Royal Staff Corps watched the exodus:
First came a battalion of the 95th Rifles, dressed in dark green, and with black accoutrements. The 28th Regiment followed, then the 42nd Highlanders, marching so steadily that the sable plumes of their bonnets scarcely quivered.
Lieutenant Jackson had been awake most of the night, delivering a message eastwards, and now he had a moment to rest before mounting his tired horse and following those steady Highlanders towards the crisis.
And it was a crisis. Quatre-Bras marked the last place where the allies had easy access to each other. Lose Quatre-Bras and the only connecting roads would be country lanes which twisted through hilly country and were obstructed by narrow bridges, so if Napoleon could thrust the British away from the crossroads then communication between the British–Dutch and the Prussians would become far more difficult. All the French needed to do was push, and the Emperor had massively reinforced Ney’s force. Indeed, by the morning of the 16th, the French had over 40,000 troops with which to overwhelm the small Dutch contingent under Saxe-Weimar. Those Nassauers had little ammunition left, just ten rounds a man. ‘I will defend the post entrusted to me as long as possible,’ Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar had promised, but how long could 4,000 men who were short of ammunition hold out against Ney’s overwhelming force?
But Marshal Ney, astonishingly, did nothing. He could have captured the crossroads any time that morning with little effort. He had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, yet still ‘the bravest of the brave’ hesitated. He claimed later to be waiting for further orders from Napoleon, yet he had not even obeyed the Emperor’s previous orders, which were clear enough, capture Quatre-Bras, and while he waited the British–Dutch reinforcements were marching from Nivelles and from Brussels. Many explanations have been offered for Ney’s inactivity: that he really was confused and waiting for orders, or that he misunderstood the Emperor’s intentions, or, perhaps, that he was being extremely cautious.
Ney knew he was facing the British–Dutch army that was commanded by the Duke of Wellington, and Ney had faced Wellington before. He had been at Busaco in 1810 when 65,000 French troops had attacked Wellington’s 50,000 and been bloodily repulsed. Ney had commanded an army Corps that had attacked the centre of the British line, and all seemed to be going well as the French troops advanced uphill against a fairly scattered skirmish line of British and Portuguese troops, but just as the Corps reached the heights of Busaco the British sprang their trap and two concealed battalions of redcoats stood and fired a tremendous volley at close range and followed it with a bayonet charge that sent Ney’s men reeling in panic down the hill.
Wellington was a master of the ‘reverse slope’. Very simply, that means he liked to conceal his troops behind a hill. At Busaco the British objective was to hold the high hill, but if Wellington had positioned his men on the crest, or on the forward slope, then they would have become targets for the deadly efficient French artillery. By placing them just behind the crest, on the reverse slope, he kept them safe from most artillery fire and concealed his dispositions from the enemy. One biographer of Napoleon called this a ‘tired old dodge’, which is a remarkably stupid comment. It was, perhaps, an obvious tactic, but concealing and protecting troops is neither a ‘dodge’ nor ‘tired’, and the surprising thing is how rarely other commanders used the tactic.
Ney, south of the crossroads, could not see what awaited him at Quatre-Bras. His view northwards was obstructed by thick woods, by some gentle undulations in the ground and, especially, by those tall crops of rye and other cereals. His experience in Spain, and his knowledge that he faced Wellington, could well have convinced him that the innocent-looking landscape actually concealed the whole of the British–Dutch army. This was a moment when Wellington’s reputation served him well. In truth the British–Dutch army was still marching on dusty roads under a sweltering sun and the crossroads was there for the taking, but Ney hesitated.
‘In three hours the campaign will be decided,’ Napoleon claimed that day, but Ney was wasting those hours. Napoleon had decided on his tactics for the day. He divided his army. One of the rules of war is never to divide an army, but Napoleon only meant the division to be temporary. He would attack the Prussians around the village of Ligny and fully expected that Ney would throw back any British attack at Quatre-Bras and then march eastwards from the crossroads to assault the flank of the Prussians. Napoleon, by attacking the Prussians from their front, would hold them in place until Ney’s strong force fell on their right flank to destroy them. Then, with the Prussians defeated and his army reunited, Napoleon would turn on the British–Dutch.
Blücher’s hopes for the day were almost a mirror-image of Napoleon’s. The Prussians would hold their position about the village of Ligny and wait for the British to arrive from Quatre-Bras, then the British–Dutch forces would fall on the left flank of the French army and so give the allies a famous victory.
Wellington, meanwhile, just hoped to hold Quatre-Bras. He was fully aware of Blücher’s hopes and doubtless wished he could join the battle that was to develop at Ligny, but his first priority was to keep the French from capturing the vital crossroads. He arrived at Quatre-Bras at about ten in the morning to discover that the enemy was inexplicably supine. The French were in force to the south of the crossroads, but showed no signs of attacking, and so Wellington rode three miles west to meet Blücher at a windmill in the village of Brye, which is close to Ligny.
Blücher explained that he meant to fight, and requested that Wellington send him troops. Wellington, meanwhile, was inspecting the Prussian deployment and, perhaps tactlessly, criticized it. Many of Blücher’s men were arrayed on open ground, dangerously exposed to artillery fire. ‘I said that if I were in Blücher’s place,’ the Duke of Wellington recalled, ‘I should withdraw all the columns I saw scattered about the front, and get more of the troops under shelter of the rising ground.’ In other words to use the reverse slopes of the gently undulating fields that lay between the villages. The advice was not welcome, ‘they seemed to think they knew best, so I came away very shortly.’
The Prussians asked that he bring his army to their aid, but to do that Wellington needed to hold Quatre-Bras and he knew that, despite Ney’s somnolence, the crossroads must soon be under severe attack. ‘Well,’ he told them, ‘I will come, provided I am not attacked myself.’
Much has been made of this meeting. The Duke of Wellington’s critics claim that he made a solemn promise to come to the aid of the Prussians, and that he broke the promise. It has even been suggested that the Duke deliberately lied about his intentions because he wanted the Prussians to fight and so give him time to concentrate his army, though there is not the slightest evidence to back up that contention. Wellington certainly did not want the Prussians to be routed, because then his smaller army would have to face Napoleon’s larger army alone, so why would he risk a Prussian disaster? The evidence suggests that he was being realistic. He could not march to Ligny until he had fought off the expected French attack at Quatre-Bras. If there was no attack, then he would send men, but if he was defending the crossroads against Ney’s considerable force then he would probably have no men to spare.
Which meant the Prussians would almost certainly have to face Napoleon on their own, but by early afternoon Blücher had assembled 76,000 infantry, 8,000 cavalry and 224 guns to oppose the Emperor’s 58,000 infantry, 12,500 cavalry and 210 cannon.
Napoleon had not reckoned on facing such a large force. He had thought the Prussians were still retreating and would leave around 40,000 men as a rearguard, but he was not dismayed at the disparity of numbers. In the first place the Prussians had decided against using the ‘tired old dodge’ of sheltering their troops, and that refusal left many of Blücher’s regiments vulnerable to Napoleon’s efficient artillery. More importantly, the Emperor had troops in reserve, primarily a very strong Corps of 22,000 men under the command of Count d’Erlon, who, in expectation that the Prussians would assemble a much smaller force, had been sent to reinforce Ney. Napoleon
