Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
second cavalry charge attempted by the French reserve, coming just too late, necessarily failed, and at the same moment yet another reinforcement—the first British division of the Guards, and a body of Nassauers, with a number of guns—came up to increase the now overwhelming superiority of Wellington’s line.10
There was even an attempt at advance upon the part of Wellington.
As the evening turned to sunset, and the sunset to night, that advance was made very slowly and with increasing difficulty—and all the while Ney’s embarrassed force, now confronted by something like double its own numbers, and contesting the ground yard by yard as it yielded, received no word of Erlon.
The clearing of the Wood of Bossu by the right wing of Wellington’s army, reinforced by the newly arrived Guards, took more than an hour. It took as long to push the French centre back to Gemioncourt, and all through the last of the sunlight the walls of the farm were desperately held. On the left, Pierrepont was similarly held for close upon an hour. The sun had already set when the Guards debouched from the Wood of Bossu, only to be met and checked by a violent artillery fire from Pierrepont, while at the same time the remnant of the cuirassiers charged again, and broke a Belgian battalion at the edge of the wood.
By nine o’clock it was dark and the action ceased. Just as it ceased, and while, in the last glimmerings of the light, the major objects of the landscape, groups of wood and distant villages, could still be faintly distinguished against the background of the gloom, one such object seemed slowly to approach and move. It was first guessed and then perceived to be a body of men: the head of a column began to debouch from Frasnes. It was Erlon and his 20,000 returned an hour too late.
All that critical day had passed with the First Corps out of action. It had neither come up to Napoleon to wipe out the Prussians at Ligny, nor come back in its countermarch in time to save Ney and drive back Wellington at Quatre Bras. It might as well not have existed so far as the fortunes of the French were concerned, and its absence from either field upon that day made defeat certain in the future, as the rest of these pages will show.
* * * * *
Two things impress themselves upon us as we consider the total result of that critical day, the 16th of June, which saw Ney fail to hold the Brussels road at Quatre Bras, and there to push away from the advance on Brussels Wellington’s opposing force, and which also saw the successful escape of the Prussians from Ligny, an escape which was to permit them to join Wellington forty-eight hours later and to decide Waterloo.
The first is the capital importance, disastrous to the French fortunes, of Erlon’s having been kept out of both fights by his useless march and countermarch.
The Elements of Quatre Bras.
The second is the extraordinary way in which Wellington’s command came up haphazard, dribbling in by units all day long, and how that command owed to Ney’s caution and tardiness, much more than to its own General’s arrangements, the superiority in numbers which it began to enjoy from an early phase in the battle.
I will deal with these two points in their order.
* * * * *
As to the first:—
The whole of the four days of 1815, and the issue of Waterloo itself, turned upon Erlon’s disastrous counter-marching between Quatre Bras and Ligny upon this Friday, the 16th of June, which was the decisive day of the war.
What actually happened has been sufficiently described. The useless advance of Erlon’s corps d’armée towards Napoleon and the right—useless because it was not completed; the useless turning back of that corps d’armée towards Ney and the left—useless because it could not reach Ney in time—these were the determining factors of that critical moment in the campaign.
In other words, Erlon’s zigzag kept the 20,000 of the First Corps out of action all day. Had they been with Ney, the Allies under Wellington at Quatre Bras would have suffered a disaster. Had they been with Napoleon, the Prussians at Ligny would have been destroyed. As it was, the First Army Corps managed to appear on neither field. Wellington more than held his own; the Prussians at Ligny escaped, to fight two days later at Waterloo.
Such are the facts, and they explain all that followed (see Map, next page).
But it has rightly proved of considerable interest to historians to attempt to discover the human motives and the personal accidents of temperament and misunderstanding which led to so extraordinary a blunder as the utter waste of a whole army corps during a whole day, within an area not five miles by four.
It is for the purpose of considering these human motives and personal accidents that I offer these pages; for if we can comprehend Erlon’s error, we shall fill the only remaining historical gap in the story of Waterloo, and determine the true causes of that action’s result.
There are two ways of appreciating historical evidence. The first is the lawyer’s way: to establish the pieces of evidence as a series of disconnected units, to docket them, and then to see that they are mechanically pieced together; admitting, the while, only such evidence as would pass the strict and fossil rules of our particular procedure in the courts. This way, as might be inferred from its forensic origin, is particularly adapted to arriving at a foregone conclusion. It is useless or worse in an attempt to establish a doubtful truth.
The second way is that by which we continually judge all real evidence upon matters that are of importance to us in our ordinary lives: the way in which we invest money, defend our reputation, and judge of personal risk or personal advantage in every grave case.
This fashion consists in admitting every kind of evidence, first hand, second hand, third hand, documentary, verbal, traditional, and judging the general effect of the whole, not according to set legal categories, but according to our general experience of life, and in particular of human psychology. We chiefly depend upon the way in which we know that men conduct themselves under the influence of such and such emotions, of the kind of truth and untruth which we know they will tell; and to this we add a consideration of physical circumstance, of the laws of nature, and hence of the degrees of probability attaching to the events which all this mass of evidence relates.
It is only by this second method, which is the method of common-sense, that anything can be made of a doubtful historical point. The legal method would make of history what it makes of justice. Which God forbid!
Historical points are doubtful precisely because there is conflict of evidence; and conflict of evidence is only properly resolved by a consideration of the psychology of witnesses, coupled with a consideration of the physical circumstances which limited the matter of their testimony.
Judged by these standards, the fatal march and countermarch of Erlon become plain enough.
His failure to help either Ney or Napoleon was not treason, simply because the man was not a traitor. It proceeded solely from obedience to orders; but these orders were fatal because Ney made an error of judgment both as to the real state of the double struggle—Quatre Bras, Ligny—and as to the time required for the countermarch. This I shall now show.
Briefly, then:—
Erlon, as he was leading his army corps up to help Ney, his immediate superior, turned it off the road before he reached Ney and led it away towards Napoleon.
Why did he do this?
It was because he had received, not indeed from his immediate superior, Ney himself, but through a command of Napoleon’s, which he knew to be addressed to Ney, the order to do so.
When Erlon had almost reached Napoleon he turned his army corps right about face and led it off back again towards Ney.
Why