Chapter XIV · THE SEVENTEENTH OF JUNE: BLÜCHER AND WELLINGTON.

Zieten and Pirch I. fell back after the battle of Ligny, as has been above stated,513 in the direction of Wavre. Gneisenau, the chief-of-staff of the Prussian army, on whom, in the absence of Marshal Blücher, who was unhorsed and quite seriously bruised in a cavalry encounter at the end of the day, and was supposed to have been taken prisoner,514 the command devolved, gave the order at first for the two beaten corps515 to retire on Tilly, and then, as one of his staff-officers called his attention to the fact that Tilly was not on all the maps, he substituted Wavre for Tilly as the point to be reached.516

This step involved obviously the renunciation of the line of Namur. It implied also that the IIId and IVth Corps, those of Thielemann and Bülow, would be ordered to retire in the general direction of Wavre, so that a union of the whole army might be effected somewhere to the northward. But it did not necessarily imply that this union of the army would be effected at Wavre; or even that, if effected at Wavre, it would be followed by an attempt to unite with the Anglo-Dutch army. It was quite possible that the two beaten corps might, after reforming at Wavre, be ordered in the direction of Maestricht, towards which place the IIId and IVth Corps might also be ordered to retire. In fact, this was the interpretation put by General Thielemann on the facts as he first learned them. He wrote to Bülow,517 that he had heard nothing from the Marshal, but supposed that the intention was that the Ist and IId Corps were to fall back from Wavre towards St. Trond, which is a town in the direction of Maestricht, some 35 miles from Wavre.

At the same time it is clear that Gneisenau, in ordering Zieten and Pirch I. to Wavre, had taken the necessary preliminary steps to effect a concentration of the whole army at that place, from which a movement for the assistance of Wellington, if he should be willing to accept battle at Waterloo, could be made. This union with the Anglo-Dutch army was, therefore, naturally regarded by the Prussian officers and soldiers as the real object of the movement to Wavre.518 It may be that Gneisenau himself gave his orders with the sole intention of bringing about a union of the two allied armies.519 But this is doubtful. It is more likely that he ordered a retreat on Wavre, knowing that this alone could render such a union possible, and leaving its practicability and advisability to be determined afterwards.

It must be remembered that the step which Gneisenau had taken involved a temporary change of base, with all the many inconveniences and risks therefrom resulting. The communications with Namur must be abandoned. No such course as this had been thought of when Marshal Blücher decided on accepting battle at Ligny; if it had been, he would have posted his troops very differently, as we have had occasion to observe.520 Gneisenau, however, though disappointed at not receiving help from the English during the battle, yet influenced, very possibly, by the fact that Wellington had successfully held his ground against the attack of the French left wing,521 was extremely unwilling to renounce, by retiring on Namur, all hopes of another battle to be fought in coöperation with the English. Hence he determined to take at any rate the first steps to make it possible to fight such a battle; and in the absence of his chief, and in the confusion and turmoil which followed the successful charge of the Imperial Guard, he did not hesitate to take the responsibility of ordering the beaten corps to retire on Wavre.522

But whether it would be wise to concentrate the whole army on Wavre was a question that could not be settled in an instant. It was in truth dependent on many things. The question of supplies of ammunition was perhaps the most serious problem; but there were others, each presenting more or less difficulty. Then, besides these, there was the question of the amount of confidence to be placed in the Duke of Wellington. The whole object, the sole justification, of the manœuvre now in contemplation was the fighting another battle in coöperation with the English. Here, of course, it had to be assumed that the Duke would be desirous of fighting such a battle. But could Wellington be relied upon to fulfil the expectations which would be entertained in regard to his willingness and ability to fight such a battle? Gneisenau had been gravely disappointed by the non-arrival of support from the English army during the battle of Ligny. He never had had,—so we learn from Müffling,523—entire confidence in the Duke’s trustworthiness. The letter524 received on the morning of the battle,—so far from accurate,—the confident statements525 made by the Duke at Brye early in the afternoon, on which such expectations had been formed, and which had proved so utterly unreliable,—must have seriously shaken Gneisenau’s belief in Wellington. He feared lest the danger to the Prussian army involved in its concentration at Wavre might be incurred only to see the Anglo-Dutch army marching off to Antwerp or Ostend.

During the night Marshal Blücher had been carried, badly bruised and suffering a good deal,—a man, too, it must be remembered, seventy-two years of age,526—to the little village of Mellery,—or Melioreux, as the older maps have it,—a mile or two north of Tilly.527 Here, in a little house, filled with wounded men, he passed the night. Here Gneisenau, his chief-of-staff, and Grolmann, his quartermaster-general, joined him. Here also was brought Lieutenant-Colonel Hardinge, the English military attaché at Blücher’s headquarters, who had lost his left hand in the battle.528 He gave to the Duke of Wellington, twenty-two years after, an account of his experience during that night, making the mistake,—natural enough under the circumstances, and considering how long a time had elapsed,—of locating the scene at Wavre, and not at Mellery. The story is thus reported by Earl Stanhope:—529

“Yes,” said Hardinge, “Blücher himself had gone back as far as Wavre. I passed that night, with my amputated arm, lying with some straw in his ante-room, Gneisenau and other generals constantly passing to and fro. Next morning Blücher sent for me. * * * He said to me that he should be quite satisfied if, in conjunction with the Duke of Wellington, he was able now to defeat his old enemy. I was told that there had been a great discussion that night in his rooms, and that Blücher and Grolmann had carried the day for remaining in communication with the English army, but that Gneisenau had great doubts as to whether they ought not to fall back to Liége and secure their own communication with Luxembourg. They thought that if the English should be defeated, they themselves would be utterly destroyed.”

Colonel Maurice tells us in confirmation of this story that General Hardinge “records that, as he was, on the 17th, lying on his bed, Blücher burst into his room, triumphantly announcing: ‘Gneisenau has given way. We are to march to join Wellington.’”530

If these statements are to be accepted literally, and there is, perhaps, no sufficient reason why they should not be, the credit of the decision remains wholly with Marshal Blücher. Still, it may, not impossibly, be that Gneisenau, to whose action alone it was due that the original intention of retreating on Namur, in case it should be found necessary to retreat at all, had been departed from, felt himself morally bound to present to his impetuous and unthinking chief the more cautious and conservative course; and that in reality he was not averse to find that the movement which he had ordered in Blücher’s absence should receive from his chief and his advisers such hearty approval and be prosecuted to its natural result.

While the Ist and IId Corps were making their way towards Tilly and Mont St. Guibert, Thielemann, in ignorance of the dispositions of the commander-in-chief, retired from Tongrinelle and Balâtre to Sombreffe, and thence continued his retreat to Gembloux, so as to approach the IVth Corps, which had arrived late in the evening in the neighborhood of Baudeset and Sauvenières. Thielemann reached Gembloux at 6 A.M. of the 17th. Here he wrote a letter to Bülow, to which reference has been already made. Bülow in reply requested him to retire to the neighborhood of Corbaix, half way between Gembloux and Wavre, and informed him that he himself was directing his corps on Wavre. In these movements, which were to be nearly parallel, the corps of Bülow was to keep to the eastward of that of Thielemann.

Thus the temporary separation of the four corps composing the Prussian army worked no harm. The corps-commanders acted with cheerful and zealous coöperation in the absence of orders from the commander-in-chief. In fact nothing can be finer than the spirit displayed by the Prussians after the loss of the battle of Ligny,—whether we look at their willingness to take risks and make sacrifices to ensure the success of the combined movement now in process of execution, or at the harmony which prevailed among the chief officers, which it is evident neither the loss of the battle nor the non-arrival of Bülow’s Corps had disturbed in the least.

Orders were now issued for the retreat of the whole army on Wavre. It was conducted as follows:—531

The Ist Corps marched from its position between Tilly and Mellery early in the morning of the 17th, and proceeded through Gentinnes and Mont St. Guibert towards Wavre, where it crossed the Dyle, and took up position at Bierges.

The IId Corps followed by the same route somewhat later, and halted at Aisemont, a village on the south side of the Dyle, opposite Wavre.

The IIId Corps rested at Gembloux till 1 or 2 o’clock P.M., and then marched by way of Corbaix to Wavre, the head of the column passing through the town in the evening, but the rear guard not arriving till the morning of the 18th.

The IVth Corps marched in two columns, by way of Walhain and Tourinnes to Dion-le-Mont, a village about two miles east of Wavre, where it arrived about 10 P.M. of the 17th.

One brigade of infantry belonging to the IId Corps and some cavalry were stationed for a time at Mont St. Guibert for purposes of observation,532 and General Groeben, of Blücher’s staff, who accompanied these troops, witnessed from a high hill near Tilly533 the march of the troops which Napoleon carried with him to Quatre Bras, and the movement of a smaller body, estimated by him at about 12,000 or 15,000 men, in the direction of Gembloux. He supposed, naturally, that this was all the force which had been detached for the pursuit of the Prussians.534 The march of the rest of Grouchy’s command was concealed by the inequalities of the ground.

The artillery trains, containing the needful ammunition for the coming battle, for the arrival of which Gneisenau had felt great anxiety, arrived safely at Wavre about 5 P.M. of the 17th.

Thus the retreat of the Prussians on Wavre had been successfully and quickly accomplished, and, what is almost as important, it had escaped the observation of the French. Marshal Blücher had collected at Wavre somewhere about 90,000 men, and both the army and its leaders were animated by the best spirit, impatient to encounter the enemy again, and confident of success in another battle.

The Duke of Wellington spent the night after the battle of Quatre Bras at Genappe, but returned to the front “at daybreak, or soon after.”535 A detachment of cavalry was soon afterwards sent out, which ascertained that the Prussians had been beaten the day before, and were now retreating on Wavre. This information reached Wellington about 7.30 A.M.536

Blücher had sent an officer, Major Winterfeldt, from the field of battle the evening before to inform General Müffling of his intended retreat, but he had been wounded,537 and the information had not reached the Duke.

At 9 o’clock another officer arrived from Blücher,538 Lieutenant Massow.539 The Duke told him that he would fall back to the position of Mont St. Jean where he would give battle, if he were supported by one Prussian corps. This answer Massow carried to Blücher. He arrived at Wavre at noon. At this hour, as we are told by the latest Prussian historian,540 it was not known where the IIId or IVth Corps was, and the reserve ammunition had not arrived.541 No decided assurance could, therefore, be given during the day. Finally, about 11.30 P.M., news arrived from Bülow of the arrival of his corps at Dion-le-Mont, and about the same time a despatch from Müffling arrived, stating that the Anglo-Dutch army had taken position for battle at Mont St. Jean. Then Grolmann wrote to Müffling Blücher’s answer. It was sent off about midnight of the 17th.

This despatch stated that Bülow would move at break of day by way of St. Lambert to attack the right flank of the enemy, and that the IId Corps would support the IVth Corps in this operation. The Ist and IIId Corps were to hold themselves in readiness to do the like.

This despatch, which could not have reached Wellington until the morning of the battle of Waterloo, seems actually to have contained the first definite promise of support from Blücher.542 Long before its arrival the Duke had taken up his position at Waterloo in the hope—in fact, in the expectation,—of receiving some such promise of assistance and support. Messages were doubtless exchanged, as we are told,543 between the English and Prussian headquarters during the whole day. But the Duke received no positive assurance until the early morning of the 18th that the Prussian army, or any part of it, would come to his assistance. It is true that he was aware that the Prussians were concentrating at Wavre; and he knew that their object in so doing could be nothing else than to tender him their support in the battle that was sure to occur the next day. But it must have required all the resolution and courage which he possessed to have decided him to take up position for battle without having received any definite assurance that the necessary support would be furnished.

For it was a perfectly possible thing that he might the next morning be assailed by a hundred thousand men. Blücher had, no doubt, sent him the information obtained by Groeben, that Napoleon had detached only 12,000 or 15,000 men to follow the Prussians, and was bringing against the Anglo-Dutch army all his remaining troops.544 As we see it now, that would have been Napoleon’s best course. If he had known the facts at the time, as he might easily have done had he not neglected to take the proper measures to ascertain them, that is what he probably would have done. At any rate, Wellington had no assurance from any quarter whatever that Napoleon would not do exactly that thing. If Napoleon had done it, and if the weather had been fine and the ground hard, what chance would Wellington have stood? The question is asked simply to define the situation in which the Duke placed himself on the night of the 17th and 18th. That is, we desire to bring out the fact that Wellington in taking up position at Waterloo, instead of continuing his retreat to Brussels and arranging with Blücher to do the like from Wavre, ran a very great risk of being beaten before he could get help from the Prussians, whereas if both commanders had proceeded to Brussels, where the roads from Waterloo and Wavre converge, they would have greatly outnumbered the French. This course was the one which Napoleon maintained would have been the safer and wiser.545

Still, it must be remembered that both Wellington and Blücher were anxious to close the campaign with a great battle, which was certain to take place if Wellington stood at Waterloo, and that it was by no means certain that Napoleon would push through the forest of Soignes only to find the combined armies confronting him. They also thought that there was a very fair chance that they would succeed in effecting the union of their armies at Waterloo.