A Model Victory. Malcolm Balen

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СКАЧАТЬ XVIII had fled the country and the French monarchy had collapsed. But that was not the end of Napoleon’s ambitions, and his enemies knew it. Europe’s political masters, whose representatives had gathered at the Congress of Vienna, realised it was only a matter of time before war broke out. Now it had actually happened, but still Napoleon had managed to take everyone by surprise.

      Through the brilliance of his manoeuvres, Napoleon was able to dictate the course of events, and to scatter the two armies, of Britain and Prussia, which had hoped to unite against him. In doing so, he not only gave himself a chance of victory which would have been denied him if they had joined forces, but he placed their alliance under a strain which nearly broke it. In this way, he so undermined the little trust that the two armies placed in each other that the British military authorities would give little or no credit to the Prussians for the victory they came to win. The seeds of this discord lay in the speed of Napoleon’s attack which kept Wellington’s army and the Prussian forces apart until the very end of the Battle of Waterloo. As William Siborne discovered, the eventual result of their separation was to infect the battle’s history beyond his cure.

      When the first dozen regiments of French cavalry thundered through the countryside, it was not yet dawn, and Wellington had no idea that his enemy was on the move. The horsemen, brass-helmeted, spurred on their charges, and barely noticed the land as it fell away behind them. Their road led north, and soon it brought them to a small river which marked the frontier of France and Belgium. A hundred hooves, followed by many hundreds more, came crashing through the river at its shallow fording-place, so that spray was sent high into the air, to hang for a moment in the half-light. The horses climbed up and over the riverbank and took their thunder with them. The River Sambre resumed its gentle course, and the birds returned to their resting place in the trees. But the world was no longer at peace. The enemy had crossed the border and there were thousands more waiting to follow the bridgehead they had made. It was 15 June 1815 and the invasion had begun.

      If Napoleon was to narrow the odds against him, he had to catch the enemy off-guard. To take on the Duke of Wellington, who was undefeated in battle, was one matter, even though the Emperor did not rate his tactical abilities: too slow, too cautious, and no flair, he thought. But to take the Anglo-Allied army on at the same time as the Prussian army of old Blücher was military madness. The Emperor must keep the two sides apart or else be hopelessly outnumbered. That was why speed was all. His spies had told him that it would take many hours to bring together Wellington’s scattered army, and many hours more for the two armies to become one force. If he could take on each army separately, then they might never unite. And that was entirely their own fault.

      Wellington and Blücher had first met only six weeks earlier to discuss their joint campaign. They met again in Brussels at the end of May, where Blücher had been granted the rare honour of inspecting some of the Duke’s cavalry. Their discussions had led to them to agree that their armies would cooperate in battle, but their pact was incomplete. United by a common enemy, the two armies were not brought together on the ground. There was no joint command, and their forces operated in different parts of the country, which made coordination difficult. Wellington’s base lay in Brussels, and his supply lines ran from Ostend and Antwerp. Blücher’s headquarters were being transferred from Liège to Namur, and his supply lines ran in the opposite direction to those of Wellington. If the two armies were forced to retreat, they would be pulled even further apart. But the two leaders had, at least, agreed on tactics. They planned to advance into France on 27 June to attack Napoleon, and to try to defeat him through the use of overwhelming force. If the plan failed, then the Allied army and the Prussians would try to protect each other. Now, although they did not know it, the plan was failing, and their pact would be tested to destruction.

      The alliance with the Prussians was, in any case, an unlikely one, because in battle as in life, Wellington and Blücher were polar opposites. Blücher was born to be obstinate, and he had lived his life according to his own drumbeat in a military career which was as rich as it was varied. A member of a military family, he had joined the Swedish army as a cavalryman in 1742 and had taken part in three campaigns against Prussia’s Frederick the Great. When he was captured by his enemy in 1760, he changed sides and became a loyal, but uncontrollable soldier. He then served with distinction against France’s revolutionary armies, but the disastrous 1806 campaign had led to his enforced retirement. When Prussia again took up arms against the French in 1813, Blücher returned to fight with typical ferocity until the emperor was defeated at Laon, forcing his abdication. Now the two rivals were to face each other again, with Blücher, at seventy-two, the oldest man on the battlefield, and the only man to have beaten Napoleon more than once in battle.

      In contrast, Wellington was cautious and conservative, a methodical commander who considered defence was the best form of attack, who wanted to lure his enemy into making mistakes, and who instinctively eschewed unnecessary risks. He had never met Napoleon directly in battle though the two had circled each other warily. The Duke had forced the Emperor into exile on Elba the year before, and there was a certain inevitability in their meeting now, the scion of the establishment ranged against the avowed outsider, the imperial usurper of monarchy and tradition. The son of an Irish aristocrat, albeit an impoverished one, Arthur Wellesley had been educated at Eton, and had then taken a commission in the 73rd Infantry. India was the making of him. The war with France had effectively moved there, with the French encouraging native princes to resist the East India Company’s control. As brigade commander under General George Harris in 1799, Wellington impressed his superiors throughout the Seringapatam expedition against the rebellious Tippoo Sahib of Mysore, who had been stirred into action by his French allies, and he was made administrator of the conquered territory.

      It was the Peninsular War against the French in Spain, however, which had cemented Wellington’s growing reputation and which taught him a mastery of defensive warfare. Between November 1809 and September 1810 he had supervised the construction of protective lines of trenches and redoubts, north of Lisbon, stretching from the Atlantic to the Tagus. The ‘Lines of Torres Vedras’ were crafted out of two successive ridges of hills. Buildings, sunken lanes, olive groves and vineyards were all erased from the landscape, denying any cover to an attacking force. It was a brilliantly successful tactic, and after driving the French from the Peninsula, Wellington pushed on into France itself in 1814 until Napoleon, pressed by Wellington in the south and by a triple alliance of Prussia, Russia and Austria in the north and east, had been forced to abdicate.

      But a year later, with every mile of Belgian countryside covered by his light dragoons, his hope of revenge was growing. After securing the crossing at the River Sambre, his Armée du Nord had moved fast to form a wedge between its two enemies. Marshal Ney led the left wing towards Frasnes and Quatre Bras, while Marshal Grouchy took the right wing towards Fleurus and Sombreffe. A mobile reserve was kept at Charleroi to reinforce either of the commanders. By seizing Quatre Bras, the French would control the main highway, and the chances of the two armies joining up against them would be as likely as this year’s harvest failing, and already the crop was as high as the tallest cavalryman. Instead, Wellington and Blücher would be forced to fall back across country, slowed down by the rutted landscape and the sun-baked soil. The Emperor had sprung his trap before his enemies knew anything about it. Soon, he would be the conqueror of Brussels.

      

      That evening, in a large room on the ground floor of the Duchess of Richmond’s residence, the young ladies of Brussels were dancing with the British officers, resplendent in their scarlet, gold and white uniforms. The ball, it should be said, was the scene of the first of many myths which came to cloak the history of the Battle of Waterloo. As William Siborne was to find, the imprecision of legend began even before the combatants reached the battlefield.

      The building in which the ball was held has long since disappeared, enabling novelists, painters and poets to let loose their imaginations, so that the ball has entered the classical literature of England without regard to fact. Over the years, it became a grand affair, in a magnificent ballroom, with sparkling chandeliers, great sweeping curtains and sumptuous furniture. But it was a memory based СКАЧАТЬ