Part 45
Well and earnestly was this duty performed. All night long were the wretched French pursued. Nine times did they attempt to halt for rest, and nine times was the Prussian drum heard, and the flight was again to be resumed. A French officer[39] thus describes the scene:--
“Near one of the hedges of Hougoumont, without even a drummer to beat the rappel, we succeeded in rallying 300 men; these were nearly all that remained of our splendid division. Thither came also a band of Generals. Here was Reille,[40] D’Erlon, Bachelor, Foy, and others. All were gloomy and sorrowful. They said, one to another, ‘Here is all that is left of my corps,--of my division,--of my brigade!--I myself!’
“The enemy’s horse approached, and we were obliged to retreat. The movements of the English cavalry had demoralized our soldiers, who, seeing all regular retreat cut off, strove each man to save himself. Infantry, cavalry, artillery, all jammed together, were pressing along pell-mell. Figure to yourself 40,000 men all struggling along a single causeway. We could not take that way, so we struck across the fields. We were humiliated, we were hopeless; we walked like a troop of mourners.
“We passed through Thuin, and finding a little copse, we gladly sought its shelter. While our horses grazed, we lay down and slept. We rested in the little copse till noon, and sat watching the wrecks of our army defile along the road. It was a soul-harrowing sight!
“We drew near to Beaumont, when suddenly a regiment of horse was seen debouching from a wood on our left. The column that we followed cried out, ‘The Prussians! the Prussians!’ and hurried off in utter disorder.
“I was trying to return to General Foy, when another horde of fugitives burst into Beaumont, swept me into the current of their flight, and hurried me out of the town with them. I reached Landrecy, though I know not how or when.”
Such is the description given by one of the fugitives, and it exactly corresponds with the official report of the Prussian General, Gneisenau, who says, “The French army, pursued without intermission, was absolutely disorganized. The highway presented the appearance of an immense shipwreck; it was covered with an innumerable quantity of cannon, caissons, baggage, arms, and goods of every kind. As soon as the enemy heard the sound of our drums, they fled, while the moonlight favoured the pursuit, for the whole march was a continued chase, whether in the corn-fields or in the houses.”
“At three o’clock Napoleon had despatched a courier to Paris with the news that victory was certain: a few hours afterwards he had no longer an army.”
The French accounts, Gourgaud’s, Napoleon’s, &c., written long after, endeavour to diminish the defeat by representing that within a week as many us 60 or 65,000 men were re-assembled at Laon. Some one attempted to make a representation of this sort in the French Chamber of Peers, on the 24th of June; when Marshal Ney rose in his place, and declared all such accounts to be deceptive. “It is a mere illusion to suppose that 60,000 men can be collected. Marshal Grouchy,” said he, “cannot have more than 20,000, or 25,000 at the most.”
Fortunately, however, the question is set at rest by Fleury de Chaboulon, Napoleon’s secretary, who describes very vividly what followed immediately after the battle. He tells us, how, in his flight, on meeting Maret, “the Emperor could not repress his emotion; a large tear, escaping from his eyes, betrayed the efforts of his soul.” Again he says, “The Emperor stopped beyond Rocroi to take some refreshment. We were all in a pitiable state: our eyes swelled with tears, our countenances haggard, our clothes covered with dust or blood.” And, on arriving at Paris, when one of his ministers spoke of the army, Napoleon exclaimed, “_I have no longer an army!_ I have nothing but fugitives!”[41]
It was this absolute destruction of the French army which made Waterloo one of the greatest and most important of all victories. Thus, Jules Maurel, a French historian, says:--
“From a comparison of all the documents, it appears, that Bonaparte was already beaten when the mass of the Prussian army appeared on the field; but the arrival of Bulow had powerfully assisted the British, and the arrival of Blucher changed the defeat into _an unparalleled disaster_.”
Lamartine, another Frenchman, adds:--
“This defeat left nothing undecided,--nothing for the future to do. Victory had given judgment: the war began and ended in a single battle.”
But let us return for a moment to the great victor of the day. At a road-side house, near Rossomme, he left Blucher, who gladly undertook the pursuit, and after twelve hours of constant exertion, he turned his charger’s head once more towards Mont St. Jean and Waterloo. Darkness now shrouded a thousand scenes of horror, over which it had been useless to pause. At his quarters the Duke found assembled the survivors of his staff, the representatives of the allied powers, and a few other friends. All sorely needed rest and food, and the meal was ready. On leaving his quarters in the morning, he had desired his domestics to have dinner ready to place on the table “whenever it might be wanted” and his cook excited amusement by the confidence with which he asserted, that “his master had ordered dinner, and would certainly return to eat it.” But the thoughts which would throng into the conqueror’s mind, at that moment, must have been such as few men have ever experienced.
The foremost considerations with the Duke of Wellington always were, _his country, and his duty_. But besides these there was a personal question, little spoken of by him, but which could not be excluded from his thoughts.
“I go to measure myself with Wellington,” exclaimed Napoleon, when he flung himself into his carriage, only a few days before, to join his army on the Belgian frontier. The Duke spoke not of such matters, but he could not possibly forget that the muse of history was waiting all that day, to know _which_ of the two great names was to take the highest place among the many able commanders of the nineteenth century. The one had defeated, in turn, nearly every general in Europe, except Wellington. The other had triumphed over almost all the Marshals of France, but had not yet confronted Napoleon.
Captain Moyle Sherer thus writes:--
“Upon the night of that memorable battle, the words and emotions of the conqueror will long be remembered by those who sat with him at supper, after the anxious and awful day had closed. The fountain of a great heart lies deep, and the self-government of a calm mind permits no tears. But, this night, Wellington repeatedly leaned back in his chair, and rubbing his hands convulsively, exclaimed, “Thank God! I have met him: Thank God! I have met him.”[42] And, ever as he spoke, the smile that lighted up his eye was dimmed by those few tears that gush warm from a grateful heart.
“His many and deep anxieties; his noble desire to defeat his country’s implacable enemy; his rational doubts of success against so great a general;--these and many other fears and hopes, undisclosed to any one, all were now resolved and dissipated by a result more sudden, full, and glorious than any expectation he could have formed, or any hope he could have admitted. England was placed on the very pinnacle of glory; her foe was prostrate, his legions fugitives, and her general might joyfully look around and say, ‘This work was mine!’”
But after necessary food, and the writing of despatches and letters, came such rest as the excited mind and body could take. The Duke threw himself, unwashed but exhausted, on his bed long after midnight. He had desired Dr. Hume to bring him the report of the surgeons at seven in the morning. The doctor was punctual, but the claims of nature were not satisfied, the Duke’s sleep was still sound. Knowing that, with him, duty was paramount to all other considerations, the doctor at once awakened him. The list was produced, and the doctor began to read; but as name after name came forth--this one as dying, that as dead--the voice failed, and Hume, looking up, perceived the tears rapidly chasing each other down the victor’s blackened cheeks;--he laid down the list and instantly left the apartment.
The British loss was indeed great. Of the Duke’s staff twelve were killed and forty-six wounded. The number of British officers killed and wounded in these three days exceeded 700, and of privates it was more than 10,000, so that about every third man in the British ranks had been struck down in this terrible battle. The loss of Dutch, Hanoverians, &c., had been 7,000; and that of the Prussians exceeded 6,000. As to the French, their loss in killed and wounded never could be ascertained; but it is certain that of 150,000 men who crossed the frontiers, not 50,000 were ever re-assembled under their colours.
The utter loss of his army sent Napoleon back to Paris. But the news of his total defeat arrived along with him. His fame, his “glory,” and his power perished together. The Chambers rose in rebellion against him; and his abdication was demanded. The English and Prussian armies, meanwhile, rapidly advanced; and on their arrival before Paris the city capitulated; the King returned to his palace; and Napoleon gave himself up to the Captain of an English ship of war. On the 15th of June one of the finest armies that he had ever led into the field entered Belgium to take advantage of the Duke of Wellington’s unprepared state;--on the 3rd of July, just fifteen days after, _Paris itself capitulated_! Such were the vast results of Waterloo.
Napoleon, indeed, had been in some peril, for the Prussian general showed a particular anxiety to get hold of him, in order that he might hang him! The Duke had no fondness for him,--always designating him in his despatches, merely as “Bonaparte;” but the old Prussian field-marshal, remembering the cruel treatment of his country by the French in 1807, felt, and constantly expressed, sentiments of positive hatred. The Duke, however, with that loftiness of aim and of feeling which had forbidden his officers to fire upon Napoleon during the action, firmly resisted Blucher’s desires on this point. General Muffling, the Prussian commissioner, tells us, that the Duke said to him, “I wish my friend and colleague to see this matter in the light I do: such an act would give our names to history stained with a crime; and posterity would say of us, “They were not worthy to be his conquerors; the more so, as such a deed would be useless, and can have no object.”
In the same tone the Duke wrote to Sir Charles Stuart, telling him, “I said, that as a private friend, I advised him to have nothing to do with so foul a transaction; that he and I had acted too distinguished parts in these transactions to become executioners; and that I was determined that if the Sovereign put him to death, they should appoint an executioner, _which should not be me_.”
In a similar spirit, the Duke succeeded in preventing the Prussians from executing other plans of vengeance, such us the blowing up the bridge of Jena, pulling down the column of Austerlitz, and the like. In fact, had the old marshal been alone in these transactions, he would gladly have indulged his troops with the plunder of Paris.
Indeed, such an utter overthrow as France had received, and that in the course of a few days, was hardly to be paralleled in history. Sufficient stress has seldom been laid upon that wonderful working of the Divine Providence by which this great contest, expected by all men to be so long, so desperate, and so sanguinary, was suddenly brought to a close on the fourth day after its commencement. All the great powers of Europe had agreed upon a united effort. They had pledged their faith to one another to place 600,000 men on the soil of France in July, 1815.
All at once, in the middle of June, while the bulk of these armies were moving up from Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and other distant lands, they hear that the war is begun. And in four days after, they hear that it is _finished_! Such is not the ordinary course of human history.
All, however, is easily accounted for. Napoleon saw in England the most resolute, consistent, and indomitable of his foes, and in England’s Great General, the only Captain whom he could hold in no light esteem. He said, and not unwisely, “If the Anglo-Belgian army had been destroyed at Waterloo, what service could the Allies derive from the number of armies which were preparing to cross the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees?”[43]
And acting upon this sound view of the case, and knowing that one or two more weeks would elapse before Wellington could have his veteran battalions around him, he resolved to throw himself like an avalanche upon the Duke’s army in its unreadiness; in the hope that a campaign beginning with a defeat of this his chief opponent would alarm England, terrify the other powers, and so make peace, with his continued retention of the throne of France, attainable.
This plan was a sagacious as well as a bold one. It grappled at once with the grand difficulty of the case. But the difficulty, when grappled with, overmastered him. Still, the peculiar characteristics of this momentous struggle deserves to be carefully remarked. A judicious writer has well observed, that:--
“Waterloo seemed to bear the features of a grand, immediate interposition of Providence. Had human judgments been consulted, they would have drawn a different plan. The Prussians would have joined the English and have swept the enemy before them; or, the British would have been in force enough to have beaten the French long before the set of sun, &c., &c. But if the French had suffered a common defeat, with consummate generals at their head they would have rallied; or, retiring in force, would have called in all available aids, and have renewed the struggle. So the conflict held on till the last moment, when they could neither escape nor conquer. If they had retreated an hour before nightfall they might have been saved; if they could have fought an hour after it, darkness would have covered them. But the crash came on the very edge of darkness. The Prussians came up unfatigued by battle and fresh for pursuit. The night was to be a night of slaughter. ‘Thou, moon, in the valley of Ajalon.’”
Such was one of the grand events of modern history,--the victory which gave all Europe peace for forty years. Ascribing, as we most unreservedly do, the whole ordering of this momentous struggle to an overruling Providence, it still seems a duty to add a few words on the respective merits, or demerits, connected with this tremendous contest, of the two great commanders, who for the first and last time met at Waterloo. Let us first glance at the great deeds achieved, and the great mistakes committed, by Napoleon in the course of these three eventful days.
He carried his magnificent army over the frontier, and threw it upon the allied armies in a manner exhibiting the most consummate skill. Twenty years spent in the practice of war had given him an expertness in the handling of large bodies of troops which few generals have ever possessed. He showed also on the 16th that he was a better general than Blucher, and that his army was a better army than that of the Prussians. But here our commendation must close; for a variety of faults and errors have been pointed out by military critics, of which we shall only mention a few of the chief. Napoleon was guilty of two great miscalculations, and of three important practical mistakes. These were:--
1. He rashly and erroneously assumed that his appearance in Belgium at the head of a fine army would force his opponents, Wellington and Blucher, out of mere awe and terror, to fall back, to evacuate the country, and so to give him a triumph at the opening of the campaign. In his ixth Book he seriously argues that they _ought_ to have done so: but this was a strange miscalculation. When had either Wellington or Blucher showed any alacrity in running away? And what right had he to assume that a force amounting, when united, to nearly 200,000 men, would act as if terror-stricken, on the mere appearance of a French army of only 150,000? Yet he constantly tells us that they ought to have retreated, and that his calculations always rested on the presumption that they certainly would retreat.
2. In like manner was he disappointed when he sent Grouchy with 35,000 or 40,000 men, to occupy and keep employed the whole Prussian army. Again did he absurdly overlook the real character of Blucher, who was not one to be easily duped. Napoleon might speculate, if he pleased, on the chance of keeping Blucher at Wavre while he was overpowering and crushing Wellington at Waterloo; but Blucher was equally at liberty to despise all such devices, and to leave Napoleon’s lieutenant in order to seek for Napoleon himself. This was what actually took place, and hence we see that again Napoleon is exposed to the imputation of having fatally miscalculated.
3. But as in his plans there were these two errors, so in actual execution we meet with three egregious faults. Having found Wellington with his weak army apart from Blucher, why did he allow several hours to elapse before he seized the opportunity for which he had been hoping? He speaks of the softened state of the ground after several hours’ rain. But, as we have seen, when Grouchy advances the same excuse for inaction at Wavre, he styles it “ridiculous!” and who can say that the movements which he actually made at eleven o’clock, _could not_ have been made at ten, or even at nine o’clock? Meanwhile, although Napoleon was _waiting_, the Prussians were _marching_. They found the task _difficult_, while he deemed it _impossible_. In earlier days he would have replied that “there was no such word in his vocabulary.”
4. Again, to what strange hallucination was it owing, that, all through the day, attacks which might have been made simultaneously were only discharged in succession? Thus, at three or four o’clock, he sorely tried the nerve and pluck of the English infantry by pouring in upon them “twelve thousand select horse.” It took them three hours to kill or drive away these formidable intruders. And _then_, when the French cavalry had been destroyed, Napoleon next attacked the English line with six or eight thousand of his Imperial Guard. But what prevented his moving this formidable column up the heights of Mont St. Jean, while the cuirassiers were already in possession of the plateau? They had seized or silenced the English artillery; they had compelled the infantry to throw themselves into squares. If a mass of the finest infantry in France had then been thrown upon the British centre, how fearful would have been the trial? But Napoleon still delayed. He sent on his cavalry, unsupported by any infantry; and then, when the cavalry had been “massacred,” he sent on a column of infantry, unsupported by any cavalry. Will the greatest admirer of his genius hesitate to admit that his practical generalship, his excellence as a leader in battle, was not conspicuous at Waterloo? Yet, wherefore was he less vigorous, less audacious at Waterloo, than at Austerlitz or Jena? He was still in the very prime of life. Must we suppose that the toils and troubles and disappointments of 1812-1814 had prematurely worn out his mind; and that he was already, at only forty-six years of age, mentally decrepit?
5. The most singular exhibition of defect in generalship, however, and of blindness to that defect, is seen in this,--that he could not lose a battle without utterly losing his army also!
The general who can bear a defeat well, and can carry off his army with only a moderate loss, is entitled to take a high rank amongst commanders. He who cannot do this is only a fair-weather general.
The Prussian commander was attacked on the 16th before his army was all assembled. He placed his men badly,--so badly that Wellington predicted their certain defeat. Yet, when that defeat fell upon him, he rallied his army at a distance of a quarter of a league, and was ready and eager to fight another battle on the second day after. It was this unconquerability which made Blucher one of the most formidable antagonists of his time.
But let us turn to Napoleon. He invites us to do this, by the pertinacity with which he assails Wellington on this very point. Again and again he brings the charge vehemently against him, that at Waterloo he had made no provision for a retreat. Thus, in Book ix, p. 124, he says:--
“He had in his rear the defiles of the forest of Soignes, so that, if beaten, retreat was impossible.”
And again, at p. 158--
“The enemy must have seen with affright how many difficulties the field of battle he had chosen was about to throw in the way of his retreat.”
And again, at p. 207--
“The position of Mont St. Jean was ill-chosen. The first requisite of a field of battle, is, to have no defiles in its rear. The injudicious choice of his field of battle, rendered all retreat impossible.”
Thus Napoleon challenges our criticism on this very point. All military authorities are agreed that he was wrong in his censure on Wellington. It is conceded even by Frenchmen like Lamartine, that the forest of Soignes, instead of being a source of peril, was an element of safety. But he who assails his rival on this especial point, of a provision for retreat, must expect to be asked, himself, “How his own retreat was conducted?”
There is no parallel to its disastrous character. An army of nearly 90,000 fine soldiers, not 40,000 of which could have been killed or wounded, was nothing the next day but a vast horde of fugitives. We notice, with contemptuous pity, how the Spanish generals, in 1809, managed to incur such a disgraceful defeat at Ocana, that out of 50,000 men, not 1,000 kept the field a week after. But here was one of the finest armies that ever France sent forth, commanded too, by the conqueror, of Europe; and even the very day after the battle, not a single thousand men were to be found in the field! All were utterly scattered and broken up. And yet their general has the assurance, in criticising the general who has beaten him, to censure him, especially, because “he had taken no precautions to secure his retreat!”