The Campaign of Waterloo: A Military History / Third Edition

by John Codman Ropes

Of the three divisions of the 2d Corps present at the battle,—that of Girard having been left at Ligny,—the division of Jerome was on the left, that of Foy in the centre, and that of Bachelu on the right,—its right resting on the Charleroi road.

Of the four divisions of the 1st Corps, that of Donzelot was the left, and its left rested on the Charleroi road; then came that of Allix, commanded by Quiot; then that of Marcognet, and then that of Durutte. This last was opposite Papelotte and La Haye.

The two armies were nearly equal in numbers; and had that of the Duke of Wellington been equal in point of material to that of the Emperor, the advantage of position which it possessed would have fully made up for the slight superiority in numbers possessed by the French. As it was, however, the superiority of the French, not only in artillery and cavalry, but so far as a large part of the Anglo-Dutch army was concerned, in moral, was unquestionable, and Wellington’s only justification for receiving battle lay, as Kennedy points out above, in his expectation of receiving help from Blücher.

Napoleon, as we have seen, dictated his plan of battle before eleven o’clock. It provided that,[701] as soon as the whole army should be ranged in order of battle, about 1 P.M., and the Emperor should give the order to Marshal Ney, the attack should commence, having for its object to get possession of the village of Mont St. Jean, where the road from Nivelles strikes into the Charleroi turnpike. This attack was to be made by the 1st Corps, supported on the left by the 2d Corps. To aid this attack a formidable battery of seventy-eight guns, many of them twelve-pounders, was to be moved forward on the east side of the road to a ridge which ran in front of and parallel to the French line of battle, and only 600 yards from the English position.

The Emperor had then definitely decided before eleven o’clock to defer the principal move of the day till about one in the afternoon. In this decision he was mainly, if not wholly, influenced by the difficulties which he saw would be caused by the deep mud of the fields over which his troops would have to manœuvre.

The determination of Napoleon to make his main effort against the village of Mont St. Jean, so as to possess himself of the principal avenue of retreat open to the enemy,—the road to Brussels,—has always elicited the commendation of military men. The Emperor undoubtedly intended to aid the attack of the 1st Corps by advancing the 6th Corps in its support; but this, as we shall see, owing to the intervention of the Prussians, he did not attempt. Whether, in case the attack had succeeded, so far as to give to the French the possession of the Brussels road, the Forest of Soignes would have afforded cover to Wellington’s retreating army, as English writers have always maintained, or would have necessitated the abandonment of the greater part of their artillery, as Napoleon contended, is a question which we will not undertake to discuss here.

At 11.30 A.M., before the time arrived for beginning the main operation of the day, Napoleon ordered Reille to attack Hougomont with his left division, that of Prince Jerome.[702] This movement, intended only as a diversion, was undertaken without any sufficient examination of the enemy’s position, and in the most inconsiderate manner.[703] Neither Jerome, who commanded the division, nor Guilleminot, who, Charras maintains, really controlled its operations, took the pains to direct the boiling courage and superfluous energy of the men, which, skilfully used, might have resulted in obtaining at least partial success. For example, the western entrance of the Chateau was perfectly open to artillery fire, and, had a few heavy guns been employed, the doors and adjacent wall would have been demolished, and the building would probably have been taken,[704] although it is doubtful if it could have been held. Bags of powder, also, would have destroyed the garden wall, but no one thought of supplying them to the men.[705] In consequence of these neglects, the soldiers of Jerome’s division, after possessing themselves of the wood and orchard, were shot down by their opponents from behind the garden wall, and from the loopholes in the house and its outbuildings, and could make no further progress. This, of itself, was, perhaps, of no great consequence; but Reille, impatient of being thwarted, and still neglecting to ascertain the precise reasons of the ill-success of the attack, sent in the division of Foy to support that of Jerome. In fact, later in the day, the division of Bachelu was also employed in this useless and most costly attempt to get possession of Hougomont. When it is considered that the 2d Corps contained on this morning not far from 12,000 foot soldiers, and that very few of them assisted in the attacks on the main line of the English army, one gets an idea of the wasteful, and, in fact, inexcusable mismanagement of the resources of the French army on this day. Not more than half the above number of men were employed to maintain the position.

The main operation of the day was to be, as we have said, an advance by the 1st Corps under d’Erlon to break the centre of the English line at and near the junction of the Wavre road with the turnpike. The great battery of seventy-eight pieces of cannon continued firing for an hour and a half at a distance of less than a third of a mile from the crest in front of which lay the brigade of Bylandt, and behind which lay the brigades of Kempt and Pack and Best of Picton’s division. At half-past one Napoleon ordered d’Erlon forward.

His attack was to be made in four columns, marching in échelon, the left in advance. The formation of these columns was so extraordinary, and so ill-suited for the work to be done, that it has always excited the comment of military men. We owe to Charras[706] a clear explanation of this formation. The first, or left, column consisted of the brigade of Bourgeois of the division of Allix,—the other brigade of this division, that of Quiot, being assigned to the special task of capturing La Haye Sainte. This brigade of Bourgeois contained four battalions, one behind another; each battalion stood in three ranks, one behind the other; and there was a distance of five paces between the battalions. The front of this column, therefore, consisted of one-third of the number of men in the leading battalion; and there being four battalions in the brigade, there were of course twelve ranks in the column. It was the same, mutatis mutandis, with the other columns. Donzelot’s division, which contained nine battalions, had, therefore, twenty-seven ranks in its column; the divisions of Marcognet and Durutte, which had only eight battalions each, had each twenty-four ranks. This formation was quite an exceptional one. A column very generally in use at that day consisted of a battalion in the centre, in line,—that is, in three ranks,—flanked on either side, by battalions in column of divisions, capable of promptly forming line or square. And then there were other convenient formations in frequent use. But these formations of d’Erlon’s divisions were unwieldy,—they lacked mobility. Why Ney and d’Erlon should have departed from the usual practice on this occasion, no one knows.[707]

The story of d’Erlon’s charge has been often told.[708] How the soldiers of the unfortunate brigade of Bylandt, utterly unable, as they were, after having been exposed to the fire of the great battery for an hour and a half, to resist alone the impact of such an enormous force, broke in confusion and fell to the rear amid the undeserved curses of their English allies;[709] how the French in their unwieldy masses pressed forward to the crest of the ridge to receive the fire at short range of the brigades of Pack and Kempt, which only the leading battalions were able, owing to the faulty formation of the columns, to return at all; and how, when staggered by the fire, and while endeavoring to disengage their closely following ranks, Ponsonby’s brigade of heavy cavalry charged them furiously, riding down between the columns, throwing them into confusion, cutting down the exposed foot-soldiers, capturing two eagles, and many prisoners, disabling some 15 guns, and forcing the three left columns to fall back in disorder,—all this is familiar to all readers of the story of Waterloo. It is difficult to find a parallel to this clumsily executed movement of d’Erlon’s. At the same time, faulty as the formation of the columns was, the troops got actually on the crest of the British position; and had there been any timidity or hesitation on the part of their adversaries, the columns would undoubtedly have forced their way through the British line. But the necessary time was not allowed them. Sir Thomas Picton was alive to the danger; he was prompt to seize the opportunity; his troops by their close and deadly fire threw the heads of the columns into confusion, and then charged them with the bayonet. Lord Uxbridge, who commanded the cavalry, rode over from his own position on the other side of the turnpike, and ordered Ponsonby to charge. He then returned to lead Somerset’s cavalry brigade in a successful charge on the west of the pike. The whole affair was a great and deserved success for the English. Their cavalry, however, was very severely handled on returning to its original positions.