What actually happened was this. Durutte, who commanded the leading division of the 1st Corps, when in march from Jumet for Frasnes,[406] received orders from Ney to continue his march to Quatre Bras. But, as he was reaching Frasnes,[407] he was ordered by one of the Emperor’s aides, on his own responsibility,[408] to direct his march towards Brye. This order Durutte obeyed, and, on arriving at Frasnes, turned the head of the column to the right. D’Erlon, who, had he been present, might have stopped this unauthorized proceeding, had unfortunately ridden in advance of his corps. The aide, who, according to d’Erlon’s statement, was carrying a pencil note to Marshal Ney, came up with d’Erlon just beyond Frasnes, and told him what he had done. D’Erlon then rode back to join his command, sending his chief-of-staff to Marshal Ney to inform him what had happened. The 1st Corps then proceeded by way of Villers-Peruin towards St. Amand for possibly a couple of miles,[409] when it was seen by Vandamme, who between 5.30 and 6 o’clock reported to the Emperor the appearance of this unexpected body of troops.[410] The corps must have been seen, therefore, shortly after 5 o’clock. It must, therefore, have left the Charleroi road at Frasnes somewhere about 4.30 P.M. That is, the head of d’Erlon’s column did not reach Frasnes till two hours and a half after the rear of the 2d Corps had left it. For, as we have seen, the last division of the 2d Corps, Jerome’s, had passed through Frasnes by 2 o’clock.
This fact, that there was a march of two hours and a half between the two corps which constituted the principal part of Marshal Ney’s command, has not received due attention.[411] It is impossible to account for it without laying a grave responsibility on the shoulders of both Marshal Ney and the Comte d’Erlon. There is no need of dwelling on the importance of the matter. That there was no sufficient effort to obey the orders of the Emperor,—vigorously and energetically to carry out the duty assigned to this wing of the army,—is too plain for argument. It needs hardly to be remarked, that if Durutte had followed closely on the traces of Jerome,—even if he had started from Jumet at the moment when Jerome started from Gosselies, and had not (as would have been natural and proper) moved up nearer to Gosselies before the order to march to Quatre Bras arrived,—he could not have been turned off the main road by the Emperor’s staff-officer, for, long before half-past four o’clock, which was the hour when the staff-officer reached Frasnes, Durutte would have been fighting the English at Quatre Bras. One cannot avoid the conclusion that Marshal Ney’s measures for getting his command together on the field of battle this day were singularly ineffective.
For d’Erlon’s marching off towards St. Amand, Ney, of course, was in no wise responsible. When he heard of it, he sent him a peremptory order to return at once. For this he has been severely, and, in our opinion, unjustly blamed by many critics who have approached the question in the belief that d’Erlon was ordered to leave Ney’s immediate command by the Emperor himself. But this was not so. Napoleon addressed no order to d’Erlon. The only orders which the Emperor sent on this afternoon of the 16th of June of which we have any knowledge were sent to Marshal Ney. Napoleon cannot be imagined to have sent a direct order to one of Ney’s corps-commanders, for they, the Emperor must have supposed, were acting under the Marshal’s immediate supervision. Napoleon himself always denied having sent any order to d’Erlon, and even Charras believes him to be correct in this statement. We shall recur to this subject later; suffice it to say here that we are inclined to think that it was the 2 P.M. order that was shown, or, of which more likely, the supposed purport or intent was stated, to Durutte.[412] The time at which Durutte’s column was perceived heading for St. Amand indicates approximately when he must have left the turnpike at Frasnes; and this, as we shall hereafter see, was about the hour when the officer who carried the 2 P.M. order must have reached Frasnes.
D’Erlon, on receiving Ney’s order to return, retraced his steps, leaving Durutte’s division on his right in the neighborhood of Marbais, but he did not reach Frasnes till after 9 P.M. Thus the 1st Corps was of no use either to Ney or Napoleon that afternoon.
Take next the case of Kellermann’s cavalry. The last order which Ney received was, as we have seen, perfectly explicit in terms.[413] It directed him to “unite the corps of Counts Reille and d’Erlon, and that of the Count of Valmy [Kellermann],” and stated that “with these forces he ought to be able to beat and destroy any force of the enemy which might present itself.” Yet Ney ordered one of Kellermann’s divisions to halt at Frasnes and the other at Liberchies,—two miles, and two miles and a half, respectively, from the field of battle. It is not going too far to say that there is no excuse for such flat disobedience of orders. Cavalry, as respects the use to which they were put in those days, must be on the spot, ready to take advantage in an instant of a weak place in the enemy’s line of battle. No one knew this better than Marshal Ney. The disposition he made of his cavalry was deliberately made, from the same reason which induced him to order the 1st Corps to take up position at Frasnes,—probably because he deemed it unwise and even dangerous that the left wing should be advanced so far in front of the main army; and he did not send for Kellermann till six o’clock, and then he only employed one brigade.[414]
To return now to the battle. The arrival of Alten’s division gave Wellington the advantage, certainly in point of numerical force; still, the three infantry-divisions of the 2d Corps were superior in numbers to the two divisions of Picton and Alten; and the Dutch-Belgian and Brunswick troops had suffered so much that there was very little fight left in them. The cavalry of Piré was easily superior to that of the Brunswickers and Dutch-Belgians; none of the English cavalry had arrived; and the French were decidedly superior in artillery.
About 5 P.M.[415] the 2 o’clock order from Napoleon was received, but it was impossible for Ney, situated as he was, to execute it. At 6 P.M.[416] the 3.15 P.M. order arrived. Then, according to Charras,[417] Ney for the first time sent to Kellermann to bring up L’Heritier’s division. The veteran of Marengo made a gallant and at first a successful charge[418] at the head of the cuirassier brigade of this division, but, finally, the galling fire from the British in the farm-enclosures near the intersection of the roads, received when the horses were blown and the impetus of the charge was exhausted, brought about a panic, and the troops retired in great disorder. Soon after this, which was the last offensive move made by the French, Cooke’s division of the English Guards came up from Nivelles, and the French were forced to retire to Frasnes, which they did in good order.
At the close of the action, the Duke of Wellington had employed his 1st, 3d and 5th British divisions, the 2d Dutch-Belgian division, and the Brunswick contingent, numbering in all over 31,000[419] men; Marshal Ney, of the 43,000 men which had been entrusted to him and with which he was to “beat and destroy any enemy’s force” in his front, had brought to the encounter less than 22,000 men. The casualties of the Anglo-Dutch army were nearly or quite 4,500,—those of the French over 4,000.
It cannot be seriously questioned that the result of the action would have been a victory for the French if the 1st Corps, d’Erlon’s, had not been diverted from the turnpike.[420] The head of his column reached Frasnes, as we have seen, about half-past four o’clock, and the leading division could have been put in line before half-past five, that is, shortly after the arrival of Alten’s division. Wellington at this moment was deeply involved in the battle. He was expecting reinforcements hourly. He probably would not have thought of retiring. In fact his deficiency in cavalry and artillery would have made it a difficult matter to bring off his command in good order, and it is not likely that any of his troops save his (so called) British divisions could have sustained with firmness the strain of a retreat before an enemy fired with the success of the first battle of the campaign. The chances are that if d’Erlon’s Corps had marched straight on to Quatre Bras, the result would have been a severe defeat for the Duke of Wellington. Distrust and even demoralization would almost certainly have appeared in most of his foreign contingents; and with only his English regiments and those of the King’s German Legion he could not have mustered a sufficient force to justify him in accepting battle at Waterloo, even if he had been otherwise disposed to do so. In fact, one may safely conclude, that the battle of Waterloo would not have been fought had not d’Erlon’s Corps been turned aside by the unauthorized act of the staff-officer. We may, and in fact we must, even go further. It is altogether improbable that if Blücher had found that Wellington was in no condition to receive battle on the 18th, he would have deviated from his natural course of action after losing the battle of Ligny; he would without doubt, in such case, have retired on either Liége or Namur. These consequences are assuredly not too remote. The immediate and palpable results of an action, or of a failure to act, are within the legitimate field of inquiry; in fact, unless this be permitted, history can yield no lessons at all; it is only when we carry our speculation into the region of remote results, or vary too much from the conditions which actually existed, that we are going beyond the line of legitimate inference and useful deduction. It may be added that it is, and in the nature of things must be, for each person to draw the line in each case.
If, now, we ask what would probably have happened if Ney had collected his troops at Frasnes during the forenoon, in order that he might be able promptly to obey his orders as soon as they should be received, as we have above maintained he ought to have done, we are inclined to think that the simultaneous movement upon Quatre Bras between twelve and two o’clock of 40,000 men would have brought about the prompt retirement by the Prince of Orange[421] of Perponcher’s division. It would probably have fallen back on Nivelles, where Chassé was assembling the other Dutch-Belgian division. Whether the Duke on his return from Brye could have effected a concerted attack on the French by combining a movement on the Brussels road by Picton and the Brunswickers with one on the Nivelles road by Perponcher and Alten, it is not easy to say. The advantage of position would have clearly been with the French, and in fact they would have been considerably superior in numbers. There would certainly have existed no reason why in this case Ney could not have sent 10,000 or even 20,000 men down the Namur road in compliance with the orders of 2 and 3.15 P.M.[422]