This substitution of an expressed intention to attack the Prussians as soon as he should have caught up with them, if he finds them going to Wavre, is a radical departure from the received text. It is not difficult to see the motive for making this mutilation. Grouchy and his defenders were unwilling to allow that he had, in this despatch, expressed his intention of manœuvring with the object of separating the Prussians from Wellington, for that was exactly what he distinctly refused to do on the next day. And the reason which he alleged for refusing to follow Gérard’s advice was, that he had been told by the Emperor to follow the Prussians up closely, and attack them as soon as he should catch up with them. Hence, to admit that the received text of his 10 P.M. report on the 17th is correct, is to admit that Grouchy, at the time he wrote it, took a different view of his task from that which he put forward the next day, and ever afterwards maintained; it is, in fact, to admit that he had received, understood, and was intending to act under the Bertrand order, which warned him that the Prussians might be intending to unite with the English; that on that evening of the 17th, at any rate, he fully recognized the real danger to be feared, and regarded, as his great task, not the following on the heels of the Prussians, and attacking their rear guard, but manœuvring so as to prevent them from carrying out their purpose of joining the English.[836]
That the changes in the two Grouchy books are wilful mutilations of the correct text, made for the purpose stated above, appears sufficiently from the fact that the statement of what Grouchy was going to do, if he found the Prussians retiring on Perwès is entirely omitted, apart from the fact that not a single writer adopts the Grouchy version.
Charras puts it mildly in our opinion when he says of Grouchy,[837]—“He has not always been very exact, or very sincere.”
APPENDIX C.
I.
ADDRESS TO THE ARMY: June 14, 1815.
Corresp. Vol. 28, p. 324.
22052.—À L’ARMÉE.