“There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium’s capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes look’d love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage bell;
But hush! hark! A deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it! No; ’twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o’er the stony street;
On with the dance! Let joy be unconfined:
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet—
But hark! That heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! Arm! It is—it is the cannon’s opening roar.”
After the ball, the Prince of Orange, anxious for orders, was told by the duke, it is said, to “go to bed”; but he started instead for Quatre Bras, which his chief did not reach until eleven o’clock.
Then the duke rode to Ligny and conferred with Blucher. At this conference he agreed, against apparently his own and Müffling’s opinion, to move to the right rear of the Prussians and act as a reserve, provided he were not attacked himself. To do so he must have moved by the Namur Chaussée, which passes through Quatre Bras. To do so at all, therefore, that point must first be securely held. To have made a flank march in the very presence of the enemy, and to have left his own line of advance, towards which his troops were converging, exposed to danger, would but have been to court disaster. To lend any aid whatever to Blucher, Quatre Bras was his first case. But Herr Delbruck, in his Life of Gneisenau, makes the assertion that the battle of Ligny was only fought on the assumption that 60,000 men would form on their right to strengthen, and if necessary prolong, their line on this side, while Müffling, on the other hand, clearly points out that the promise to come to Ligny was quite conditional—“provided,” to use the duke’s own words, “I am not attacked myself.”
Moreover, for the Prussians to fight at Ligny can scarcely be considered optional. Like the action at Quatre Bras, it was unavoidable, unless they retreated at once on Waterloo; for if Wellington were obliged to engage the enemy in order to check his advance and complete his concentration, it was equally Blucher’s only choice to give battle at Ligny so as to enable Bülow to join him. But now comes in a very remarkable statement made by Gneisenau, who was the chief of staff to the Prussian army which Blucher commanded in chief. He was the thoughtful brain thereof, as his chief, old Marshal “Vorwarts,” was the fighting leader. Excellent as the latter was at carrying out with abundant energy a plan entrusted to him, the devising of that plan was given to more able and accomplished students of the art of war. Gneisenau was esteemed one of these, and the Prussian plan of co-operation with Wellington is probably due mainly, if not entirely, to him. This fact must be borne clearly in mind in criticising his comments on the campaign in which he took so prominent a part. Moreover, he was next in command to Blucher, and was thus placed with the object of assuming supreme authority over the Prussian army, should such an eventuality as the temporary or permanent disablement of Blucher render his services necessary. Such an eventuality occurred at Ligny, and the retreat to Wavre was therefore directed by Gneisenau, although the final operations of the Prussian army, which led to so brilliant a result as the battle of the 18th June, were superintended by Blucher himself. Gneisenau’s position, therefore, was difficult and delicate. In supreme command all the honours of victory would be his; acting as second in command, only a reflection of that glory would fall upon him. Some allowance must be made, therefore, for his views with regard to the campaign, if only for the sake of the possible reason that his judgment was embittered by the fact that, in the opinion of the world, to Wellington and to Blucher, not to Gneisenau, the successful issue of the most momentous battle that the world has seen was mainly due.
It is difficult to understand without some such charitable assumption the bitterness of his remarks regarding the English Commander-in-chief, which are so prominently brought forward in the fourth volume of his life. Not only does he comment in an almost contemptuous spirit on the early dispositions of Wellington before the hostile armies came into contact, but he accuses him of a want of camaraderie which is foreign to the English character, and with which Wellington cannot fairly be charged.
None the less, the Prussian leader plainly and brusquely considers that he was guilty of culpable slowness in concentrating after the French had attacked Ziethen’s outposts on the Sambre on the 15th June, and charges him with dilatoriness in issuing the necessary orders on the receipt of the intelligence that the Prussian outposts were so engaged, and with want of loyalty to his Prussian allies in not rendering them active assistance at Ligny.
The two first of these may be dismissed without comment. They were matters of opinion, and, rightly or wrongly, Wellington took his own view regarding them, and must abide, like other men, by his acts, and submit to honest criticism. But the last is more serious, for it is not only stated that Ligny would not have been fought, had it not been for Wellington’s asserted promise to help, but that he promised in case of disaster to fall back, with a portion of the army at least, with Blucher to the Rhine. Gneisenau’s charge is both venomous and explicit. He compares his own impression with the want of cordial feeling that undoubtedly frequently existed between the duke and the Spanish generals in the Peninsula; but this is such an ex parte statement as to merit little rejoinder.
The evidence of every officer who shared in the glories and troubles of the Peninsular campaigns bears full testimony to the jealousy, and want even of courtesy, sometimes shown by the Spaniards, both towards the army that was fighting for the deliverance of the country and the chief who commanded it. It was not Wellington only who experienced this difficulty of operating with the Spanish allies of the British. Lord Lynedoch[45] very fully supports the accusation of incompetency, jealousy, and uncordiality against the Spanish generals. After the battle of Barrosa, his letters and despatches refer frequently to his own difficulties with them; and as a general officer acting somewhat independently of the principal British army, his corroboration of the generally received opinion is valuable and trustworthy.