John Codman Ropes - The Battle of Waterloo

All this was in all probability known to Napoleon, and served as the basis of his expectations, as we shall see later on.

Of the principal officers of this motley force, it is not necessary to say much. The Prince of Orange, who commanded the 1st Corps, though an officer of experience, had not distinguished himself as a general. Lord Hill, who led the 2d Corps, was a very valuable man, whose merit had been thoroughly ascertained in the Peninsula. Sir Thomas Picton had a well-won reputation as a man of energy, courage, and capacity in all the positions in which he had served. Then there were many junior officers of great merit.

The Duke himself was in the prime of life, having just passed his forty-sixth birthday. He had never met Napoleon before, but he had often met and defeated his Marshals. His career had been one of almost uninterrupted success. His experience in the field against French soldiers had been large, and he was for this reason peculiarly fitted for the work he had now in hand. He had shown very varied ability. His military imagination, if one may use such a word, may not have been large, but he had few equals in the faculty of making up his mind what it was best to do under ascertained circumstances. His decisions were always dictated by practical reasons. He never allowed sentiment to hinder the exercise of his common sense. He could advance or retreat, fight or decline to fight, with equal ease,—with him it was a mere question of what it was best under the circumstances to do. Though esteemed a cautious officer, he had shown over and over again that he possessed not only courage and firmness, but that in daring, and in coolly taking great risks, he was equal to any emergency. His hold on his army, that is, on his own troops, was perfect. In ability, reputation, and in social rank, his preëminence among the officers of the British army and the King’s German Legion was cheerfully acknowledged, and over these parts of his army he exercised a perfect and unquestioned control. And his long experience in dealing with his Spanish allies had given him an uncommon facility in administering the affairs of such a composite body of troops as he was now to command.

These three armies were curiously different in their internal economy. Napoleon, as we have said before, expected from his high officers a sort of coöperation. The “Correspondence of Napoleon” is full of long and confidential letters to his marshals, written during his campaigns, explaining the situation, stating his own intentions at length, giving them not only orders to be executed, but suggestions for their guidance in case of the happening of certain contingencies. We shall see excellent specimens of these letters in the course of this narrative. Napoleon had been for years constantly in the habit of directing complicated movements, in which the active and intelligent comprehension of his main object and purpose on the part of his lieutenants who were operating at a greater or less distance from him, was essential to success. Hence these elaborate communications, in which the style of the military order is but barely preserved, and in which the effort of the writer to impart all the information in his power to his correspondent and to give him an intelligent and precise knowledge of the objects of the campaign, is very evident.

In the English army there was nothing of this sort. Obedience, not coöperation, was what Wellington required, and it was all he needed. Operating as he did on a much smaller scale than Napoleon, his simpler methods were quite adequate to his wants. It is needless to say that such a relation as that which existed between Napoleon and his old companions in arms, who had begun their careers with him in Italy or Egypt, never existed to the least extent in the English service.

The Prussian army was managed differently from either the English or French. Baron Müffling, who was the Prussian attaché at the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington, says:—55

“I perceived that the Duke exercised far greater power in the army he commanded than Prince Blücher in the one committed to his care. The rules of the English service permitted the Duke’s suspending any officer and sending him back to England. * * * Amongst all the generals, from the leaders of corps to the commanders of brigades, not one was to be found in the active army who had been known as refractory.

“It was not the custom in this army to criticise or control the commander-in-chief. Discipline was strictly enforced; every one knew his rights and his duties. The Duke, in matters of service, was very short and decided.”

It is clear that Baron Müffling had seen a very different state of things prevailing in the Prussian service,56 where it would seem that advice was sometimes thrust upon the general-in-chief, and even criticism was not silent. Perhaps the fact that the Prussian army was always organized in corps, and that the chiefs of corps and all the other high officers were men of an equal social rank, rendered it hard to conduct matters according to the far more soldierly ways prevailing in the English service. Whatever may have been the reason, however, such would seem to have been the fact in the early part of this century.

The Earl of Ellesmere, who wrote, as has been before said, under the inspiration of the Duke of Wellington, has given us the following critical estimate of a portion of the Duke’s army. He is speaking of the English and German infantry, some thirty thousand in all, which fought at Waterloo.57

“Of this very body, which bore the brunt of the whole contest, be it remembered that not above six or seven thousand had seen a shot fired before. It was composed of second battalions to so great an extent that we cannot but imagine that this disadvantage would have been felt had the Duke attacked the French army, as he would have attacked it at Quatre Bras on the 17th, if the Prussians had maintained their position at Ligny—as he would have attacked it on the 18th at Waterloo, if the army with which he entered the south of France had been at his disposal. For purposes of resistance the fact is unquestionable that these raw British battalions were found as effective as the veterans of the Peninsula; but it might have been hazardous to manœuvre under fire, and over all contingencies of ground, with some of the very regiments which, while in position, never flinched from the cannonade or the cavalry charges through the livelong day of Waterloo.”

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Napoleon, as we have said above,58 “proposed to assemble his own forces with all possible secrecy in the neighborhood of Charleroi,” and this step was, of course, the essential preliminary to the opening of the campaign. The five corps of which the army was to be chiefly composed, were widely separated from each other, and each was at a considerable distance from Charleroi. The 1st and 2d Corps lay to the westward of Charleroi, in the neighborhood of Lille and Valenciennes respectively, the 3d and 4th Corps to the southeastward of Charleroi, near Mezières and Metz; the 6th Corps was at Laon, about half way from Charleroi to Paris, and the Guard partly at Paris, and partly, not far off, at Compiègne. The four cavalry corps were stationed to the north of Laon, between that place and Avesnes. The larger part of these commands were placed on or near the frontier, and any movements on their part were likely to be observed by the enemy. Nevertheless the concentration of the army was safely and secretly effected. The 4th Corps, which was near Metz, broke camp as early as the 6th of June, the 1st Corps, which was near Lille, as early as the 9th, the Guard left Paris on the 8th, the other corps left their encampments at somewhat later dates. The Emperor left Paris at half-past three o’clock on the morning of the 12th, and so well were his calculations made that, on the evening of the 14th, his headquarters were at Beaumont, not more than sixteen miles south of Charleroi, with the entire army within easy reach. And, by the expedient which he adopted, of causing demonstrations to be made at various points on the frontier, from the English Channel on the west almost to Metz on the east, he diverted the attention of the enemy’s pickets and created false alarms, so that his formidable army was concentrated without arousing the serious concern of the chiefs of the allied armies.