The Eagle's Last Triumph E-Book

Andrew Uffindell

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

The Eagle's Last Triumph is a compelling analysis of Napoleon's victory at Ligny on 16 June 1815. The fi ghting lasted for six hours, but such was its bitterness that more than 20,000 were killed or wounded – at least one in seven of the soldiers who fought. This fascinating narrative examines the action in detail, with many maps, diagrams and first-hand accounts. Eyewitnesses described the battlefield afterwards as 'an unforgettable spectacle'. In this illuminating book, the author reveals how this important, but incomplete, triumph led just two days later to absolute defeat at Waterloo.

Leseprobe

This book is dedicated to the memory of:

Lt-Gen Le Capitaine

Capt von Anders

Brigade commander

Commander, 6-pdr battery no. 15

Maj Hervieux

2nd Lt von Cordier

Commander, 30th Regt

19th Regt

Chef de bataillon Richard

2nd Lt von Schmeling

30th Regt

4th Westphalian Landwehr

Chef de bataillon Lafolie

2nd Lt von Lintner

30th Regt

4th Westphalian Landwehr

of the French IV Corps

of the Prussian 4th brigade

Killed in action at the Battle of Ligny 16 June 1815

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe a deep debt of gratitude to my tutors over the years and I would particularly like to thank Dr Geoffrey Ellis of Hertford College, Oxford.

I thank Philip Offord, Fred Rye, James Wilkes and the other members of the Bexhill Hanoverian Study Group, as well as my friends and comrades of the 21st Regiment and of the Napoleonic Association. I am grateful also to Michael Corum, editor of the Waterloo Journal and source of much helpful advice. Richard Moore and Lucien Gerke have kindly given their valuable advice on several matters relating to the Waterloo campaign.

David Chandler and Philip Haythornthwaite read through the manuscript of this book; I thank them for their positive criticism and expert advice which has saved me from several errors. In Belgium I received invaluable help from Guy and Janine Delvaux and greatly appreciate the hospitality and valuable information they gave me. I am very grateful to the Renard family for their warm welcome, encouragement and advice on the location of the Bussy mill. I wish to record my deep gratitude to Patrick Maes who lives in Ligny village and is the President of the Association Belge Napoléonienne. Patrick most generously shared with me his detailed knowledge of the battle and battlefield of Ligny and provided me with much invaluable documentation. He himself has written a first-rate booklet, Ligny: Le Crépuscule de l’Aigle, which I thoroughly recommend.

I am grateful to both the parish priest of Sombreffe who kindly invited me into Blücher’s headquarters and to the ladies of the secretarial staff at Fleurus Town Hall for showing me Napoleon’s room.

I thank the first-rate staff of the Bodleian Library. Their cheerful and undaunted spirit was undimmed even after my three years’ sojourn in Oxford. I thank also the authorities of All Souls’ College, Oxford, for allowing me to conduct research in the magnificent Codrington Library. The Codrington specialises in military history and contains many of the French eyewitness accounts for the 1815 campaign. I thank the staff there for their co-operation.

I am indebted to Lionel Leventhal, Kate Ryle and the other staff of Greenhill Books for their unfailing encouragement and sound advice throughout the publication of this book.

For help in obtaining suitable illustrations, I am most grateful to Peter Harrington, curator of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University, Rhode Island, U.S.A., and to Peter Hofschröer.

Finally but by no means least, I am grateful to my family, particularly to Big Brother who forbore to complain when in 1987 I diverted our cycling tour of Dutch polders to the battlefield of Waterloo.

ANDREW UFFINDELL

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

List of illustrations

List of sketch maps

Key to maps

List of diagrams

,

orders of battle and line drawings

Foreword

Preface

Part One

1    Stormclouds of War

2    The Foes

The Rival High Commands

The Rival Armies

3    The Campaign Opens

Prelude to Combat

Napoleon Attacks

4    Approach of Battle

Night of 15/16 June: Wellington

Night of 15/16 June: Blücher

Morning

,

16 June: Napoleon

The Meeting at Bussy Windmill and Final Preparations

5    Battle of Ligny

Phase One: St Amand and Ligny Come Under Fire

Phase Two: The Combat Escalates

Phase Three: French Hesitation and Prussian Counter-attacks

Phase Four: The Imperial Guard Attack and the End of the Battle

6    The Battle of Quatre Bras

7    The Fatal Peregrinations of d’Erlon

8    17 and 18 June 1815

9    After the 1815 Campaign

Part Two

10    Analysis of Napoleon’s Last Military Victory

11    Losses at Ligny

12    The Garrison of Ligny Village: A Case Study

13    Guide to the Battlefield of Ligny Today

Appendices

1    The Miller at Ligny

2    Extracts from

The Times

3    Extracts from Eyewitness Accounts Relating to the Movements of d’Erlon’s I Corps on 16 June 1815

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

129

ILLUSTRATIONS

Pages 129–144

Illustrations 1–5, 7, 9, 10, 16 and 17 are reproduced by courtesy of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University, Rhode Island, U.S.A.

  1  Napoleon in 1815

  2  Prince Blücher

  3  Count Gneisenau

  4  Duke of Wellington

  5  Marshal Ney

  6  One of the tracks used by advancing French infantrymen

  7  French infantrymen marching into Belgium

  8  The Farm d’en Bas in Ligny village today

  9  The closing stages of the Battle of Ligny

10  The Farm d’en Bas during the battle

11  St Amand village today

12  Napoleon’s observation post

13  The view from Blücher’s command post

14  The eastern sector of the battlefield of Ligny

15  Ligny village

16  A Prussian infantry lieutenant disputing a wooden bridge over the brook at Ligny village with French infantry

17  Blücher trapped beneath his horse

18  Farm of La Haye

19  Gemioncourt farm on the battlefield of Quatre Bras

20  The Roman road used by d’Erlon’s French I Corps

21  The track past the Chassart farms, along which d’Erlon’s troops marched after leaving the Roman road

22  Château des Caraman-Chimay at Beaumont, Napoleon’s quarters on the night of 14/15 June

23  The north side of the Château de la Paix, now Fleurus Town Hall

24  The presbytery at Sombreffe, Blücher’s headquarters for the night of 15/16 June

25  The house in the rue Royale, Brussels, in which Wellington resided in June 1815

26  Inn of the King of Spain, at Genappe: Wellington’s quarters on the night after the battle of Quatre Bras

27  Wellington’s headquarters at the town of Waterloo

SKETCH MAPS

  1  Napoleon against Europe: the balance of forces, June 1815

  2  Strategic situation, 14/15 June

  3  The French invasion, 15 June

  4  Wellington orders his divisions to assemble: 7.00 pm, 15 June

  5  Dispositions of Ziethen’s Prussian I Corps on the battlefield of Ligny: evening 15 June

  6  March to the battlefield: morning, 16 June

  7  The Allied and French plans for the Battle of Ligny: 16 June

  8  Battle of Ligny: 3.00 pm, 16 June

  9  Battle of Ligny: Phase 1

10  Battle of Ligny: Phase 2

11  Battle of Ligny: Phase 3

12  Battle of Ligny: Phase 4

13  Strategic situation: 2.30 pm, 16 June

14  Climax of the Battle of Quatre Bras: 6.30 pm, 16 June

15  The 1815 Campaign: 17–18 June

16  The Climax of the Battle of Waterloo: 8.00 pm, 18 June

17  Battlefield of Ligny today

18  Charleroi today

19  Battlefield of Quatre Bras today

20  In the footsteps of d’Erlon

KEYTO MAPS

Note: On some maps two identical Prussian brigade signs appear. This indicates that the brigade has been split into roughly equal parts.

DIAGRAMS

  1  The French Army

  2  Attack formation of a Prussian brigade

  3  The Prussian Army

  4  The composition of the three armies

  5  The Anglo-Dutch-German Army

  6  Strengths of the armies, 16 June

  7  French command structure, 16 June

  8  Impact of the losses of 16 June

  9  Impact of the whole campaign on army strengths

10  Prussian guns lost owing to Blücher’s defeat at Ligny

11  Units which entered Ligny Village: a Chronological Table

12  Troops at Ligny village

ORDERSOF BATTLE

1    The Balance of Forces

2    The Prussian Army at Ligny

3    The French Army at Ligny

LINE DRAWINGS

1    The British 28th Foot repelling French cavalry at Quatre Bras

2    Wellington’s army begins its advance across the valley at Waterloo

3    The Allied commanders meet at La Belle Alliance

4    Wellington’s letter to Blücher, 16 June

5    British Guards burying officers at Quatre Bras

6    The Duke of Brunswick falls at Quatre Bras

FOREWORD

I have always been fascinated by the Waterloo campaign and by the three extraordinary commanders, Wellington, Napoleon and Blücher, who decided its outcome. The arguments over the strategy and tactics, the suitability of key subordinates and how Napoleon might have won are endless.

Andrew Uffindell has written extensively on Waterloo and the Napoleonic era. His books include The National Army Museum Book of Wellington’s Armies; Great Generals of the Napoleonic Wars and their Battles and On the Fields of Glory: The Battlefields of the 1815 Campaign.

I am delighted that Greenhill are now reissuing his first book, The Eagle’s Last Triumph. The book broke new ground by concentrating on the neglected early stages of the 1815 campaign and in doing so placed the climax, the battle of Waterloo itself, in its proper perspective. The Eagle’s Last Triumph showed that it was the Prussian army of Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher that bore the initial brunt of Napoleon’s offensive and won vital time for Wellington to concentrate his army.

Andrew Uffindell skilfully analyses how Napoleon drew the Prussians into a murderous attritional struggle at Ligny before sending in his reserves in the evening. He also convincingly shows how Napoleon’s failure to win a truly decisive victory led to his final and most famous defeat two days later, on the field of Waterloo.

I thoroughly recommend The Eagle’s Last Triumph as a very readable and thought-provoking account of the crucial opening stages of this remarkable campaign.

ANDREW ROBERTS

PREFACE

This book is an in-depth study of Napoleon’s victory over the Prussian Army of the Lower Rhine at Ligny, two days before the Battle of Waterloo.

The aim is to examine in detail the neglected early stages of the 1815 campaign and thus to place Waterloo in its proper perspective. The book argues that Napoleon won a major, but indecisive, victory at Ligny and that by failing to knock out the Prussians, or to pursue them vigorously the next morning, he lost the initiative. This had fatal results as the Prussian commander, Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, was able to rally his army around the town of Wavre and then march to join Wellington at Waterloo, thus ensuring Napoleon’s defeat by weight of numbers.

It was therefore Blücher and his Prussian army who, by accepting battle at Ligny, enabled the Allies to survive the dangerous early stages of the campaign, complete the assembly of their armies and unite on a battlefield. It was largely the Prussians who laid the foundations of victory and who made possible Wellington’s epic defensive battle at Waterloo in the spotlight of history.

Both Wellington and the Prussian high command have been criticised for their conduct of the campaign, particularly in the early stages. The concentration of both armies was delayed by misunderstandings, flawed communications and misreadings of Napoleon’s intentions. The Prussians fought at Ligny with only three of their four corps, while Wellington underestimated the time he would need to concentrate his army and launch a powerful offensive at Quatre Bras in support of the Prussians. It has even been suggested that Wellington deliberately misled his Prussian allies to induce them to take the brunt of the campaign, and its casualties, but this controversial interpretation remains unproven.

Allied co-operation throughout the campaign was far from perfect on either side, partly because of the pressure of swiftly unfolding events and the difficulties in ascertaining what was happening in a theatre of war when commu nications moved only at the speed of a mounted messenger, about three to five miles an hour over long distances.

But the Allied mistakes were ultimately less significant than Napoleon’s vague or unrealistic orders to his wing commanders, the careless French staff work and the poor teamwork of several French generals, notably Marshal Grouchy’s fractious subordinates, Generals Gérard and Vandamme during 17 and 18 June.

The 1815 campaign, like that in North-West Europe in 1944–5, saw Allied disagreements about strategy and national prestige, but also much underlying trust and co-operation. Neither Wellington nor Blücher could have won alone, for individually each was inferior in numbers to Napoleon and commanded an army of poorer quality than Wellington’s experienced army of the final months of the Peninsular War or Blücher’s Army of Silesia during the invasion of France in 1814. Yet, together, they won an Allied victory.

Interest in Waterloo is unlikely to fade and it is hoped that this updated reissue of the book will contribute to a fuller understanding of the crucial and long-overshadowed opening stages of this fascinating campaign.

ANDREW UFFINDELL

PART ONE

1

STORMCLOUDSOF WAR

The French Revolution plunged Europe into more than two decades of strife. Anxious to contain the spirit of Revolution, and if possible to reverse the Revolutionary course of events in France, the European powers went to war. The French responded with the execution of their king, Louis XVI, and with conscription. This gave French Republican generals the weight of numbers with which to defend their fatherland’s frontiers and to extend both French power and Revolutionary ideas.

The chaotic conditions in France, the breakdown of the old social hierarchy and the chances of gaining military renown made the Revolutionary era one of opportunism. Napoleon Buonaparte, the most skilful and determined opportunist of all, was a rising star, fresh from a victory at Toulon and about to gain laurels in Italy. Victory followed victory, political advancement led to political advancement and through a combination of ambition, ruthlessness and good fortune, Napoleon became Emperor of the French in 1804.

However, Europe’s strife continued, partly because Napoleon’s enemies refused to recognise him as the ruler of France (the would-be King Louis XVIII was in exile in Britain). Moreover, the Revolution had begun a cycle of French expansion and Napoleon needed to conquer new lands in order to pay for his gifts to loyal servants, and for his large standing army. For several years Napoleon was the master of Europe. He crushed the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz in 1805, the Prussians at Jena-Auerstädt in 1806 and the Russians again at Friedland in 1807.

Then the cracks in the mighty edifice of the French Empire appeared. Britain held out, protected by the English Channel and by her powerful fleet. In Spain, guerrilla fighters helped a British army under the Duke of Wellington to defy and eventually defeat the French. In Russia, Napoleon’s Grand Army of 1812 was swallowed up, frozen by the winter, harassed by Cossacks and all but destroyed.

The years 1813 and 1814 saw French forces in fighting retreat all over Europe. In spite of a brilliant defensive campaign in 1814 on French soil itself, Napoleon was finally finished, defeated militarily by a coalition of the rest of Europe and internally by a revolt of French politicians and marshals. Napoleon abdicated from the throne of France on 6 April 1814. With a small, faithful escort of crack Imperial Guardsmen, the fallen French Emperor departed for exile on the Italian island of Elba.

He was not in exile for long. The European powers squabbled and danced the time away at the Congress of Vienna. In France itself, the restored Bourbon monarchy was unpopular. The French people were bored and dissatisfied. ‘All France regrets me and wants me’, was Napoleon’s accurate verdict of the mood of the nation.1 In February 1815 he saw his chance and seized it.

Lightning is the only word to describe it: a swift voyage by sea to the south coast of France followed by a fantastic twenty-day march across country to Paris while collecting troops, marshals, and support like pennies falling into his cap.

‘The Eagle will fly from steeple to steeple up to the towers of Notre-Dame’, promised Napoleon, and so it did.2 His carriage clattered into the Tuileries on 20 March 1815 with that of Louis XVIII having scampered out the day before. Then came Napoleon’s frantic race against time to revitalise the French army and to place the French nation on a war footing.

For the sovereigns of Europe rejected Napoleon’s overtures of peace. To Europe, Napoleon was an unbridled warmongerer, the dangerous product of the feared Revolution. Now he was back on the throne of France. Already, the allied powers had condemned the French Emperor as having ‘placed himself outside the pale of civil and social relations’ and that ‘as the disturber of world repose he had exposed himself to public vengeance.’ Now they mobilised their armies for war. They created the Seventh Coalition of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars – the signatories being Russia, Great Britain, Spain, Portugal, Prussia, Austria, Sweden and some of the German states – and determined on restoring Louis XVIII by force of arms. Europe was ranged against Napoleon.

Four huge armies, with smaller supporting formations, marched on the frontiers of France, gathered strength and prepared to invade. In the north, in Belgium (part of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands), two armies built up their strength. The first was a composite force of soldiers from Britain, the United Netherlands and various small German states, the whole being commanded by England’s foremost general, Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington. The second army was Prussian, under Field Marshal Prince Blücher. Further south, a Russian army and a force of Austrians and German contingents marched across the plains towards the River Rhine. The invasion plan involved these four huge armies making for Paris, with supporting units in the south capturing Lyons, the other important French city. The emphasis was on a co-ordinated steam roller approach with armies pushing on at all costs and crushing the French opposition by brute force and numerical superiority.

Mobilisation and concentration of the allied armies required time. In particular, the Russians had to march all the way from the River Vistula. Only Wellington and Blücher’s armies were ready, stationed as they were in Belgium facing the French border. In short, the allied invasion could not begin until July 1815. That gave Napoleon time.

Sources: Esposito and Elting, A Military History and Atlas of the Napoleonic Wars, map 156; Chandler, The Hundred Days, p.30; Houssaye, Waterloo 1815, pp.92–4 and 34–6; Siborne, History of the Waterloo Campaign, pp.511–20; Chalfont, Waterloo: Battle of the Three Armies, pp.204–7; Bonaparte, Napoleon’s Memoirs, pp.486–7.

Napoleon had a choice. He could remain on the defensive, building up further forces before the allies invaded in mid-July, and repeating his brilliant 1814 campaign with more chances of success. The invaders would have to detach troops to invest the French frontier forts. Consequently, they would arrive before the gates of Paris and Lyons lacking food and a sufficient numerical superiority, only to face powerful counter-attacks. Wellington later stated this had been Napoleon’s best chance of success but ‘the fact is, he never in his life had patience for a defensive war.’3

Yet the political drawbacks of fighting on French soil outweighed the military advantages. After his fall in 1814, Napoleon was no longer an omnipotent dictator. His only sure power base was the army, and he could not afford to antagonise the shifting sands of public opinion or the political opposition in Paris.

Napoleon decided it was better to seize the initiative. The best form of defence was attack. Until July the only allied armies on the frontiers of France would be those of Wellington and Blücher. Napoleon hoped to invade Belgium and to knock these two armies out of the allied coalition. In short, it would be a daring pre-emptive strike designed to start the war with a glorious lightning campaign.

Having dealt with Wellington and Blücher, Napoleon would face a con siderably weakened allied onslaught on France in July. The plan had the added benefit of seizing Belgium, whose people were mostly sympathetic to France and hated their enforced union with Holland. Besides gaining valuable troop reinforcements from the Belgians, the seizure of the country would be popular in France.

The defeat, or if possible the destruction, of Wellington’s army could topple the British Tory Government, bringing the Whigs to power. Unlike the Tories, the Whigs did not insist on the need to restore Louis XVIII as a condition of making peace. With Britain out of the war and the vital British subsidies no longer forthcoming, the other coalition powers might likewise withdraw from the fight.

But if the pre-emptive attack on Belgium was a gamble with great prizes, it was also one with great risks. It was a gamble because if it failed, Napoleon would fall back on Paris with an army ravaged by casualties and a nation ravaged by demoralisation. France in this state would be ill fitted to meet the coalition invasion in July.

But Napoleon was a born gambler.

In the two months since his return to power on 20 March, Napoleon had achieved wonders. Cloth factories were restarted to churn out uniforms. Horses were purchased. Muskets were produced in remarkable numbers. France became infected with a patriotic fervour, and at parades spectators handed Napoleon banknotes to help pay for the war preparations. Unemployment dropped; Napoleon’s popularity soared.

In the course of April and May, nearly 7000 soldiers were raised every day. By September, the French army would hopefully consist of 800,000 armed and trained men. By June, the total was already 506,000. Of this figure, 222,000 formed the Auxiliary Army of National Guardsmen and other second line troops, who garrisoned coasts and fortresses. This left an active army of 284,000. This fighting army was to guard the frontiers and also to form a strike force, known as the Army of the North, 124,000 men strong, to invade Belgium.

Napoleon’s next task was complex and formidable. He had to surprise Wellington and Blücher. He had to launch a sudden onslaught on their unsuspecting armies before they could concentrate and unite for battle. The accomplishment of this task was remarkable. Wellington himself later admitted to admiration: ‘Bonaparte’s march upon Belgium was the finest thing ever done – so rapid and so well-combined.’

In twelve days, starting on 2 June, Napoleon concentrated the 124,000 men of the Army of the North south of the Belgian frontier without any allied defensive measures being taken. He himself left Paris in the early hours of 12 June to join the army. A total security blackout had been imposed on the entire operation. French agents spread false intelligence. The secret concentration was so successful that as late as 13 June, Wellington wrote that Napoleon’s joining his army from Paris was ‘not likely to be immediate. I think we are now too strong for him here.’4 Just two days later Napoleon attacked.

Notes

1.  Brett-James, The Hundred Days, p.1

2.  Chalfont, Waterloo: Battle of Three Armies, p.27

3.  Stanhope, Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, p.60

4.  Longford, Wellington: The Years of the Sword, p.405

2

THE FOES

The Rival High Commands

Napoleon stood at the head of the French army. ‘I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men’, remarked the Duke of Wellington.1 The French Emperor’s genius lay not merely in his military skill as a general but in his ability to inspire his troops. ‘It is with baubles that men are led’, he declared, bestowing lands and gifts on his marshals and generals and lavishing his troops with praise and the coveted medals of the Legion of Honour. Napoleon encouraged, cajoled and lauded his troops. He led them by offering to all a glittering vision of glory, fame and riches.

But Napoleon the leader of men had another side to his character. The violent rages of temper, the crushing rebukes, the ruthless application of the adage ‘divide and rule’ were as much part of Napoleon’s method as were the rewards for loyalty and bravery. ‘Men must be led by an iron hand in a velvet glove’, declared Napoleon. His penetrating eagle-eyes and harsh words could break hardened soldiers.

Napoleon believed in personal reconnaissance of enemy positions, as well as in being seen and heard by his troops in order to boost their morale. His ability to inspire loyalty and devotion in his troops depended not a little on his photographic memory, which enabled him to recall statistics and faces and records of old soldiers.

Napoleon admired the famous generals of history Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar and Frederick the Great, and from them he borrowed stratagems and schemes of war. He had learnt from notable theorists of his day and per fected his own set of campaign systems. He outwitted, outflanked, outmarched and outgeneralled his opponents. He seized the initiative and imposed his will on the enemy.

Surprise, rapid movement and a swift and decisive victory were the ingredients of a successful Napoleonic campaign. Napoleon disliked attrition as it wasted both men and time. Yet in the later years of the Empire, his battles became more attritional. The decline in quality of troops with conscripts replacing dead or wounded veterans was one cause of this unfortunate development. A decline in Napoleon’s freshness and hitherto unflagging mental energy was another.

Ulm and Austerlitz in 1805 had been won by manoeuvre but Wagram in 1809 and Borodino in 1812 were head-on attacks on formidable and staunchly held enemy positions. Ligny and Waterloo in 1815 would both be costly attritional battles. Increasingly, Napoleon came to mass both his artillery and his attacking formations; his battles came to lack their old finesse and skill.

‘Activity! Speed! Speed!’ an energetic Napoleon had urged in earlier campaigns. But on several key occasions in 1815 the Emperor would delay and do nothing. ‘The Napoleon we knew is no more’ whispered one of his generals.2 Indeed, Napoleon was no longer the rising star who had won Marengo and Austerlitz and Friedland. ‘Men of genius are meteors destined to be consumed in illuminating their own century’, he had written in 1790. By 1815 the meteor was becoming burnt out. His overall level of energy was on the decline. He was ill with cystitis and piles. ‘Napoleon’s stoutness had increased rapidly’, wrote one French officer of 1815. ‘It was noticeable in this campaign that he remained on horseback much less than in the past.’3

Moreover, Napoleon had become deluded by his own propaganda. He came to believe in his own infallibility and fatally underestimated at least the tenacity if not the skill of Wellington and Blücher, his opponents of 1815. Napoleon tended, over-optimistically, to believe all was going according to his plan, not crediting evidence to the contrary unless he were on the spot to see it for himself.

Yet in many respects, the Napoleon of 1815 was the same master of war as before. His supreme qualities of leadership were intact; so too was his unrivalled capacity for organisation. His secret concentration of the French army at the Belgian border and the sudden, well planned invasion of 15 June, were nothing short of masterly. Napoleon in 1815 was still ‘a giant surrounded by pygmies.’

Napoleon’s generals in 1815 were not the best with whom he had campaigned. Too many of his fine marshals were either dead, exiled or retired. Other marshals, namely Louis-Nicolas Davout the Prince of Eckmühl and Louis-Gabriel Suchet the Duke of Albufera, were superb commanders in their own right, but Napoleon assigned them to important posts outside his ‘Army of the North.’ Davout, for example, was War Minister and Governor of Paris. Suchet had been entrusted with one of the French armies guarding the eastern frontier of France.

It is possible that Napoleon left Davout and Suchet behind because he underestimated his adversaries in Belgium. The Emperor believed the shock of his sudden invasion would send Wellington and Blücher reeling back and that Brussels would fall without a difficult campaign. The important fighting would come later, against the Austrian and Russian invaders. By then, the most brilliant marshals would be already in place – Davout to defend Paris and Suchet to defend Lyons – and would be familiar with the ground and their troops.

But Marshal Joachim Murat, the finest cavalry leader in the world, the dashing General Patton of the Napoleonic wars, received no command, either in the Army of the North or on the eastern frontier of France; Napoleon still bitterly resented Murat’s treachery of 1814 in temporarily joining the Austrians.

Perhaps Napoleon deliberately did not appoint Murat and his other best marshals to commands in the Army of the North so that their skill would not detract from his own glory and success. The campaign in Belgium had to be a brilliantly decisive Napoleonic victory. It had to be Napoleon’s personal triumph in order to overawe the enemy coalition, and to unite France behind him. ‘He thought’, commented the German historian Major Karl von Damitz, ‘that he would master events and would be, alone, the saviour of France.’4

So in 1815 Napoleon had only four, second-rate, marshals with him for his last military campaign. One of these, Mortier, would fall ill on the eve of hostilities and would play no part. The other three were Nicolas Soult, Emmanuel de Grouchy and Michel Ney.

Napoleon’s appointment of Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult the Duke of Dalmatia as Chief of Staff was a mistake. Soult was no adequate replacement for the reliable, if not infallible, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier the Prince of Neuchâtel and of Wagram, who had recently died. Although Soult had a good understanding of the Emperor’s strategy, he would fail dismally in interpreting Napoleon’s wishes to his subordinates. Soult’s orders would lack precision, clarity and detail.

Soult conspicuously failed to work as a member of a team. He disagreed and argued with colleagues. This boded ill for 1815 when as Chief of Staff, he had not merely to work as part of a team but also had to use the tact and diplomacy he had never possessed to manage a team composed of generals who distrusted him. Soult was particularly disliked by Marshal Ney, yet on 16 June, Soult’s communications to Ney, and Ney’s obedience of them, would be of the utmost importance.

Marshal Michel Ney, Prince of the Moskowa, Duke of Elchingen, was forty-six years of age and destined to command the French left wing in the 1815 campaign. He would therefore have a key role to play.

Ney was a legend in his own lifetime. Ney’s greatest asset was his remarkable popularity with the ordinary French soldier, who admired Ney’s bravery and his uncomplicated personality. Limitless personal courage, immense energy and tactical skill had carried Ney by 1804 to the heights of Napoleon’s military hierarchy – the marshalate.

Ney’s finest hour came in 1812 when he led the French rearguard during the horrific retreat from Moscow. This was Ney at his best; the defeats of 1814 would bring out the worst in him. Ney became caught up in the political turmoil of France, forced Napoleon’s abdication and served the restored Bourbon monarchy to the extent of promising Louis XVIII, when Napoleon returned from Elba, to capture the Corsican and bring him to Paris in an iron cage.

Although in the event Napoleon won the tempestuous Ney over to his side by an emotive letter recalling the marshal’s bravery at Borodino, he did not consider taking Ney with his army until four days before the campaign began. Ney’s treason rankled deeply, but the Emperor was short of commanders. ‘Send for Marshal Ney,’ Napoleon instructed Davout on 11 June, ‘and tell him that if he wishes to be present at the first battles, he ought to be at Avesnes on the fourteenth.’5

Napoleon was not to give Ney the command of the French left wing until Ney was able to catch up with him at Charleroi in the afternoon of 15 June, when the campaign was already under way. In these circumstances, Ney had insufficient time to familiarise himself with his troops and generals, to ascertain Napoleon’s intentions for the campaign or to discuss plans in detail with him. Nor did he have time to set up a proper staff team.

Napoleon’s delay in giving Ney a command in the army was potentially disastrous. Furthermore, the command offered to Ney, that of 50,000 troops, was not the right one. After Waterloo, Napoleon’s verdict was that Ney ‘was good for a command of 10,000 men, but beyond that he was out of his depth.’6 Ney’s boldness in battle bordered on rashness. He risked losing sight of the battle or campaign as a whole by immersing himself in the front line rough and tumble. Ney lacked the intellect for an independent command; he needed to be under direct and constant supervision by Napoleon.

The faults in Ney’s tempestuous personality were destined to be demonstrated to the full.

The other French marshal to participate in the 1815 campaign was Emmanuel, Marquis de Grouchy. The last of Napoleon’s twenty-six marshals, Grouchy was promoted only on 15 April 1815. He would fail to live up to expectations. Although steady and determined and a cavalry commander of genius, Grouchy lacked dash and imagination in the realm of strategy. In 1815, Grouchy would command the Reserve Cavalry of Napoleon’s army. He would also command the French right wing, except when the Emperor was present in person as he would be at Ligny. Grouchy was to be a more important figure in the campaign on 17 and 18 June than at Ligny; nevertheless, he would be a noteworthy participant there.

Usually, Napoleon would place a marshal at the head of each corps. But with marshals in lamentably short supply for this campaign, Napoleon had to rely on ordinary generals. Some of these were talented and reasonably young men who inspired their troops to great deeds of military valour, but others were overcautious. This was particularly true of those who had taken hard knocks at the hands of their redoubtable British foes in the Peninsular War of 1808–14.

For instance, both Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Count d’Erlon, the commander of I Corps, and Count Honoré Reille of II Corps were cautious generals who had been repeatedly drubbed by Wellington in the Peninsula. D’Erlon in particular was indecisive and lacking in confidence and dash. He had neither initiative nor flair.

Dominique Vandamme the Count of Unsebourg and commander of III Corps, on the other hand, was a hard-bitten and loyal veteran who had joined the army in 1788 and had risen from the ranks. A foul-mouthed looter, whose greed was matched only by his ambition, Vandamme was touchy and rebellious but eager to fight for France, for glory and for his Emperor.

Count Maurice Gérard had volunteered in 1791 for service in the French Revolutionary armies. In 1815 he was at the head of the IV Corps. Napoleon rated him as one of the three best French generals and after Ligny intended, he said, to create Gérard a marshal.

Georges Mouton, the Count of Lobau, commanding VI Corps, was a distinguished veteran with years of service in the Revolutionary and Imperial armies. He had particularly distinguished himself against the Austrians in 1809.

The commanders of the four cavalry corps were Count Claude Pajol, Count Rémy Exelmans, François Kellermann the Duke of Valmy and Count Edouard Milhaud. All were veterans. Pajol was a brilliant and reliable tactician with a flair for seizing enemy-held bridges by a magnificent cavalry coup de main. Kellermann, the son of a marshal, had emerged as a celebrated cavalryman who helped save the day at Marengo (14 June 1800) with a decisive charge on the Austrians.

Count Antoine Drouot, an experienced artilleryman, was at the head of the Imperial Guard. The son of a baker, Drouot had joined the army in 1793. Present at numerous battles, including Trafalgar and Borodino, Drouot had decided the victory of Hanau in 1813 by his brilliant employment of the Guard artillery.7 A brave and simple soldier, Drouot had shared Napoleon’s exile on the island of Elba.

Such were the marshals and generals Napoleon had with him in 1815. No longer did he have a galaxy of glittering, ambitious stars in the ascendant, but a collection of survivors, some good, others faulty. Several were worn out. Many of the French generals, wrote Count Fleury de Chaboulon, Napoleon’s secretary, ‘were no longer those youthful and ambitious men who generously gave their lives to gain promotion and fame; they were men tired of war and who, having reached the highest rank and enriched by loot from enemies or by the generous gifts of Napoleon, desired only to enjoy their fortune in peace and in the shade of their laurels.’8

Yet much talent remained in the majority of Napoleon’s generals. Many of the corps commanders of 1815 became Marshals of France in later life. Above all, every one of Napoleon’s generals was a veteran with years of experience.

The main disadvantage experienced by the generals was the lack of trust placed in them – except a favoured, popular few such as Marshal Ney – by the rank and file. The political turmoil of Napoleon’s abdication and the return of the Bourbons in 1814, during which many generals had taken office under Louis XVIII, left many troops suspicious of the trustworthiness of their commanders.

The Prussian high command laboured under an entirely different set of problems and contained men whose characters contrasted sharply with those of the French generals.

‘The French are before me, glory behind, and a explosion will come soon!’9 Thus promised the Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian army, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher the Prince of Wahlstadt. No ordinary commander was he. Indomitable, resilient, exuberantly optimistic, Blücher was always wanting to attack. He was a veteran of dozens of scraps, a drinker, a gambler and a swearer.

In spite of his seventy-two years, Blücher was energetic and ferociously intent on capturing his hated foe, Napoleon, and executing him by firing squad. Blücher’s vendetta against the French and their Emperor brought him to the verge of insanity. In 1811, he had believed he was pregnant with an elephant. This fantasy was to return shortly after Waterloo, following a fall from a horse that resulted, characteristically, from showing off in front of the ladies.

Aged Blücher enjoyed the active life of a youth and the popularity of a saviour of the nation. His unlimited capacity to inspire his troops, as much as any skills of generalship, had led to his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Prussian army.

His career was chequered but colourful. Born at Gross-Renzow near Rostock in 1742, he had enlisted fifteen years later in the Swedish hussars. Captured by a regiment of Prussian hussars in 1760, he entered its ranks, under the guardianship of the Prussian colonel. This introduction to soldiering fixed Blücher’s attitudes. It gave him for life a ‘hussar complex’ that showed itself even when he was a general commanding a force of all three arms. The cavalry always remained Blücher’s favourite arm and, according to one who knew him, even ‘as a field-marshal he put himself at the head of a squadron as readily as at the head of an army.’ He would employ infantry as if they were cavalry, hurling battalions into spirited bayonet charges rather than placing them in coolly chosen defensive positions.

Blücher participated in the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) against the French, but Frederick the Great took offence at young Blücher’s peacetime pastimes of duelling, gambling, wenching and drinking, told Blücher he could ‘go to the devil’ and in 1773 sent him to become a farmer. Blücher was allowed to return to the army in 1786 and led Prussian cavalry against the powerful armies of the French Revolution after 1793.

In 1806, he commanded the Prussian advance-guard at Auerstädt. Blücher did not perform well at this battle, failing to co-ordinate his attacks and being beaten by numerically inferior French forces. Worse was to follow and, obliged to surrender at Lübeck, he retired to his estates. From these years stem Blücher’s intense vendetta against Napoleon, and his desire to avenge the humiliations he and Prussia had undergone in 1806.

Blücher’s chance came in 1813, when Napoleon was in fighting retreat through Europe consequent to the disaster in Russia of 1812. Blücher soon proved himself to be the outstanding leader of the sixth European coalition against Napoleon. He was popular not merely with his own Prussian soldiers but also with the Russians, Austrians and Swedes. Blücher habitually exchanged coarse, jovial banter with his devoted troops:

‘Good morning, children’, he would address them. And they would roar in delighted reply, ‘Hurrah, Father Blücher!’ His pipe was always in his mouth, the word ‘Forwards’ always on his lips and the smell of powder always in his nostrils. Often Blücher suffered defeat – at Lützen and Bautzen in 1813, at Brienne and Vauchamps in 1814 to name just a few – but he always returned for another scrap.

A dogged, fierce persistence won Blücher his victories in the end: at Leipzig, at La Rothière, at Laon until, eventually, he had driven, cajoled, led and swept the allied armies into Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate on 6 April 1814.

Now in 1815, Napoleon was back in France, and Blücher was once more at the head of a Prussian army eager to do battle and eager to stand by his friend the Duke of Wellington. For Blücher worked well as part of a team, and his loyalty was fierce and unswerving. ‘Wellington is obligingness itself,’ Blücher commented on his new ally for this campaign. ‘He is an extremely resolute man, we shall get along very well together.’10

For all his undoubted assets, Blücher did have drawbacks as a commander. He was a hussar general who waged war by instinct rather than reasoned logic. Even so, Blücher could muddle through a battle with some credit to his name; it was in the realm of strategy that the aged field marshal was truly out of his depth. He was incapable of reading a map and was nearly illiterate. A subordinate asserted that Blücher understood so little of the conduct of war that he was unable to judge whether a plan of operations was good or bad.11

Fortunately, therefore, Blücher was blessed with a superb Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Count Neithardt von Gneisenau. Seventeen years younger than Blücher, Gneisenau nevertheless shared his chief’s intense hatred for the French and equally intense dedication to Prussia and victory. Gneisenau and Blücher made a superb command team – as they had proved in the campaigns of 1813 and 1814. For Gneisenau possessed the intellectual power and knowledge of strategy his chief badly needed. Blücher once joked that he was the only person who could kiss his own head: and proved it by kissing Gneisenau’s brainy brow.

Born in 1760, Gneisenau commenced his career in the Austrian army, transferring to the Prussian army in 1786. Like Blücher, Gneisenau had fought against the French in 1806. Following Napoleon’s defeat of Prussia in that year, Gneisenau helped the reformer General von Scharnhorst to remodel the outdated, professional Prussian army into a national, patriotic, motivated force. Gneisenau was strong, forceful and energetic. He was an impressive personality, not given to boasting or vanity and he exuded an air of wisdom and reliability.

Unlike Blücher, Gneisenau did not work well with allies. He disliked the Russians. From the outset, he suspected the honesty of Wellington. A copy of a secret treaty of January 1815 between Britain, Austria and royalist France aiming to check Prussian and Russian ambitions had been found in Paris by Napoleon on his return from exile. He had published it with glee. Wellington had stood by this treaty and consequently it was a maxim in Berlin that the Duke might be counted on to desert a friend.12 Unlike Blücher, Gneisenau shared this view. He warned Baron Carl von Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer to Wellington’s army, that the Duke had become a master of duplicity.13

Fortunately, Gneisenau’s suspicions of Wellington’s honesty did not immediately cause him to doubt his generalship. But following the Duke’s tardiness in supporting the Prussians when the campaign opened, Gneisenau would come to doubt Wellington’s resolution. It would take all Blücher’s fierce loyalty to Wellington for Gneisenau’s caution and distrust to be overcome. This would allow his better half – his undoubted organisational genius as Chief of Staff – to come to the fore.

Individually, both Blücher and Gneisenau were handicapped by serious flaws. Together, they made a formidable and brilliant command team.

The four Prussian corps commanders were Generals Ziethen, Pirch, Thielmann and Büllow. Count Hans von Ziethen, commander of I Corps, was a tough veteran of the 1813 and 1814 campaigns against the French. He had particularly distinguished himself at Leipzig, the great ‘Battle of the Nations’, in 1813. Now Ziethen was forty-five years old.

Georg von Pirch, at the head of II Corps, was a native of Magdeburg and was fifty-two years of age.

Baron Johann von Thielmann, fifty years old and commander of III Corps, was Saxon by birth. He had served in the French ranks, commanding a Saxon cavalry brigade in Napoleon’s army at Borodino in 1812. But in 1813, Thielmann defected to the allies and carried out attacks on French lines of communication. Arrogant and tactless, Thielmann was nevertheless an experienced soldier and had the advantage of possessing a fine Chief of Staff in the person of Colonel Carl von Clausewitz. Clausewitz was destined to emerge after 1815 as the world’s most famous military philosopher.

Friedrich von Büllow, the Count of Dennewitz, was sixty years of age and a seasoned veteran with several sucesses to his credit. In 1813, he had defeated Marshal Oudinot at Gross-Beeren and Marshal Ney at Dennewitz. Büllow had been present at Leipzig (1813) and Laon (1814) and in 1815 commanded IV Corps. Although Bülow’s corps was not present at Ligny, it would form the main Prussian contribution at the Battle of Waterloo two days later.

With the exception of Bülow, none of these corps commanders belonged to the first rank of Prussian military leaders. Generals Tauenzien, Yorck and Count Frederick Kleist von Nollendorf were tried and tested commanders of genius, yet they were given commands outside Blücher’s army. The reason for this was the outdated strict Prussian system of command by seniority. Baron Carl von Müffling wrote that ‘Gneisenau really commanded the army, and … Blücher merely acted as an example as the bravest in battle.’14

But Gneisenau was below Tauenzien, Yorck and Kleist in seniority. Gneisenau was essential to the Prussian army as Blücher’s brains. Hence the only answer was to appoint younger generals to corps commands, even at the price of depriving the army of the services of better, yet senior, men. It was ridiculous, it was self-defeating but there was no choice. Of the four corps commanders, only Bülow was senior to Gneisenau, and so Bülow’s IV Corps was expected to act as a reserve to Blücher’s army. In the event, it would have to participate in the campaign and fight under Gneisenau’s orders and this resulted in a misunderstanding that meant Büllow failed to arrive in time to participate in the Battle of Ligny.

All in all, the Prussian generals were reasonably able professionals with experience and valour, though they lacked the elan and flair enjoyed by the best of their French counterparts.

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley the Duke of Wellington enters but briefly and indirectly into the story of the Battle of Ligny. However, as Blücher’s ally and commander of the Anglo-Dutch-German army that tied down most of Marshal Ney’s French forces at Quatre Bras and prevented them from outflanking Blücher at Ligny, Wellington’s character demands analysis.