Authors: Alessandro Barbero
The Battle (17 page)
Below left: A
12-pounder gun, one of
les belles
filles de l'Empereur.
Below: The crops of rye in June were almost as tall as the infantry soldiers who flattened them as they marched across the fields.
Inset
above:
British soldiers form a square to defend against cavalry attacks.
Main illustration:
The French bombard Hougoumont, prompting the British artillery to open fire, against Wellington's orders.
Inset opposite:
The Guards brigade attack the French to alleviate the pressure on the defenders of the chateau, just visible in the far right background.
Painting by Denis Dighton.
Right:
The battle around the farmhouse and stables at La Haye Sainte.
Painting by
R. Knotel.
Below:
Marshal Grouchy.
Engraving
Above:
General von Bulow.
German engraving
Above:
Count d'Erlon holding his marshal's baton.
Engraving by Collier after Lariviere.
Above:
"That old rogue," Sir Thomas Picton.
Below:
The charge of the Scots Grays.
Painting
by Lady Butler.
Although the French general could not know it, the situation on Mont-Saint-Jean ridge was even more disconcerting. With mounting uneasiness, the officers of the Allied infantry watched artillery caissons struck by enemy cannonballs blow up before their eyes; as the smoke cleared, they could see that some batteries, running short of ammunition, were harnessing horses to limbers and preparing to clear out of that inferno.
Les belles filles de l'Empereur,
"the Emperor's beautiful daughters"—as the French gunners affectionately called their 12-pounders—were doing their job well.
D'Erlon's infantry soldiers, massed immediately behind the guns, could tell from the movement of the couriers and the gesticulations of the commanders that the moment was about to arrive when they would begin marching toward the Allied positions and "comb their hair for them," as the soldiers said. Captain Martin of the Forty-fifth Ligne, a Swiss barely twenty years old, was in a good humor, and so were all his troops; the night had been horrendous, but morning had brought a little cow meat, which seemed delicious to such hungry men, and a great deal of brandy, of which all had drunk their fill. "We were all getting ready, cleaning our weapons, urging one another to do well so we could finish the campaign with this one stroke. Alas! We didn't know how right we were."
O
n the high ground behind Rossomme farm, Napoleon waited for Marshal Ney to set d'Erlon's infantry in motion. Major Lemonnier-Delafosse, General Foy's aide-de-camp, was there, too, expecting the arrival of an artillery battery that he was to guide into position. While he waited, the major observed his emperor: "He was sitting on a straw chair in front of a rustic table and holding his map open on it. His famous spyglass was in his hand, and he often pointed it at various parts of the battlefield. When he rested his eyes, he picked up a wheat straw and put it in his mouth like a toothpick. To his left stood Marshal Soult, alone, awaiting his orders, while ten paces behind him all the members of his staff were grouped together on horseback. Sappers from the engineers were leveling the ground around and making ramps so that people could reach the Emperor more easily. . . . In the end, I had to go away with the artillery, and I never saw him again."
Napoleon didn't remain seated in his straw chair the whole time. De Coster, the guide, described how the emperor walked up and down, sometimes with folded arms, but more often with his hands behind his back, or with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his overcoat; now he looked at his watch, now he took a pinch of tobacco, now he brought the telescope to his eye and surveyed the battlefield. During one of these surveys he seemed to catch a glimpse of something in the distance, on the right, something that hadn't been there before. The emperor asked Soult for his opinion, and after examining the horizon, the general affirmed that they were looking at troops in movement. The other officers hastened to point their telescopes, but since it was a hazy day, there was a variety of perceptions: One thought it was a grove of trees, while others saw troops at rest with their weapons stacked. But someone declared in agreement with Soult that not only were they troops, but they were moving in their direction.
Comparing what they saw with the map, the French calculated that if indeed they were looking at marching columns, the head of those columns must be approaching Chapelle-St. Lambert, a village four or five miles away, just on the other side of the River Lasne; which meant that they would be able to reach the extreme right of the French line, deployed in front of Papelotte, in about three hours. Soult suggested that it might be Grouchy's troops, and at first glance the hypothesis appeared to them plausible as well as pleasantly reassuring. But the fact that it was even taken into consideration indicates that the emperor and his general weren't working with their habitual efficiency. In fact, Grouchy's last dispatch, dated at six in the morning, revealed that at that time he was still in Gembloux; his plan was to march toward Sart-a-Walhain—that is, farther to the northeast—before turning northwest toward Wavre, after making sure that the bulk of the Prussian troops had retreated in that direction. Flad the emperor bent over his map and calculated the distances with his compass, as had been his custom in the past, he would have seen at once the physical impossibility that Grouchy, given the time of his departure and the direction he proposed to take, could have already reached Chapelle-St. Lambert. But nobody took the trouble to make those calculations, and the dangerously vague idea that Grouchy would shortly appear on the horizon continued to waft through everyone's head.
In any case, the emperor, though still uncertain, ordered the two cavalry divisions commanded by Domon and Subervie to deploy as cover for the right flank as far as the Fichermont wood, which closed off the battlefield on that side. This decision suggests that Napoleon did not really believe that a threat was going to materialize from that direction; those six regiments of light cavalry, a little more than 2,000 horsemen in all, were certainly not the right troops to infiltrate the wood and deny the Prussian vanguard passage over the Lasne, and in fact they limited themselves to taking up positions on the near side of Fichermont. Had the emperor sent a couple of battalions of light infantry into the wood instead of cavalry, pushing out a line of skirmishers as far as the escarpment that overlooked the watercourse, General von Bulow's advance might have been delayed almost indefinitely. But evidently, Napoleon's intention was simply to reinforce the cavalry screen on that flank and multiply reconnaissances to identify the approaching troops, in the hope that they were really Grouchy's. General Domon himself interpreted his mission in the most optimistic sense: He told his officers that the battle was won, that their task was to implement the linkage with Grouchy's troops, and that they would sleep that night in Brussels.
Nevertheless, all uncertainty about the troops that could be glimpsed beyond the bell tower of Chapelle-St. Lambert was soon dispelled, because a patrol from the Seventh Hussars arrived, bringing the emperor a Prussian prisoner. They had been sent by their commander, Colonel Marbot, who had that morning been ordered to make a reconnaissance beyond the French right flank. Once they were through the Fichermont wood, the Hussars were to patrol the roads and the bridges over the Lasne and the Dyle in anticipation of making contact with Grouchy's vanguard. Marbot was an old fox who would later write one of the most colorful memoirs in the epic of Napoleon. He was also a soldier who knew his business; the first Prussian courier who tried to pass his way was caught and sent to the emperor, together with the dispatch he was carrying. It was a note addressed to Wellington, informing him that Bulow's corps, marching as promised to the battlefield, had reached Chapelle-St. Lambert. The prisoner, who spoke French, did not hesitate to assure the emperor that the troops visible in the distance were indeed the vanguard of Bulow's corps, that the entire Prussian army had spent the night at Wavre, and that during their march that morning, they hadn't encountered a single Frenchman.
By then, Wellington had been aware for some time that the Prussians were on the way. That morning, a Prussian Hussar officer at the head of a cavalry patrol had come into contact with a squadron of the British Tenth Hussars, which had been assigned to guard the extreme left of the Allied deployment. After communicating to Captain Taylor, commander of the British squadron, the momentous news that Bulow's corps was now nearing the battlefield, the Prussian and his patrol turned back. Taylor immediately sent one of his officers to inform the duke, and then he and the rest of his men began anxiously scrutinizing the horizon, waiting for the Prussian columns to appear. But their wait turned out to be disagreeably long, and the occasional arrival of one of the duke's aides-de-camp, sent out to Taylor's position to determine whether anything had finally appeared, did nothing but add to the captain's embarrassment. He saw—too far off for him to be able to do anything about it—some French cavalry leave the field on what appeared to be a reconnaissance mission, heading in the direction from which the Prussians were supposed to arrive; but of the Prussians themselves he saw no trace.
Nevertheless, word that the Prussians were coming spread rapidly among the Allied officers. Sir Augustus Frazer learned it from one of Lord Uxbridge's aides-de-camp, who was looking for the duke, wishing to report the news to him, and asked Sir Augustus to join him in the effort. Frazer diligently copied Captain Taylor's report, according to which Bulow and his troops had arrived at a place that Sir Augustus transcribed as "Occey"; afterward, when he tried to find the place on the map, he was predictably unable to locate it anywhere. In any case, Frazer galloped off in search of Wellington but stopped on the way to communicate the news to Sir Thomas Picton and lingered to discuss the situation with him and to adjust the position of some guns; when, much later, he finally found the duke and delivered Taylor's report to Wellington's secretary, Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the latter icily informed him that "his Grace was aware of it."
A
lthough no one realized it, the information that the Prussian officer had given AA Captain Taylor was excessively optimistic; General von Bulow's march JL A. turned out to be much more difficult than had been foreseen. The roads his troops were advancing on were dreadful; actually, they were simple dirt paths, in terrible condition after days of rain. To follow them, the troops had to go up and down hills, traverse densely wooded areas, and pass over streams and rivers so swollen that only a few bridges would allow the men to cross them safely. It was the third consecutive day of marching for the exhausted men of the IV Corps, most of whom were inexperienced
Landwehr
recruits, and hardly any of whom had had anything to eat that morning except a little bread and brandy Furthermore, they had to haul along with them some eighty-eight artillery pieces—howitzers and cannon—while sinking to their knees in mud.
Worse yet, IV Corps, even though it was the only corps in the Prussian army whose troops were still fresh, was also the one that had bivouacked farthest away. The men began marching at the first light of dawn, but they had to go through the encampments of the other three corps, and then through the narrow lanes and alleys of the little town of Wavre, before they could even set foot on the first of the muddy tracks that would lead them to Waterloo. The main stone bridge across the Dyle was located in the center of Wavre, and the situation that developed there can be easily imagined by anyone who has ever been stuck in a traffic jam. At one point, a single 12-pounder gun broke an axle and blocked the entire column; the street had barely been cleared when a mill near the bridge caught fire, and the flames quickly leaped to the adjoining buildings. Since, at that moment, the bridge was crowded with ammunition wagons, panic spread through the troops, and the column dissolved into a mob of howling runaways; only with difficulty could their officers succeed in getting them in line again on the other side of the bridge. The cumulative effect of so many delays was such that the last of the four brigades of IV Corps got under way only at ten in the morning, by which time its men, having been roused at dawn, had been standing in formation for six hours. By then, also, Bulow's column was strung out about six miles long, and his vanguard had already reached Chapelle-St. Lambert.
If Bulow's troops, instead of stopping there, had gone down into the Lasne valley, crossed the river, and continued marching along the tracks that led to Fichermont wood, they would have met no resistance worthy of note and would have reached the battlefield by the early afternoon. Perhaps Bulow's personal characteristics had some influence on the caution of his movements; the general was already an elderly man, a fervent Lutheran, and a composer of religious music, and at the same time much smitten with his own rank and quick to take offense. Gneisenau, his equal in rank but not in seniority, never sent him orders without couching them in the most obsequious terms. But Bulow was also a good general; in 1813, he had routed Marshal Ney at Dennewitz—a feat that had won him, among other things, the title of count.
When Bulow reached Chapelle-St. Lambert, he saw nothing ahead of him but a steep slope, almost a precipice, where the path descended into the valley; beyond the swollen waters of the Lasne, there was an equally impracticable ascent, up which his guns would have to be hauled and pushed; and beyond that, a thick forest prevented him from seeing anything else. As if that weren't enough, the instructions transmitted by Gneisenau the previous evening expressly directed Btilow to advance only as far as Chapelle-St. Lambert and not to proceed beyond that place without first having verified that Wellington's army was indeed engaged in battle at Waterloo; for if at the last moment the duke had decided not to stay where he was and await Napoleon's attack, the Prussians would not have exposed themselves to it, either.
13
Thus it is difficult to blame General von Bulow, arriving at Chapelle-St. Lambert with his vanguard and knowing that several hours would pass before his whole corps could be assembled there, for being wary of ordering his troops to advance beyond the village. The cannonade had yet to begin at Waterloo, and his orders expressly forbade him to proceed farther without knowledge that the battle was on. As he waited to acquire more information, Bulow decided that the enemy was too close for him to take any chances; he deployed his battalions in battle order, one beside the other, by having them pass from marching formation to attack columns eight ranks deep, preceded by a swarm of skirmishers, as prescribed in the Prussian manual.
The passage from column of march to deployment by battalions in attack column was one of the most complex maneuvers that troops of those days had to perform. All officers knew, or should have known, the proper sequence of commands, but it was a long process at best, all the more so with exhausted and for the most part insufficiently trained troops like those of the IV Corps. While the Prussian commanders were intent on this maneuver, the opening cannonade at Waterloo could be heard in the distance. This convinced Bulow that there was indeed going to be a battle, but it also reinforced his belief that it was imperative to deploy his troops in battle order before proceeding. Several hours therefore passed between the moment when an officer of the Prussian Hussars, at the head of his patrol, met Captain Taylor near Smohain, and the moment when Bulow's first battalions, having completed their deployment on the high ground behind Chapelle-St.-Lambert, began to advance. Around one o'clock, when Napoleon noticed that something was happening in that area, the line of Prussian skirmishers had just begun moving out to cross the Lasne and penetrate the Fichermont wood.