The Battle of Waterloo: Europe in the Balance (16 page)

This time, with greater numbers and the men of the Imperial Guard, Ney achieved more. The British 15th Hussars were caught in open order by the Guard Dragoons and lost heavily, as did several units of Brunswick infantry. When the Guard horse artillery joined the fray they poured fire into the densely packed men of the squares. An infantry division from d’Erlon’s corps marched up the slope close to Hougoumont and deployed to open musket fire on the squares facing them. Both moves threatened to inflict massive casualties, but due to the restricted space they had in which to deploy neither could get fully into action. A charge by the 900 men of the Brunswick cavalry caused them to fall back.

At 6 pm Ney accepted that he could not batter his way through Wellington’s army with cavalry and led his men back across the valley. He had been too busy with his cavalry charges and too deafened by the thundering roars of the grand battery to notice what had been going on elsewhere on the battlefield. When he got back to Napoleon’s command post he must have been aghast at what he learned.

A new threat

It had been nearly six hours since Lobau’s small corps had been sent to hold the right flank of Napoleon’s army. Lobau had known that he was as likely to face a Prussian attack as to welcome Grouchy’s forces, but for hours nothing had happened. He could hear the cannon and musketry coming from behind him as the attack on Wellington’s ridge continued, but he received no word from his emperor. Once or twice Lobau had seen columns of men moving across open ground miles to the east, but they had been too far away to see if they were French or Prussian.

Lobau occupied his time deploying his men to block the roads coming from the east. He also sent units to secure the ground around the Smohain stream. The sun shone, the birds sang, time passed. Suddenly there was movement on the edge of a wood a mile to his south-east. Men were hauling two dozen cannon out of the trees and manhandling them into position. Suddenly the cannon belched flames and smoke. Cannonballs began falling among Lobau’s men to kill and wound dozens of his men.

The Prussians had arrived.

Chapter 10
 
‘As if blown by a whirlwind’
 

Marshal Grouchy describing the Prussian army in a letter to Napoleon, 17 June 1815
 

The Prussians, meanwhile, had been having problems of their own. Before dawn a confidential message arrived from Müffling giving Blücher his private view on Wellington’s intentions and abilities. He confirmed that Wellington had drawn up his army to defend the ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean and that he intended to fight. However, Müffling gave his opinion that Wellington would not be able to hold out all day without Prussian help.

Blücher and Gneisenau discussed the situation. Gneisenau in particular was still wary of Wellington’s intentions, and both men were painfully aware of the mauling their forces had received at Ligny. For both reasons it was decided that the Prussian advance to Waterloo would be led by the only corps that had not been involved at Ligny and which was therefore both fresh and at full strength: that of Bülow. The army’s entire baggage and supply train would go in the opposite direction, to Louvain, in case a retreat to Germany proved necessary.

Slow progress

Bülow set out at dawn, at 7 am reaching Wavre – where the bottleneck of the bridge over the river Dyle was expected to cause delays. Entirely unexpected was the fact that a large house in the high street caught fire just as Bülow’s ammunition wagons were trundling past. The potential for an explosion on an epic scale was obvious. The march was abandoned and thousands of men were thrown into the town to drag the wagons clear and put out the fire. The affair delayed Bülow by more than two hours. It was 10 am before he marched out of Wavre.

At least one thing was not bothering the Prussians. Grouchy had delayed leaving Gembloux until he knew where the main Prussian army had gone to. As a consequence he was unlikely to reach Wavre until later in the afternoon.

Bülow’s advance was at first speeded up by Gneisenau’s decision to send the baggage train to Louvain. With no wagons in his column, Bülow could give priority to his cannon when it came to bridges or good roads, and hurry his infantry and cavalry forward over the open fields with speed. That speed soon slowed to a crawl.

The roads were entirely unsurfaced and after heavy rain had turned to mud. Pounded and stirred by thousands of hooves and booted feet, the mud fairly quickly turned into a quagmire of liquid goo that sucked at feet, pulled off boots and trapped horses while making the progress of artillery impossible. Time and again, pioneers had to come up to cut brushwood to lay over the mud so that artillery could pass. Elsewhere the fields gave way to dense woods, forcing the marching men either to return to the roads or take circuitous routes around the woods. It was all taking time, a great deal of time.

Marshal Blücher urges an artillery crew to hurry along the road to Waterloo on the morning of 18 June. The cross-country roads from Wavre to Waterloo were of poor quality and many had degenerated into mud after the heavy rains of the previous day.

The occasional sighting of French light cavalry patrols caused even more delays. Bülow feared an ambush, and if caught strung out on the march he would have suffered a massacre. Time and again he had to halt his forward units in a defensive position to allow the rear units to catch up.

The defence of Wavre

Back at Wavre, things were still running less than smoothly. The III Corps of Thielmann had been ordered to be the last to leave Wavre. At about 3 pm Thielmann received reports from his scouts to the south that a large column of French soldiers was approaching. Grouchy had caught up with the Prussians. Having learned of the poor state of the roads he was expected to take, Thielmann was just as worried about being caught in ambush as Bülow. He halted his men and put them into defensive positions around Wavre, at the same time sending messages to Blücher asking for orders.

The messenger arrived at 3.30 pm just as Blücher and Gneisenau had arrived on a hill near Lasne from which they could get a distant view of the Waterloo battlefield some kilometres to the west. They studied the scene through telescopes: they could see the smoke caused by artillery fire and the movement of larger masses of men. Although they did not know it, they were watching Wellington’s reorganization after defeating d’Erlon’s attack and Ney’s assault on La Haye Sainte.

It was clear that a major battle was taking place, and that Wellington was managing to hold his own so far. Blücher wanted to steer Bülow’s men directly west so that they would arrive on Wellington’s left flank and give him support against Napoleon’s assault. Gneisenau disagreed. He suggested sending Bülow south-west so that he would arrive behind Napoleon’s right flank, cutting his line of retreat and falling on the rear of the French army. Such a plan would, if it succeeded, guarantee a total victory by crushing Napoleon. However, it ran the risk that Napoleon might manage to ambush the Prussians as they were on the march by falling on their exposed right flank.

After some discussion, Blücher and Gneisenau decided to direct Bülow south-west, while Zieten’s I Corps would go west. This meant that the first Prussians on the scene would attack Napoleon’s rear right flank, while those arriving later would go to the direct aid of Wellington.

Blücher sent off his orders, including instructions back to Wavre that Thielmann was to hold Wavre no matter what the cost in men. After the despatch riders had gone, Blücher turned to Gneisenau and said ‘It does not matter if Thielmann and all his men are killed, so long as they stop Grouchy from joining Napoleon.’

At Wavre, Thielmann was attacked at 4 pm. Thielmann had placed a strong advance guard south of the town in the hamlet of Aisemont. An attack of French infantry with artillery support soon drove the Prussians out of Aisemont and by about 4.30 pm the French had control of the south bank of the river Dyle.

Grouchy himself then came up and studied Thielmann’s defences. He decided that Wavre was too strongly held to be taken without suffering heavy casualties. He kept some infantry in front of Wavre, together with some artillery to keep Thielmann’s attention focused there, then sent infantry and cavalry to march to the flanks to try to find another way over the river.

At this crucial point Thielmann discovered that one of his four brigades had marched off to the west. The message he had sent to halt had gone astray, so General von Borcke had marched off with 7,000 of Thielmann’s 22,000 men to go to Waterloo.

Grouchy, too, had received disturbing news. At 4 pm he received Napoleon’s orders telling him to march to join the emperor before the Prussians arrived to support Wellington. By this time he was engaged against Thielmann and feared that if he pulled back, the Prussian would attack his outnumbered and retreating men. It would make more sense to make it look as if he intended to continue attacking Wavre.

Grouchy therefore allocated the task of continuing to mount attacks on Thielmann to Vandamme’s III Corps of 16,000 men. Gérard’s IV Corps of 15,000 men would meanwhile turn west and march through St Lambert to attack where he estimated the bulk of the Prussian army would be disorganized by marching along poor quality roads. It took him sometime to get Gérard’s men off the road north and turned west. Gérard had got only as far as Bierges when he was shot and badly wounded. His troops pushed on without him, however, but made slow progress.

Blücher plans attack

Meanwhile, Blücher had at 4 pm received a message from Müffling in which he gave them a detailed account of the battle so far and how things looked from Wellington’s ridge. Until this point, Blücher had been intending to await the arrival of Bülow’s entire IV Corps before attacking. The troops that had come up were hiding in a wood 1.5 km to the east of Plancenoit, facing the right flank of Lobau’s corps. Having read Muffling’s message, however, Blücher decided to attack at once. At 4.30 pm Bülow received orders to seize Plancenoit in order to outflank Lobau on the south, then to march straight on west for another 1.5 km to reach the main road south of Napoleon and cut off his line of retreat. Blücher was intending then to attack Lobau with Pirch’s II Corps as soon as it arrived, while sending Zieten’s I Corps to join up with Wellington.

It took a few minutes for Bülow to prepare his troops. Then he led his artillery out of the wood and opened fire with the salvo that surprised Lobau.

Chapter 11
 
‘Up Guards and at them’
 

Wellington’s orders to the British Guards at the Battle of Waterloo.
 

The arrival of the Prussians completely changed the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was no longer seeking to defeat Wellington before turning on the Prussians the following day. He now had to face both his enemies at once. Time was running out for the French.

Lobau’s first reaction to the arrival of the Prussians was to send a messenger to Napoleon to announce the news. At the same time he realized that there was a wide gap between the Prussians’ right flank and Wellington’s left. Into this gap Lobau pushed his cavalry, followed by infantry who barricaded themselves into the handful of houses overlooking the Smohain stream. He also realized that the village of Plancenoit to the south commanded the main Brussels road. He sent his infantry reserves into the village.

As more and more Prussians emerged into sight, Lobau reduced his frontage so as to increase the depth of his formations and concentrated around Plancenoit, leaving only a screen to link his main force to Napoleon’s right at the Smohain stream. Lobau was confident he could hold his own against Bülow’s corps, but he had to assume that more Prussians were on the way and that he might soon be in difficulties.

Attack on La Haye Sainte

Back on the main battlefield, Napoleon scanned Wellington’s ridge. He saw units being repositioned and correctly deduced that Wellington was shifting regiments around to try to plug gaps. His eye fell on the farm of La Haye Sainte. If that fell to the French it would clear the way for a new assault on the weakest part of Wellington’s centre. Napoleon sent Ney to take the farmhouse with those units of d’Erlon’s corps that had reformed.