Waterloo Lectures: a study of the campaign of 1815

Preface

To THE SECOND EDITION. There is a double satisfaction in being called upon so soon for a Second Edition of this work, inasmuch as it is thus shown that the Author's effort to treat his subject in an impartial spirit has met the approval of his own countrymen, while it ' has done something ' — to use words which come from high authority — ' to heal a soreness which has been kept up among our Waterloo Allies these fifty years, by our arrogating to ourselves the whole credit of the victory for which they bled as well as we.' It may be added, that although the French reviewers not unnaturally think the view here taken of their great soldier unduly severe, they admit liberally that their gallant army has suffered no injustice. May it not be that much of the deep bitterness with which generations of Frenchmen have viewed their national disaster has been due to the same excess of self assertion on our part of which the Prussians have complained ?

PREFACE.

TO THE SECOND EDITION. VI Since the publication of the First Edition, some valuable and wholly original details relating chiefly to the crowning event of the campaign -the Battle of Waterloo itself— have reached the Author, who has felt justified in adding them to this work, although thereby slightly enlarging its original scope. Some of the numerous kind critics of this work have supposed that these Lectures had been actually delivered before publication. This was not so, how ever. They were not written until the Author had left the Staff College, although they embody the results of a study which was carried on there, as it had been begun years before he was connected with that Institution. Aldershot : 19*7"* April, 1869.

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION. It has been the practice at the Institution which the Author lately quitted, to commence the course of Military Art and History by the critical study of a single great campaign ; that of Waterloo being, for obvious reasons, generally selected. In perusing much literature bearing on the subject, he has been constantly led to make two observations : the one, that critics of Napoleon and of the Allies are alike apt to build up theories upon inaccurate and super ficial study of the facts ; the other, that the key to the whole, the great strokes of strategy upon which the world's fate hung for a brief space, are apt to be lost, or greatly obscured, beneath a mass of pictorial details, interesting for the day to the families or friends of those who shared in the actions, but of little real importance to the general result. In addition to these tendencies, there is the third and more dangerous error of the so called national historians, who wilfully pander to a

PREFACE.

TO THE FIRST EDITION VIII the passions of their countrymen at the expense of historical truth. In laying before the world the result of his own study, the Author desires to claim no more credit for it than that he has striven for impartiality, and sought to apply to the narratives he has used the proper test of evidence. If, in doing this, it has been necessary to do battle specially with certain brilliant falsehoods, it is because these have their influence over millions of his fellow-men, and for that reason the more need to be thoroughly ex posed. He has endeavoured to confine his own criticisms, so far as is possible, to matters of actual evidence and fact. Where comments go beyond these, he has sought rather to point to those of authors who have shown themselves practical sol diers as well as sound critics, than to offer obser vations which might reasonably be rejected as the mere dogmas of a Professor.

E. E. Establishment, Chatham : October 24, 18G8. CONTENTS. LECTURE I. PAGt Introduction to the Study of the Waterloo Campaign . 1 LECTURE II. Preparations for the Campaign 35 LECTURE III. Events of the 15th June. — Comments. — Summary . . 72 LECTURE IV. Events of the 16th. — Comments. — Summary . . . 101 LECTURE V. Events of the 17th. — Comments. — Summary . . . 140 LECTURE VI. Events of the 18th. — Close of the Battle of Waterloo. — Comments. — Summary 170 LECTURE VII. The Retreat of Grouchy to France. — Comments. — Concluding Reflections. — Summary of the Campaign . 224 Map of Belgium, with French Frontier of 1815 . to face page List of Works and Editions chiefly used as Marginal References. CONTRACTED AS Muff. Hist. . . . Muffling-'s History of the Campaign of 1815, translated by Sir John Sinclair (London, 1816).

Mu. Mem. . . . Muffling's Passages out of My Life, translated by Yorke (London, 1853). Pr. Off. .... (Prussian Official). Recueil de Batailles (Berlin, 1821). Claus Clausewitz. Feldzug von 1815 (Berlin, 1835). Ense Varnhagen von Ense's Leben Blucher's (Berlin, 1845'). Brial Histoire du Due de Wellington, par le Colonel Brialmont (Brussels, 1858). Loben S. ... Van Loben Sels, Precis de la Campagne de 1815 (Hague, 1849). Sib Siborne's History of the War in the Netherlands (London, 1844). Hamley .... Hamley's Wellington's Career (London, 1860). Kenn Notes on Waterloo, by Sir J. Shaw Kennedy (London, 1865). Hooper .... Waterloo, by G. Hooper (London, 1862). Gur. . . . ; . The Wellington Dispatches, by Gurwood. Sup. Dis. . . . Supplementary Dispatches of Wellington. Doc Accounts and Official Documents relating to Waterloo, coUected by a Near Observer (Eighth Edition, London, 1816).

Leeke .... Lord Seaton 's Regiment at Waterloo, by W. Leeke (London, 1866). (Used for battle only.) •Tom Precis de la Campagne de 1815, par le General Jomini (Paris, 1839). Gourg Napoleon. Campagne de 1815, par le General Gourgaud (London, 1818). Mem Napoleon. Memoires pour servir, &c. (Paris, 1830). Cha Charras. Campagne de 1815 (Brussels, 1858). Quin Quinet. Campagne de 1815 (Paris, 1862). Thi Thiers. Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire (Paris, 1862). >!*-:■ LECTURE I.