A Model Victory. Malcolm Balen

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СКАЧАТЬ ornate ballroom modelled on an entirely different building, and especially by Byron, who ensured that romanticism prevailed, rather than historical accuracy. It was left to the son of a Waterloo veteran, Sir William Fraser, to prove, though not conclusively, the mundane truth: that the ball had in fact taken place, not in a high hall, but in a long, low-ceilinged room supported by square wooden posts.

      The guest list for the ball is, however, well documented. More than two hundred people had been invited: His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange was there, and the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Nassau and the Duc d’Aramberg and a clutch of counts and countesses. There were more than eighty British officers, too, on the guest list, many of whom would play a prominent part in the battles which lay ahead, including the Earl of Uxbridge, Wellington’s deputy; Maj.-Gen. Lord Edward Somerset; Lord Hill; Lt.-Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, and his wife, Lady Susan; Lt.-Col. Lord Saltoun; Sir John Byng; Sir William Ponsonby; Maj.-Gen. Sir Hussey Vivian and Maj.-Gen. Sir James Kempt. They did not know that the room they occupied had more humble origins as the storeroom of a coachbuilder who still owned the rented property, for its rose and trellis wallpaper camouflaged its previous existence from the party-goers, as if their evening’s pleasure was a veneer which could be stripped away.

      During the morning of 15 June, there had been rumours in the city that the Emperor had invaded the country. But although there is a dispute about when reports reached Wellington, it seems there was no definite information on which he could rely. A messenger on a good horse would take only three hours to gallop the distance which separated the city from the border. And yet there had been no definite sighting, not even a suggestion of a cloud of dust created by an army on the move. Besides which, the Duke of Wellington needed to keep up appearances: there were too many supporters of Napoleon in the city who resented the yoke of the Dutch rule. It would not do to raise their hopes or give them encouragement, which was why he intended to go to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.

      By mid-afternoon, Wellington knew that there had been an attack, but he could not discern if it was merely sabre-rattling by the Emperor or if a full invasion had been launched. A clash of Prussian and French skirmishers did not tell him anything, for he knew enough of Bonaparte’s brilliance not to be lured into a false move: the attack might simply be a feint, to mask his true intentions. Was Napoleon really heading directly through Charleroi? Or would he attack more centrally, with a strike at Mons? Perhaps further east still, darting between Condé and Tournai? It was impossible to judge. If the Duke was tricked into sending his men to Charleroi, then the road from Mons would lie open. In the end, he thought his army was most vulnerable to an attack on its supply links to the Channel, and so he issued orders for his divisions to gather at their assembly points in readiness for battle, a decision which pulled men away from Brussels, in the opposite direction to where they were needed.

      At nightfall, more reports arrived. Wellington learned that the Prussians were mobilising at Sombreffe, against a French push east; he learned too, from the young Prince of Orange, that there had been the sound of gunfire near the border. But still he was unable to calculate the position of the main French force. So he did not commit his men to Quatre Bras, as he should have done, and its strategically vital crossroads remained unguarded.

      In the end, given the confusion the day had brought, it was appropriate that the threat of war should finally come to wrap itself, incongruously, around Brussels society as it paraded on the dance floor. For as the guests danced and talked and ate, Lieutenant Henry Webster, of the 9th Light Dragoons, an aide-de-camp to the Prince of Orange, was pounding the road between Braine-le-Comte and Brussels, bearing news of the French advance from Maj.-Gen. Jean-Victor Constant-Rebecque, the incisive chief of staff of the Prince of Orange. ‘I was in my saddle without a second’s delay; and, thanks to a fine moon and two capital horses, had covered the ten miles I had to go within the hour! Such was the crowd of carriages, that I could not well make way through them on horseback; so I abandoned my steed to the first man I could get hold of, and made my way on foot to the porter’s lodge.’ Even so, Webster was forced to wait because the Duchess of Richmond had just given orders for the band to go upstairs, and he was told that if he burst in suddenly it might disturb the ladies. Peering in between the doors he saw two couples on their way to the ballroom, the Duchess of Richmond with the Prince of Orange, and Lady Charlotte Greville on the Duke of Wellington’s arm. Webster slipped quietly into the house to deliver his vital message.

      After reading Rebecque’s despatch, Wellington remained at the ball for twenty minutes, then quietly asked his host if there was a good map in the house. The Duke of Richmond took him upstairs into his own dressing-room, and as the two men pored over the chart, the full impact of Napoleon’s lightning strike became clear. It was only now that Wellington realised how disastrously he had miscalculated. Famously, he was said to have declared, ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me,’ and he ordered men to move to Quatre Bras. ‘But we shall not stop him there,’ Wellington reflected, ‘so, I must fight him here.’ And he put his thumbnail on the map, on the village of Mont St Jean, just south of Waterloo.

      Wellington was to say afterwards that this was the first he had heard of Napoleon’s attack on the Prussian outposts. But the Prussians were convinced that Wellington had received news of the attack which they had sent in the afternoon, and that he had broken his promise to support them. Tonight, there would be no help for the Prussians from the Duke of Wellington’s army, and they would come to connect his apparent failure to help them with the terrible defeat they were to suffer the next day. With every minute that went by, and with every mile his men pushed on into Belgium, Napoleon was on his way to victory.

      

      Both armies paid the price for Wellington’s mistake. At the crossroads of Quatre Bras on 16 June the gunfire started at first light. Eight thousand men in the Dutch-Belgian army had spread out in a wide circle, south of the crossroads, facing twenty-eight thousand of the enemy. There were not enough of them to hold the French but there were enough to delay them if Wellington’s men arrived, and their skirmishers were already at work, sniping at enemy forces. But they would have to wait several hours for reinforcements, for Wellington’s orders of the night before were only just beginning to get through to some units, so that new orders which referred to previous orders confused the men who had not received the first set of paperwork. Captain Alexander Cavalié Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery was told to head for Braine-le Comte: ‘that we were to move forward, then, was certain … but the suddenness of it, and the importance of arriving quickly at the appointed place, rather alarmed me … First, all my officers were absent; secondly, all my country waggons were absent; thirdly, a whole division (one-third of my troop) was absent at Yser-ingen.’ Ensign Edward Macready, who was the brother of a famous actor, William Charles Macready, had lost contact with his regiment, the 30th (Cambridgeshire), which had been billeted in the little town of Soignes, the headquarters of the 3rd British Division. Macready was only seventeen, and had joined the 2nd Battalion of the 30th Foot the previous year as a volunteer, serving in Holland. He kept a private journal of his experiences. That morning he had ridden over to the regiment ‘and pulling up in the market-place, was thunder-struck. Not a soul was stirring. The silence of the tomb reigned where I should have met 10,000 men. I ran into a house and asked, “where are the troops?” “They marched at two this morning,” was the chilling reply.’ If it was a shock for such a young soldier, then soon he was acting like a veteran: by the end of the Battle of Waterloo, such was the casualty rate, he was commanding his own light company.

      When Wellington arrived to take charge at Quatre Bras, he was facing a crisis of his own making. Not only were the defending forces in disarray, but he had to fight the battle in a place which was not of his own choosing. The landscape was flat and featureless, its only features a brook which ran parallel to the Nivelles road and the Bossu Wood towards which it meandered, where the Dutch troops had taken shelter. There could be no question of the Duke developing a considered strategy or dictating the pace of events. His army was not yet fully assembled and it would grow incoherently and unpredictably as the hours went by, so that each fresh unit would be flung straight into the fray as soon as it arrived.

      Wellington СКАЧАТЬ