Your very obedient servant,
Wellington.
Let us see precisely how far this letter agrees with Colonel De Lancey’s Memorandum, which he drew up—presumably before the Duke left Brussels—for the Duke’s information, and of which we have before spoken, entitled “Disposition of the British army at 7 o’clock A.M., 16th June.” (See Map 4.)
The 1st Corps, says the Duke in his letter, has a division here,—that is, in rear of Frasnes,—and at Quatre Bras. This, as we have seen above, was the 2d division of Dutch-Belgian troops,—Perponcher’s. The rest of the 1st Corps, says the Duke, are at Nivelles. Now, of the three divisions,—those of Chassé (Dutch-Belgian), Alten, and Cooke, which constituted the rest of the 1st Corps,—the first two had been ordered to Nivelles the previous evening,—the last, Cooke’s, is stated in the De Lancey “Disposition” to be, at 7 A.M., at Braine-le-Comte. The Duke, therefore, might well suppose that it would accomplish the greater part of the distance between Braine-le-Comte and Nivelles, nine miles, in three hours and a half.
The Duke next says “The Reserve is in march from Waterloo to Genappe, where it will arrive at noon.” For this statement the Duke did not have to refer to the “Disposition.” He had passed Picton’s division on the road, a mile or two north of Waterloo, probably a little before 9 A.M.; and, supposing, as he did, that Picton either had then received, or shortly would receive, orders to push on to Quatre Bras, he was warranted in saying that the division would reach Genappe at noon. He did not take the trouble to except from his general statement, which he doubtless thought was sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes, the division of Sir Lowry Cole, which the “Disposition” placed at Assche, eight miles north-west of Brussels, nor the 5th Hanoverian brigade, which was at Hal.
The Duke next says that the English Cavalry will be at Nivelles at noon. The “Disposition” puts them at Braine-le-Comte at 7 A.M. Relying on this statement, the Duke says they will accomplish the nine miles between that place and Nivelles by noon.
“The Corps of Lord Hill is at Braine-le-Comte,” is the next and last statement in the letter. That corps consisted of the 2d and 4th British divisions, of the 1st Dutch-Belgian division, and of Anthing’s brigade. As respects the 2d division, the “Disposition” states that it was at 7 A.M. at Braine-le-Comte. The 4th division, the “Disposition” states, was at Audenarde at 7 A.M. and was marching on Braine-le-Comte; but the Duke certainly could not have supposed it possible that that division could have marched from Audenarde to Braine-le-Comte, a distance of more than thirty miles, between seven and half-past ten in the morning. And as for the 1st Dutch-Belgian division and the Indian brigade, the “Disposition” puts them at Sotteghem, a village near Audenarde, at 7 A.M., and states that they are marching on Enghien. The Duke, therefore, had not the authority of the “Disposition” for the statement made in his letter as to these portions of Lord Hill’s Corps; but then these divisions had been stationed so far away, that probably he never counted on them at all in his own mind in connection with a concentration at Quatre Bras. These were the troops which he left at Hal and Tubize on the day of Waterloo to protect his right.
It is, therefore, we submit, easy to see that the Duke had the “Disposition” before him when he wrote the letter to Marshal Blücher. He seems to have taken it,—so to speak,—blindfold; it never seems to have occurred to him that it was practically impossible that his various divisions could have been at seven o’clock that morning where his chief-of-staff had said that they were. He accepted the memorandum as official, and followed it substantially—with a few deviations, to be sure, as we have pointed out—in his letter to Blücher. Not only this; the Duke acted at once on the faith of the representations contained in the “Disposition.” He, about noon, rode over to Brye to confer with Marshal Blücher, and to propose to coöperate with him. It is evident from the narrative[234] of Baron Müffling, who accompanied the Duke, that Wellington was, in his opinion, laboring under grave misconceptions as to the whereabouts of his army. The conversation, according to Müffling, was mainly concerned with the manner of the promised coöperation,—Gneisenau wishing the Duke to march from Quatre Bras to Brye, and Wellington being unwilling thus to expose his communications with Brussels and Nivelles. Towards the close of the discussion, says Müffling, the Duke adopted a suggestion of his, and said “I will overthrow what is before me at Frasnes and will direct myself on Gosselies.” We cite this simply to show how confident Wellington was that he would find a sufficiently large force at Quatre Bras on his return from Brye, at about half-past two o’clock. If Alten’s division was at Nivelles at 7 A.M., en route for Quatre Bras, it should have arrived there before noon. The reserves, which marching from Brussels for Quatre Bras, had by 7 A.M. nearly reached Waterloo, ought to be at Quatre Bras, which is not over eleven miles further, by 2 or 3 P.M. If the cavalry was actually at Braine-le-Comte at 9 A.M. it might well be at Nivelles by noon, and at Quatre Bras, only seven miles further, by 3 P.M. Cooke might be expected about the same time, with his division of Guards. These expectations were no doubt in the mind of the Duke of Wellington as he rode back to Quatre Bras from his meeting with Marshal Blücher. The theory advanced, or perhaps suggested, by the Prussian biographer of Gneisenau, Delbrück,[235] that the Duke misrepresented the position of his army for the purpose of inducing Blücher to give battle at Ligny on the strength of his promise to support him, and of his ability to keep his promise, so that he, Wellington, might gain the necessary time for the concentration of his army, has not, in our judgment, anything to support it.[236] The truth plainly is, that the Duke was himself entirely deceived by the statement drawn up for his information by his chief-of-staff. He took it for granted that the troops were where they were stated to be, and made his dispositions accordingly. He was destined thereby not only to be greatly disappointed, but to incur imminent danger of defeat. For, as a matter of fact, many of his divisions were at seven that morning nowhere near the positions assigned them in Colonel De Lancey’s Memorandum. We shall refer to this matter in another place; suffice it to say now that the Duke’s reinforcements came on the field very much later than he had reason to expect; that the allied troops were for a couple of hours or so in a very precarious situation, and would without doubt have been disastrously defeated had Napoleon’s orders been carried out.