Waterloo: A New History of the Battle and Its Armies by Gordon Corrigan

Author:Gordon Corrigan [Corrigan, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Belgium, Military, Napoleonic Wars, World, Western
Amazon: B00J75GW1U
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2014-06-11T14:00:00+00:00

6

BATTLE JOINED

After 2 June 1815, when the Congress of Vienna officially declared Napoleon to be an outlaw, there could be no doubt that there would be war. Napoleon had always known that there would be, but had to go through the motions of seeking peace to placate those sections of French public opinion that did not want a return to the years of struggle. Now that war was inevitable, Napoleon’s plan was to strike at the only armies that were in position on the French frontiers, those of the Anglo-Dutch and the Prussians. If he could catch them before they had time to join, then he would outnumber each and could defeat them separately. If they were allowed to join, however, the combined army would greatly outnumber the Army of the North and the result could be entirely different. For all the enormous efforts to raise and equip new French formations, the army was brittle. It was patriotic, fired by loyalty to the emperor and made bitter by the treatment meted out during the brief restoration period, but there remained an atmosphere of distrust between those who had stayed loyal to the emperor and had been unemployed or worse until Napoleon’s return, and those who had taken an oath to the Bourbons and had done well by it. Napoleon needed a victory, and he needed it quickly. Any unnecessary delay would not only give the Austrians and the Russians time to get closer to the French borders but it would also allow suspicion to fester and encourage royalists at home and waverers in the army. An early victory, however, would consolidate his position in the army and in the state, and might well provoke a rebellion in Belgium, many of whose inhabitants had not been unhappy as Frenchmen and women, and were not especially enamoured of now being Dutch.

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