Waterloo: The French Perspective

By Andrew W. Field

From the author of Talavera, an extensive history of the Battle of Waterloo from the losing side’s point of view.

The story of the Battle of Waterloo—of the ultimate defeat of Napoleon and the French, the triumph of Wellington, Blücher, and their allied armies—is most often told from the viewpoint of the victors, not the vanquished. Even after 200 years of intensive research and the publication of hundreds of books and articles on the battle, the French perspective and many of the primary French sources are under-represented in the written record. So, it is high time this weakness in the literature—and in our understanding of the battle—was addressed, and that is the purpose of Andrew Field’s thought-provoking new study. He has tracked down over ninety first-hand French accounts, many of which have never been previously published in English, and he has combined them with accounts from the other participants in order to create a graphic new narrative of one of the world’s decisive battles. Virtually all of the hitherto unpublished testimony provides fascinating new detail on the battle and many of the accounts are vivid, revealing, and exciting.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 24, 2012
• ISBN: 9781781599983

Andrew W. Field

Andrew Field MBE is a former British army officer whose travels around the world have given him a unique opportunity to explore battlefields from ancient history to present times. He has always harboured a special fascination for the Napoleonic Wars. In particular he has reassessed Napoleon's campaigns in 1814 and 1815, and has carried out extensive research into Wellington's battles in the Peninsula. His books include Talavera: Wellington's First Victory in Spain, Prelude to Waterloo: Quatre Bras, Grouchy’s Waterloo: The Battles of Ligny and Wavre and Waterloo: Rout and Retreat: The French Perspective.

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To my three special children,

Katie, Charlotte and Thomas

First published in Great Britain in 2012 by

Pen & Sword Military

an imprint of

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Copyright © Andrew W. Field 2012

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Contents

List of Maps

List of Illustrations

Preface

Introduction

Section One

Setting the Scene

  1.  The French Army of 1815

  2.  Preliminary Moves

Section Two

Prelude to Battle

  3.  The Night Before

  4.  The Morning of Battle – 1am to 11.30am

Section Three

11.30am to 1.30pm

  5.  The First Attacks on Hougoumont

  6.  The Grand Battery

  7.  The First Sightings of the Prussians

Section Four

1.30pm to 3.30pm

  8.  Preparations for d’Erlon’s Attack

  9.  The First Assault on La Haye Sainte

10.  The Attack on the Ohain Road

11.  The Counter-Attack of the British Cavalry

12.  Hougoumont

13.  The Second Assault on La Haye Sainte

Section Five

3.30pm to 6.00pm

14.  The Prussians Arrive on the Battlefield

15.  The Great French Cavalry Attacks

16.  The Prussian Pressure Begins to Mount

Section Six

6.00pm to 8.00pm

17.  The Taking of La Haye Sainte and the Real Crisis

18.  The Defence of Planchenoit

19.  The Attack of the Middle Guard

20.  The Rout Begins

21.  The Sacrifice of the Old Guard

Section Seven

8.00pm to 1.00am

22.  The Loss of Planchenoit

23.  The Disintegration of the French Army

24.  The Last Squares

25.  The Road to Genappe

Section Eight

Tactical Notes

Introduction

Napoleon’s Attack Options

Hougoumont

The Columns Used in d’Erlon’s Attack

The French Cavalry Attacks

French Cavalry Tactics at Waterloo

The Sunken Lane as an Obstacle

The Killing of Prisoners

The Attack of the Middle Guard

The Grenadier Guards

Section Nine

Summary: The French Perspective

Introduction

Hougoumont

The Attack of d’Erlon’s I Corps

The Great Cavalry Charges

The Fighting Around La Haye Sainte

The Real Crisis

The Fight Against the Prussians

The Attack of the Middle Guard

French Generalship

Could the French have won the battle?

Appendix 1: The French Army at Waterloo

Appendix 2: Anecdotes

Appendix 3: Eye-witnesses Consulted

Notes

Select Bibliography

List of Maps

Initial deployment

Hougoumont attacks

D’Erlon’s attack

The cavalry attacks

Prussian attack on Plancenoit

Situation at 7.30pm

Attack of the Middle Guard

Repulse of the Middle Guard

List of Illustrations

Napoleon in 1815.

Marshal Soult.

Marshal Ney.

Marshal Grouchy.

Lieutenant General Drouot.

Lieutenant General Drouet d’Erlon.

Lieutenant General Reille.

Lieutenant General Lobau.

Lieutenant General Guyot.

Marechal de camp Cambronne.

Colonel Jean-Louis de Crabbe.

Colonel Louis Bro.

Colonel Baron Jean-Baptiste-Antoine-Marcellin-Marbot.

A contemporary map of the area of the battle.

An old photograph of the north gate of Hougoumont.

Sous-lieutenant Legros (or was it Bonnet?) leads the break in through the north gate of Hougoumont.

An old photograph of the south gate of Hougoumont.

La Haye Sainte.

La Belle Alliance.

Le Caillou.

Marshal Ney leads a cavalry charge against a Highland square.

The French claim to have captured six allied colours at Waterloo.

The sunken lane that has entered Waterloo mythology.

Napoleon takes temporary refuge in the square of the 1st/1st Grenadiers.

The last cannon shots.

The last stand of the Old Guard.

A member of Napoleon’s Old Guard with the regiment’s Eagle.

Preface

I have been a soldier all my life. This work has been born out of my abiding interest in the Napoleonic Wars and the armies of Napoleon. Long hours of archive study are not conducive to a military career and family life, so I have indulged my hobby by acquiring as many of the memoirs and first-hand accounts as possible. Those I have not been able to find on second-hand book websites (try www.abebooks.co.uk) or Ebay (French and Belgian sites), I have been delighted to access in the British Library. As I have deliberately tried to present a fighter’s view of the battle, as far as possible I have avoided official reports from senior officers.

Virtually all French translations are my own and I take full responsibility for any errors. I have tried to retain the feel and authenticity of the originals rather than to try and bring them into modern English parlance.

I do not have a long list of eminent academics or historians to thank, as both the research and the writing has been very much my own work. However, I would like to thank the commissioning editor at Pen & Sword, Rupert Harding, who has waited patiently through the many years it has taken me to write this, taking into account my military career, including a sojourn in Afghanistan, and the time it has taken me to collect the sources and translate them all. Thanks also to my partner, Mandy, who despite having her weekends wrecked for the last six months has encouraged me to finish the work. Her son, Jeff, did the excellent maps even as he travelled around the world. Last, but not least, thanks to Louise, who diligently ensured that no animals were injured in the preparation of this book.

So here is the faithful picture of the battlefield, chosen by Wellington, and from where, as we have said, he appeared to defy his adversaries, who, by the lack of foresight of their headquarters, committed the fault of attacking the bull by the horns. In the numerical inferiority of our troops, the little time that we had before the arrival of the Prussians, and, above all, having to fight an enemy who leaves little to fate, it would have been preferable to force him to manoeuvre rather than to leave him to fight on ground of his own choosing.

But it seems that inevitability always dragged us along and led us to throw ourselves with a light heart into the abyss, and we repeat, to attack the English bull by the horns. Indeed, it is noticeable that from Agincourt to Waterloo, nearly all the battles in which the English have beaten us have been defensive battles. We attack with lowered heads against their formidable positions, prepared in advance, that they know how to defend marvellously. One could say that we endeavour to fight precisely the type of battle that is best suited to their way of fighting: witness in recent times, Vimeiro, Talavera, Bussaco, Salamanca and Waterloo, which might not even have been fought if the English army had been beaten on the 16th, as it would have been if it hadn’t been for the military foolishness of that day. Indeed, either because of their character, their military talent; or the spirit of their government, which imposes great caution on their commanders, it is clear that the English are not as capable of offensive operations as defensive. Unless enjoying a great superiority of forces, as at Toulouse, or of absolute necessity such as at Alkmaër, they find it difficult to take the initiative and to attack. Wellington is certainly not a general of science or inspiration, but he is a brave soldier and knows how to find remarkable defensive positions from unpromising ground. He has a cool temperament and an excellent army that has admirable order in all senses of the word; in the organisation of equipment, and in general and individual solidity, which fights tenaciously on the strong ground where it is established. Making use of these qualities, it displayed to us a most admirable appearance.

Sergeant Hippolyte de Mauduit, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, 2nd Battalion of the 1st Regiment of Foot Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard.

Introduction

I wonder how many books on Waterloo I have read in which the author begins by trying to justify why he has produced another. Whilst as a British soldier it would be somewhat incongruous to accuse me of being a Francophile, I am, however, a member of what must be a rather rare breed; a British soldier with a fascination for Napoleon’s Grande Armée, and this may partially explain my own attempt to bring a new perspective on what is almost certainly the most famous and most written-about battle in history.

Waterloo was a unique battle in many ways and no doubt this is one of the reasons it is considered so interesting. Not only did it see the final defeat of one of the greatest military leaders of all time, and the end of his controversial rule, but it was also the first (and of course only) time that Wellington and Napoleon faced each other on the battlefield. What’s more, the battle resulted in the almost unprecedented total collapse of one of the protagonists. Napoleon had achieved many memorable and decisive victories during his military career but of these – Austerlitz, Jena and Friedland – only Jena comes close to featuring the same total, if temporary, rout and disintegration of the loser’s army as at Waterloo.

But perhaps one of the greatest fascinations of this battle is that so much controversy still surrounds it: the fight for Hougoumont, d’Erlon’s attack, the unsupported French cavalry charges, the attack of the Imperial Guard, the decisiveness of the Prussian intervention, Grouchy’s non-appearance and the effectiveness of Napoleon’s own performance are all still much debated. I suspect only a few of you will have noticed that five out of six of these points of contention are focussed on the French role in the battle, rather than the allied.

Over the years I have always been surprised and disappointed at the little interest British Napoleonic historians and enthusiasts have shown in their opponents. In so many accounts of battles between the British and French during the Peninsular War there is little consideration of the French army and its capabilities. Indeed, the French army, despite its humiliation of the great military powers of Austria, Russia and Prussia, is almost always contemptuously written off as ‘coming on in the same old style’ and being ‘beaten off in the same old style’. Although it is true that the British bettered the French in all the major battles between them during the Napoleonic Wars, Talavera, Albuhera and, of course, Waterloo were all ‘close run things’ and the French themselves, with some cause, would add a number of other battles to this list. Had any one of these been a French victory it would have had a significant impact on the course of the wars and perhaps history itself.

Wellington himself, prone to many a disparaging remark about the quality of his own army, seems to have more respect for his opponents than many historians have displayed. Speaking of the French army he is quoted as saying: ‘They were excellent troops; I never on any occasion knew them to behave other than well. Their officers too were as good as possible’. Whilst we can be justifiably proud of what our predecessors achieved in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, there is always a danger that our nationalistic pride and lack of linguistic skills can fail to do justice to our equally brave opponents, and prevent us from taking a truly objective view of this period of history.

Although ‘history is written by the victors’ has become a rather hackneyed phrase, it is nevertheless a truism and, perhaps until recently, particularly apt in the case of Waterloo. In the hundred or so years following the great battle it would have been viewed as treasonous to suggest that the Duke of Wellington had not fought a perfect campaign, that the French came close to winning the battle, that the French army was anywhere near as brave or as capable as the British, that it was the Prussian intervention that was decisive or that, despite Wellington’s army being only twenty-five percent British, it was not down to them alone that the battle was won. Without wishing to deny the British Army pride in its considerable accomplishments, it is certainly difficult to defend ourselves against a charge of insufferable self-congratulation and arrogance in our wallowing in the warm and prolonged afterglow of victory.

In more recent times, however, there has been a discernible and most welcome shift towards a more objective and even-handed approach to writing history, based on thorough research and questioning of what was once accepted as established fact. As a result of this trend, many historical accounts have been challenged and found to be riddled with inaccuracies and myths; myths that in many cases have been constantly recycled over the years. Many early histories were motivated by understandable national pride, national prejudice or were created as propaganda during a subsequent conflict to establish some sort of racial, military or cultural supremacy and boost national morale.

We now find the ‘Britishness’ of the Waterloo victory coming under close scrutiny, and perhaps it is not surprising that some of us have found this a little uncomfortable. Many early narratives were based on the less than objective accounts of British officers present at the battle and these have rarely been balanced against the eye-witnesses and official reports of other nations. In early British accounts the performance of the Dutch-Belgian troops was at best portrayed patronisingly and at worst treated with contempt. The possible reasons for this have already been touched upon, but it is reassuring that this viewpoint has been intellectually challenged in a number of books and periodicals. Whilst it was inevitable that earlier proponents of the Dutch-Belgian case were themselves Dutch or Belgian, the most recent contributor to the debate has been the British historian Hamilton-Williams, whose book, although controversial on many other aspects of the battle, nonetheless presents a convincing case reassessing their performance. Furthermore, Peter Hofschröer has recently promoted the contribution of the Prussians and the considerable German contingents in the Anglo-Dutch army. His work is based on fastidious research in the previously untapped (at least by English authors) German accounts and archives, and has robustly and effectively challenged the British claim to have been the sole contributor to victory.

It seems, then, that the British, Dutch-Belgian and German viewpoints have all been taken care of. I cannot help thinking, therefore, that the time is right to take a clear, objective view from the French perspective. This is no mean challenge, as any reappraisal of the battle from a French viewpoint must fully comprehend how cataclysmic this battle was, and still is, in the French historical and military psyche. Even in more recent interpretations, some French historians find it difficult not to turn an account of the battle into an almost hysterical Anglophobic tirade, and it is somewhat strange that virtually all French accounts, both histories and those by participants, refer to the enemy as ‘English’, rather than ‘British’ or ‘allied’, and make little or no reference to the many Dutch-Belgians or Germans that made up the majority of the allied army.

That said, most French accounts of Waterloo are every bit as jingoistic and subjective as many of those produced by the British. However, whereas British accounts were taken as the truth on the basis that they won and British officers did not stretch the truth or tell lies (!), the French accounts have been disregarded on the basis that they were poor losers (though this does make one wonder how you can be a ‘good loser’ of a major battle in which many thousands of your men have been maimed or killed and which changed the course of your nation’s history) and trying to excuse their momentous defeat. Furthermore, many French histories have drawn heavily, although unsurprisingly, on Napoleon’s own accounts of the campaign. Unfortunately, as we shall discuss a little later, these have been largely discredited and therefore accounts that have drawn on them have had their own credibility undermined.

M.A. Thiers, perhaps France’s most famous military historian of that era, wrote a massive twenty-volume history of Napoleon’s campaigns. The last volume covers the campaign of 1815. However, Thiers was an unashamed and unrepentant admirer of Napoleon and can be little trusted as a wholly objective recorder of history, despite his eloquence and apparent attention to detail. Even more modern French historians, such as Lachouque, set out to enhance the Napoleonic legend rather than improve our understanding of what really happened, and like many British accounts he repeats many often recycled myths. In the absence of a victory, many French historians have judged the outcome of the battle on la gloire, in which they feel free to give Napoleon’s army a considerable lead.

The research conducted in the middle of the nineteenth century by the English officer Siborne, for his model and history of the battle, has provided us with a wealth of primary sources in the English language. Regrettably, his overtures to French officers to give their own perspective were ignored. The paltry number of quotes from French soldiers or officers in British accounts led me to believe that, as a result of what was seen as a very public humiliation, few memoirs or first-hand accounts were published (in much the same way that in the outstanding military museum of Les Invalides, which inevitably has a huge Napoleonic section, there is virtually nothing on Waterloo). This view was reinforced by one of the more recent, and still most enjoyable, accounts of the battle: David Howarth’s Waterloo, A Near Run Thing. In his introduction he explains that despite the many eye-witness accounts, ‘I am only sorry a disproportionate number of them are British: the British wrote much more about the battle than the French or anyone else …’. However, as I have conducted my research the number of balanced, detailed and apparently honest souvenirs by French participants has surprised me. The fact that few of these have been utilised by British authors only emphasises their reluctance either to translate them, or to include a different perspective in their accounts.

When considering the veracity of eye-witness accounts the historian must question whether the author had any personal agenda that was likely to colour his judgement. Clearly French participants have a long list of reasons for not telling the whole truth. Some wished to justify their own performance in light of the catastrophe, some tried to protect Napoleon’s own performance on that day, and others attempted to enhance their own reputations even amongst the ruins of defeat. After the Emperor’s second abdication and the restoration of the monarchy there were also many who wished to ingratiate themselves with the new government and were very happy to downplay their own part in the fighting and enthusiasm for Napoleon’s return.

All this is particularly true of the senior officers who had most to lose. However, over the years many accounts have come to light, by more junior officers and other ranks who had less reason and inclination to doctor the truth. These give us a more personal and perhaps more accurate feel for the battle from the French perspective. They also either lend credibility to, or arouse suspicion about, the reports and memoirs of their superior officers. Furthermore, the often graphic accounts by younger eye-witnesses display an innocent naivety that almost demands that we give them the benefit of the doubt in terms of authenticity. They rarely pretend to have any knowledge of what happened beyond their own very personal and localised experiences.

We must also be wary of accounts written long after the events that they describe. Those based on diaries or notes kept at the time may safely be assumed to be relatively accurate, but when this is not the case we must treat them with a little more caution. Later accounts often draw on histories of the battle or the personal accounts of others. When a junior officer describes events that he could not have seen for himself because of his own position on the battlefield, we must be especially wary. I have therefore tried to restrict myself to the experiences or descriptions of events that the author might reasonably have seen for himself.

Many accounts by junior French officers or other ranks were not sufficiently long to justify a book, but appeared in any number of magazines and other publications over the last two hundred years. These, along with many of the memoirs of less senior or celebrated officers have not generally been available to the general public, certainly in modern times. However, following a trend which started in England some years ago, some French publishers (such as Editions Historiques TEISSDRE and Le Livre Chez Vous) are now reprinting old and rare editions and collecting together shorter accounts and publishing them under a single cover, making them available to a much wider audience.

Napoleon himself is credited with three accounts of the battle. The first was his official report, which was dictated to his secretary, Fleury de Chaboulon, at Laon, two days after the battle. The second was La Campagne de 1815, ou relation des opérations militaries qui ont eu lieu en France et en Belgique, pendant les Cents Jours, écrite à Ste Hélène, par général Gourgaud, which is generally accepted as having been dictated to Gourgaud by the ex-emperor. Finally there is Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France en 1815, anonymously published in 1820 but also accepted as having been dictated by Napoleon to General Bertrand during his exile on St Helena.

Fleury de Chaboulon tells us that the first of these, Le bulletin de Mont-Saint-Jean, was drafted at Philippeville the day after the battle, completed at Laon on the 20th and published in the Moniteur in Paris on the 21st. He claims Napoleon was determined that France should know the true extent of the defeat. However, needless to say, the bulletin is a piece of propaganda that, despite admitting defeat, is designed to persuade the people of France that the situation was far from beyond repair. The detail of the fighting is inevitably superficial, and thus of little use in helping us to fully understand the true ebb and flow of the battle.

The second account, dictated by Napoleon to General Gourgaud on St Helena during his exile, gives us a far more detailed description of the battle. Frankly, if considered objectively, it is relatively uncontroversial and the sequence and phasing of the fighting is in general agreement with other national histories, but it fails to give us the level of detail that would allow us a better feel for the fighting from a French perspective.

The account that appeared in 1820 was translated into English the same year and, although published anonymously, was even then attributed to Napoleon himself. The original English edition is very rare, but a later translation appeared in 1945 edited by Somerset de Chair and was reprinted again in 1992. These Mémoires give a similar account of the battle to that dictated to Gourgaud. The main difference is that Napoleon gives a more detailed analysis of his own movements and decisions, despite complicating things by writing in the third person. The account ends with nine ‘observations’ in which he further attempts to analyse the whole campaign and the critical moments and decisions.

Although Napoleon displays his usual intellect, the Mémoires are essentially a justification of his performance, heavily, and in places clumsily, clouded by all the advantages of hindsight. However, they should not be written off because of some rather fanciful claims, as running through them is an incisive and compelling argument that supports Napoleon’s central thesis that, as Somerset de Chair concludes in his introduction, ‘although the outcome was decisive, the margin between success and failure was extremely narrow.’ On this basis I believe that some of the points he makes are relevant to my own central theme. I hope readers will forgive me for using de Chair’s translation, which presents the narrative in the first person, rather than the third in which it was written, as I believe it is important for us to understand that it is Napoleon’s own viewpoint that we are using rather than that of a more objective commentator.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, many French histories of the battle were based on Napoleon’s accounts, and consequently foreign commentators have attached little credibility to them. Primarily this is because Napoleon was famous for twisting the facts in his reports: his rewriting of the official account of the battle of Marengo is perhaps the most famous example, and it was from this tendency that the catchphrase, ‘to lie like a bulletin’ originated. Secondly, they were seen as pieces of propaganda rather than a serious attempt to describe the battle accurately, and it is true that the two dictated on St Helena appear to have been used to lay the blame for the disaster on a number of marshals and generals, rather than Napoleon himself. However, it is in the interpretation and analysis of the fighting, rather than the sequence or even results of the fighting, that the two sides differ fundamentally. It is here that I contend that, through a failure to examine any, yet alone all, of the French evidence beyond Napoleon’s own accounts, or histories based on them, most British historians have failed to be truly objective. Quite frankly, the use of French primary sources, even by modern British historians, has thus far been pitiful.

Few French accounts of Waterloo have been translated into English. Perhaps the best known are those by Gourgaud, Lachouque and Houssaye. ‘Gourgaud’s’ account has already been mentioned above and first appeared in 1818. Lachouque’s account was published in 1972 and translated into English three years later. It is relatively uncontroversial, but his blind devotion to the emperor, lack of identified sources or references and his overly dramatic style rather demean it as a serious history. Henry Houssaye’s 1815 Waterloo, however, is perhaps one of the most objective available in any language. First printed in English in 1900, it draws heavily on British accounts and, whilst he could not benefit from more recent research, he has attempted to be as even-handed as possible. Houssaye gives us a thorough account of the whole campaign and his coverage of Grouchy’s role is particularly interesting.

It is rather ironic, though perhaps not surprising, that the two most objective accounts of the battle, in this author’s opinion, were written by Italians, representing a nation whose army took no part in that momentous day. General Albert Pollio’s Waterloo (1815) published in 1908, and the more recent The Battle, A History of the Battle of Waterloo published in 2003 by Alessandro Barbero, both display comprehensive bibliographies of primary sources of all participating nations.

The major failing of French accounts is their lack of objectivity. They are either unapologetically pro- or anti-Napoleon, and this seriously detracts from their value. Two key works have made a serious attempt at an objective analysis of the French perspective. These are John Codman Ropes’s The Campaign of Waterloo (published in 1892), and Captain A.F. Becke’s Napoleon at Waterloo (published in 1914). The former, being an American, may be considered truly objective, but his work is a purely strategic analysis of Napoleon’s handling of the entire campaign. He gives us only a sketchy account of Waterloo itself, saying (in a footnote) ‘We shall not attempt to give a complete tactical description of the battle of Waterloo. The narratives of Siborne, Charras, Hooper, La Tour d’Auvergne, and others give all the facts’. Becke, although he makes a detailed, tactical-level analysis of the battle, appears to base his description of the battle almost exclusively on British accounts, and therefore effectively loses any claim to the objectivity we seek. Thus an account of the battle based on French firsthand accounts and, specifically, an objective explanation of the many questions that still remain to be answered about so many of its mysteries, has yet to be produced.

Perhaps the most compelling of French accounts is that of Hippolyte de Mauduit, who wrote: ‘To undertake the history of a campaign, it is necessary to have been an actor in it, to have smelt the intoxicating smell of powder, to have experienced all the emotions of combat with cold steel, of standing helplessly under the fire of enemy batteries and finally to have slept and eaten amongst the dead!!’ Mauduit met his own criteria by serving at Waterloo as a sergeant in the prestigious 1st Regiment of Grenadiers of the Old Guard. Later, after commissioning, he went on to become the director of the military review La Sentinelle de l’Armée.

In this latter post he entered into communication with a wide range of participants in the battle and, along with his own research into the French archives and reference to British and Prussian histories, wrote his own account. In this way he may be considered as the French equivalent of Siborne, whose work to create an accurate model of the battle led to his own celebrated correspondence and history of the campaign. Regrettably, Mauduit’s own correspondence is not available to us in the same way that Siborne’s is. Although inevitably a disciple of Napoleon, he does not hesitate to criticise him and attempts, despite his ardent patriotism, to analyse the battle objectively. In his book Les derniers jours de la grand armée he identifies eleven reasons why the French lost the campaign, although only four of them relate directly to the battle of Waterloo. His account is embellished with many personal anecdotes of the battle, although interestingly, but rather disappointingly, none are of his part in the actual fighting.

The most comprehensive recent study of Waterloo that has appeared in French is the Carnets de Campagne de 1815 series, although this is in fact a Belgian, rather than French, publication. Each of the thirteen volumes in the series, which are about a hundred pages in length, covers a different phase of the battle. Although not designed to be a detailed and flowing account of the fighting, the authors have reproduced extensive first-hand accounts by all participants, many of which have not been published before. For French speakers (or readers) this is probably the most comprehensive account available and has the bonus of being beautifully illustrated.

To help the modern enthusiast, Editions Historiques Teissedre published Bibliographie Analytique des Temoignages Oculaires Imprimés de la Campagne de Waterloo by Philippe de Meulenaere in 2004. This weighty tome contains references for all known eye-witness accounts, as well as edited lists of general histories, in French, English, Dutch and German, although not all the information available in national archives. Whilst its earlier publication would have saved me many hours of work, this is a ‘must’ for anyone conducting serious research on the battle.

My aim, therefore, is not to try and convince the reader that Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo, nor that the French army was better than that of the Anglo-Dutch or Prussians. What I have humbly attempted to do is to present the battle from a French perspective, putting a French emphasis on certain aspects of it, but basing my work, as far as possible, on French eye-witness accounts which are plausible, and, where possible, corroborated by the observations of their actions and performance by British, Dutch or German/Prussian eye-witnesses. Hopefully this gives them some validity. I have also attempted to explode a few myths, analyse the battle from the French perspective and, in doing so, identify why things went so horribly wrong for Napoleon. Finally, I have attempted to give rational explanations for some of the decisions that were made that have been so contemptuously derided by British accounts. I believe that not only can I claim that this is a genuinely objective account, but also that I encourage a healthy respect for all participants in what was truly a ‘battle of giants’.

SECTION ONE

Setting the Scene

Chapter 1

The French Army of 1815

Despite a campaign much admired as one of his finest, Napoleon had failed to prevent the allied armies capturing Paris in early 1814. Forced to abdicate by his marshals, Napoleon was sent into exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba. Louis XVIII came to the throne and, with France tired of war, it appeared that the new king was welcomed by the majority of the country. However, Louis seemed to have learnt nothing from the Revolution and the many positive aspects of imperial rule. Instead of embracing the new France, Louis acted as if he was determined to bring back the old, reinstating many institutions of the ancien regime and placing émigrés in key positions of power. In a short time the new king managed to alienate a large proportion of the population. Reduced greatly in size, and aggrieved by the apparent indifference shown to it by the new monarch, the army yearned for a return to the great days of glory and conquest. A young officer wrote:

This family [the Bourbon family of King Louis] returned behind foreign bayonets, and its flag unknown and often fought against by us, replaced that under which we had subjugated by arms the kings of continental Europe; from the one side, nobles, émigrés, men who in the past had served as an escort to this dynastic rogue … imbued with their old prejudices, desperate to reassume their privileges like feudal rights, hearts full of pride, of bile and disposed to overturn the France of today in order to re-establish that which they did not want to forget …¹

Taking advantage of the surge of disillusionment, Napoleon landed with a tiny army on the south coast of France on 1 March 1815. After his legendary march to Paris, he entered the Tuileries on the 20th. Already declared an outlaw by the Congress of Vienna, it soon became clear that he could not avoid war against the major powers of Europe.

By the Treaty of Chaumont, the allies each pledged to put an army of 150,000 into the field until he was crushed. His desperate attempts to avoid conflict were rebuffed and Napoleon quickly realised he would have to fight. Having placated the liberal bourgeoisie and secured his political position with the Acte Additionel, and facing the possibility of an invasion of up to 650,000 enemies by July, the emperor turned his mind to rebuilding the army.

The Armée du Nord (Army of the North) that Napoleon led into Belgium in June 1815 has been hailed by many historians as one of the finest he ever commanded. It is true that in many ways it was superior to those he had led in the previous eight years, but it also suffered from some significant flaws, in which lay the foundations of the complete collapse at Waterloo and which differentiate it from the Grande Armée that he had led to glory from 1805 to 1807. These differences were not in organisation, numerical strength, courage or élan, but in fundamental defects in leadership, cohesion, spirit and discipline. It is therefore these latter issues, perhaps the more complex and potentially most controversial, that will be examined here. The raising, strength and organisation of the Army of the North has been described in detail many times and readers are directed to the plethora of fine books that cover this subject, some of which are included in the bibliography.

Napoleon’s Return

As Napoleon marched towards Paris, the French army was mobilised to bar his way and stop him. Many of the generals, although elevated to their rank by Napoleon, had sworn an oath of loyalty to Louis on the emperor’s abdication and, bound by that oath, felt they had no option but to march against him. The soldiers, however, had no such scruples and news of the emperor’s return was enthusiastically received. Lieutenant Chevalier, of the Chasseurs à Cheval of the Imperial Guard, recalls the effect of the news on his regiment.

We heard as we were on the march that Napoleon had disembarked in Provence with a small band of men from the island of Elba, and that he was marching directly on Paris … and that we also marched on Paris … ‘Vive l’empereur!’ At this moment, there was joy, delirium throughout the regiment, everyone cried with pleasure. In a moment the silver fleurs de lys, distributed by M. Le duc d’Angoulême, were broken and strewn on the ground.²

Despite their loyalty to Napoleon, the soldiers generally respected their officers and remained with their units and followed their orders. These early days offered them no opportunities to join Napoleon and thus they marched as they were told to and good order and discipline were maintained. Indeed, many officers deliberately kept news of Napoleon’s movements from their soldiers in order to maintain their control over them whilst events unfolded. This state of uncertainty is well described by many officers. Chef de bataillon Jolyet commanded a battalion in the 1st Léger:

From the time that the emperor’s disembarkation was announced, we had no more rest. We passed the nights in the barracks, we left the soldiers as little as possible. If we left, we did not get one hundred paces without being accosted by men who demanded news from us and regaled us with extravagant tales … Our own men assembled to consult us … The soldiers, called together by the leaders of their companies, unanimously promised to follow their officers …³

Marshal Macdonald, who had held that rank since 1809, stayed true to his oath to the king during Napoleon’s advance and actively tried to organise resistance. He visited units with the Duke of Angoulême to try and encourage them to stay loyal to the crown. In his memoirs he wrote of the stoicism of one soldier in his loyalty to the emperor:

We had come to the last regiment, the 14th Dragoons, if I remember rightly. The Prince went up to an old and decorated trooper, spoke to him kindly, and praised him for his courage, of which he bore the proofs on his breast. The dragoon – I can see him now – stood motionless, impassive, with staring eyes and open mouth. His colonel and several officers, who were shouting, ‘Long live the King!’ with us, addressed him by name, exhorted and pressed him, but he remained unshaken. Monsieur was crimson with anger, but had the good sense not to show it.⁴

The vast majority of the soldiers had an unconditional love for Napoleon. Lacking education and responsibility for anyone other than themselves, and with a sense of duty that was exclusively to him, it was an uncomplicated decision to cast off the fleur de lys and transfer their loyalty to the emperor without any soul-searching or feelings of guilt or betrayal. This was particularly true for the older soldiers, who still remembered the days of victory before the humiliation of defeat, and many of whom had personal grievances with the enemies of France.

The younger soldiers, of which there were many, had experienced only fleeting moments of glory and the final humiliation of invasion. They had vengeance in their hearts and, having spent many hours listening to the stories of veterans, and with the passion of youth, they too wanted their share of sacrifice and glory.

Despite the best efforts of their officers to isolate the soldiers from the news, it became increasingly difficult to keep them under control as the news spread. Unit after unit ignored their officers and rushed to join Napoleon. Chef de bataillon Jolyet describes the experiences of his own regiment.

I can only say that I suffered during this first part of March, for I foresaw all sorts of regrettable complications. But I can say that I served the king’s cause with the best will, not ceasing to encourage the officers and soldiers to remain loyal to the Bourbons and endeavouring to refute the bad rumours that were going around … we slept close to our soldiers, searching to get a night’s rest, when cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ were heard in the 2nd Léger who were close to us. This regiment, in a spontaneous move, took up arms and headed for Fontainbleau. Immediately our colonel had us march in the opposite direction, and we went thus until an inn called, I think, les Armes de France. There, the 2nd Line Regiment rose like the 2nd Léger and left to repeated cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ It was a true rout: the generals were no longer in command, each colonel was abandoned … What was I to do? Several people, even some of my family, told me later that I should have followed the king, even to a foreign land. But firstly, I was not rich enough to allow such a fantasy; secondly, could a twenty-nine-year-old officer desert at the very moment when France was threatened by all the armies of the European coalition? Finally, the Bourbons fled without leaving any orders or direction, were we not now released from our oaths?⁵

In the 30th Regiment, Captain François described how his own battalion reacted.

They [the officers] were ordered to be constantly amongst the soldiers, who, despite our presence, did not conceal their joy. Many showed tricolour cockades that they had kept hidden away. They were sent to prison, but they cried, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’

When the news was confirmed, General Curto remained shut up in his house; whilst the soldiers ‘played the devil’, and laughed openly at any officer who reminded them of their duty.⁶

Not all regiments were quick to declare for Napoleon. Contrary to popular myth, two units, one that had rallied to the emperor, and one that had not, did exchange shots. This clash was between men of the 39th Line who had declared for Napoleon, against the 10th Line who had remained loyal to the king. The skirmish took place at the bridge of Loriol over the River Drôme on 2 April, nearly two weeks after Napoleon had entered Paris. The 10th Line joined the emperor a few days later; some of its officers were transferred to other units and the regiment fought bravely against the Prussians at Waterloo as part of the VI Corps.

For the vast majority of the soldiers there was no doubt about whom they would serve. It was only their loyalty to their officers, and the officers’ efforts to suppress news of the emperor’s whereabouts and progress, that stopped them immediately marching to join him.

Low-ranking regimental officers inevitably sided with the soldiers. Marshal Oudinot, like Macdonald trying to rally support for the king, organised a review of his units. In order to try and establish their loyalty, he called all the officers to his quarters; his wife wrote in his memoirs:

Not long after, a treble row of officers was crammed in our room, forming a circle with the Marshal in the centre. He waited until they had all taken their places in silence, and then expressed himself more or less in the following words:

‘Gentlemen, in the circumstances in which we are placed I wish to make an appeal to your loyalty. We are marching under the white cockade. I am to review you tomorrow before our departure: with what cry will you and your men reply to my Long live the King?’

These words were followed by an absolute silence. Nothing so striking ever passed before my eyes. I was hidden behind a curtain, and had remained a