The battles of the world

by J. Douglas Borthwick

It was a knowledge of this intrinsic weakness of the Duke’s army, and of the fact that 10,000 or 15,000 of his old Peninsular troops would soon join him, that decided Napoleon, as is frankly confessed,[18] to make a sudden attack on the British and Prussian forces before they were fully prepared to meet him. Silently, therefore, but with his usual skill and rapidity, Napoleon brought together a powerful army, and on the morning of the 15th of June he moved forward and entered Belgium.

And here we are met by the most current of all the fictions which are connected with this history. A variety of writers have repeated, one after another—Napoleon himself setting them the example—the story that the Duke never heard of the approach of the French until eleven o’clock in the evening of that day, while at a ball at Brussels. The facts, however, which are beyond dispute, are these—that the French did not enter Charleroi, the first Belgian town, until eleven or twelve o’clock on June the 15th—that tidings of their movement reached the Duke at Brussels by three o’clock, and that between four and five o’clock that same afternoon orders went out to every corps of the British army to move to the front, many of them beginning their march that same evening. There was no surprise, then, nor was there the loss of a single day. The French had not marched thirty miles—had not entered any place of the least importance, when, on the third day, they found the British army drawn up across their path, and had to fight the battle of Waterloo.

They had, indeed, found their progress arrested still earlier. Entering Belgium on the 15th, they were stopped the very next day at Ligny by the Prussians, at Quatre Bras by a part of the English army. Marshal Blucher being defeated, and retiring a few miles, the Duke fell back also, and thus was enabled to draw up his army at Waterloo—a position which he had before observed to be an advantageous one, and which was in all respects well suited to the defence of Brussels.

It was on the afternoon of the 17th June that the Duke’s army found itself assembled on this spot. The French army, led by Napoleon himself, soon approached, but the day was too far advanced to afford time for a general engagement. The two armies, therefore, took position, the English on a rising ground called Mont St. Jean, about half a mile in advance of the village of Waterloo, and nine miles on the French side of Brussels; the French on a series of heights facing Mont St. Jean, having the village of Planchenoit on the right, and looking down upon a small valley which separated the two hosts.

And now we are naturally brought to a consideration of the question, what was the respective strength of these two armies? This is a point upon which Napoleon has bestowed great pains in his “Historical Memoir, Book ix,” and on which he has succeeded in deluding many English writers.

As to the strength of the British army, there can be no kind of doubt upon that point, for the actual numbers present in each battalion and squadron was carefully recorded; and these records were needed to establish the respective rights of all present to honours and rewards. We have spoken of a gross amount of nearly 100,000 men. But of these, several thousands were required to garrison Antwerp, Ostend, Nieuport, Ypres, Tournai, and Mons,—the loss at Quatre Bras had been 3000 or 4000, and a post of observation at Hal, consisted of nearly 6000. When these deductions were made, not quite 70,000 men remained, to meet Napoleon’s attack at Waterloo.

The British infantry in the field were 15,181, and the German Legion infantry were 3301. The British and German cavalry were 7840, and their artillery was 3493. Thus the whole reliable force of the Duke—the force to which he must look to stand the French attack—was not quite 30,000 men. All this was well known to Napoleon, who, in his “Book ix,” says, “Victory appeared to be certain,” for the French army consisted of “good troops, while, in the enemy’s army, the English only, amounting to 40,000 at most, could be reckoned upon as such.”[19]

The “Allied troops,” who made up the Duke’s array, consisted of 10,755 Hanoverians, many of whom were mere landwehr or militia, and nearly 25,000 Belgians, Dutch, and men of Brunswick and Nassau. Some of these fought gallantly, but others retreated whenever the French approached,—some actually flying from the field. Hence Napoleon justly says, “one Englishman might be counted for one Frenchman:—two Dutchmen, Prussians, or soldiers of the Confederation, for one Frenchman.”