The Battle of Waterloo: Europe in the Balance (9 page)

Mass attacks

Suddenly, at 6 pm, the Prussian attack surged forward. Leading the way were heavy cavalry, supported by dense columns of infantry and horse artillery. They surged over the stream and into the French positions held by Vandamme. Vandamme was caught reorganizing his defences – having realized it was d’Erlon, not Wellington, coming up on his left. The Prussians, expecting the French to be trapped between two fires, attacked with reckless courage. Vandamme’s men were pushed back and for a while it looked as if they were about to break. Then Vandamme got his reserve division into action and the Prussian attack ground to a halt.

A little after 7.30 pm, Napoleon unleashed his own mass attack. He moved his artillery to face the Prussian centre and opened up a furious barrage that inflicted heavy casualties. As the cannon pounded away, Napoleon formed up two massive attack columns, both spearheaded by the Imperial Guard and supported by dense masses of heavy cavalry. The French guns fell silent to avoid hitting their own men just as the columns reached the Prussian lines. With barely a delay, the French Imperial Guard smashed its way through the first line of Prussian defences and began to mount the slope beyond. Blücher had no reserves left and it was clear that the few Prussian infantry on the crest of the hill would break and run as soon as the Imperial Guard reached them.

Prussians forced back

Gneisenau and Blücher were appalled. They could not understand how Napoleon could be launching an attack when, as they thought, Wellington was assaulting his left flank. While Gneisenau sent off desperate messages to the commanders on the flank to tell them of the dire situation, Blücher leapt on his horse and spurred off to a nearby regiment of hussars. Despite his 72 years of age, Blücher was an energetic man. He paused only long enough to send off messengers with orders to bring every cavalry unit to the spot. Then he led the hussars in a charge at the advancing French columns.

The French calmly formed square to receive cavalry, then delivered a devastating volley of musket fire that emptied many Prussian saddles. The hussars fell back. They had, however, forced the French infantry to deploy from column into square. It is much more difficult to march a regiment over fields in square than in column, so the French advance was slowed considerably.

Returning to his start position, Blücher found more cavalry had answered his summons. Issuing orders to some infantry who had also come to his aid, Blücher led yet another reckless cavalry charge at the advancing French columns. The infantry that he had left behind formed themselves into an ad hoc rearguard behind which the more disorganized units could fall back to get away from the French. Meanwhile, Gneisenau’s messages had reached the Prussian wings and they, too, began to retreat.

Gneisenau, at about this time, received word from his scouts that the large marching columns that had been approaching from the west had vanished. Nobody could say for certain where they had gone. While attention had been focused on events on the battlefields the thousands of men had vanished like smoke in the wind.

To make matters even worse Blücher had vanished, as well. He had last been seen leading a cavalry charge at Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, which was flanked by a squadron of heavy cuirassier cavalry. He had not been seen since, and Gneisenau had to assume that his commander was dead.

Gneisenau was both worried and furious. He was worried for his army and furious with Wellington for having apparently abandoned the Prussian army in its hour of need and fled for the safety of the Royal Navy. He quickly reviewed the situation. The Prussians had started the day with about 80,000 men. Around 10,000 of them were now dead, another 30,000 or so were streaming to the rear having lost all formation and discipline. That left around 40,000 men who were still in their units, but who had often lost cohesion and morale and who had suffered casualties, some units heavily. The centre of the army was smashed to pieces and the two wings retreating hastily and without contact with each other, And Blücher was missing. To his front was Napoleon with the entire French army. Somewhere to the west, Wellington was apparently fleeing for safety.

The only realistic option that Gneisenau could see was to fall back on Bülow’s advancing and intact IV Corps. Once having effected a junction with Bülow, the Prussian army would retreat to Germany to await political developments. Looking at his map and estimating where Bülow would be, Gneisenau set Tilly as the rendezvous point and began issuing orders to the officers of the retreating army to muster there at first light. A staff officer, von Reiche, referred to the standard map that had been issued to regimental officers and realized that Tilly was not marked on it. The next place along the road that led through Tilly that was marked on all maps was Wavre. He suggested that Gneisenau give orders to muster at Wavre at noon, instead of Tilly at dawn. On such small incidents do the fates of nations turn.

Into the gathering darkness streamed the defeated Prussian army.

Victory within reach

Napoleon, meanwhile, was just as furious as was Gneisenau. He did at least know that the advancing columns had been those of d’Erlon’s corps, but he no more knew where they had gone than did the Prussians. With the Prussian centre having been smashed by the Imperial Guard and the two wings retreating in different directions, now was the time for the enemy army to be ripped to pieces and destroyed as a fighting force. All that was needed was for d’Erlon and his fresh men to surge forward and fall on the Prussian flank and rear. But where was d’Erlon? He and his men had apparently vanished off the face of the Earth.

By 10 pm it was clear to Napoleon that he had had the Prussian army at his mercy, but that somehow they had slipped away. Leaving orders for his army to regroup around Ligny and for scouts to ride out to find where the various units of the Prussian army were going, Napoleon rode back to his headquarters at Fleurus for supper, bed and some serious thinking.

August von Gneisenau, 1760 - 1831

Chapter 5
 
‘If we cannot stop him there....’
 

Wellington in a letter to Lady Frances Webster, 16 June 1815
 

After his meeting with Blücher, Wellington rode back to Quatre Bras to await the arrival of his army. Almost as soon as he got there he realized that something was wrong. He had been expecting to find a sizeable portion of his army already gathered around the crossroads, with more arriving every minute. Instead by 2 pm there was still only the Prince of Orange with 8,000 men and 16 cannon of the Netherlands army.

In some desperation, Wellington sent riders out to try to find his army and get it to march to Quatre Bras. He soon had other matters on his mind.

French attack at Quatre Bras

At 2 pm a shattering roar signalled the start of a heavy cannonade from the French lines. Ney had been mustering Reille’s II Corps all morning. His orders from Napoleon had been both precise and maddeningly vague. Ney had been told to ‘hold the crossroads at Quatre Bras in strength’ to stop Wellington’s army marching to aid Blücher at Ligny – this despite the fact that the crossroads were actually held by Wellington, not Ney. He was also ordered to ‘to support with every man at his disposal’ Napoleon’s attack on the Prussians. How Ney was supposed to hold a crossroads he did not hold and at the same time send his command to support Napoleon was not made clear. Napoleon was clearly missing the skills of his deceased chief of staff, Berthier. Ney decided that his first priority had to be to capture the crossroads.

Ney rode up the main road to view the situation for himself. At 1.30 pm he found that the crossroads was held by relatively few men. Two farms – Pierrepont and Gemioncourt – stood about 1,000 m south of the crossroads and were held by Dutch infantry with artillery behind them. To the west was a large wood with dense undergrowth, the Bois de Bossu.

Ney quickly realized that he could not attack the crossroads until the Bois de Bossu was secured. He told Reille to send his light infantry into the wood at once. Reille hesitated. ‘This may turn out to be like in Spain when you don’t see the British until they attack you.’ Reille was referring to Wellington’s habit of positioning his troops on the reverse sides of hills, behind woods or other places where they were out of shot of the French artillery, and out of sight of the French commanders, until he needed them. Ney, who like Reille had fought Wellington in Spain, delayed his assault until all of Reille’s corps had arrived.

Ney decided to try to obey his contradictory orders by dividing his force. He brought Reille’s II Corps up to attack Quatre Bras. D’Erlon’s I Corps was behind Reille on the road north from Charleroi. Ney sent him orders that he was to continue north to Frasnes, then halt there to await orders. This would put d’Erlon in a position to continue north to support Ney, or turn east along another main road to support Napoleon.

As his guns roared out, Ney sent infantry forward to take the farms south of Quatre Bras. The fighting was intense, but within 45 minutes both farms had fallen. Ney then pushed light infantry into the Bois de Bossu on his left while forming up men on the right to assault the Dutch holding the main road east of the crossroads. Rather ironically, these units were commanded by Colonel Westenberg, commander of the Dutch Royal Guard who had until a year earlier commanded a battalion in Napoleon’s Imperial Guard.

British reinforcements

As the French formed up to advance, a column of British redcoat infantry came into sight marching south along the main road from Brussels. These were the lead units of the British 5th Division, under Lieutenant General Thomas Picton. They had been camping around Brussels and so had avoided the confusion engulfing nearly every other British unit. Welcome as they were, the advancing British regiments were strung out along the road in the order they had left Brussels. They would be arriving piecemeal in no coherent order over a period of two or three hours. It is an indication of Wellington’s priorities that the first battalion to arrive was sent to the east to hold the road leading to Ligny and secure the route Wellington hoped to take as soon as his main army turned up.

When the 28th Regiment arrived, it was sent to help the garrison of Gemioncourt, but seeing that farm in French hands, they turned around and fell back on the crossroads. As they fell back a force of dragoons in green galloped up shouting in French. Assuming the dragoons were French, who wore green, the redcoats opened fire and killed many horses and a few men. In fact the cavalry were Dutch dragoons. Once again the similarities between Dutch and French uniforms were having tragic results.

An illustration showing the advance of the British redcoats on the French in blue that took place in the evening of 16
th
June at Quatre Bras. The battle ended in something of a stalemate, though the British had possession of the field.

At about 4 pm Duke Frederick William of Brunswick arrived with his army, officially part of Wellington’s 6th Division under General Sir Lowry Cole. Brunswick was another of the small independent states of Germany and its army numbered some 5,000 men and was made up of line infantry, light infantry, guard infantry and the ducal artillery plus small numbers of lancer and hussar cavalry. Wellington asked Brunswick to take his small army to the right of the crossroads to drive back French skirmishers working north along the edge of the Bois de Bossu.