John Codman Ropes - The Battle of Waterloo

The fact that the subsequent written orders to proceed to Quatre Bras, issued on the morning of the 16th, make no mention either of this verbal order, or of Ney’s failure to comply with it, does not seem to us to tend in any way to show that the verbal order had not been given. There would not only be no need of referring to such a fact in a subsequent written order, but such a mention of it would be unusual and unmilitary.133 What light, if any, the contents of the written orders throw on the question of the previous giving of a verbal order, is a matter that will be considered hereafter.

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Marshal Blücher had long since fixed upon Sombreffe as the point of concentration for his army, in the event of the French crossing the Sambre at or near Charleroi, and he had even chosen the line of the brook of Ligny, which borders the villages of St. Amand, Ligny, and Balâtre, as a possible battlefield. 134

On the night of the 13th of June, Zieten, who commanded the Ist Prussian Corps, and whose headquarters were at Charleroi, saw the French bivouac fires at Beaumont and Solre; 135and, on the evening of the 14th, Blücher ordered the IId, IIId and IVth Corps to concentrate at or near Sombreffe. Zieten with the Ist Corps was to make as obstinate resistance as possible and fall back to and hold the village of Fleurus, thus gaining time for the concentration of the whole army. 136

These measures, it is admitted by all writers, were taken without any consultation being had with the Duke of Wellington at the moment. But it is claimed that there existed a definite understanding between the two commanders, in pursuance of which Blücher acted.137

There had been a meeting between Wellington and Blücher at Tirlemont on May 3d, which the Duke138 in a letter to the Prince of Orange pronounces “very satisfactory.” Baron Müffling, who was the Prussian military attaché at the Duke’s headquarters, states139 that the lines of march which the English and Prussian armies should respectively pursue in case France should be invaded , were definitely agreed upon and laid down in writing. This agreement may have been arrived at at that interview, though Müffling does not say so. He then goes on to say:—140

“The junction of the English and Prussian armies for a defensive 141 battle * * * was so distinctly prescribed by circumstances and by the locality that no doubt whatever could be raised on the point.”

He then proceeds to give his views, and ends by saying:—

“The point of concentration for the Prussian army was accordingly marked out between Sombreffe and Charleroi, and for the English, en dernier lieu , between Gosselies and Marchiennes.”

We do not think142 that Müffling intends here to state that Blücher and Wellington had made any agreement as to their respective action in case Napoleon should be the invader; he only tells us what in his judgment was the true course for them to take,—the course marked out, as he thought, by the circumstances and the locality. That we are right in this, will appear when the likelihood of Wellington’s having definitely agreed to advance his army to the very borders of the Sambre and the immediate vicinity of Charleroi, in view of his well-known anxiety for his communications, is considered for a moment.143 We believe that the Duke, although doubtless informed of Marshal Blücher’s intention to concentrate his army at Sombreffe in case the enemy advanced by way of Charleroi, made no agreement whatever with him as to his own movements. The two commanders no doubt fully intended to act in concert, and expected and relied upon the hearty support of each other, but there was not, as we believe, any definite agreement as to the particular steps to be taken in the event of a French invasion.

This matter is an important one to settle, because some Prussian historians claim that Blücher gave battle at Ligny relying on Wellington’s agreement to support him. We cannot decide on this question at the present stage of our narrative; but we have already seen that Blücher gave orders for his four corps to concentrate at Sombreffe without any definite agreement or understanding with Wellington that he was to be assisted by the English in the battle that was almost certain to occur as a consequence of this concentration. All he had a right to expect was, that the Duke, as soon as he was informed of the situation, would at once assemble his forces, and, if he could safely and wisely do so, would march to the assistance of his ally.144 But the Prussian Marshal took the risk of the English general’s not coming to his support in the next day’s battle; for, in the first place, he knew the scattered situation of the Anglo-Dutch troops, and that it would take a couple of days or so to get them together; and, secondly, he could not be sure that Napoleon might not, by operating with a part of his army by way of Mons and Hal, induce the Duke to concentrate his forces so far to the westward as to put it out of his power to render any help to an army that was fighting in front of Sombreffe.

We have stated that, on the evening of the 14th, Blücher ordered the IId, IIId and IVth Corps to concentrate at or near Sombreffe. In compliance with these directions the IId and IIId Corps respectively concentrated, and marched rapidly towards Sombreffe. But Bülow, whose headquarters were at Liége, and who had, in obedience to his first orders, concentrated his corps, took it upon himself to disobey a subsequent order which he received about eleven o’clock in the morning of the 15th, directing him to march at once upon Hannut, and to put off the execution of this order until the next day. It is hardly worth while to undertake to decide how far Gneisenau, Blücher’s chief-of-staff, was, as has been often asserted, partly to blame for this mischance, by not inserting in the order a statement to the effect that hostilities were imminent. The matter has been often discussed;145 it would seem that Bülow ought to bear the largest share of the blame; but why Gneisenau, upon whose shoulders lay the burden of effecting a concentration of the entire army by the morning of the 16th, should have omitted, when a battle was imminent, to put the commander of his most distant corps in possession of the facts of the situation and of Marshal Blücher’s intentions, it is certainly not easy to see. In such an exigency, the chief-of-staff must be held to the duty of omitting nothing that would tend to accomplish his task.

The Duke of Wellington had been, as had Marshal Blücher, aware for the last few days of the movement of large masses of French troops near the frontier, but he had not deemed it necessary or desirable in any way to alter his dispositions. He felt that his army was the force relied upon to protect Brussels, where the King of the Netherlands was, and Ghent, where the King of France was, and that it was of the utmost importance that Napoleon should not be allowed to gain the political advantage of putting those newly made sovereigns to flight,146 and repossessing himself of Belgium and Holland. Moreover, of the importance of preserving his own communications with Antwerp and Ostend the Duke was well aware. He believed that Napoleon’s best move would be against his communications;147 and he felt that, under this belief, he ought to hesitate before concentrating his army and moving it by its left to gain a union with that of Marshal Blücher.148

Hence he retained his own headquarters at Brussels, thirty-four miles149 from Charleroi. His army, as has been already stated, lay in cantonments to the westward of the Charleroi-Brussels turnpike. It is well known that Wellington looked for a movement of the French either on the road from Mons to Brussels or to the westward of that road. He had repaired the fortifications of Mons, Ypres, Tournay and other places, and put them in a state of defence.150 It is also to be observed that for the last three days before the opening of hostilities the information that came to him of the enemy’s movements indicated a probable concentration of their forces near Mons.151 Wellington’s troops, if they remained in the positions which they occupied on June 12th, for instance, could be concentrated at Braine-le-Comte or Hal,—towns on the road from Mons to Brussels,—much more readily than at Quatre Bras or Gosselies,—that is, they were well situated to oppose such a movement of the French as that which the Duke thought it most likely Napoleon would make. They were, it is true, still in their cantonments, scattered about in the towns and villages, but the Duke evidently thought that he would have time enough to assemble his various detachments and concentrate his army after the movements of his adversary should have been clearly ascertained. For holding this opinion he has been sharply criticised, but this we will consider in another place.