Authors: Alessandro Barbero
The Battle (3 page)
T
he rain had started falling in the early afternoon of June 17, 1815, soaking the Brabant hills and turning them into a sea of mud. Only the cobblestone road, the big main highway that led from the French-Belgian border to Brussels, was still practicable—though with difficulty—and this road was crowded with Napoleon's soldiers, horses, and guns, all in pursuit of Wellington's retreating army. Under normal conditions, the mid-June daylight should have lasted until well past nine o'clock, but on this day, after a series of cloudbursts had displaced the warm morning sunshine, the horizon had grown steadily darker, as though night were falling early. All the soldiers in both armies, right down to the lowliest Dutch or German farm boy recruited into the militia a few weeks earlier and completely ignorant of war, understood that there was no more chance of fighting a battle that day.
Riding on horseback in the torrential rain, Napoleon arrived at an inn and farmhouse called La Belle Alliance, which stood, and stands today, on a panoramic spot near the main road, in the commune of Plancenoit. From there one could see the road descending in dips and rises across a broad area of cultivated fields, which the rain had reduced to bogs, and then climbing toward a long ridge, parallel to the line of the horizon and marked, in those days, by a large, solitary elm tree. There the Brussels road intersected another, smaller road, a lane, sunken in some places and known locally as the chemin d'Ohain, which ran the entire length of the ridge. Past this crossroads, the main road, no longer visible from the farmhouse, descended to another farm and a small cluster of houses, barely a village; both farm and village were called Mont-Saint-Jean. A man on foot needs a good quarter of an hour to cover the distance between La Belle Alliance and the crossroads, which still exists today, though to be sure the surfaces are all paved, and a little group of hotels and restaurants has replaced the elm.
Extending the telescope that one of his aides had hastened to offer him, Napoleon studied the horizon. A dark column of enemy infantry was crossing the shallow valley at a brisk pace and preparing to march up the opposite slope, under the protection of the British cavalry standing in line along the ridge and ready to charge, as it had already done several times during the course of that arduous day, to cover the retreat of these last foot soldiers. The vanguard troops of the French cavalry had ridden into the valley as well, and they were maintaining but little distance between themselves and the enemy's rear guard, wishing to make the retreating soldiers feel the hot breath of their pursuit. The rain came down in torrents, and it was impossible to see anything else in the gloomy gray light. The bulk of Wellington's hastily assembled army—whose English, German, Belgian, and Dutch troops spoke in four different languages— had already disappeared behind the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean.
The emperor dismounted from his horse and entered the inn. While he was removing his rain-drenched hat and overcoat, he ordered his map to be spread out on a table. This map, which Napoleon always carried in a special compartment of his traveling carriage, together with all the books and documents that might prove useful to him during the course of a campaign, had been drawn by Ferraris for the Austrian government in 1777 and printed in Paris by Capitaine in 1795. On it the emperor could see that the road to Brussels, after it crested the ridge and passed the village of Mont-Saint-Jean, ran past a few more isolated farms and some windmills before coming to another, larger village: Waterloo. Beyond Waterloo stood a vast woodland, the forest of Soignes; the road passed through the village and advanced resolutely into the trees. Continuing to follow the road with his finger on the map, the emperor could easily calculate that an infantry column, marching on the
pave
—the cobblestones—could traverse the forest in a few hours; and when the troops broke into the open, they would be within sight of the bell towers of Brussels.
For Napoleon, the situation was clear. If Wellington intended to defend Brussels, he would have to turn and give battle before reaching Waterloo, and so his army must have halted behind the long, low ridge that hid the duke's forces from the emperor's telescope. In a time when a general and his officers could rely only on the sight of their persons and the sound of their voices to maneuver an army and maintain its cohesion, one did not give battle in a forest. As for the possibility that the duke and his entire army might take refuge in the city and passively await the course of events, perhaps generals of another generation would have done so; but, after the lessons that Napoleon had taught the world, no commander would be so mad as to place his forces in such a trap voluntarily, particularly when his opponent was the emperor himself. Therefore, if Wellington wished to defend Brussels and spare his ally, the king of the Netherlands (which at that time included Belgium), the shame of losing one of his two capital cities in the very first days of the war, he would spend the night at Mont-Saint-Jean, and tomorrow he would give battle.
If, on the other hand, the enemy columns were continuing their gloomy retreat through the pouring rain, that would mean the vanguard had already entered the forest of Soignes and the duke had abandoned the defense of Brussels. But this hypothesis, despite its favorable appearance, could have brought no joy to the emperor's heart. Among the same gently rolling hills, somewhere to the east but not too far away, another army was on the march in the rain. The Prussian army, which Napoleon had defeated at Ligny the previous day, was retreating, although Napoleon could not yet know on what roads and in what direction. If Wellington accepted the loss of Brussels and continued to withdraw, he would still be able to join forces with the Prussians; in that case, the capture of the city would cease to have any significance. The purpose of Napoleon's invasion of Belgium and his surprise advance against the two enemy armies massing along the border with France had been to face and defeat them separately; to allow the English to escape and link up with the Prussians would be equivalent to watching the objective of his campaign go up in smoke.
For this reason, the emperor preferred that Wellington should not march his exhausted men any farther into the nocturnal darkness, but rather that he should halt and prepare to accept battle on the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge. Napoleon felt confident of winning that battle, and then the forest of Soignes would be transformed into a fatal trap for the defeated army. It was imperative, therefore, to discover Wellington's purpose; because if his troops were continuing their retreat on the other side of the hill, the emperor's forces would have to push forward at once and pursue the enemy without giving him a chance to breathe. But if the enemy army was preparing to bivouac just beyond the ridge, then the similarly exhausted French units, as they reached La Belle Alliance, could also be ordered into bivouac, there to prepare for battle the next day by cooking their soup and trying to get a few hours' sleep in the rain.
Together with the vanguard of the French cavalry, two batteries of horse artillery—a total of twelve 6-pounder cannon—had arrived at La Belle Alliance. The emperor ordered the gunners to unlimber the guns, get them into position, and open fire on the opposing ridge, where the waiting enemy cavalry could still be glimpsed through a veil of rain. At that distance, and in the steady downpour, the guns could do little damage, but if the English riders were simply carrying out a covering operation, they would abandon their positions and join the retreat, the infantry being safe. Before much time had passed, however, the enemy artillery opened fire in response, and not with just a few pieces, but with a large number of batteries dispersed along the whole length of the ridge. The columns of French infantry that were approaching La Belle Alliance on the main road found themselves under fire and suffered some casualties before their officers could succeed in withdrawing them to a more secure position, and some cannonballs struck the inn of La Belle Alliance. After a little while, Napoleon judged that he had learned enough and ordered the artillery to stop firing. Wellington had decided to accept battle with his back to the forest, and in Napoleon's view his army was doomed.
As long as a little light remained in the gathering dusk, the emperor continued to peer through his telescope, examining the terrain that would become a battlefield. The ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean was the principal defensive position, and doubtless the enemy army would await his attack under cover of that rising ground, which would shelter the Allied troops from artillery bombardment. According to the emperor's generals, whom Wellington had defeated one after another during the long, ferocious war in Spain, this had always been the duke's favorite tactic. Furthermore, there were a few positions ahead of the ridge that could impede the French offensive, and Napoleon had no doubt that his enemy would fortify them. In the center of the battlefield, right beside the Brussels road, stood the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, a stone building surrounded by stout walls and half hidden in a fold of the earth. Before the French could break through the center of the enemy position, they would have to take La Haye Sainte. Away on the left, the emperor's telescope revealed a thickly planted wood. His eye could see only trees, but the map indicated that they concealed a complex of buildings: the chateau of Hougoumont. Should he decide to turn the enemy's right flank, Napoleon knew he would have to take possession of that wood, which extended toward him from the chateau. Hougoumont and its grounds lay at the bottom of the shallow valley, halfway between the two ridges of La Belle Alliance and Mont-Saint-Jean. Finally, at the opposite end of the terrain, far on the emperor's right, barely visible in the midst of sparse clumps of trees, were some small communities, indicated on the map with the names of Papelotte, La Haye, and Smouhen (or Smohain, as it is written today), which if defended would protect Wellington's left flank.
While Napoleon was surveying the position, his corps commanders reported to him and received instructions for the bivouac of their troops: on the ridge of La Belle Alliance, or farther to the rear, or—in the case of those units that were still too far from the front—along the road. Aside from the bivouac orders, the emperor gave his generals no further commands. Before mounting his horse to ride to the farm of Le Caillou, a few kilometers to the rear, where his numerous imperial staff were already preparing his dinner and his camp bed, Napoleon spoke to d'Erlon, the commander of the I Corps: "We'll see tomorrow," he said. And in truth, the emperor knew too little about the enemy positions on the other side of the ridge to be able to determine in advance what would happen. Besides, he himself had repeatedly declared that battles could not be blocked out and directed as though they were plays in a theater; one had to know how to improvise:
"On s'engage, et puis on voit."
Provided that the enemy remained where he was, there would be plenty of time to force him to reveal his positions, and only then would the emperor see where to deliver the decisive attack.
Napoleon dined alone, in a room in the farmhouse of Le Caillou. In an adjoining room, another table had been set for his aides-de-camp and several high-ranking officers, among them Colonel Combes-Brassard, the VI Corps chief of staff. In the course of the officers' dinner, one of them spoke in a loud voice about the battle awaiting them on the morrow, and the emperor heard him. Napoleon burst into the room and took a few paces with his hands behind his back; then, without turning around, addressing no one in particular, he exclaimed: "A battle! Gentlemen! Are you sure you know what a battle is? Between a battle won and a battle lost, there are empires, kingdoms, the world— or nothing." Saying no more, he returned to his chamber. A few days after the battle, Colonel Combes-Brassard wrote that in that moment he had seemed to hear the sentence of Fate.