LITMIR.BIZ

      V

       THE ACTION

       Table of Contents

      In approaching this famous action, it is essential to recapitulate the strategical conditions which determined its result.

      I have mentioned them at the outset and again in the middle of this study; I must repeat them here.

      The only chance Napoleon had when he set forward in early June to attack the allies in Belgium, the vanguard of his enemies (who were all Europe), was a chance of surprising that vanguard, of striking in suddenly between its two halves, of thoroughly defeating one or the other, and then turning to defeat as thoroughly its colleague.

      Other chances than this desperate chance he had none; for he was fighting against odds of very nearly two to one even in his attack upon this mere vanguard of the armed kings; their total forces were, of course, overwhelmingly superior.

      He did succeed, as we have seen, in striking suddenly in between the two halves of the allied army in Belgium. He was not as quick as he had intended to be. There were faults and delays, but he managed, mainly through the malinformation and misjudgment of Wellington, to deal with the Prussians unsupported by Wellington’s western wing.

      He attacked those Prussians with the bulk of his forces; and although he was outnumbered even upon that field, he defeated the Prussians at Ligny. But the defeat was not complete. The Prussians were free to retire northward, and so ultimately to rejoin Wellington. They took that opportunity, and from the moment they had taken it Napoleon was doomed.

      We have further seen that Grouchy, who had been sent after the Prussian retreat, might, if he had seen all the possibilities of that retreat, and had seen them in time, have stepped in between the Prussians and Wellington, and have prevented the appearance of the former upon the field of Waterloo.

      Had Grouchy done so, Waterloo would not have been the crushing defeat it was for Napoleon. It would very probably have been a tactical success for Napoleon.

      But, on the other hand, we have no ground for thinking that it would have been a final and determining success for the Emperor. For if Wellington had not known quite early in the action that he could count upon the arrival of the Prussians, he would not have accepted battle. If, as a fact, he had found the Prussians intercepted, he could have broken contact and retreated before it was too late.

      Had he done so, it would simply have meant that he would later have effected a junction with his allies, and that in the long-run Napoleon would still have had to fight an allied army immensely superior to his own.

      All this is as much as to say once more what has been insisted upon throughout these pages; Waterloo was lost, not upon Sunday, June 18th, but two days before, when the 63,000 of Napoleon broke and drove back the 80,000 of Blucher but failed to contain them, failed to drive them eastward, away from Wellington, or to cause a general surrender, and failed because the First French Army Corps, under Erlon, a matter of 20,000 men, failed to come up in flank at the critical moment.

      We have seen what the effect of that failure was; we have discussed its causes, and we must repeat the main fact for military history of all those four days: the breakdown of Napoleon’s last desperate venture turned upon Erlon’s useless marching and countermarching between Quatre Bras and Ligny, two days before the final action of Waterloo was fought.

      This being so, the battle of Waterloo must resolve itself into two main phases: the first, the beginning of the struggle with Wellington before the Prussians come up; the second, the main and decisive part of the action, in which both Prussians and English are combined against the French army.

      This second phase develops continually as the numbers of the arriving Prussians increase, until it is clinched by the appearance of Ziethen’s corps at the very end of the day, and the break-up of the French army; this second part is therefore itself capable of considerable subdivision. But in any large and general view of the whole action, we must regard it as divided into these two great chapters, during the first of which is engaged the doubtful struggle between Napoleon and Wellington; during the second of which the struggle, no longer doubtful, is determined by the arrival of the Prussians in flank upon the field.