XV.
EXTRACT FROM WELLINGTON’S “MEMORANDUM ON THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.”
SUPPLEMENTARY DESPATCHES, &c., of the Duke of Wellington:
vol. x, pp. 523 et seq.
But what follows will show that, notwithstanding the extension of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, such was the celerity of communication with all parts of it, that in point of fact[840] his orders reached all parts of the army in six hours after he had issued them; and that he was in line in person with a sufficient force to resist and keep in check the enemy’s corps which first attacked the Prussian corps under General Zieten at daylight on the 15th of June; having received the intelligence of that attack only at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th, he was at Quatre Bras before the same hour on the morning of the 16th,[841] with a sufficient force to engage the left of the French army.
It was certainly true that he had known for some days of the augmentation of the enemy’s force on the frontier, and even of the arrival of Buonaparte at the army; but he did not deem it expedient to make any movement, excepting for the assembly of the troops at their several alarm posts, till he should hear of the decided movement of the enemy.
The first account received by the Duke of Wellington was from the Prince of Orange, who had come in from the out-posts of the army of the Netherlands to dine with the Duke at three o’clock in the afternoon. He reported that the enemy had attacked the Prussians at Thuin; that they had taken possession of, but had afterwards abandoned, Binch; that they had not yet touched the positions of the army of the Netherlands. While the Prince was with the Duke, the staff officer employed by Prince Blücher at the Duke’s headquarters, General Müffling, came to the Duke to inform him that he had just received intelligence of the movement of the French army and their attack upon the Prussian troops at Thuin.
It appears by the statement of the historian[842] that the posts of the Prussian corps of General Zieten were attacked at Thuin at four o’clock on the morning of the 15th; and that General Zieten himself, with a part of his corps, retreated and was at Charleroi at about ten o’clock on that day; yet the report thereof was not received at Bruxelles till three o’clock in the afternoon. The Prussian cavalry of the corps of Zieten was at Gosselies and Fleurus on the evening and night of the 15th.
Orders were forthwith sent for the march of the whole army to its left.
The whole moved on that evening and in the night, each division and portion separately, but unmolested; the whole protected on the march by the defensive works constructed at the different points referred to, and by their garrisons.
The reserve, which had been encamped in the neighborhood and cantoned in the town and in the neighborhood of Bruxelles, were ordered to assemble in and in the neighborhood of the park at Bruxelles, which they did on that evening; and they marched in the morning of the 16th upon Quatre Bras, towards which post the march of all the troops consisting of the left and centre of the army, and of the cavalry in particular, was directed.