“Yes,” said Hardinge, “Blücher himself had gone back as far as Wavre. I passed that night, with my amputated arm, lying with some straw in his ante-room, Gneisenau and other generals constantly passing to and fro. Next morning Blücher sent for me. * * * He said to me that he should be quite satisfied if, in conjunction with the Duke of Wellington, he was able now to defeat his old enemy. I was told that there had been a great discussion that night in his rooms, and that Blücher and Grolmann had carried the day for remaining in communication with the English army, but that Gneisenau had great doubts as to whether they ought not to fall back to Liége and secure their own communication with Luxembourg. They thought that if the English should be defeated, they themselves would be utterly destroyed.”
Colonel Maurice tells us in confirmation of this story that General Hardinge “records that, as he was, on the 17th, lying on his bed, Blücher burst into his room, triumphantly announcing: ‘Gneisenau has given way. We are to march to join Wellington.’”[530]
If these statements are to be accepted literally, and there is, perhaps, no sufficient reason why they should not be, the credit of the decision remains wholly with Marshal Blücher. Still, it may, not impossibly, be that Gneisenau, to whose action alone it was due that the original intention of retreating on Namur, in case it should be found necessary to retreat at all, had been departed from, felt himself morally bound to present to his impetuous and unthinking chief the more cautious and conservative course; and that in reality he was not averse to find that the movement which he had ordered in Blücher’s absence should receive from his chief and his advisers such hearty approval and be prosecuted to its natural result.
While the Ist and IId Corps were making their way towards Tilly and Mont St. Guibert, Thielemann, in ignorance of the dispositions of the commander-in-chief, retired from Tongrinelle and Balâtre to Sombreffe, and thence continued his retreat to Gembloux, so as to approach the IVth Corps, which had arrived late in the evening in the neighborhood of Baudeset and Sauvenières. Thielemann reached Gembloux at 6 A.M. of the 17th. Here he wrote a letter to Bülow, to which reference has been already made. Bülow in reply requested him to retire to the neighborhood of Corbaix, half way between Gembloux and Wavre, and informed him that he himself was directing his corps on Wavre. In these movements, which were to be nearly parallel, the corps of Bülow was to keep to the eastward of that of Thielemann.
Thus the temporary separation of the four corps composing the Prussian army worked no harm. The corps-commanders acted with cheerful and zealous coöperation in the absence of orders from the commander-in-chief. In fact nothing can be finer than the spirit displayed by the Prussians after the loss of the battle of Ligny,—whether we look at their willingness to take risks and make sacrifices to ensure the success of the combined movement now in process of execution, or at the harmony which prevailed among the chief officers, which it is evident neither the loss of the battle nor the non-arrival of Bülow’s Corps had disturbed in the least.
Orders were now issued for the retreat of the whole army on Wavre. It was conducted as follows:—[531]
The Ist Corps marched from its position between Tilly and Mellery early in the morning of the 17th, and proceeded through Gentinnes and Mont St. Guibert towards Wavre, where it crossed the Dyle, and took up position at Bierges.
The IId Corps followed by the same route somewhat later, and halted at Aisemont, a village on the south side of the Dyle, opposite Wavre.
The IIId Corps rested at Gembloux till 1 or 2 o’clock P.M., and then marched by way of Corbaix to Wavre, the head of the column passing through the town in the evening, but the rear guard not arriving till the morning of the 18th.