Napoleon and Wellington by Andrew Roberts

Author:Andrew Roberts
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780297865261
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2010-11-25T05:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Wellington Protects Napoleon

(and His Own Reputation)

JUNE—JULY 1815

Wellington had always been baneful to Bonaparte, or rather the rival genius to France, the English genius, barred the road to victory.

CHATEAUBRIAND

‘My Lord,’ wrote Wellington to the secretary for war Lord Bathurst in his great Waterloo despatch on the morning of 19 June 1815, ‘Bonaparte having collected the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th Corps of the French army, and the Imperial Guard and nearly all the cavalry, on the Sambre… advanced on the 15 th, and attacked the Prussian posts… at daylight in the morning.’1 Wellington then skated over the fact that he had been, in the word he used to the Duke of Richmond, ‘humbugged’, by saying that when he heard of Napoleon’s having crossed the Sambre ‘in the evening of the 15 th’ he had ‘immediately ordered the troops to prepare to march, and afterwards to march to their left’. This somewhat obscured the central point, that he had heard in the afternoon, and that they had originally been ordered to concentrate to the south-west of Brussels, and not, as had been agreed with Blücher, to the south-east.

Wellington’s reference to the battle of Ligny was similarly misleading. Highly complimentary to Blücher, he stated that the Prussian army had ‘maintained their position with their usual gallantry and perseverance’ and then the Prussian commander had ‘determined to fall back to concentrate his army upon Wavre; and he marched in the night, after the action was over’. Wellington had not been present during the fighting, and therefore had an excuse for dressing up his ally’s defeat in this generous way. (The Prussians had been forced from the field and Blücher, recovering from concussion in a barn after having been ridden over by French cavalry in the retreat, in fact only confirmed Gneisenau’s order to head northwards to Wavre long after it had been taken, though Wellington might well not have known this on the 19th or not have thought it relevant.)

Ignorance of the truth might also have led Wellington to state that ‘The enemy made no effort to pursue Marshal Blücher,’ when in fact of course Grouchy had been detached with 33,000 men and ninety-six guns to do just that. The (surely unintentional) effect of this misstatement was to have led the readers back in Britain – and the despatch was reproduced in almost every newspaper in the land – to assume that Napoleon must have attacked Wellington with his entire army, rather than just two-thirds of it. Later on Wellington does refer to Napoleon having sent his III Corps ‘to observe’ Blücher, which contradicted his earlier statement but anyhow hardly altered the overall impression.

When Wellington wrote that Blücher had ‘promised me that, in case we should be attacked, he would support me with one or more corps, as might be necessary’, he did the Prussian commander-in-chief something of a disservice. In fact Blücher had told Wellington that ‘Bülow’s Corps will set off marching at daybreak in your direction. It will be immediately followed by the Corps of [Lieutenant-General Georg] Pirch.

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