Napoleon: A Sketch of His Life, Character, Struggles, and Achievements

by Thomas E. Watson

Concentrating his army swiftly, Napoleon was near Charleroi, on the evening of June 14, 1815, and next day crossed the Sambre.

At daybreak, on the morning of the 15th, General Bourmont, two officers of his staff, and eight soldiers deserted. As Bourmont had been present at the Council of War, he knew the secrets of the French, and these he carried with him to the Allies. This treason, on the eve of battle, demoralized, for a time, the entire division, and had a depressing effect throughout the army.

Another “deplorable mischance” happened on this morning. An order to Vandamme to advance was sent by a single courier, whose leg was broken by a fall of his horse. The order was not delivered, Vandamme did not make the movement, and Napoleon’s manœuvre, by which he had expected to cut off and capture the Prussian corps of Ziethen, failed.

Blücher, acting much more promptly than Wellington, concentrated his army at Fleurus, from which he retired on Ligny. Wellington and many of his officers were at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in Brussels, on the night of June 15, when Napoleon’s guns were heard. At eleven o’clock a despatch arrived which told of the French capture of Charleroi and advance upon Brussels. Although Wellington knew that Napoleon’s army was in motion, he was taken by surprise at the nearness of his approach. Withdrawing into a private room with the Duke of Richmond, he called for a map, saying, “That damned rascal Bonaparte has humbugged me!”

From midnight on to dawn, the English army was hurrying to the front, to concentrate and fight. Without waiting for Wellington or his orders, Prince Bernard, of Saxe-Wiemar, had already occupied Quatre-Bras. When Wellington arrived there, June 16, he passed on at once to a conference with Blücher, to whom he had written a letter which Blücher had received at noon. In this letter, Wellington had seemed to promise aid to Blücher if he would fight at Ligny,—mentioning the positions which the troops of the Anglo-Belgian army then occupied.

The curious feature of the case is that Wellington’s troops were not where his letter said they were, and that he remarked to one of his staff as he was leaving Blücher, “If he fights here, he will be damnably whipped.”

This letter in which Wellington promised to help Blücher only came to light in 1876, and Lord Wolseley says that Wellington, “an English gentleman of the highest type, wholly and absolutely incapable of anything bordering on untruth or deceit, must have been misled by his inefficient staff.” Perhaps so. But it looks marvellously like a case where the English gentleman of the highest type had been caught napping by “that damned rascal Bonaparte,” and wanted “old Blücher” to fight, in order that the British army might have time to concentrate. Blücher’s chief of staff, Gneisenau, held this view at the time, and died in that belief. So little did the opening events of the campaign depend upon any generalship of Wellington, that some of his officers had to violate his orders before they could reach the positions which it was absolutely necessary they should occupy.

It was near five o’clock on the evening of June 15 that Ney, who had come from Paris to Beaumont in a post-chaise, and from Beaumont had travelled to Avesnes in a peasant’s cart, bought horses from Marshal Mortier. At that late hour he was given command of the left wing of the French army, with verbal orders from Napoleon himself. Just what these orders were is a matter of dispute. The partisans of Ney contend that the Emperor said, “Go and drive back the enemy.” Napoleon and his sympathizers allege that the orders were to seize Quatre-Bras, and hold it. That the Emperor meant to give such orders, there can hardly be a doubt. On his way to Quatre-Bras, Ney encountered some Nassau troops at Frasnes, who fell back at once. Instead of advancing upon Quatre-Bras, Ney halted some two or three miles short of it, and reported to Napoleon for further orders. A small force of French cavalry actually entered Quatre-Bras, and then retired.

The Emperor, worn out with fatigue, and suffering from urinary, hemorrhoidal, and other ailments, had gone back to Charleroi to sleep and rest.

For reasons not fully explained, it was nine o’clock on the morning of the 16th before Ney was ordered positively to advance and capture Quatre-Bras. Had he moved promptly, he could even then have taken the place, for it was held by a few thousand Nassauers only. It was not until 2 P.M. that Ney attacked. A still greater delay marked Napoleon’s own movements. It was between two and three o’clock in the evening before he struck the Prussians at Ligny.