Waterloo 1815: Wavre to Plancenoit

INTRODUCTION

Histories of the Waterloo Campaign generally concentrate on the main battle, leaving the role of the Prussian and Federal German armies in the background. Little has been said of what was surely Lt-General Count Neidhardt von Gneisenau’s greatest contribution to the final downfall of Napoleon – the way in which he rallied the defeated Prussians, turning chaos into order and transforming a tactical defeat into a strategic victory. Left with the bitter taste of defeat in their mouths, and for a time without leadership, these men conducted an exhausting overnight march to Wavre, where they had only the briefest of respites, before being sent on to make the decisive attack at the Battle of Waterloo. This achievement was all the more remarkable as much of the Prussian infantry was militia and faced its baptism of fire on 16 June 1815. Furthermore, Lt-General Hans von Zieten’s Corps had suffered nearly 40 percent losses in the first two days of the fighting, yet, on the morning of 18 June, it took the bit between its teeth again and made its march to Waterloo, allowing the Duke of Wellington’s battered centre to be relieved just in time to receive Napoleon’s final thrust, the attack of the Imperial Guard.

The route Field Marshal Prince Blücher von Wahlstadt’s army took to Waterloo on 18 June 1815 was twisted and tortuous. His army was exhausted and disorganised before it even started its march to Waterloo. A fire in the narrow streets of Wavre delayed it, then the torrential rain of the previous night turned the narrow paths to Plancenoit into mudslides, along which moving the artillery and waggons proved difficult. Only by walking the route can the superhuman efforts Blücher made to keep his word to Wellington be fully appreciated.

If that was not enough, Blücher ’s exhausted and ravenous men, covered from head to foot in mud and dirt and suffering from a raging thirst, faced Napoleon Bonaparte’s élite Imperial Guard, rested and fed, waiting for them in the village stronghold of Plancenoit, with its fortress-like church. The battle began for the right rear of Napoleon’s position, the key to victory. Facing such determined opposition, the Prussians had to storm the village three times before they finally imposed their will. With the road in the rear of Napoleon’s position now open to them, the Battle of Waterloo was won. Indeed, as Sir Richard Hussey Vivian, commander of a cavalry brigade in Wellington’s army, put it:

… Too little [is] allowed for the support and assistance of the Prussians on this great occasion. That the British and their allies fought most determinately, and held their position with a degree of obstinacy and courage with which Napoleon had never been before resisted, it must be admitted; but when it is considered how large a Prussian force came to their assistance, attacking the right flank and, rear of the French, no military man can refuse to attribute to such assistance a considerable share in the brilliant victory that followed without such assistance the British might have held their ground, but the defeat of the enemy never could have been so complete.

Determined to bring the weight of numbers to bear at the crucial point at Waterloo, the Prussian high command left Lt-General Johann Adolf von Thielemann’s III Army Corps behind at Wavre to cover their rear and to suffer its fate at the hands of Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy’s pursuing Frenchmen. Thielemann’s men held on, and only just, against overwhelming odds, until the news of victory at Waterloo arrived.

The Prussians then went over to the offensive and the pursuit to Paris started. Grouchy, now able to act on his own initiative, withdrew and, once no longer acting on Napoleon’s orders, came into his own, conducting a brilliant rearguard action. Grouchy’s actions kept alive the possibility for Napoleon to rally his defeated forces and continue the campaign.

History often regards the Waterloo Campaign as having ended with the battle of that name, but there was every chance Napoleon might have bounced back after that defeat, as he had done so often in the past, and rallied his troops on Grouchy’s wing and used the northern French fortresses as a base of operations. Blücher’s vigorous pursuit to Paris did much to prevent that happening, but pro-Bonapartist fortresses held out for months after Napoleon had surrendered to the British, the last one capitulating on 30 November 1815, marking the end of the Waterloo Campaign.

Chapter One

The Retreat to Wavre

Positions of the three armies

On the evening of 16 June 1815, Napoleon’s main army, consisting of the Imperial Guard, the infantry corps of General Dominique-Joseph-René Vandamme, Count d’Unsebourg; Marshal Maurice-Étienne Count Gérard and Marshal Georges Mouton Count de Lobau; the infantry division of General Baron Jean-Baptiste Girard from the corps of Marshal Honoré-Charles-Michel-Joseph Count Reille and the cavalry corps of General Claude-Pierre Count Pajol; General Rémy-Joseph-Isodore Baron Exelmans and General Edouard-Jean-Baptiste Count Milhaud under the command of Marshal Emmanuel Count de Grouchy, was situated on the field of Ligny, which had just been taken from the Prussians.

The wing of the army under the command of Marshal Michel Ney, Count of Moscow, consisting of the infantry corps of Reille and the cavalry corps of General Count François- Étienne Kellermann, Duke of Valmy, was facing the forces under the Duke of Wellington in and around Quatre Bras. The infantry corps under Marshal Jean-Baptiste Drouet Count d’Erlon was between Quatre Bras and Ligny, not having been involved in either battle that day. The main part of the Duke of Wellington’s army was either at Quatre Bras or on its way there, but would withdraw to Waterloo the next morning.

The French Imperial Guard infantry. It was in the bitter fighting for possession of the village of Plancenoit that Napoleon’s much vaunted Guard scored its last success. It was to suffer its final defeat only an hour or so later.

French Imperial Guard Chasseur. Consisting of infantry, cavalry and artillery, the Imperial Guard made up one corps in Napoleon’s army. The Guard Cavalry was frittered away on 18 June 1815 attacking Wellington’s squares.

The Prussian army, under the nominal command of Field Marshal Prince Blücher von Wahlstadt, consisted of four army corps of mixed arms. The first two, under Lt-General Hans von Zieten and Major-General Georg Dubislav Ludwig von Pirch I, were falling back from Ligny in the general direction of Wavre. The third, under Lt-General Johann Adolf von Thielemann, was falling back from Ligny towards Gembloux. The fourth, under General Friedrich Wilhelm Count Bülow von Dennewitz, was coming up from Namur to Gembloux.

The situation after the Battle of Ligny

On 16 June, Napoleon’s final attack on the Prussian centre at Ligny, made in the growing darkness, achieved the long-awaited breakthrough. Blücher tried to stem this last assault at the head of his cavalry, but fell beneath his mortally injured mount leading an unsuccessful charge. With the commander-in-chief hors de combat and confused masses of men falling back, control was lost for a time. The Prussian right wing fell back to the north, as did the centre. The left wing headed east, towards Gembloux, where reinforcements in the shape of Bülow’s IV Army Corps were expected. No decision had been made before the battle on a line of retreat; any withdrawal was to be made according to circumstances and that was impossible to predict.

History often presents Gneisenau, the Prussian chief-of-staff, as having an irrational mistrust of his ally Wellington, and wanting to take his beaten army eastwards, towards home. Such tales originate from Lt-Colonel Sir Henry Hardinge, Wellington’s liaison officer in Blücher ’s headquarters, but he was known for telling several tall stories about this affair. Furthermore, an examination of the record – both documentary and eyewitness – shows this not to be true. Gneisenau’s first action was to ensure that no further men took to the road east towards Namur, but he was not able to stop around 8,000 men from departing for the Rhineland. He then attempted to direct the remainder of the army on the village of Tilly, just a few kilometres north of Brye, the last village his men had held on that day’s battlefield. From Tilly, there were roads running westwards, along which Gneisenau could have taken his army to just behind Wellington’s position at Quatre Bras. This act makes his intention clear.

Sir Henry Hardinge. In the Waterloo Campaign, Hardinge was Wellington’s representative in the Prussian headquarters. His reported accounts of certain incidents have given rise to a number of myths.

This was, however, not to be, but that was not due to any decisions Gneisenau made. The Prussian forces had spent much of that day involved in street fighting, a form of battle which easily breaks down the cohesion of units and in which command and control are quickly lost. Added to that were the heavy casualties that particularly Zieten (39%) and Pirch I (17%) had suffered, further destroying the integrity of these units. Finally, many of these men were untried and poorly trained militia fighting their first battle. Lacking much in the way of military experience, one cannot reasonably expect them to maintain their order for long. Gneisenau was simply not able to stop this disordered mass of men where he wanted to. It continued through Tilly and beyond.

Having done what he could to regain control over his shattered army, Gneisenau then looked for a suitable place to establish his headquarters. A report came to him that Blücher had been located and was recovering in Mellery, a few kilometres north of Tilly. Moving through Mellery, he found a group of soldiers guarding a house at the far end of the village. Gneisenau had found his master. Order was slowly being restored.

Now that the headquarters had come together again, orders could be despatched to the army. A staff officer was sent off with orders for the retreating column. He rode for many kilometres, down dark and narrow country lanes, before reaching the head of the column at Lauzelle, just south of Wavre. In effect, the army had chosen its line of retreat, the men voting with their feet. At this time, the road ran through a wood, and just three officers blocked it. The army was halted. Dawn was breaking.

NAPOLEON BONAPARTE (1769 – 1821)

The man that shaped this era was born in Ajaccio, on the isle of Corsica. He spent his youth training to be an artilleryman in the French army, in the country that had recently annexed the Italian-speaking island, until then part of the Republic of Genoa. His early career was nondescript, but in 1793 his handling of the artillery that broke the siege of the British-occupied French Mediterranean port of Toulon catapulted him into the limelight. His experience in the Italian Campaign of 1794 stood him in good stead and the ‘whiff of grapeshot’ with which he broke the power of the Paris mob in 1795 opened the door for a career in politics. His successful campaign in Italy in 1796 laid the foundations of his power-base in the army. Despite suffering a setback in his Egyptian adventure, Napoleon seized power in 1799 after his return to France as one of three consuls that swept away the corrupt and unpopular Directory. He was soon made into First Consul and became the supreme ruler of France.

Napoleon’s second campaign in Italy in 1800 did much to consolidate his power in France, and in 1804 he crowned himself emperor. At this time, France was, after Russia, the second most populous state in Europe. Its colonial possessions and international trading network rivalled that of