The fact is, that, at 3 A.M. of the 16th only the brigade of Prince Bernhard of Saxe Weimar was at Quatre Bras, and he had taken it there entirely on his own responsibility, and not, as is implied in the above statement, in obedience to orders from the Duke of Wellington.
But it is unnecessary to set forth in detail any refutation of such statements as the above. The best English authorities do not rely[195] on this Memorandum, alleging that the Duke’s memory, when he wrote it, was no longer exact.[196] We are quite within bounds when we say that this Memorandum adds nothing to our knowledge of the facts. We may add that it is a pity that this is so. Wellington wrote this Memorandum in 1842,—twenty-seven years only after the date of the battle of Waterloo. This is not so very long after the occurrence: we are now twenty-nine years after Gettysburg. Very many officers conversant with the facts must have been then alive; and the Duke had access to all the official papers. It is a pity, we repeat, that he did not set himself to the task of drawing up an exhaustive and accurate narrative of the facts of the campaign.
2. We desire to call attention again to the absence of evidence that Wellington and Blücher had formulated any definite plan of concerted action in the event of Napoleon’s invading Belgium.
One thing, at any rate, is quite clear, and that is that neither of the allied commanders acted, so far as we can judge, in pursuance of any such agreement. Blücher, when he hears of Napoleon’s advance to Charleroi, orders his army to assemble at Sombreffe, and then sends word to Wellington of what he has done; the latter, as we have seen, although he learns that the enemy’s main attack is by way of Charleroi and therefore upon the Prussians, and although he has long known that in this event it was Blücher’s intention to concentrate his army at Sombreffe, takes no instant steps to bring his army into close union with that of Blücher. His first idea, certainly, is to assemble his army at Nivelles. This difficulty, it is true, does not seem greatly to trouble the writers who have adopted the theory of a previous understanding or arrangement; it seems to be possible, for instance, for Siborne, to believe that Wellington had agreed to concentrate at Quatre Bras,[197] and yet actually to call attention[198] to the fact that he halted Picton’s division at Waterloo, hours after he had known that Blücher was concentrating at Sombreffe, because he had not then made up his mind whether to send Picton to Nivelles or to Quatre Bras. But he and those other historians who have followed him, or have adopted the same theory, have certainly a serious difficulty to contend with. The Duke had been informed about mid-night[199] that Quatre Bras was occupied by a part of Perponcher’s division, and he had heard also that Blücher was concentrating his army at Sombreffe. If he had agreed with Blücher to concentrate the Anglo-Dutch army at Quatre Bras, he would assuredly have given his orders accordingly, and in season,—at least one would suppose so,—and he certainly could have had a large force there by ten o’clock in the morning. But he acted, on the other hand, as if he thought that he possessed perfect discretion as to what he would do,—as if he was bound by no agreement whatsoever. It is evident, in fact, that he did not make up his mind till shortly before he left Brussels to go to Quatre Bras himself, whether he would undertake to hold the place or not.
3. It is, however, to be noted that the action that was fought at Quatre Bras assumed at once such importance in the eyes of the world, that those historians who have been great admirers of the Duke have very generally asserted that he had, almost from the first news of the French attack, determined to concentrate his army there. This assertion has been accompanied by many eulogistic remarks, in which Wellington’s prescience and power of quick decision have been held up to an undeserved admiration. “At ten the same night, however” [the 15th], says Gleig,[200] “the enemy’s movements had sufficiently disclosed his intentions; and the whole army, with the exception of the reserve, was put in motion. It marched by various roads upon Quatre Bras.” Captain Pringle, of the Royal Engineers, upon whom Sir Walter Scott largely relied for his narrative of the campaign, says:[201] “Having obtained further intelligence about 11 o’clock [on the evening of the 15th], which confirmed the real attack of the enemy to be along the Sambre, orders were immediately given for the troops to march upon Quatre Bras.”
We have just seen that no such orders were given until the early morning hours of the 16th.
4. Assuming now, as we fairly may, that the Duke did not direct a general concentration of his army at Quatre Bras until shortly before he left Brussels, say, for a guess, at 2 A.M. of the 16th, let us endeavor to get a notion, if we may, of his first intentions and expectations, as shown in his previously issued orders.
He had directed three divisions on Nivelles,—all his reserves to a point on the Charleroi-Brussels pike from which they could easily be moved to Nivelles,—and his more westerly divisions to Enghien and Braine-le-Comte, in the direction of Nivelles. Among the troops thus directed on Nivelles were some that had been stationed at Genappe and Quatre Bras. He had in fact ordered his army to concentrate at Nivelles; notwithstanding that he had been informed that the French attack was by way of Charleroi, that Blücher was concentrating at Sombreffe, that a brigade of Dutch-Belgians was at Quatre Bras, and that it had been skirmishing with the enemy. The question of the appropriateness of his action to these facts is certainly an interesting one.
Colonel Maurice, the most recent military commentator on the campaign, discusses this question, and arrives at the conclusion that Wellington’s original intention of concentrating his army at Nivelles, was in accord with the principles of war.[202] “If there is one thing which rests on more certain experience than another,” says he, “it is that an army ought not to expose itself piecemeal to the blows of a concentrated enemy. Wellington, therefore, contemplated concentrating his army out of reach of the advancing French. Napoleon, from his general knowledge of the position of the English army, assumed that they would, of course, not venture to oppose him till they had fallen back to concentrate. As the case actually happened, only the wild wandering of d’Erlon’s Corps prevented Ney from overwhelming the force in his presence at Quatre Bras.”
To this it may be replied:—