Waterloo

by Hilaire Belloc

IV

THE ALLIED RETREAT AND FRENCH ADVANCE UPON WATERLOO AND WAVRE

When the Prussians had concentrated to meet Napoleon at Ligny they had managed to collect, in time for the battle, three out of their four army corps.

These three army corps were the First, the Second, and the Third, and, as we have just seen, they were defeated.

But, as we have also seen, they were not thoroughly defeated. They were not disorganised, still less were the bulk of them captured and disarmed. Most important of all, they were free to retreat by any road that did not bring them against their victorious enemy. In other words, they were free to retreat to the north as well as to the east.

The full importance of this choice will, after the constant reiteration of it in the preceding pages, be clear to the reader. A retreat towards the east, and upon the line of communications which fed the Prussian army, would have had these two effects: First, it would have involved in the retirement that fresh Fourth Army Corps under Bulow which had not yet come into action, and which numbered no less than 32,000 men. For it lay to the east of the battlefield. In other words, that army corps would have been wasted, and the whole of the Prussian forces would have been forced out of the remainder of the campaign. Secondly, it would have finally separated Blucher and his Prussians from Wellington’s command. The Duke, with his western half of the allied forces, would have had to stand up alone to the mass of Napoleon’s army, which would, after the defeat of the Prussians at Ligny, naturally turn to the task of defeating the English General.

Now the fact of capital importance upon which the reader must concentrate if he is to grasp the issue of the campaign is the fact that the French staff fell into an error as to the true direction of the Prussian retreat.

Napoleon, Soult, and all the heads of the French army were convinced that the Prussian retreat was being made by that eastern road.

As a fact, the Prussians, under the cover of darkness, had retired not east but north.