children; and he severely blamed D’Erlon, Ney and Grouchy.
A curious evidence of the difficulty of learning the truth about Waterloo is to be found in Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” Describing the struggle for Hougoumont, he speaks of the fight in the chapel. He represents the sacred building as having gone through all the horrors of war, having been splashed with blood, having been torn by shot and shell, and having been ravaged by fire. All this seems probable enough, and yet the English authoress of “Waterloo Days” visited the battlefield a few hours after the fight and she makes particular mention of this same chapel; and she declares that it “stood uninjured”! Listen to this lady—Charlotte Eaton: “No shot or shell had penetrated its sacred walls; and no sacrilegious hand had dared to violate its humble altar, which was still adorned with its ancient ornaments and its customary care.” This is quite different from Hugo’s “Soldiers massacred each other in the chapel.”
After Hugo’s famous description of Waterloo appeared, all the world talked of “the old road of Ohain” which had, the novelist declared, been the pitfall and the tomb of the French cavalry. Painters caught up the theme, and the legend lives on imperishable canvas. But now history discards the story. The road from Ohain to Braine l’Alleud does become a hollow way, between steep banks, for about 400 yards; but the French were aware of the fact, and the cavalry did not charge across the trench. The charges passed over the road where it was on a level with the plain. It is true, however, that in the bewildering movements incident to charge and countercharge, a small body of French cavalry came upon this “hollow way,” walked their horses down the bank, got upon the road, and were about to ride up the other bank to get at the English, when the English cavalry charged the road, making it impossible for the French to mount the bank. They then rode up “the hollow way,”—hacked at by the English above,—until they reached the level ground, when they retired into the open field to reform.
There has been much controversy as to whether the Duke of Wellington rode over to Blücher’s camp on the night of the 17th. There is now conclusive evidence that no such visit was made.
In Archibald Forbes’s “Camps, Quarters and Casual Places,” published in 1896, we find: “Quite recently there have been found and are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the grandson of the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a ‘conversation with the Duke of Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams, Judges on Circuit, at Strathfieldsaye House, on 24th February, 1837.’ The annotator was Baron Gurney, to the following effect: ‘The conversation had been commenced by my inquiring of him (the Duke) whether a story which I had heard was true of his having ridden over to Blücher on the night before the battle of Waterloo, and returned on the same horse. He said, “No, that was not so. I did not see Blücher on the day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before, on the day of Quatre Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He embraced me on horseback. I had communicated with him the day before Waterloo.” The rest of the conversation made no further reference to the topic of the ride to Wavre.’”
In Houssaye’s “1815” the statement is made that the French troops did not receive their rations on the night of the 17th until after midnight, or even later.
The truth seems to be that some of the troops got nothing at all to eat. They went into the fight on empty stomachs—stimulated by a drink of brandy. The enemy, of course, suffered no such disadvantage, for ample supplies came from Brussels. Again, the English had camp-fires to keep themselves warm and to dry their clothing; the French had no fires, and went into action chilled, and in wet clothing.
To understand the physical disadvantage against which the French had to struggle, we should remember that they had to charge up hill over miry ground. The English were stationary on the crest, excepting when they charged, and then they charged down hill. Those who have walked over a ploughed field, or who have galloped a horse up a miry slope, will know how to appreciate the immense difficulties under which the French labored.
