“The reason is simple. It is that they were only transmitted to me verbally. Those who have served under Napoleon know how rarely he gives them in writing. * * * If it is of any consequence to show that they were only verbal, I can find if not a proof, certainly a strong indication of it in the letter of the Major-General, Marshal Soult, in speaking of my march on Sartavalin. He expresses himself in these terms:—
“‘This movement is conformed to the dispositions which have been communicated to you.’
“He would not have failed to say to the instructions or the orders which I have transmitted to you, and which you are acting under, if I had received any except verbal orders.”
The point of this argument is fully seen only when we remember that the Bertrand order was dictated by the Emperor in the absence of Soult, the chief-of-staff, and therefore no copy of it was likely to be found on the regular official files. But fortune enabled Grouchy to make sure of this, for he had, soon after Waterloo, an opportunity of examining the records of the chief-of-staff.
Accordingly, we find him, soon afterwards,[820] in support of his denial of having received the orders alleged in the Memoirs to have been sent to him, saying, not, as he ought to have done, that he did receive an order through Bertrand, which, however, was entirely different in its tenor from those given in the Memoirs, but that he received on the 17th no written order at all.
“The proof of this is in the order-book and correspondence of the major-general, the organ of communication of the General-in-chief with his lieutenants. This irrefutable document, which, when I received the command of the army after the loss of the battle of Waterloo, came into my possession, shows that no orders or instructions except those contained in the two letters given herewith, and dated at 10 A.M. and 1 P.M. of the 18th, were ever sent to me.”
In a work published in Paris in 1829, speaking of the 10 A.M. order to him of the 18th of June, he says:—[821]
“This letter, and that dated from the field of battle of Waterloo, at one o’clock, are the only ones which I received and which were written to me on the 17th and 18th. The book of the orders and correspondence of the major-general, which I possess, proves this. It gives the hours at which orders are given, and the names of the officers who carry them; and its details do not permit a suspicion of an omission any more than of a misstatement.”
It is rather remarkable, to say the least, that General Bertrand should not have stated what he recollected about the matter. But he does not appear to have done so; unless the mention in Jomini’s “Political and Military History of the Campaign of Waterloo,”[822] that General Bertrand sent Grouchy a positive order to march on Gembloux, may be attributed to information received from Bertrand.