Hilaire Belloc - The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc

Of course, if war were clockwork, if there were no human character in a commander, if no latitude of judgment were understood in the very nature of a great independent command such as Ney’s was upon that day, if there were always present before every independent commander’s mental vision an exact map of the operations, and, at the same time , a plan of the exact position of all the troops upon it at any given moment—if all these armchair conceptions of war were true, then Ney’s order would have been as undisciplined in character and as foolish in intention as it was disastrous in effect.

But such conceptions are not true. Great generals entrusted with separate forces, and told off to engage in a great action at a distance from the supreme command, have, by the very nature of their mission, the widest latitude of judgment left to them. They are perfectly free to decide, in some desperate circumstance, that if their superior knew of that circumstance, he would understand why an afterorder of his was not obeyed, or was even directly countermanded. That Ney should have sent this furious counterorder, therefore, to Erlon, telling him to come back instantly, in spite of Napoleon’s first note, though it was a grievous error, is one perfectly explicable, and parallel to many other similar incidents that diversify the history of war. In effect, Ney said to himself: “The Emperor has no idea of the grave crisis at my end of the struggle or he wouldn’t have sent that order. He is winning, anyhow; I am actually in danger of defeat; and if I am defeated, Wellington’s troops will pour through and come up on the Emperor’s army from the rear and destroy it. I have a right, therefore, to summon Erlon back.” Such was the rationale of Ney’s decision. His passionate mood did the rest.

A second and graver difficulty is this: By the time Erlon got the message to come back, it was so late that he could not possibly bring his 20,000 up in time to be of any use to Ney at Quatre Bras. They could only arrive on the field, as they did in fact arrive, when darkness had already set in. It is argued that a general in Ney’s position would have rapidly calculated the distance involved, and would have seen that it was useless to send for his subordinate at such an hour.

The answer to this suggestion is twofold. In the first place, a man under hot fire is capable of making mistakes; and Ney was, at the moment when he gave that order, under the hottest fire of the whole action. In the second place, he could not have any very exact idea of where in all those four miles of open fields behind him the head of Erlon’s column might be, still less where exactly Delcambre would find it by the time he had ridden back. A mile either way would have made all the difference; if Erlon was anywhere fairly close; if Delcambre knew exactly where to find him, and galloped by the shortest route—if this and if that, it might still be that Erlon would turn up just before darkness and decide the field in Ney’s favour. 11

Considerable discussion has turned on whether, as the best authorities believe, Erlon did or did not receive a pencilled note written personally to him by the Emperor, telling him to turn at once and come to his, Napoleon’s, aid, and by his unexpected advent upon its flank destroy the Prussian army.

As an explanation of the false move of Erlon back and forth, the existence of this note is immaterial. The weight of evidence is in its favour, and men will believe or disbelieve it according to the way in which they judge human character and motive. For the purposes of a dramatic story the incident of a little pencilled note to Erlon is very valuable, but as an elucidation of the historical problem it has no importance, for, even if he got such a note, Erlon only got it in connection with general orders, which, he knew, were on their way to Ney , his superior.

The point for military history is that—

( a ) Erlon, with the First Corps, on his way up to Quatre Bras that afternoon, was intercepted by a messenger, who told him that the Emperor wanted him to turn off eastward and go to Ligny, and not to Quatre Bras; while—

( b ) He also knew that that message was intended also to be delivered, and either had been or was about to be delivered, to his superior officer, Ney. Therefore he went eastward as he had been told, believing that Ney knew all about it; and therefore, also, on receiving a further direct order from Ney to turn back again westward, he did turn back.

If we proceed to apportion the blame for that disastrous episode, which, by permitting Blucher to escape, was the plain cause of Napoleon’s subsequent defeat at Waterloo, it is obvious that the blame must fall upon Ney, who could not believe, in the heat 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.

* * * * *

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.”