Turn from this dozing chief, exhausted by half a day’s work, and look at old Blücher. At the age of seventy-three, he is full of pluck and dash and persistence. He hurries up his divisions to fight as soon as he knows that the French are moving. He is in the thick of the combat at Ligny. He heads charges like a common hussar. His horse is shot and he falls under the feet of rushing squadrons, is drawn out almost dead and borne off the field unconscious. Bruised and battered, the old man no sooner “comes to himself” than he is up again, beating down the cautious counsels of his chief-of-staff, and determined to go to the help of Wellington,—who had not come to his help,—although the chief-of-staff, Gneisenau, believing Wellington to be a “master knave,” wished the Prussians to leave the English to take care of themselves at Waterloo, as the Prussians had been left to take care of themselves at Ligny. And on the ever memorable 18th, while Napoleon will be waiting, hour by hour, for the ground to dry so that he can move his artillery, old Blücher will be coming as fast as he can hurry his troops through the mud, as fast as he can drag his artillery; and the net result will be that, while miry ground stops the great Napoleon, it does not stop the impetuous and indomitable Blücher.
CHAPTER XLIX
When Napoleon finally awoke on the 17th, he spent the morning talking politics to Gérard and Grouchy. It was midday when he gave the latter some thirty-three thousand men, and sent him after the Prussians. The spirit, if not the letter, of his instructions was that he was to penetrate Blücher’s intentions: “whether he was separating from the English, or meant to unite, and fight again!” Davoust would have known how to interpret such an order, and how to act upon it; Grouchy, it seems, did not. For thirty years there was a dispute about the order itself, but at length it came to light; and since its text has been known there has been little difference of opinion on the subject of Grouchy’s conduct. Detached from the main army to take care of Blücher, and to prevent the Prussians from coming to the aid of the English, he failed miserably to perform the task intrusted to him, and was of no more service to Napoleon in the movement which decided the campaign than D’Erlon had been at Ligny.
Through torrents of rain, through the mud and slush of the cut-up roads, the French followed the English toward Brussels.
On the crests of Mont St. Jean, with the forest of Soignes behind him, Wellington drew up his men for battle, relying upon Blücher’s promise to arrive in time to coöperate. There were eighteen thousand troops at Hal, which might have been called up to his support; but Wellington, entirely misconceiving Napoleon’s plans, had expected an attack upon his right, and this large force at Hal was left there in idleness to guard against an imaginary danger. By two o’clock in the morning of the 18th, Blücher sent a courier to Wellington, promising the support without which the English army would have continued its retreat.
When Napoleon’s vanguard reached La Belle Alliance, and he saw that Wellington’s army was in position on the opposite heights, he was happy. He had feared that the English would retire behind the forest of Soignes, unite with the Prussians, and thus be too strong for him. If he could but fight Wellington while Blücher was away, he did not doubt his ability to “give the Englishman a lesson”: for while the French numbered 74,000, there were but 67,000 of the Anglo-Belgian army.
The French army floundered through the mud of the soaked wheat-fields, the miry lowlands of the Dyle, and were late in the night of the 17th in reaching their positions at La Belle Alliance. Indeed, some of the troops did not reach the battle-field till late next morning. The floods of rain had rendered it impossible for the provision trains to keep up. The exhausted French lay down with empty stomachs, to rest as well as they could on the wet ground, without shelter or fire, whilst the English army, comfortably fed, kept themselves warm by campfires.
At dawn the rain ceased. Napoleon again reconnoitred, the ground being so soft that in places he “mired up,” requiring help to lift his feet out of his tracks. Unconscious that even then old Blücher was wading through the bogs, across country, to get from Wavre to the English left at St. Lambert, Napoleon allowed hour after hour to slip by, stealing from him every chance of victory. The natural line of Prussian retreat was on Namur: he did not know that while Blücher lay unconscious, on the 16th, Gneisenau, chief of staff, had directed the retreat on Wavre. Therefore, Napoleon took his breakfast leisurely, chatting cheerfully with his general officers; and when he rode along the lines, saw all the splendor of his magnificent array, heard the bugles and the bands, and the sweeter music of seventy thousand voices shouting “Live the Emperor!” the great captain’s face glowed with pride and joy. To him such a spectacle, such a greeting, was the nectar of the gods; he drank it now for the very last time.
It was eight o’clock when he made his plan of battle, nine when he issued orders, at ten he lay down and slept an hour.