Part 41
“Never was victory more complete. The trophies were innumerable. Marshal Jourdan’s baton of command was brought to Lord Wellington, who sent it to the Prince Regent, from whom he quickly received one of an English marshal in return. The loss of the French was never ascertained; that of the Allies was 3,567 English, 1,059 Portuguese, and 550 Spanish. The spoil taken was enormous. “The soldiers of the army,” wrote Lord Wellington, “have got among them about 1,000,000 sterling in money, with the exception of about 100,000 dollars found in the military chest. Rich vestures of all sorts, gold and silver plate, pictures, jewels, parrots, monkeys, and children, lay scattered about the field amidst weeping mothers and wailing children. Joseph himself narrowly escaped; a squadron of dragoons pursued his carriage and fired into it.”
All the remaining bodies of the French in Spain fell in the fall of Vittoria. They escaped out of the kingdom by various roads as quickly as possible. “Joseph’s reign was over, the crown had fallen from his head, and after years of toil and combats, which had rather been admired than understood, the great English leader, emerging from the chaos of the Peninsular struggle, stood on the summit of the Pyrenees a recognized conqueror. From those lofty pinnacles the clangour of his trumpets pealed clear and loud, and the splendour of his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to warring nations.”[15]
Thus, in some five or six weeks, had a great kingdom been cleared of its invaders and oppressors--not by the power of superior numbers, but by the natural ascendency of a consummate military genius. “Here,” remarks Napier, “was a noble army driven like sheep before prowling wolves, although in every action the officers had been prompt and skilful, and the soldiers brave, firm, and obedient. The French troops were excellent and numerous, and the country strong and favourable for defence; but the soul of a great Commander was wanting; and hence, the Esla, the Tormes, the Douro, the Pisuerga, seemed to be all dried up, the mountains to be levelled; and 60,000 veteran soldiers, willing to fight at every step, were hurried with all the tumult and confusion of defeat across the Ebro.”
The deliverance of the Peninsula, by a force so far inferior to that of the French, must always remain one of Wellington’s greatest glories. The same French writer, whom we have already quoted, Jules Maurel, remarks this surprising fact. He says: “The truth is, that from 1808 to 1813, Wellington never had 30,000 English under his orders, even at a period when the Imperial armies deluged the Peninsula with no fewer than 370,000 men.”
Nor were the results of this great day confined to the Spanish peninsula. Like its predecessor, the victory of Salamanca, the battle of Vittoria shook the whole continent of Europe. Napoleon himself, holding his ground at Dresden, had, up to this moment, succeeded in withholding Austria from any actual participation in the confederacy against him. He had even succeeded, on the 30th of June, in obtaining a convention for the restoration of peace between himself, Russia and Prussia. But the very next day the news of the expulsion of the French from Spain reached Dresden, filling Napoleon and his ministers with consternation, and giving new life and vigour to the Russian and Prussian councils. The Allies regretted that any cessation of arms had been agreed to, and they began to long for its termination. The very moment it expired by lapse of time, Austria joined the Allies; war was actively resumed, and the autumn had not ended before Napoleon had been driven across the Rhine, and Germany freed from the presence of the French armies.
The French writer from whom we have just quoted, Jules Maurel, thus notices this remarkable passage in modern history:
“Scarcely had the armistice been signed when intelligence arrived that the French had lost everything in Spain. In 40 days Wellington had turned, one after another, all the positions occupied by the French armies of the centre, of the south and of the north, and had crossed the Tormes, the Douro, the Esla, the Carrion, and the Ebro. He had reached Vittoria; he had gained a decisive battle; he had expelled King Joseph from the Peninsula, and had planted his army on the Pyrenees. In the beginning of May he was in Portugal; on the 23rd of June he was on the frontiers of France. The defeat of Vittoria entirely neutralized the victories of Lutzen and Bautzen, and at once restored the coalition.”
VOUGLE, BATTLE OF.--Fought between Alaric II and Clovis of France. Alaric was entirely overthrown, and the whole country subdued. Clovis afterwards made Paris the capital, and became the founder of the French Monarchy.
W.
WAGRAM, BATTLE OF.--Fought, July 5th, 1809, between the Austrians and French, in which the former were completely overthrown; 20,000 were taken by the French. The slaughter on both sides was dreadful. The defeated army retreated into Moravia.
WAKEFIELD, BATTLE OF.--Fought, December 31st, 1460, between Queen Margaret, the wife of Henry VI, and the Duke of York, in which the latter was slain, and 3000 Yorkists fell in the field. This was one of the bloodiest battles between the houses of York and Lancaster.
WALCHEREN EXPEDITION.--This important expedition consisted of thirty-five ships of the line, and 200 smaller vessels, and 40,000 troops, under the command of the Earl of Chatham. The fleet was commanded by Sir Richard Strachan. A large number of the forces died, and the whole expedition came to nothing, December 28th, 1809.
WARSAW, BATTLES OF.--The Poles suffered a great defeat here from the Russians, October 10th and 12th, 1794. Suwarrow, the Russian General, after the siege of Warsaw, cruelly butchered 30,000 Poles, November 8th, 1794. The battle preceding the surrender of Warsaw was fearfully bloody; of 26,000 men, more than 10,000 were killed; nearly 10,000 were made prisoners, and only 2000 escaped the merciless fury of the Russian butcher. Another battle fought here, and the Poles again defeated, September 7th and 8th, 1831.
WASHINGTON.--Taken, August 24th, 1814, in the war between Great Britain and the United States, by General Ross, when all the superb national structures were consumed, in a general conflagration--the troops not sparing the national library.
WATERLOO, BATTLE OF.--The greatest of all British engagements, fought June 18th, 1815, between the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon. The carnage on both sides was immense. The account of this great battle is taken from the “Twelve Great Battles of England.” The following is a fine account of the visit of Scott to the field of Waterloo after the battle, and also Alison on the defeat of the Old Guard:
WATERLOO AT NOON ON THE DAY AFTER THE BATTLE.
“On a surface of two square miles, it was ascertained that 50,000 men and horses were lying! The luxurious crop of ripe grain which had covered the field of battle was reduced to litter, and beaten into the earth; and the surface, trodden down by the cavalry, and furrowed deeply by the cannon wheels, was strewn with many a relic of the fight. Helmets and cuirasses, shattered fire-arms and broken swords; all the variety of military ornaments; Lancer caps and Highland bonnets; uniforms of every colour, plume, and pennon; musical instruments, the apparatus of artillery, drums, bugles; but, good God! why dwell on the harrowing picture of a foughten field? Each and every ruinous display bore mute testimony to the misery of such a battle. * * * Could the melancholy appearance of this scene of death be heightened, it would be by witnessing the researches of the living midst its desolation for the objects of their love. Mothers, and wives, and children, for days were occupied in that mournful duty; and the confusion of the corpses, friend and foe intermingled as they were, often rendered the attempt at recognising individuals difficult, and in some cases impossible. * * * In many places the dead lay four deep upon each other, marking the spot some British square had occupied, when exposed for hours to the murderous fire of a French battery. Outside, lancer and cuirassier were scattered thickly on the earth. Madly attempting to force the serried bayonets of the British, they had fallen, in the bootless essay, by the musketry of the inner files. Farther on, you traced the spot where the cavalry of France and England had encountered. Chasseur and hussar were intermingled; and the heavy Norman horse of the Imperial Guard were interspersed with the grey chargers which had carried Albion’s chivalry. Here the Highlander and tirailleur lay, side by side, together; and the heavy dragoon, with Green Erin’s badge upon his helmet, was grappling in death with the Polish lancer. * * * On the summit of the ridge, where the ground was covered with death, and trodden fetlock-deep in mud and gore, by the frequent rush of rival cavalry, the thick-strewn corpses of the Imperial Guard pointed out the spot where Napoleon had been defeated. Here, in column, that favoured corps, on whom his last chance rested, had been annihilated; and the advance and repulse of the Guard was traceable by a mass of fallen Frenchmen. In the hollow below, the last struggle of France had been vainly made; for the Old Guard, when the middle battalion had been forced back, attempted to meet the British, and afford time for their disorganised companions to rally. Here the British left, which had converged upon the French centre, had come up; and here the bayonet closed the contest.”
DEFEAT OF THE OLD GUARD AT WATERLOO.
“The Imperial Guard was divided into two columns, which, advancing from different parts of the field, were to converge to the decisive point on the British right centre, about midway between La Haye Sainte and the nearest enclosures of Hougoumont. Reille commanded the first column, which was supported by all the infantry and cavalry which remained of his corps on either flank, and advanced up the hill in a slanting direction, beside the orchard of Hougoumont. The second was headed by Ney in person, and moving down the _chaussée_ of Charleroi to the bottom of the slope, it then inclined to the left, and leaving La Haye Sainte to the right, mounted the slope, also in a slanting direction, converging towards the same point whither the other column was directing its steps. Napoleon went with this column as far as the place where it left the hollow of the high road, and spoke a few words--the last he ever addressed to his soldiers--to each battalion in passing. The men moved on with shouts of _Vive l’Empereur!_ so loud as to be heard along the whole British line, above the roar of artillery, and it was universally thought the Emperor himself was heading the attack. But, meanwhile, Wellington had not been idle. Sir Frederick Adam’s brigade, consisting of the 52nd, 71st, and 95th, and General Maitland’s brigade of Guards, which had been drawn from Hougoumont, with Chasse’s Dutch troops, yet fresh, were ordered to bring up their right shoulders, and wheel inward, with their guns in front, towards the edge of the ridge; and the whole batteries in that quarter inclined to the left, so as to expose the advancing columns coming up to a concentric fire on either flank: the central point, where the attack seemed likely to fall, was strengthened by nine heavy guns; the troops at that point were drawn up four deep, in the form of an interior angle: the Guards forming one side, the 73rd and 30th the other;--while the light cavalry of Vivian and Vandeleur was brought up behind the line, at the back of La Haye Sainte, and stationed close in the rear, so as to be ready to make the most of any advantage which might occur.
It was a quarter past seven when the first column of the Old Guard, under Reille, advanced to the attack; but the effect of the artillery on its flank was such, that the cavalry were quickly dispersed: and the French battalions uncovered, showed their long flank to Adam’s guns, which opened on them a fire so terrible, that the head of the column, constantly pushed on by the mass in the rear, never advanced, but melted away as it came into the scene of carnage. Shortly after, Ney’s column approached with an intrepid step; the veterans of Wagram and Austerlitz were there; no force on earth seemed capable of resisting them; they had decided every former battle. Drouot was beside the Marshal, who repeatedly said to him they were about to gain a glorious victory. General Friant was killed by Ney’s side: the Marshal’s own horse was shot under him; but bravely advancing on foot, with his drawn sabre in his hand, he sought death from the enemy’s volleys. The impulse of this massy column was at first irresistible; the guns were forced back, and the Imperial Guard came up to within forty paces of the English Foot Guards, and the 73rd and 30th regiments. These men were lying down, four deep, in a small ditch behind the rough road, which there goes along the summit of the ridge. “Up Guards, and at them!” cried the Duke, who had repaired to the spot; and the whole, on both sides of the angle into which the French were advancing, springing up, moved forward a few paces, and poured in a volley so close and well directed, that nearly the whole first two ranks of the French fell at once. Gradually advancing, they now pushed the immense column, yet bravely combatting, down the slope; and Wellington, at that decisive instant, ordered Vivian’s brigade to charge the retiring body on one flank, while Adam’s foot advanced against it on the other. The effect of this triple attack, at once in front and on both flanks, was decisive: the 52nd and 71st, swiftly converging inward, threw in so terrible a volley on their left flank, that the Imperial Guard swerved in disorder to the right; and at that very instant the 10th, 18th, and 21st dragoons, under Vivian, bore down with irresistible fury, and piercing right through the body, threw it into irrevocable confusion. The cry, “Tout est perdu--la Garde recule!” arose in the French ranks, and the enormous mass, driven headlong down the hill, overwhelmed everything which came in its way, and spread disorder through the whole French centre.”
DESCRIPTION OF WATERLOO FROM THE TWELVE BATTLES.
“We have seen the three several stages by which the Duke of Wellington had conducted the British army to that elevated position in which the peace of 1814 left it. We have seen how it had, first, on the broad fields of Castile, boldly encountered a French army of twice its strength, and had sent it back in defeat. Next, at Salamanca, meeting an army of equal force, it had scattered it by an assault of a single hour, annihilating at a blow one-half of its strength. And lastly, falling upon the intrusive King himself in his final position of retreat and defence at Vittoria, it had driven his entire array, like a flock of frightened sheep, over the Pyrenees. After those triumphs, by which a whole realm of great extent had been delivered from its invaders, there seemed scarcely any way by which the fame and honour of the British army and its illustrious Commander could be enhanced, except by an event not to be anticipated--an encounter with the great conqueror of modern times, now an exile at Elba; and a triumph over him.
This event, however unlikely it might seem, was reserved for England’s soldiers and her General; and it occurred in less than a year after the apparent restoration of peace. Napoleon suddenly left his island-home, reappeared in France, gathered his soldiers round him, and re-entered Paris as once more its Emperor. Naturally enough, the Sovereigns who had compelled his retirement, scarcely nine months before, resolved to maintain their position; and they covenanted with each other to place armies amounting to 600,000 men on the soil of France in the course of July, 1815. The British portion of this force was collecting together in the months of May and June, under the Duke’s command; when Napoleon determined not to wait for the attack, but to carry the war into the allied territories; and, accordingly, in the second week in June he entered Belgium. Before he had proceeded twenty miles he encountered both the English and the Prussian armies, and on the fourth day, at a distance of about thirty miles from the French frontier, was fought the great and decisive battle of Waterloo.
This momentous contest will require of us a more lengthened description than we have given of any of the great battles; both because it was an event of the highest possible importance to the fate of England, of Europe, and of the world; and also because it was, so to speak, a succession of battles fought on one field, and on the same day. In a former case we have seen “an army of forty thousand men defeated in forty minutes;” but here the deadly strife occupied nearly ten hours. The French opened the attack at eleven in the morning, and at nine o’clock at night the last of their battalions had not yet quitted the field. In the course of these ten hours four or five desperate and prolonged contests had taken place; each of which might have been justly called a battle. It will be impossible, therefore, to give any fair or complete idea of this long continued struggle, without occupying much greater space than is required for an ordinary battle.
It is also a history which is thickly strewn with controversies. The defeated General himself was the first to open this wordy strife. The loss of the fight of Waterloo was a fact to which he never could be reconciled. That battle hurled him, finally, from the throne on which he had for the second time seated himself, and sent him to wear out the few remaining years of his life on the rock of St. Helena. In that retirement he occupied himself, for the most part, in a series of efforts to resuscitate his extinguished “glory.”[16] In these attempts he was hampered by no moral scruples; for, as Emerson has remarked, “this, the highest-placed individual in the world, had not the merit of common truth and honesty; he would steal, slander, assassinate, as his interest indicated.” Any reasonable man, therefore, will read his “Historical Memoir,” book ix, written at St. Helena, and published in London in 1820, with that caution which is so plainly called for when a document is confessedly an _exparte_ statement, and written by one who is known to be of unscrupulous character.
Yet that document has been received in many quarters with a credulity which is somewhat surprising. It is true that this credulity may be accounted for in the case of the French historians--who, obliged to confess that their defeat at Waterloo was “horrible”--a “massacre”--a “deluge of blood”--are glad to have supplied to them, under Napoleon’s own hand, the apology that he was overmatched and greatly outnumbered; and that yet, after all, he would have proved victorious if one of his Generals had not disobeyed his commands.
The latter of these two pleas has been generally rejected by English writers--utterly denied as its truth has been by the party so accused. But, strangely enough, although there was every probability that Napoleon’s account of his own strength, and of that of his opponent, would be wholly untrustworthy--several of our best English writers have given entire credence of his statement of the real amount of his army; even while those statements are clearly refuted by abundant testimonies of many Frenchmen. And this point is not an immaterial one. For if we could admit the truth of Napoleon’s final conclusion, that “On that day 69,000 French beat 120,000 men, and the victory was only torn from them between eight and nine o’clock at night by the increase of the allies to 150,000 men”[17]--what merit could we assign to the British soldiers, or to their great commander, for such a victory? But, in sober verity, of all the falsehoods deliberately put forth by Napoleon in the course of his life, this, probably, is nearly the greatest.
Let us, however, now endeavour to arrange our narrative in its proper order. The army which was assembling in Belgium under the Duke’s command, had reached, in the beginning of June, the respectable amount of almost 100,000 men. It contained, however, far more Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, and Dutchmen, than British troops, and far more new levies, landwehr, and militia, than of experienced soldiers. The English regiments which had followed the Duke through all the fields of Spain had been sent to America, and were now on the Atlantic, on their return home. He had some of the Guards, and a few other regiments of some standing; but the largest portion of the British troops which had yet reached Belgium were second battalions--new recruits drafted from the militia--and the same observation would apply to the Hanoverians and other auxiliaries.
It was a knowledge of this intrinsic weakness of the Duke’s army, and of the fact that 10,000 or 15,000 of his old Peninsular troops would soon join him, that decided Napoleon, as is frankly confessed,[18] to make a sudden attack on the British and Prussian forces before they were fully prepared to meet him. Silently, therefore, but with his usual skill and rapidity, Napoleon brought together a powerful army, and on the morning of the 15th of June he moved forward and entered Belgium.
And here we are met by the most current of all the fictions which are connected with this history. A variety of writers have repeated, one after another--Napoleon himself setting them the example--the story that the Duke never heard of the approach of the French until eleven o’clock in the evening of that day, while at a ball at Brussels. The facts, however, which are beyond dispute, are these--that the French did not enter Charleroi, the first Belgian town, until eleven or twelve o’clock on June the 15th--that tidings of their movement reached the Duke at Brussels by three o’clock, and that between four and five o’clock that same afternoon orders went out to every corps of the British army to move to the front, many of them beginning their march that same evening. There was no surprise, then, nor was there the loss of a single day. The French had not marched thirty miles--had not entered any place of the least importance, when, on the third day, they found the British army drawn up across their path, and had to fight the battle of Waterloo.
They had, indeed, found their progress arrested still earlier. Entering Belgium on the 15th, they were stopped the very next day at Ligny by the Prussians, at Quatre Bras by a part of the English army. Marshal Blucher being defeated, and retiring a few miles, the Duke fell back also, and thus was enabled to draw up his army at Waterloo--a position which he had before observed to be an advantageous one, and which was in all respects well suited to the defence of Brussels.
It was on the afternoon of the 17th June that the Duke’s army found itself assembled on this spot. The French army, led by Napoleon himself, soon approached, but the day was too far advanced to afford time for a general engagement. The two armies, therefore, took position, the English on a rising ground called Mont St. Jean, about half a mile in advance of the village of Waterloo, and nine miles on the French side of Brussels; the French on a series of heights facing Mont St. Jean, having the village of Planchenoit on the right, and looking down upon a small valley which separated the two hosts.
And now we are naturally brought to a consideration of the question, what was the respective strength of these two armies? This is a point upon which Napoleon has bestowed great pains in his “Historical Memoir, Book ix,” and on which he has succeeded in deluding many English writers.