NOTES TO CHAPTER XIII.

1. In regard to Napoleon’s action with reference to the defeated Prussians, it is necessary to distinguish between instituting a prompt and vigorous pursuit of them, and taking immediate measures for ascertaining in which direction they had retreated. The first was under the circumstances impossible, that is, without an entire change of plan, but the second was not only possible, but of prime necessity.

Charras,494 however, complains bitterly of Napoleon for not following up the Prussians. “Not to pursue the vanquished, sword in hand, to leave him time to collect himself, to reform his forces, to gather in his reinforcements, was so strange a thing for troops accustomed to the tactics of Napoleon.”

But Clausewitz495 with better judgment says:—

“If we seem here to find so great a difference from the earlier methods of procedure adopted by the French, we must get a true picture of the changed conditions. The extraordinary energy in pursuit to which the brilliant results of Bonaparte’s former campaigns were due, was simply pushing very superior forces after an enemy who had been completely vanquished. Now, however, Napoleon had to turn with his main force, and above all with his freshest troops, against a new enemy, over whom victory had yet to be gained. The pursuit [of the Prussians] had to be carried out by the 3d and 4th Corps, the very two who had been engaged in the bloodiest fight till ten in the evening, and now necessarily needed time to get into order again, to recover themselves, and to provide themselves with ammunition.”

Napoleon, therefore, while censurable for not having ascertained as early as possible the direction of the retreat of the Prussians, and for not having moved promptly with his main body against the English, can not be blamed for having allowed Grouchy’s troops to remain on the field till noon, to recover from their fatigues.

2. It hardly needs to be said that if Napoleon had known that the Ist and IId Prussian Corps were retiring on Wavre, he would not have ordered Grouchy on Gembloux. Exactly what he would have done, it is needless to conjecture, but in all probability he would have kept the whole army together, or within easy reach, so as to have concentrated an overwhelming force against Wellington the next morning, if not on that afternoon.

3. To illustrate the effect which the concealment of the Bertrand order by Marshal Grouchy has produced on the mind of an able critic, take the following passages from Clausewitz,496 who wrote his narrative before the order came to light:—

“Bonaparte, it is claimed, ordered Grouchy to keep between Blücher and the road from Namur (Charleroi) to Brussels, for the second battle would have to be fought on this road, and only thus was there a possibility of Grouchy’s coöperating in it. But of such an order nothing can be found except in the untrustworthy account497 of Bonaparte and of the men who have copied him. The account which Grouchy gives of the movements of the 17th bears too much the character of the simple truth498 not to gain credence; and, according to this, Bonaparte’s instruction was directed in very general terms towards pursuing Blücher, and was drawn up in very uncertain expressions.”

499“As we read Marshal Grouchy’s account of the events which took place with Bonaparte on the morning of the 17th, we see:—

(1) That this Marshal in all probability actually received no other direction for his action on the 17th besides a very general instruction to pursue the Prussians:

(2) That Bonaparte had no idea of the retreat of the Prussians towards the Dyle, and considered the opinion that they had gone towards Namur not unreasonable, and therefore did not give the Marshal the direction of Wavre.”

Clausewitz concludes by surmising that Napoleon was “affected by a sort of lethargy and carelessness.” Had Clausewitz known the truth, namely, that Grouchy was sent off with a letter of instructions, telling him in so many words that the Prussians might be intending to unite with the English to fight a battle for the defence of Brussels on the turnpike on which Napoleon was now marching with the intention of encountering the English, we should have had a very different criticism from this, we may be sure.

4. But it is a curious thing, that, even with those historians who wrote after the Bertrand letter came to light, the influence of Grouchy’s misrepresentations has induced a sort of ignoring of the letter, and an acquiescence in the erroneous judgment of Napoleon’s conduct formed when the existence of the letter was unknown, and when the verbal instructions, as given by Grouchy, were all the orders which it was believed that Napoleon ever gave to Grouchy. Thus Chesney,500 after giving the substance of the document, says:—

“Such was the whole tenor of this important letter, which serves to show two things only: that Napoleon was uncertain of the line of Blücher’s retreat, and that he judged Gembloux a good point to move Grouchy on in any case.”

The injunction to Grouchy, though given by Chesney almost textually, to ascertain whether or not the Prussians were intending to unite with the English and fight a battle for the defence of Brussels,—the very thing which they actually were intending to do,—has evidently made no impression whatever on his mind.

The same determination,—for we know not what other word indicates more correctly the temper of mind which must possess a historian of this campaign who shuts his eyes to the contents of the Bertrand letter,—the same determination, we say, not to recognize the fact that the Bertrand letter shows beyond a question that Napoleon was alive to the danger that the Prussians might be intending to do exactly what they were intending to do, that is, unite with the English and fight another battle,—this time on the Brussels road,—is shown also by the latest English critic, Colonel Maurice. He says:—501

“He (Napoleon) gave orders to Grouchy, with a force of 33,000 men and 96 guns, to pursue the Prussians, complete their defeat, and communicate with him by the Namur road.502 Written orders were subsequently given to Grouchy directing him to move on Gembloux.”503

Here, the warning contained in the written order, the injunction to ascertain whether the Prussians were intending to join Wellington, is absolutely and quietly ignored. One would suppose that all that the Bertrand letter contained was an order to move on Gembloux. Colonel Maurice proceeds:—

“He (Grouchy) promised, that if, from the reports he received, he gathered that the Prussians had for the most part retired on Wavre, he would follow them there, in order to prevent them gaining Brussels, and in order to separate them from Wellington. This is the first indication we receive, on any authentic evidence, that any one in the French army supposed that the duty of separating the Prussians from Wellington would become the task of Grouchy’s force. Up till then, all the French supposed that there was no prospect of Blücher’s attempting to unite with Wellington.”503

Yet in the body of the Bertrand letter, of which Colonel Maurice quotes the first line, are these words:—

“It is important to penetrate what the enemy is intending to do; whether they are separating themselves from the English, or whether they are intending still to unite, to cover Brussels, or Liége, in trying the fate of another battle.”

We confess our inability to explain or account for criticism of this nature, unless by the hypothesis that to a mind preoccupied with a certain view, firmly held, it is often possible that the plainest evidence should be, so to speak, invisible. It is as plain as anything can be that Grouchy’s letter, from which Maurice makes his quotation, is a reply to that part of the Bertrand letter which we have given above; but Maurice, his mind full of the verbal orders only, wholly overlooks this.

But Colonel Maurice and Colonel Chesney are not alone in their views.

General Hamley,504 in his account of the campaign, says of Grouchy: “His orders were to follow them [the Prussians], complete their rout, and never lose sight of them.” Hamley does not seem even to have heard of the Bertrand order. Hence his elaborate criticism on Grouchy’s conduct,505—leaving out, as it does, the two most important data, viz.:—Napoleon’s explicit warning to Grouchy of the possibility of the Prussians uniting with the English to fight a battle for the defence of Brussels, and his equally explicit statement to Grouchy (as reported by the latter), that he was going that very afternoon to attack the English “if they will stand on this side of the Forest of Soignes,”—is entirely beside the mark, and cannot be considered as possessing any practical value whatever. He has addressed himself to a case which never really existed.506

Hooper, also, omits entirely the information which the Emperor gave of his own intention, and of his conjecture that the English might fight “on this side of the forest of Soignes,”—where they actually did fight,—and dismisses the explicit injunction for Grouchy to ascertain the facts in these words:—507

“Yet some doubts of the correctness of his views had entered the mind of the Emperor before he quitted Ligny, and he remarked (sic) to Grouchy that it was important to learn whether the Prussians were separating themselves from the English, etc.”

These instances suffice to show how seriously the concealment of the Bertrand letter by Marshal Grouchy has affected the historians of the campaign. The prominence assigned to the verbal orders to Grouchy, so common in most of the narratives, is not only utterly useless,—but most misleading.

5. But was the Bertrand letter sufficiently explicit?

Charras,508 who, unlike the English historians cited above, fully admits that the letter shows that Napoleon saw “the possibility of the union of the allied armies to cover Brussels,” observes that this involved the necessity of reconnoitring in the directions of Mont St. Guibert and Wavre. “Nevertheless,” he goes on to say, “Napoleon did not make this the subject of a special recommendation to Grouchy; * * * and the latter, given over to his own inspirations, did not repair the inconceivable fault of the commander-in-chief. He had an order to proceed to Gembloux; he did not trouble his head about anything else.”

If Napoleon had entertained as low an opinion of Marshal Grouchy’s capacity as Charras evidently did, it certainly would have been a terrible mistake to have omitted to tell him to explore the region between Gembloux and Wavre. But questions of this kind hardly bear discussing; every one has his own opinions on such matters, based on his own estimate of other men’s ability, his own experience, his own notions of what is fitting. The suggestion of danger to the main army, if it should find the Prussians as well as the English opposed to it on the Brussels turnpike, would have amply sufficed for many generals. It was not, however, sufficient, as we shall soon see, for Marshal Grouchy.

6. We cannot agree with those who contend that it was an error to direct Grouchy on Gembloux in the first instance.509 Up to the moment when the order was dictated to Bertrand no other considerable force of the enemy had been discovered; at Gembloux, Berton had found a whole corps. Here, therefore, one could not help getting at the direction of the Prussian retreat. And, owing to the lack of an early morning reconnoissance in all directions, this was, at noon, obviously the most promising direction for the pursuing force to take.

7. We owe to Colonel Maurice some valuable suggestions which serve to explain Napoleon’s neglect to take adequate measures to ascertain the direction of the Prussian retreat. He points out in the first place510 the folly of such writers as Quinet, who would have Napoleon sleep in the midst of his Guard,—who expect the commander of an army to do the work of a sentry on the outer picket-line. It may be remarked in this connection, by the way, that as the French were not able to push up to the Namur turnpike on the evening of the 16th, their advanced posts could not possibly have heard anything more than the withdrawal of the enemy towards the pike, down which they might have marched without let or hindrance towards Namur. Colonel Maurice in the next place quotes an able criticism511 by an officer whom he does not name, to the effect that Napoleon’s vast experience enabled him in his later years to dispense with much of that personal attention to the facts which in his earlier campaigns it had been absolutely necessary for him to give.

Colonel Maurice also calls attention to the circumstances which we have detailed above, which very naturally induced Napoleon to adopt the opinion that the Prussians had fallen back towards the Rhine.512

8. In conclusion, we may admit, fully, with Colonel Maurice, to whom we owe a great deal for setting this matter of the probabilities of the case in its true light, that Napoleon’s estimate of the probabilities was a correct one. He was quite warranted under all the circumstances in believing that the Prussians had retired towards their base. Nevertheless, this belief does not justify him for having neglected to ascertain the facts by a prompt exploration of the whole region through which the Prussians could have retreated.

The lesson which this neglect teaches, is a plain one. It is, that where there is any chance at all of the occurrence of an event, which, if it does happen, will be fatal, it is folly to trust to the probabilities of the case; every precaution should be taken; nothing that can avert a fatal calamity should be neglected, no matter how small may appear to be the chance of its happening. In this case, we find Napoleon, at one o’clock in the afternoon of the day after the battle of Ligny, entirely ignorant of the whereabouts and intentions of the Prussians, and, in fact, alarmed lest they should be intending to unite with the English, whom he is expecting to fight the next day; obliged to go off himself to join his left wing, and to leave the all-important task of preventing the union of his adversaries to a newly-made Marshal, in whose abilities he cannot place very great confidence. And all this, because he did not have the facts as to the Prussian retreat ascertained at day-break.