It is unjust in the extreme to draw any comparison between the want of unanimity that frequently existed in Spain, and the enforced inability of Wellington to come to the assistance of Blucher on the field of Ligny. But Wellington wrote a letter, which is quoted in detail in Herr Delbruck’s Life of Gneisenau, in which this controversy arises. It runs as follows:—
“Sur les hauteurs derriere Frasnes,
le 16 June 1815, á 10 heures et demi.“Mon cher Prince,—Mon armée est situé comme il suit. Le corps d’armée du Prince d’Orange a une division ici et à Quatre Bras et le reste à Nivelles. La Reserve est en marche de Waterloo sur Genappe, où elle arrivera à midi. La cavalerie Anglaise sera à la même heure à Nivelles. Le corps de Lord Hill est à Braine le Comte.
“Je ne vois pas beaucoup de l’ennemi en avant de nous, et j’attends les nouvelles de votre Altesse; et l’arrivée des troupes pour decider mes operations pour la journée.
“Rien n’a paru du côté de Binche ni sur notre droit.—Votre très obeissant serviteur,
“Wellington.”
Much capital is made out of this document. It is assumed that Wellington made a promise which he must have known could not be fulfilled. And the still graver charge is implied that the letter was intentionally misleading. It seems scarcely credible that such a view could be maintained, knowing the good feeling that obtained between him and all the Prussian leaders except Gneisenau. Moreover, Wellington’s own army was not so good, so homogeneous, or even so numerically superior to that of the French as to render his chance of fighting the emperor single-handed, when his troops were flushed with victory, a successful one. The political feeling of the Belgians, the sympathy undoubtedly felt by many with the French, a sympathy only half concealed in many cases, would be an additional reason for his being very far from desirous of in any way opposing the concentration of the Allied armies.
At the time specified there was, judging from his own statement as to the reconnaissance, little doubt in his mind but that no serious attack would be made on Quatre Bras; and he evidently intended to move to Ligny unless prevented. As to the actual position of his corps, he seemed to have indicated where they might possibly be by the time when the letter was written, rather than where they actually were; the errors in position of the different corps averaging ten miles. He seems to have forgotten, however, that by the after order of 10 p.m. on the 15th June, Picton had been directed to march along the Namur road, only “to the point where the road to Nivelles separates,” i.e. near Mont St. Jean. Clausewitz’s view that the halt there was designedly made until after the interview with Blucher is, as Colonel Chesney remarked, “obviously inconsistent” with the known time of Picton’s appearance with the leading division at Quatre Bras. As a matter of fact, he apparently overrated his power of concentration and the movement of his brigades, though there seems no reason to doubt but what they might have been, on the whole, very nearly in the positions assigned had they moved with ordinary speed.
Be all this as it may, the battle of Quatre Bras began. At the cross roads there, at 2 p.m. on the 15th June, were 7000 Dutch Belgians and 16 guns, against 17,500 French infantry and cavalry and 38 guns, who speedily drove back the outposts at Frasnes, and were pressing them still farther back through the wood of Bossu on the Allied right when the first reinforcements came. These were Pack’s Brigade, composed of the 42nd, 44th, 92nd, and 95th; Kempt’s Brigade, of 28th, 32nd, 79th, and 1st, and a Hanoverian Brigade of four battalions, with two more batteries; and thus from 3.30 to 4.30 the Allies numbered 20,000 men with 28 guns, against 18,000 with 44 guns. Now, therefore, Picton, with whom the duke “was barely on speaking terms,” made a counter attack on the left, with the usual result that the fire of the line drove back the enemy’s skirmishers which covered the advance of their columns, and these, broken by fire against their mass and then charged with the bayonet, fell back too. But on the other wing, the right, there was some confusion. The Brunswickers there had fled, both horse and foot, and their duke was wounded. The 42nd in the tall rye grass were somewhat rolled up, as they were not in square, while the 44th, assailed in front as well as rear, faced both ranks outwards, and reserved their fire to twenty paces. So the enemy’s charge swept on across the field from right to left until the 92nd checked it and compelled it to retire. Meanwhile, the Bossu wood on the right was lost, and the French heavy cavalry in vain charged the British squares, but broke up the 69th, whose order to form square had been countermanded by the Prince of Orange. So the fight fluctuated until between 5 and 6 p.m., when the Allied troops now numbered 32,000 men and 68 guns (against 20,700 and 50 guns) by the arrival of the Guards and some Brunswickers. Then the whole force advanced, and victory rested with them. Thus the battle ended at about 6.30 p.m., and at that time, even if D’Erlon had joined Ney, the French left would still have been outnumbered. But Wellington, writes the ablest critic of this momentous campaign, “at dusk, thirty hours after his first warning, had only present at Quatre Bras three-eighths of his infantry, one-third of his guns, and one-seventh of his cavalry. Truly, in holding his own, the great Englishman owed something that day to fortune.”[46]
This is really the gravamen of Gneisenau’s charge. During the night the Allied right wing was reinforced to 45,000 men, but, short as the distance between the wings was, showing how less intimate the connection between the Allied armies was than it should have been, Blucher’s left wing was beaten and in full retreat, and the English general did not know the fact till late.
So retreat was unavoidable, and was begun at 10 a.m. on the 17th. Wellington was to fall back on the known position of Waterloo. Blucher had promised to come with his whole army if he could. Napoleon had despatched Grouchy with 33,000 men to prevent this, and keep the Prussians on the move; but the emperor’s own ill health and failing strength had again caused delay; so Grouchy started late, and Napoleon wasted his time in rest and a review.
The British retreat was well conducted in wretched weather, and despite the heavy ground, there was some rearguard fighting, chiefly by the cavalry on both sides. At length, on the sodden ground about Mont St. Jean, both armies settled down for what rest was possible, and waited for the dawn. Thus the British prepared for battle, with the hope that Blucher, or the certainty that night, would come on the 18th June 1815.
But still, with a firmness that seems degenerating into obstinacy, Wellington persisted in his nervous anxiety for his right flank, as he had done throughout, and stationed some 10,000 men out of his small army at Hal. His excuse that the troops were inferior is futile, for he had battalions of a precisely similar character on the battlefield of Waterloo. He must have known, from the extent of front occupied, that the bulk of the French army were in front of him. He must have guessed that some considerable force had been despatched to keep the defeated Prussians on the move. He knew that the distance of Hal was such as to preclude the possibility of any further considerable detachment from the main French army being made, as it would be entirely isolated from the main battle.
His force was none too strong to hold the position till Blucher came. His centre was weak and reserves were insufficient. By ten o’clock, thinks Shaw Kennedy, “it is difficult to understand how any fear for the Hal road could have existed.” None the less he left ten thousand men, under the Prince of Orange, not only unemployed, but likely to remain unemployed.