Chapter XII · THE BATTLE OF QUATRE BRAS.

Marshal Ney, as we have seen, took no steps what ever, on his return to Gosselies from his midnight interview with the Emperor, to get his command in readiness for the work of the coming day. Frasnes, in any event, he must have known, would have to be occupied in force, whether an advance from that place to Quatre Bras should be decided on or not.396 Yet, instead of getting the divisions of Foy and Jerome up to Frasnes at once, where Bachelu and Piré already were, and supplying their place at Gosselies by the divisions of the 1st Corps, one of which, we know (Durutte’s), had bivouacked between Jumet and Gosselies, he suffered them to remain at Gosselies; and, so far as appears, sent officers to hurry up d’Erlon only after he had ordered him to Frasnes (ante, p. 119), that is, after 11 A.M. Then there was a delay of an hour and three-quarters, for which Ney was not directly responsible, which was caused by Reille,397 who, instead of obeying Ney’s order to march promptly from Gosselies to the front on receipt of any orders of movement from the headquarters of the army, delayed doing so until he had informed Ney, who was at Frasnes, that he had heard from Girard that the Prussians were concentrating near St. Amand, and had thereupon received fresh orders. But this delay could never have occurred had Reille been at Frasnes himself, to which place he ought to have been ordered by Ney hours before.

It is, therefore, perfectly correct to say, that if Reille’s two divisions at Gosselies had been, early in the morning, ordered to Frasnes, where Bachelu and Piré had been since the previous evening, Marshal Ney could have commenced the battle of Quatre Bras with all the 2d Corps, except Girard’s division, which was with the main army, at eleven o’clock, the hour when he received his orders from Soult and his letter from the Emperor. Or, if he had thought best to defer the attack until he should have communicated to the Emperor the information as to the concentration of the Prussian army near St. Amand conveyed by Girard,398 he would have been able to obey his orders, whatever they were, the moment his messenger returned. There was also no reason why d’Erlon should not have been likewise ordered up from Gosselies to Frasnes to support Reille, certainly with Durutte’s division, leaving the other divisions to come along as fast as they could. And it is not going too far to say that the measures above suggested were simply those which common sense would dictate, to an officer in Ney’s position.399

However, as a matter of fact, Ney did not take these measures, nor did he, even on the receipt of his orders, which, as we have seen, peremptorily directed him to assemble the 1st and 2d Corps and Kellermann’s two divisions of cavalry, and with this force to carry Quatre Bras, proceed to comply with them. He ordered d’Erlon to halt at Frasnes; he ordered Kellermann400 to station one division at Frasnes and one at Liberchies; and he assailed the enemy’s position at Quatre Bras about 2 P.M. with the infantry divisions of Bachelu and Foy, and the cavalry division of Piré. It was not until nearly 3 o’clock401 that the division of Jerome402 arrived, and took its place in the line of battle. With the 2d Corps alone, then, did Marshal Ney attempt the task which he had been directed to undertake with all the troops which had been assigned to him. The 1st Corps and the cavalry he ordered to stay behind to protect his flanks and line of retreat.

When such are the preparations, nothing but extraordinary luck can give success in battle; and at first it seemed as if this luck was in store for Marshal Ney. When he began the action, Perponcher’s Dutch-Belgian division constituted the sole force of the enemy at Quatre Bras; and Wellington not having yet returned from Brye, where he had been to see Blücher, the Prince of Orange, a gallant young officer, but possessing no remarkable abilities, was in command. Ney’s two divisions gave him a slight superiority in infantry, which was augmented by the arrival of the third, and his soldiers were much the better fighters. He easily gained ground, and success seemed assured.

The Duke of Wellington reached the field about half-past two; and of course assumed control. He now had occasion to see how far the statements of the “Disposition” were from the actual facts; he found himself obliged to sustain a vigorous and well-conducted attack by superior forces, as best he might. Fortunately, about 3.30 P.M.,403 Picton’s British division arrived, followed immediately by the Duke of Brunswick’s Corps, and Ney found himself slightly outnumbered.404 Nevertheless, the quality of his troops, both officers and men, was so good, and his superiority to his antagonists in cavalry and artillery was so great, that he continued the fight with the expectation of success and with the chances in his favor.405 But no efforts of his could overcome the steadiness and courage of the British infantry. The Dutch-Belgians retired after a couple of hours’ fighting; the Brunswickers were broken, and the Duke of Brunswick was killed; but the British and Hanoverian troops, though outmatched at this stage of the action, stubbornly maintained the fight.

At five or soon after, two brigades of Alten’s 3d British division arrived, and gave Wellington an equality, perhaps even a slight superiority in force. Ney, on the other hand, had not been reinforced either by d’Erlon or by Kellermann’s two divisions of cavalry, all which troops had been placed at his disposal by the Emperor, and all which he had been, by the last order which he had received from Marshal Soult, expressly directed to employ in the movement upon Quatre Bras. That is to say, as late as five o’clock, when the battle had been in progress for three hours, Ney had not got his command together, had not, in fact, assembled one-half of it on the field. Where were these missing troops? (See Map 7.)

Take, first, the case of the 1st Corps. We have seen that the division of the 2d Corps, which was the last to arrive, arrived on the field of battle at or shortly before 3 P.M. Quatre Bras is distant from Frasnes about two miles and a half, and the field of battle, therefore, was about two miles beyond Frasnes. Since Jerome arrived on the field at 3 o’clock, he must have left Frasnes about or soon after 2 o’clock. If Durutte, who commanded the leading division of the 1st Corps, had followed Jerome promptly from Jumet, which is not over a mile and a half to the south of Gosselies, he would have reached Frasnes before 3 o’clock. The other two divisions, which were ordered to Frasnes, should have arrived certainly in the course of the next hour and a half; so that by 4 or 4.30 P.M. Ney should have had the three divisions of the 1st Corps which he had ordered to Frasnes, ready for use there.

What actually happened was this. Durutte, who commanded the leading division of the 1st Corps, when in march from Jumet for Frasnes,406 received orders from Ney to continue his march to Quatre Bras. But, as he was reaching Frasnes,407 he was ordered by one of the Emperor’s aides, on his own responsibility,408 to direct his march towards Brye. This order Durutte obeyed, and, on arriving at Frasnes, turned the head of the column to the right. D’Erlon, who, had he been present, might have stopped this unauthorized proceeding, had unfortunately ridden in advance of his corps. The aide, who, according to d’Erlon’s statement, was carrying a pencil note to Marshal Ney, came up with d’Erlon just beyond Frasnes, and told him what he had done. D’Erlon then rode back to join his command, sending his chief-of-staff to Marshal Ney to inform him what had happened. The 1st Corps then proceeded by way of Villers-Peruin towards St. Amand for possibly a couple of miles,409 when it was seen by Vandamme, who between 5.30 and 6 o’clock reported to the Emperor the appearance of this unexpected body of troops.410 The corps must have been seen, therefore, shortly after 5 o’clock. It must, therefore, have left the Charleroi road at Frasnes somewhere about 4.30 P.M. That is, the head of d’Erlon’s column did not reach Frasnes till two hours and a half after the rear of the 2d Corps had left it. For, as we have seen, the last division of the 2d Corps, Jerome’s, had passed through Frasnes by 2 o’clock.

This fact, that there was a march of two hours and a half between the two corps which constituted the principal part of Marshal Ney’s command, has not received due attention.411 It is impossible to account for it without laying a grave responsibility on the shoulders of both Marshal Ney and the Comte d’Erlon. There is no need of dwelling on the importance of the matter. That there was no sufficient effort to obey the orders of the Emperor,—vigorously and energetically to carry out the duty assigned to this wing of the army,—is too plain for argument. It needs hardly to be remarked, that if Durutte had followed closely on the traces of Jerome,—even if he had started from Jumet at the moment when Jerome started from Gosselies, and had not (as would have been natural and proper) moved up nearer to Gosselies before the order to march to Quatre Bras arrived,—he could not have been turned off the main road by the Emperor’s staff-officer, for, long before half-past four o’clock, which was the hour when the staff-officer reached Frasnes, Durutte would have been fighting the English at Quatre Bras. One cannot avoid the conclusion that Marshal Ney’s measures for getting his command together on the field of battle this day were singularly ineffective.

For d’Erlon’s marching off towards St. Amand, Ney, of course, was in no wise responsible. When he heard of it, he sent him a peremptory order to return at once. For this he has been severely, and, in our opinion, unjustly blamed by many critics who have approached the question in the belief that d’Erlon was ordered to leave Ney’s immediate command by the Emperor himself. But this was not so. Napoleon addressed no order to d’Erlon. The only orders which the Emperor sent on this afternoon of the 16th of June of which we have any knowledge were sent to Marshal Ney. Napoleon cannot be imagined to have sent a direct order to one of Ney’s corps-commanders, for they, the Emperor must have supposed, were acting under the Marshal’s immediate supervision. Napoleon himself always denied having sent any order to d’Erlon, and even Charras believes him to be correct in this statement. We shall recur to this subject later; suffice it to say here that we are inclined to think that it was the 2 P.M. order that was shown, or, of which more likely, the supposed purport or intent was stated, to Durutte.412 The time at which Durutte’s column was perceived heading for St. Amand indicates approximately when he must have left the turnpike at Frasnes; and this, as we shall hereafter see, was about the hour when the officer who carried the 2 P.M. order must have reached Frasnes.

D’Erlon, on receiving Ney’s order to return, retraced his steps, leaving Durutte’s division on his right in the neighborhood of Marbais, but he did not reach Frasnes till after 9 P.M. Thus the 1st Corps was of no use either to Ney or Napoleon that afternoon.

Take next the case of Kellermann’s cavalry. The last order which Ney received was, as we have seen, perfectly explicit in terms.413 It directed him to “unite the corps of Counts Reille and d’Erlon, and that of the Count of Valmy [Kellermann],” and stated that “with these forces he ought to be able to beat and destroy any force of the enemy which might present itself.” Yet Ney ordered one of Kellermann’s divisions to halt at Frasnes and the other at Liberchies,—two miles, and two miles and a half, respectively, from the field of battle. It is not going too far to say that there is no excuse for such flat disobedience of orders. Cavalry, as respects the use to which they were put in those days, must be on the spot, ready to take advantage in an instant of a weak place in the enemy’s line of battle. No one knew this better than Marshal Ney. The disposition he made of his cavalry was deliberately made, from the same reason which induced him to order the 1st Corps to take up position at Frasnes,—probably because he deemed it unwise and even dangerous that the left wing should be advanced so far in front of the main army; and he did not send for Kellermann till six o’clock, and then he only employed one brigade.414

To return now to the battle. The arrival of Alten’s division gave Wellington the advantage, certainly in point of numerical force; still, the three infantry-divisions of the 2d Corps were superior in numbers to the two divisions of Picton and Alten; and the Dutch-Belgian and Brunswick troops had suffered so much that there was very little fight left in them. The cavalry of Piré was easily superior to that of the Brunswickers and Dutch-Belgians; none of the English cavalry had arrived; and the French were decidedly superior in artillery.

About 5 P.M.415 the 2 o’clock order from Napoleon was received, but it was impossible for Ney, situated as he was, to execute it. At 6 P.M.416 the 3.15 P.M. order arrived. Then, according to Charras,417 Ney for the first time sent to Kellermann to bring up L’Heritier’s division. The veteran of Marengo made a gallant and at first a successful charge418 at the head of the cuirassier brigade of this division, but, finally, the galling fire from the British in the farm-enclosures near the intersection of the roads, received when the horses were blown and the impetus of the charge was exhausted, brought about a panic, and the troops retired in great disorder. Soon after this, which was the last offensive move made by the French, Cooke’s division of the English Guards came up from Nivelles, and the French were forced to retire to Frasnes, which they did in good order.

At the close of the action, the Duke of Wellington had employed his 1st, 3d and 5th British divisions, the 2d Dutch-Belgian division, and the Brunswick contingent, numbering in all over 31,000419 men; Marshal Ney, of the 43,000 men which had been entrusted to him and with which he was to “beat and destroy any enemy’s force” in his front, had brought to the encounter less than 22,000 men. The casualties of the Anglo-Dutch army were nearly or quite 4,500,—those of the French over 4,000.

It cannot be seriously questioned that the result of the action would have been a victory for the French if the 1st Corps, d’Erlon’s, had not been diverted from the turnpike.420 The head of his column reached Frasnes, as we have seen, about half-past four o’clock, and the leading division could have been put in line before half-past five, that is, shortly after the arrival of Alten’s division. Wellington at this moment was deeply involved in the battle. He was expecting reinforcements hourly. He probably would not have thought of retiring. In fact his deficiency in cavalry and artillery would have made it a difficult matter to bring off his command in good order, and it is not likely that any of his troops save his (so called) British divisions could have sustained with firmness the strain of a retreat before an enemy fired with the success of the first battle of the campaign. The chances are that if d’Erlon’s Corps had marched straight on to Quatre Bras, the result would have been a severe defeat for the Duke of Wellington. Distrust and even demoralization would almost certainly have appeared in most of his foreign contingents; and with only his English regiments and those of the King’s German Legion he could not have mustered a sufficient force to justify him in accepting battle at Waterloo, even if he had been otherwise disposed to do so. In fact, one may safely conclude, that the battle of Waterloo would not have been fought had not d’Erlon’s Corps been turned aside by the unauthorized act of the staff-officer. We may, and in fact we must, even go further. It is altogether improbable that if Blücher had found that Wellington was in no condition to receive battle on the 18th, he would have deviated from his natural course of action after losing the battle of Ligny; he would without doubt, in such case, have retired on either Liége or Namur. These consequences are assuredly not too remote. The immediate and palpable results of an action, or of a failure to act, are within the legitimate field of inquiry; in fact, unless this be permitted, history can yield no lessons at all; it is only when we carry our speculation into the region of remote results, or vary too much from the conditions which actually existed, that we are going beyond the line of legitimate inference and useful deduction. It may be added that it is, and in the nature of things must be, for each person to draw the line in each case.

If, now, we ask what would probably have happened if Ney had collected his troops at Frasnes during the forenoon, in order that he might be able promptly to obey his orders as soon as they should be received, as we have above maintained he ought to have done, we are inclined to think that the simultaneous movement upon Quatre Bras between twelve and two o’clock of 40,000 men would have brought about the prompt retirement by the Prince of Orange421 of Perponcher’s division. It would probably have fallen back on Nivelles, where Chassé was assembling the other Dutch-Belgian division. Whether the Duke on his return from Brye could have effected a concerted attack on the French by combining a movement on the Brussels road by Picton and the Brunswickers with one on the Nivelles road by Perponcher and Alten, it is not easy to say. The advantage of position would have clearly been with the French, and in fact they would have been considerably superior in numbers. There would certainly have existed no reason why in this case Ney could not have sent 10,000 or even 20,000 men down the Namur road in compliance with the orders of 2 and 3.15 P.M.422

Neither of the above-described advantages was gained by Marshal Ney. By leaving the divisions of Jerome and Foy at Gosselies instead of bringing them up to Frasnes early in the morning,—by leaving that of Durutte at Jumet, and the other three of d’Erlon’s divisions still further in rear until long after the last regiments of the 2d Corps had left Gosselies,—he rendered a prompt and bloodless occupation of Quatre Bras almost impossible. Exactly how far he was responsible for the gap between his two corps, we do not know. But we can certainly say that a diligent and experienced officer in Ney’s place would have known to a half an hour just how long after the arrival of the last division of the 2d Corps, the van of the 1st Corps might be expected. The whole management of Marshal Ney on this day shows distrust of the Emperor’s judgment, unwillingness to take the most obvious steps, finally, disobedience of orders. As the natural consequence of his wilfulness and perverseness he failed to reap the enormous successes which the Emperor’s sagacity had placed within his power. All he did was to prevent Wellington from giving any aid to Blücher. This he certainly accomplished; and an important service it was. He also showed himself as he always did, a brave, resolute, capable officer on the field of battle. Probably he did as much as any one could have done with the force actually under his hand. But had he taken the necessary steps to get the large and powerful body of troops which Napoleon had entrusted to his care well in hand in due season, he could not have failed, so far as we can see, to achieve a striking success, which might very possibly have had a decisive effect on the fortunes of the war. If each of the two allied generals had been defeated at the outset of the campaign, the chances of Napoleon for final victory would have been greatly in his favor.

In regard to the conduct of this battle by the Duke of Wellington nothing new can be said. He has always received the credit which he certainly fully merited, of maintaining most skilfully and with great spirit and tenacity a fight in which he was outmatched until nearly the close of the day. He had been gravely misled by his chief-of-staff as to the situation of the various bodies which composed his army; and in fact it must be admitted that his own calculations were very far from being worthy of his reputation. Hence he ran the risk of encountering a largely superior force; and that he had actually to deal with only half of this force was due to no strategy of his. He found himself in a most perplexing and dangerous situation, in which he displayed undoubtedly great skill and courage, but for the successful result of the day he was largely indebted to the “fortune of war.”423