Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
of the violent action in which he was involved, that Napoleon’s contemporary action against Ligny could be more decisive or more important than his own. It was a question of exercising judgment, and of deciding whether Napoleon had justly judged the proportion between his chances of a great victory and Ney’s chances; and further, whether a great victory at Ligny would have been of more effect than a great victory or the prevention of a bad defeat at Quatre Bras. Napoleon was right and Ney was wrong.
I have heard or read the further suggestion that Napoleon, on seeing Erlon, or having him reported, not two miles away, should have sent him further peremptory orders to continue his march and to come on to Ligny.
This is bad history. Erlon, as it was, was heading a trifle too much to the south, so that Napoleon, who thought the whole of Ney’s command to be somewhat further up the Brussels road northward than it was, did not guess at first what the new troops coming up might be, and even feared they might be a detachment of Wellington’s, who might have defeated Ney, and now be coming in from the west to attack him.
He sent an orderly to find out what the newcomers were. The orderly returned to report that the troops were Erlon’s, but that they had turned back. Had Napoleon sent again, after this, to find Erlon, and to make him for a third time change his direction, it would have been altogether too late to have used Erlon’s corps d’armée at Ligny by the time it should have come up. Napoleon had, therefore, no course before him but to do as he did, namely, give up all hope of help from the west, and defeat the Prussians at Ligny before him, if not decisively, at least to the best of his ability, with the troops immediately to his hand.
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So much for Erlon.
Now for the second point: the way in which the units of Wellington’s forces dribbled in all day haphazard upon the position of Quatre Bras.
Wellington, as we saw on an earlier page, was both misinformed and confused as to the nature and rapidity of the French advance into Belgium. He did not appreciate, until too late, the importance of the position of Quatre Bras, nor the intention of the French to march along the great northern road. Even upon the field of Waterloo itself he was haunted by the odd misconception that Napoleon’s army would try and get across his communications with the sea, and he left, while Waterloo was actually being fought, a considerable force useless, far off upon his right, on that same account.
The extent of Wellington’s misjudgment we can easily perceive and understand. Every general must, in the nature of war, misjudge to some extent the nature of his opponent’s movements, but the shocking errors into which bad staff work led him in this his last campaign are quite exceptional.
Wellington wrote to Blucher, on his arrival at the field of Quatre Bras, at about half-past ten in the morning, a note which distinctly left Blucher to understand that he might expect English aid during his forthcoming battle with Napoleon at Ligny. He did not say so in so many words, but he said: “My forces are at such and such places,” equivalent, that is, to saying, “My forces can come up quite easily, for they are close by you,” adding: “I do not see any large force of the enemy in front of us; and I await news from your Highness, and the arrival of troops, in order to determine my operations for the day.”
In this letter, moreover, he said in so many words that his reserve, the large body upon which he mainly depended, would be within three miles of him by noon, the British cavalry within seven miles of him at the same hour.
Then he rode over to see Blucher on the field of Ligny before Napoleon’s attack on that general had begun. He got there at about one o’clock.
An acrimonious discussion has arisen as to whether he promised to come up and help Blucher shortly afterwards or not, but it is a discussion beside the mark, for, in the first place, Wellington quite certainly intended to come up and help the Prussians; and in the second place, he was quite as certainly unable to do so, for the French opposition under Ney which he had under-estimated, turned out to be a serious thing.
But his letter, and his undoubted intention to come up and help Blucher, depended upon his belief that the units of his army were all fairly close, and that by, say, half-past one he would have the whole lot occupying the heights of Quatre Bras.
Now, as a fact, the units of Wellington’s command were scattered all over the place, and it is astonishing to note the discrepancy between his idea of their position and their real position on the morning of the day when Quatre Bras was fought. When one appreciates what that discrepancy was, one has a measure of the bad staff work that was being done under Wellington at the moment.
The plan (p. 127)12 distinguishes between the real positions of Wellington’s command on the morning of the 16th when he was writing his letter to Blucher and the positions which Wellington, in that letter, erroneously ascribes to them. It will show the reader the wide difference there was between Wellington’s idea of where his troops were and their actual position on that morning. It needs no comment. It is sufficient in itself to explain why the action at Quatre Bras consisted not in a set army meeting and repelling the French (it could have destroyed them as things turned out, seeing Erlon’s absence), but in the perpetual arrival of separate and hurried units, which went on from midday almost until nightfall.
IV
THE ALLIED RETREAT AND FRENCH ADVANCE UPON WATERLOO AND WAVRE
When the Prussians had concentrated to meet Napoleon at Ligny they had managed to collect, in time for the battle, three out of their four army corps.
These three army corps were the First, the Second, and the Third, and, as we have just seen, they were defeated.
But, as we have also seen, they were not thoroughly defeated. They were not disorganised, still less were the bulk of them captured and disarmed. Most important of all, they were free to retreat by any road that did not bring them against their victorious enemy. In other words, they were free to retreat to the north as well as to the east.
The full importance of this choice will, after the constant reiteration of it in the preceding pages, be clear to the reader. A retreat towards the east, and upon the line of communications which fed the Prussian army, would have had these two effects: First, it would have involved in the retirement that fresh Fourth Army Corps under Bulow which had not yet come into action, and which numbered no less than 32,000 men. For it lay to the east of the battlefield. In other words, that army corps would have been wasted, and the whole of the Prussian forces would have been forced out of the remainder of the campaign. Secondly, it would have finally separated Blucher and his Prussians from Wellington’s command. The Duke, with his western half of the allied forces, would have had to stand up alone to the mass of Napoleon’s army, which would, after the defeat of the Prussians at Ligny, naturally turn to the task of defeating the English General.
Now the fact of capital importance upon which the reader must concentrate if he is to grasp the issue of the campaign is the fact that the French staff fell into an error as to the true direction of the Prussian retreat.
Napoleon, Soult, and all the heads of the French army were convinced that the Prussian retreat was being made by that eastern road.
As a fact, the Prussians, under the cover of darkness, had retired not east but north.
The defeated army corps, the First, Second, and Third, did not fall back upon the fresh and unused Fourth Corps; they left it unhampered to march northward also; and all during the darkness the Prussian forces, as a whole, were marching in roughly parallel columns upon Wavre and its neighbourhood.
It was this escape to the north instead of the east that made it possible for the Prussians to effect their junction with Wellington upon the day of Waterloo; but it must