Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
decision to abandon the field of their defeat at Ligny in a northerly rather than an easterly direction was at first deliberately conceived by the Prussians with the particular object of effecting a junction with Wellington later on.
In the first place, the Prussians had no idea what line Wellington’s retreat would take. They knew that he was particularly anxious about his communications with the sea, and quite as likely to move westward as northward when Napoleon should come against him.
The full historical truth, accurately stated, cannot be put into the formula, “The Prussians retreated northward in order to be able to join Wellington two days later at Waterloo.” To state it so would be to read history backwards, and to presuppose in the Prussian staff a knowledge of the future. The true formula is rather as follows:—“The Prussians retired northward, and not eastward, because the incompleteness of their defeat permitted them to do so, and thus at once to avoid the waste of their Fourth Army Corps and to gain positions where they would be able, if necessity arose, to get news of what had happened to Wellington.”
In other words, to retreat northwards, though the decision to do so depended only upon considerations of the most general kind, was wise strategy, and the opportunity for that piece of strategy was seized; but the retreat northwards was not undertaken with the specific object of at once rejoining Wellington.
It must further be pointed out that this retreat northwards, though it abandoned the fixed line of communications leading through Namur and Liège to Aix la Chapelle, would pick up in a very few miles another line of communications through Louvain, Maestricht, and Cologne. The Prussian commanders, in determining upon this northward march, were in no way risking their supply nor hazarding the existence of their army upon a great chance. They were taking advantage of one of two courses left open to them, and that one the wiser of the two.
This retreat upon Wavre was conducted with a precision and an endurance most remarkable when we consider the fact that it took place just after a severe, though not a decisive, defeat.
Of the eighty odd thousand Prussians engaged at Ligny, probably 12,000 had fallen, killed or wounded. When the Prussian centre broke, many units became totally disorganised; and, counting the prisoners and runaways who failed to rejoin the colours, we must accept as certainly not exaggerated the Prussian official report of a loss of 15,000.13
In spite, I say, of this severe defeat, the order of the retreat was well maintained, and was rewarded by an exceptional rapidity.
The First Corps marched along the westerly route that lay directly before them by Tilly and Mont St. Guibert. They marched past Wavre itself, and bivouacked about midday of Saturday the 17th, round about the village of Bierges, on the other side of the river Dyle.
The Second Corps followed the First, and ended its march on the southern side of Wavre, round about the village of St. Anne.
The Third Corps did not complete the retreat until the end of daylight upon the 17th, and then marched through Wavre, across the river to the north, and bivouacked around La Bavette.
Finally, still later on the same evening, the Fourth Corps, that of Bulow, which had come to Ligny too late for the action, marching by the eastward lanes, through Sart and Corry, lay round Dion Le Mont.
By nightfall, therefore, on Saturday the 17th of June, we have the mass of the Prussian army safe round Wavre, and duly disposed all round that town in perfect order.
With the exception of a rearguard, which did not come up until the morning of the Sunday, all had been safely withdrawn in the twenty-four hours that followed the defeat at Ligny.
It may be asked why this great movement had been permitted to take place without molestation from the victors.
Napoleon would naturally, of course, after his defeat of the Prussians, withdraw to the west the greater part of the forces he had used against Blucher at Ligny and direct them towards the Brussels road in order to use them next against Wellington. But Napoleon had left behind him Grouchy in supreme command over a great body of troops, some 33,000 in all, whose business it was to follow up the Prussians, to find out what road they had taken; at the least to watch their movements, and at the best to cut off any isolated bodies or to give battle to any disjointed parts which the retreat might have separated from support. In general, Grouchy was to see to it that the Prussians did not return.
In this task Grouchy failed. True, he was not given his final instructions by the Emperor until nearly midday of the 17th, but a man up to his work would have discovered the line of the Prussian retreat and have hung on to it. Grouchy failed, partly because he was insufficiently provided with cavalry, partly because he was a man excellent only in a sudden tactical dilemma, incompetent in large strategical problems, partly because he mistrusted his subordinates, and they him; but most of all because of an original prepossession (under which, it is but fair to him to add, all the French leaders lay) that the Prussian retreat had taken the form of a flight towards Namur, along the eastern line of communications, while, as a fact, it had taken the form of a disciplined retreat upon Wavre and the north.
At ten o’clock in the evening of Saturday the 17th, twenty-four hours after the battle of Ligny, and at the moment when the whole body of the Prussian forces was already reunited in an orderly circle round Wavre, Grouchy, twelve miles to the south of them, was beginning—but only beginning—to discover the truth. He wrote at that hour to the Emperor that “the Prussians had retired in several directions,” one body towards Namur, another with Blucher the Commander-in-chief towards Liège, and a third body apparently towards Wavre. He even added that he was going to find out whether it might not be the larger of the three bodies which had gone towards Wavre, and he appreciated that whoever had gone towards Wavre intended keeping in touch with the rest of the Allies under Wellington. But all that Grouchy did after writing this letter proves how little he, as yet, really believed that any great body of the enemy had marched on Wavre. He anxiously sent out, not northward, but eastward and north-eastward, to feel for what he believed to be the main body of the retreating foe.
During the night he did become finally convinced by the mass of evidence brought in by his scouts that round Wavre was the whole Prussian force, and the conclusion that he came to was singular! He took it for granted that through Wavre the Prussians certainly intended a full retreat on Brussels. He wrote at daybreak of the 18th of June that he was about to pursue them.
That Blucher could dream of taking a short cut westward, thus effecting an immediate junction with Wellington, never entered Grouchy’s head. He did not put his army in motion until after having written this letter. He advanced his troops in a decent and leisurely manner up the Wavre road through the mid hours of the day, and himself, just before noon, wrote a dispatch to the Emperor; he wrote it from Sart, a point ten miles south of Wavre. In that letter he announced “his intention to be massed at Wavre that night,” and begging for “orders as to how he should begin his attack of the next day.”
The next day! Monday!
Already, hours before—by midnight of Saturday—Blucher had sent his message to Wellington assuring him that the Prussians would come to his assistance upon Sunday, the morrow.
Even as Grouchy was writing, the Prussian Corps were streaming westward across country to appear upon Napoleon’s flank four hours later and decide the campaign.
Having written his letter, Grouchy sat down to lunch. As he sat there at meat, far off, the first shots of the battle of Waterloo were fired.
* * * * *
So far, we have followed the retreat of the Prussians northwards from their defeat at Ligny. With the exception of the rearguard, they were all disposed by the evening of Saturday the 17th in an orderly fashion round the little town of Wavre. We have also followed the methodical but tardy and ill-conceived pursuit in which Grouchy felt out with his cavalry to discover the line of the Prussian retreat, and continued to be in doubt of its nature at least until midnight, and probably until even later than midnight,