To finish now with Napoleon’s intentions and expectations in regard to his left wing. He may well have expected that Ney had, in advance of receiving the formal order, sent Reille to Frasnes with his two divisions, which Ney’s reply to his early morning inquiry had informed him were then all ready to march, thus uniting the entire 2d Corps, minus Girard’s division; also, that the leading divisions of the 1st Corps would be gotten under arms without delay in Gosselies, so as to be ready to march at once. He must have expected his order to reach Gosselies by 10 A.M., and Frasnes by 11 A.M., and he may well have thought it quite possible,—as indeed it would have been,—that Ney, at the head of three divisions of infantry and one of cavalry, might be able to drive out of Quatre Bras the Dutch-Belgians who had been encountered the evening before, unless, indeed, they had been largely reinforced. At or about 1 P.M., however, the 1st Corps ought to be arriving at Quatre Bras, as its leading divisions would leave Gosselies—as Napoleon would have a right to suppose—between 10 and 11 A.M.; so that, by 2, or, at any rate, by 3 P.M., Marshal Ney would have his entire command at Quatre Bras, well in hand, and, pretty certain,—at least so Napoleon would be likely to think,—to be successful over any troops they might encounter. On these expectations, which, as we have seen, were quite warranted by the information he had received, he based his calculations for the day’s doings.
While Napoleon was thus awaiting at Charleroi definite news of the progress and condition of the left wing of his army, he employed his time,—or a part of it, at least,—in determining on the lines of action he would pursue in view of possible emergencies. As we have already seen, he desired nothing so much as to join battle with Marshal Blücher on the 16th of June. It had been his expectation[297] that the Prussian general would assemble his army near Sombreffe, and fight a battle, somewhere to the south of that village, for the preservation of his line of communications with the Duke of Wellington,—the Namur-Nivelles turnpike. At the same time, it was, of course, perfectly possible that the allied commanders had made other arrangements.[298] It was not impossible, for instance, that Napoleon’s concentration had been such a surprise to them that they were purposing to fall back, for the present at least, either divergently towards their respective bases, or in a northerly direction by parallel lines. In any event it would be manifestly desirable to inform the commanders of the right and left wings of the army of the Emperor’s probable course in any such event, so that every advantage might be promptly taken of the situation. It was certainly true, that instructions of this nature might not be required; they would assuredly not be required if Blücher should do what Napoleon had thought it likely he would do. In that case there would be no need of elaborate instructions being given to either Ney or Grouchy; the issue of the battle would settle everything. But in order to be prepared for the other state of affairs, Napoleon employed himself with preparing letters to the commanders of the wings of the army.
The letter[299] to Ney, which, as we have seen, was dictated by the Emperor to General Flahaut between 8 and 9 A.M., and was carried by that officer to Ney, whom it must have reached at Frasnes shortly before eleven o’clock,[300] informs him that Marshal Grouchy is marching on Sombreffe with the 3d and 4th Corps; that the Emperor is taking the Guard to Fleurus, where he will be before midday; that he will attack the enemy if he meets him, and will clear the road as far to the eastward as Gembloux. There, at Gembloux, the Emperor will make up his mind what to do next,—perhaps at three in the afternoon, perhaps not till evening. But he tells Marshal Ney that, just as soon as he has made up his mind, he wants him to be ready to march on Brussels; that he will support him with the Guard, which will be at Fleurus or Sombreffe,[301] and that he would like to get to Brussels the next morning. He then tells him where he would like him to station his various divisions.[302] He informs him that he has divided his army into two wings and a reserve; that Ney’s wing will consist of the 1st and 2d Corps, comprising eight divisions of infantry and two of light cavalry, and of the cavalry of the Count of Valmy; that Marshal Grouchy commands the right wing; that the Guard will constitute the reserve. He closes by reiterating the importance of Ney’s dispositions being so well made that he can march on Brussels,—i.e., from Quatre Bras,—as soon as ordered to do so.
To Grouchy the Emperor sent a similar[303] letter, giving him the command of the 3d and 4th Corps,—those of Vandamme and Gérard,—and of the three cavalry-corps of Pajol, Milhaud and Exelmans. He orders him to Sombreffe with his entire command; the cavalry are to be sent off at once, the infantry to follow without halting anywhere. The Emperor states that he is removing his headquarters from Charleroi to Fleurus, where he will arrive between 10 and 11 A.M., and that he is going to Sombreffe, leaving the Guard, unless it should be necessary to employ it, at Fleurus. “If the enemy is at Sombreffe,” he goes on to say, “I propose to attack him; I propose to attack him even at Gembloux, and to possess myself of that position; my intention being, after having explored [connu] these two positions, to set out this night, and operate with my left wing, which Marshal Ney commands, against the English.” He then desires Grouchy to send him reports of everything he may learn, and finishes by saying:—“All my information is to the effect that the Prussians cannot oppose to us more than forty thousand men.”
It is quite true, that this last remark shows, as several writers[304] have pointed out, that the Emperor was to a considerable extent mistaken on this morning of the 16th in his apprehension of the situation. But it is an error to take these letters as if they were written for the purpose of giving Napoleon’s estimates of the probabilities; they are rather instructions in the event of the occurrence of not impossible contingencies. The fact in the case was just this,—the main army was about to make a forward movement against the Prussians; if they were found to be in force and offered battle, the result of this battle would of course settle everything; but if they should retire, instead of offering battle, they must be followed, and that involved the separation of the French army into two unequal portions. Hence it was very desirable to inform Ney, from whom in this event the right wing and reserves would march away, about how far the Prussians would be followed, and, especially to enjoin upon him, in case the Emperor should deem it safe to leave the care of the Prussians to Grouchy, and should himself retrace his steps, and, with his Guard, join the left wing, to be ready to march on Brussels at an instant’s notice.
It must be noted, too, that these letters, especially when taken in connection with the formal orders of Soult to the two Marshals, show how absolutely Napoleon adhered to his original conception of the campaign, as we have before described it. To attack the Prussians first,—to follow them up for a considerable distance, so as to be assured of the direction which their retreat was taking,—and then, and only then, to return to the Brussels road and advance on the English,—such was the programme marked out in the two letters to Ney and Grouchy. We shall have occasion to refer to this in another place.
Lastly, while the Emperor expressly states in his letter to Grouchy that he estimates that the Prussians can not oppose to him a force of over forty thousand men, and while it may perhaps be inferred from his letter to Ney that he thought that that officer would meet with little or no opposition, it is to be observed that Napoleon acted in all respects as if he expected that the enemy would be found in force. Both Ney and Grouchy were explicitly directed to employ the whole of their respective forces. We have spoken of this before as it affected Ney. It was the same with the movement prescribed to Grouchy,—“Take your right wing to Sombreffe,”—[305] i.e., the two corps-d’armée, and the three cavalry corps. Whatever Napoleon may have conjectured as to the force or intentions of the enemy, both of his movements this forenoon,—that of the main army on Sombreffe, and that of the left wing on Quatre Bras,—were to be made in force,—with all the force he could muster. If he did expect, as some writers think, that his enemies would retire before him, he at any rate made every preparation to fight and overcome them, should they give him battle. It was in order, as we have pointed out, that these movements might be made simultaneously, and in sufficient force, that they were deferred to such a late period in the day,—the backwardness of the 1st Corps having postponed for several hours the concentration of the left wing.
It will be noticed that in none of these letters or formal orders is the 6th Corps under the Count of Lobau mentioned. The inference is, that, at that time, the Emperor desired to retain this body of troops as a reserve for the whole army. He wanted to get along, if he could, without employing it at all in the present stage of the campaign.