We do not think[142] that Müffling intends here to state that Blücher and Wellington had made any agreement as to their respective action in case Napoleon should be the invader; he only tells us what in his judgment was the true course for them to take,—the course marked out, as he thought, by the circumstances and the locality. That we are right in this, will appear when the likelihood of Wellington’s having definitely agreed to advance his army to the very borders of the Sambre and the immediate vicinity of Charleroi, in view of his well-known anxiety for his communications, is considered for a moment.[143] We believe that the Duke, although doubtless informed of Marshal Blücher’s intention to concentrate his army at Sombreffe in case the enemy advanced by way of Charleroi, made no agreement whatever with him as to his own movements. The two commanders no doubt fully intended to act in concert, and expected and relied upon the hearty support of each other, but there was not, as we believe, any definite agreement as to the particular steps to be taken in the event of a French invasion.
This matter is an important one to settle, because some Prussian historians claim that Blücher gave battle at Ligny relying on Wellington’s agreement to support him. We cannot decide on this question at the present stage of our narrative; but we have already seen that Blücher gave orders for his four corps to concentrate at Sombreffe without any definite agreement or understanding with Wellington that he was to be assisted by the English in the battle that was almost certain to occur as a consequence of this concentration. All he had a right to expect was, that the Duke, as soon as he was informed of the situation, would at once assemble his forces, and, if he could safely and wisely do so, would march to the assistance of his ally.[144] But the Prussian Marshal took the risk of the English general’s not coming to his support in the next day’s battle; for, in the first place, he knew the scattered situation of the Anglo-Dutch troops, and that it would take a couple of days or so to get them together; and, secondly, he could not be sure that Napoleon might not, by operating with a part of his army by way of Mons and Hal, induce the Duke to concentrate his forces so far to the westward as to put it out of his power to render any help to an army that was fighting in front of Sombreffe.
We have stated that, on the evening of the 14th, Blücher ordered the IId, IIId and IVth Corps to concentrate at or near Sombreffe. In compliance with these directions the IId and IIId Corps respectively concentrated, and marched rapidly towards Sombreffe. But Bülow, whose headquarters were at Liége, and who had, in obedience to his first orders, concentrated his corps, took it upon himself to disobey a subsequent order which he received about eleven o’clock in the morning of the 15th, directing him to march at once upon Hannut, and to put off the execution of this order until the next day. It is hardly worth while to undertake to decide how far Gneisenau, Blücher’s chief-of-staff, was, as has been often asserted, partly to blame for this mischance, by not inserting in the order a statement to the effect that hostilities were imminent. The matter has been often discussed;[145] it would seem that Bülow ought to bear the largest share of the blame; but why Gneisenau, upon whose shoulders lay the burden of effecting a concentration of the entire army by the morning of the 16th, should have omitted, when a battle was imminent, to put the commander of his most distant corps in possession of the facts of the situation and of Marshal Blücher’s intentions, it is certainly not easy to see. In such an exigency, the chief-of-staff must be held to the duty of omitting nothing that would tend to accomplish his task.
The Duke of Wellington had been, as had Marshal Blücher, aware for the last few days of the movement of large masses of French troops near the frontier, but he had not deemed it necessary or desirable in any way to alter his dispositions. He felt that his army was the force relied upon to protect Brussels, where the King of the Netherlands was, and Ghent, where the King of France was, and that it was of the utmost importance that Napoleon should not be allowed to gain the political advantage of putting those newly made sovereigns to flight,[146] and repossessing himself of Belgium and Holland. Moreover, of the importance of preserving his own communications with Antwerp and Ostend the Duke was well aware. He believed that Napoleon’s best move would be against his communications;[147] and he felt that, under this belief, he ought to hesitate before concentrating his army and moving it by its left to gain a union with that of Marshal Blücher.[148]
Hence he retained his own headquarters at Brussels, thirty-four miles[149] from Charleroi. His army, as has been already stated, lay in cantonments to the westward of the Charleroi-Brussels turnpike. It is well known that Wellington looked for a movement of the French either on the road from Mons to Brussels or to the westward of that road. He had repaired the fortifications of Mons, Ypres, Tournay and other places, and put them in a state of defence.[150] It is also to be observed that for the last three days before the opening of hostilities the information that came to him of the enemy’s movements indicated a probable concentration of their forces near Mons.[151] Wellington’s troops, if they remained in the positions which they occupied on June 12th, for instance, could be concentrated at Braine-le-Comte or Hal,—towns on the road from Mons to Brussels,—much more readily than at Quatre Bras or Gosselies,—that is, they were well situated to oppose such a movement of the French as that which the Duke thought it most likely Napoleon would make. They were, it is true, still in their cantonments, scattered about in the towns and villages, but the Duke evidently thought that he would have time enough to assemble his various detachments and concentrate his army after the movements of his adversary should have been clearly ascertained. For holding this opinion he has been sharply criticised, but this we will consider in another place.
We must, therefore, bear in mind, first, that Wellington thought it likely that Napoleon would advance, if he advanced at all, by way of Mons, or to the westward of it, and, secondly, that he thought his own army was well placed to meet such an advance. In fact we may go further, and say that Wellington having this opinion about the line which the French would probably take, felt it all the more necessary to retain his troops in their existing positions, from which they could, as he judged, easily be assembled to meet such an attack, because he saw clearly that no assistance, certainly no immediate assistance, could be expected from the Prussians, in such an emergency, so remote were they from the Mons-Brussels route. If Napoleon was to be met or baffled in such a movement it must be by the Anglo-Dutch army. And the Duke also saw with equal clearness that nothing could serve the purpose of the French, if they were making their main attack by way of Mons, better than a premature movement of the Anglo-Dutch army towards Quatre Bras and Sombreffe, by which the communications of that army would be exposed throughout their whole length. Hence it was to be expected that the Duke would be most careful not to make such a premature movement, and, therefore, that he would insist on being convinced that the main French attack was by way of Charleroi before doing more than effecting the assembling of his scattered troops at their respective places of rendezvous.
It so happened that the Prince of Orange, who commanded, as we have said, the 1st Corps, left his headquarters at Braine-le-Comte early on the morning of the 15th, rode to the outposts, heard some firing in the direction of Thuin, a village some ten miles west of Charleroi, and then rode straight to Brussels[152] without stopping on his way at his own headquarters. During his absence[153] reports had been forwarded to him from Generals Dörnberg and Behr, who were at Mons, to the effect that all was quiet in their front, and from Van Merlen, whose command lay a little to the eastward of Mons, that Steinmetz’s Prussian brigade had been attacked early in the morning[154] and that the enemy’s movements seemed to be directed on Charleroi. These reports remained some hours at the Prince’s headquarters, and were then forwarded to the Duke at Brussels, where they arrived in the evening. But before that time, in fact by or before 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the Prince himself had arrived, bringing his own report, which was a very indefinite one, and which was to the effect that the enemy had attacked the Prussian outposts near Thuin. This was the first information which the Duke received of the outbreak of hostilities.[155] About the same time, also, a dispatch[156] sent by Zieten to Müffling arrived, announcing that he had been attacked before Charleroi.
Wellington gave sufficient credence to these reports to issue orders[157] for the immediate concentration of the different divisions[158] at the points designated for them respectively, and for their being in readiness to march at a moment’s notice, but waited till further reports from Mons should come in before doing more.[159] These orders were despatched between five and seven o’clock.[160]
They provided simply, as we have said above, for the assembling of the various divisions of the army at certain convenient places. There is, however, one passage in these orders that requires attention. Alten’s division—the third British division—had been directed in the first part of the order to assemble at Braine-le-Comte, but it was further ordered to march to Nivelles (where the two Dutch-Belgian divisions of Chassé and Perponcher had been directed to assemble), if Nivelles had been attacked during the 15th, yet not until it should be found “quite certain that the enemy’s attack is upon the right of the Prussian army and the left of the British army.”[161] This concentration of three divisions of infantry with cavalry and artillery, say about 25,000 men, at Nivelles, seven miles west of Quatre Bras, was thus the only provision made in this first order or set of orders for the contingency of the French attack being made on the lines on which it actually was made; and it would seem to be a legitimate inference from this arrangement that Nivelles, and not Quatre Bras, had been selected by Wellington as the point of concentration for his army in case Napoleon advanced by way of Charleroi. In this connection it is important to note that in a letter dated 7 P.M., but probably not sent off till midnight, Müffling wrote to Blücher that the Duke would be in the morning in the region of Nivelles with his whole force.[162]
Later in the evening, a despatch from Blücher to Müffling, sent from Namur, arrived,[163] announcing the concentration of the Prussian army at Sombreffe, and requesting Müffling