Let us consider the difficulties in the way of accepting this conclusion. The first difficulty is that Ney would not have taken it upon himself to countermand an order of Napoleon’s. Those who argue thus neither know the character of Ney nor the nature of the struggle at Quatre Bras; and they certainly underestimate both the confusion and the elasticity of warfare. Ney, a man of violent temperament (as, indeed, one might expect with such courage), was in the heat of the desperate struggle at Quatre Bras when he received Napoleon’s order to abandon his own business (a course which was, so late in the action, physically impossible). Almost at the same moment Ney heard most tardily from a messenger whom Erlon had sent (a Colonel Delcambre) that Erlon, with his 20,000 men—Erlon, who had distinctly been placed under his orders—was gone off at a tangent, and was leaving him with a grossly insufficient force to meet the rapidly swelling numbers of Wellington. We have ample evidence of the rage into which he flew, and of the fact that he sent back Delcambre with the absolutely positive order to Erlon that he should turn round and come back to Quatre Bras.
Of course, if war were clockwork, if there were no human character in a commander, if no latitude of judgment were understood in the very nature of a great independent command such as Ney’s was upon that day, if there were always present before every independent commander’s mental vision an exact map of the operations, and, at the same time, a plan of the exact position of all the troops upon it at any given moment—if all these armchair conceptions of war were true, then Ney’s order would have been as undisciplined in character and as foolish in intention as it was disastrous in effect.
But such conceptions are not true. Great generals entrusted with separate forces, and told off to engage in a great action at a distance from the supreme command, have, by the very nature of their mission, the widest latitude of judgment left to them. They are perfectly free to decide, in some desperate circumstance, that if their superior knew of that circumstance, he would understand why an afterorder of his was not obeyed, or was even directly countermanded. That Ney should have sent this furious counterorder, therefore, to Erlon, telling him to come back instantly, in spite of Napoleon’s first note, though it was a grievous error, is one perfectly explicable, and parallel to many other similar incidents that diversify the history of war. In effect, Ney said to himself: “The Emperor has no idea of the grave crisis at my end of the struggle or he wouldn’t have sent that order. He is winning, anyhow; I am actually in danger of defeat; and if I am defeated, Wellington’s troops will pour through and come up on the Emperor’s army from the rear and destroy it. I have a right, therefore, to summon Erlon back.” Such was the rationale of Ney’s decision. His passionate mood did the rest.
A second and graver difficulty is this: By the time Erlon got the message to come back, it was so late that he could not possibly bring his 20,000 up in time to be of any use to Ney at Quatre Bras. They could only arrive on the field, as they did in fact arrive, when darkness had already set in. It is argued that a general in Ney’s position would have rapidly calculated the distance involved, and would have seen that it was useless to send for his subordinate at such an hour.
The answer to this suggestion is twofold. In the first place, a man under hot fire is capable of making mistakes; and Ney was, at the moment when he gave that order, under the hottest fire of the whole action. In the second place, he could not have any very exact idea of where in all those four miles of open fields behind him the head of Erlon’s column might be, still less where exactly Delcambre would find it by the time he had ridden back. A mile either way would have made all the difference; if Erlon was anywhere fairly close; if Delcambre knew exactly where to find him, and galloped by the shortest route—if this and if that, it might still be that Erlon would turn up just before darkness and decide the field in Ney’s favour.[11]
Considerable discussion has turned on whether, as the best authorities believe, Erlon did or did not receive a pencilled note written personally to him by the Emperor, telling him to turn at once and come to his, Napoleon’s, aid, and by his unexpected advent upon its flank destroy the Prussian army.
As an explanation of the false move of Erlon back and forth, the existence of this note is immaterial. The weight of evidence is in its favour, and men will believe or disbelieve it according to the way in which they judge human character and motive. For the purposes of a dramatic story the incident of a little pencilled note to Erlon is very valuable, but as an elucidation of the historical problem it has no importance, for, even if he got such a note, Erlon only got it in connection with general orders, which, he knew, were on their way to Ney, his superior.
The point for military history is that—
(a) Erlon, with the First Corps, on his way up to Quatre Bras that afternoon, was intercepted by a messenger, who told him that the Emperor wanted him to turn off eastward and go to Ligny, and not to Quatre Bras; while—
(b) He also knew that that message was intended also to be delivered, and either had been or was about to be delivered, to his superior officer, Ney. Therefore he went eastward as he had been told, believing that Ney knew all about it; and therefore, also, on receiving a further direct order from Ney to turn back again westward, he did turn back.