A NEGLECTED EPISODE OF THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN.*

THE title of this instructive, brilliantly written, and well- printed contribution to the history of the Waterloo Campaign is a misnomer. Far from the text being restricted, as its title suggests, to Grouchy's pursuit of the Prussians after Napoleon's victory of June 16th at Ligny, it deals equally with that hitherto somewhat neglected tag- end of the story of the Hundred Days, and the general course of the campaign. To this no sensible reader will object, for Mr. Kelly's sketches of the descent of the thunder- bolt of war at Charleroi, and of the battles of Ligny and Quatro Bras, are exhaustively and skilfully drawn, and full • The Battle of Wawa and Grouchy's Retreat : a Study of an Obscure Part of the Waterloo Campaign. By W. Hyde Kelly, B.E. With Maps and Plane. London : John Murray. [es, net.] of useful comments. In an age of Gatling guns, cordite, and bicycles, recitals of disused tactical formations, equip- ment, supply, &c., are hardly of more value to the budding belligerent than details of what Fluellen called "the pristine disciplines of the ancient Romans." On such parts of the engines of war, therefore, this volume scarcely touches. The author's chief fault is his adhesion to a favourite English historic vice. At the Ecole des Chartes bibliography counts as a separate science : in Germany the writer who neglects his Quellenkancle, or knowledge of sources, passes for an amateur. Mr. Kelly ignores all his authorities both in his text and notes, even such classics of his subject as Charras, 011ech, and Dr. Rose being included in his wholesale boycott, which is only raised in favour of M. Houssaye, who is exceptionally honoured by five verbal quotations.

When the end of the French wedge was driven in at Charleroi, on the Belgian frontier, so as to effect the partial separation of the armies of Prussia and England, the eagles seemed to be pouncing down on their prey with the old swoop, and the situation was such as to justify our author's remark that" the Napoleon of Jena and Austerlitz would have won the campaign on the 15th," the day of his arrival at Charleroi. But from that moment begins a succession of delays and tentative moves. Next morning, e.g., instead of attacking Bliicher at once on the field of Ligny, the Emperor took his time before he sent Ney along the road to Quatre Bras, and, again, on the day before Waterloo started that General after Wellington's retreating forces at an easygoing pace. Regarding this slack procedure, Mr. Kelly might have quoted the Emperor's own remarks at St. Helena on his mistakes of those days :—" Je n'avais plus en moi le sentiment du

succes definitif. Ce n'etait plus ma confiance premiere J'avais l'instinct d'une issue malheureuse." To this question Dr. Rose has devoted a special appendix, which argues that Napoleon's physical health was not the ground of his admitted backwardness and mistakes. Both authors should have consulted Charras, who was told by old Jerome that after Napoleon's arrival in Paris from Elba he became the victim of an accident fitting the sufferer more for a carriage than for the saddle.

About half-a-century after the Waterloo days members of

the Club" at the Hague used to see in a reserved armchair a bulky, loquacious, touchy old gentleman whose talk would sometimes turn on the campaign of 1815. This personage was Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar, who, when stationed at Frasnes, in front of Quatre Bras, the evening before the battle of June 16th, so boldly handled his little brigade of Nassauers that be frightened off Ney on his arrival in front of the cross- roads with the powerful force given him by Napoleon at Charleroi for the occupation of that fulcrum position. Had Duke Bernard, yielding to the rules of book strategy, retreated along the highway towards Brussels, "the bravest of the brave" would have followed him, and, as our author clearly explains, "the battle of Waterloo would never have been fought," because Ney, and afterwards Napoleon, must have thrust their force into the gap between Wellington and Bliicher. Fairly, then, it can be said that "Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimar may be credited with having saved the situation for the allies."

The battle fought on the brook of Ligny was mainly lost by the Prussians in consequence of a hitch in the arrange- ments for the concentration of their army after they had been .driven back from Charleroi. Billow, famous as the victor of Dennewitz, who was at Liege with the 4th Corps, was ordered to march westward ; but owing to what our author calls the vagueness of the instructions sent him by Blucher's Chief of the Staff, Gneisenau, that commander "through no fault of his own was prevented from reaching the field of Ligny with his corps, when his arrival on the right of the left flank might have had the same effect that the arrival of the Prussians had at the great battle two days later." The result thus stated is positive, but when our author accuses Gneisenau of "culpable negligence" in giving Billow incomplete explanations and orders we venture to demur. General 011ech, whose history of the military events in 1815 was published after the Franco-German War, had held a command at Skalitz, subsequently receiving the appointment of head of the Berlin Staff College, in which capacity he delivered lectures on the Waterloo Campaign, based on researches in the Army archives. Looking to that writer's antecedents and qualifications, and to his absolute

freedom from controversial venom, special value may, unless we err, attach to his judgment. The details of his verdict cannot be reproduced here, but we may say that the Chief of the Staff's fault was that, instead of saying what he wanted in forty words, he drenched his meaning with a flood of the verbiage then usual in Prussian military orders till it swelled to forty lines, which failed to give his subordinate an idea of the urgency of the situation.

Another curious incident of the campaign was an episode of June 16th, when the French commander d'Erlon wandered with his corps backwards and forwards between Quatre Bras and Ligny without taking part in either of the battles fought on the day named. Placed under Ney's orders, he advanced at a snail's pace towards the west up the road from Charleroi, and took up his position at Frasnes in front of the cross-roads on the morning of the 16th. Though d'Erlon had been formally attached to Ney's army, while moving near Frasnes he was overtaken by an aide-de-camp from the Emperor, who, improving upon the text of the order of which he was the bearer, instructed the commander to come back to the main army, so that he might co-operate with the French at Ligny, where the battle was already in progress. His arrival in sight of the field from an inexplicable direction made Vandamme uneasy as to the individuality of this mysterious column, a doubt shared by Napoleon, so that the impending French attack on the Prussian centre was delayed. Soon the discovery was made that the approaching corps was that of d'Erlon, who, however, at that moment turned right about and vanished along the road to Quatre Bras. His cryptic movement was the result of an order from Ney to rejoin him at once. D'Erlon, then, did mischief at Ligny, and was too late to be of use at Quatre Bras. Had he stopped at his morning position before the cross-roads, there might perhaps have been no victory for Wellington over Ney.

D'Erlon's pendulum strategy was fatal to Ney at Quatre Bras, yet his vanishing at Ligny almost as soon as he came in sight did not save Bliicher, and when darkness came on, Gneisenau—Bliicher being disabled by a fall from his horse— ordered a retreat northwards, finally selecting Wavre, a town about fifteen miles above Ligny, and ten miles to the right of Waterloo, as the rallying-point for the three defeated Prussian corps. Napoleon, believing that Blucher, turning his back on Wellington, was making for Namur, arranged a cavalry pursuit, which, however, was so slowly and carelessly per- formed that the actual line of the Prussian retreat remained a mystery. Grouchy was to follow at once with the French right wing, but next morning Napoleon first took the General off to the field of Ligny, seeing to the wounded and discuss- ing politics, talking of Fouche and the Jacobins, before he would let him go, so that when night set in Grouchy and his force had only reached a position five miles from their point of departure.

Mr. Kelly's space limitations do not allow him to indulge in portraiture : he does not describe the "Little Corporal" hanging on to his saddle, or old " Vorwiirts," with his woman's bonnet, saying, justly enough : " ich stinke etwas." But he gives a capital account of Grouchy's professional individuality, explaining that though he was an adept in handling cavalry, as commander of the wing of the French

army charged with the pursuit of the retiring Prussians he was not the right man in the right place. Our author does

not forget to suggest that Grouchy's own misgivings as to his fitness for his special task may have prompted the pertinacity with which he expostulated to Napoleon against

the utility of the task assigned him, and urged that he ought to be with the Emperor for his advance upon Wellington's

assumed line of retreat. Mr. Kelly says :—

" Grouchy was not a man for independent command. In spite of his exploits in former days, he had never before been exercised in so great a responsibility. And no sooner had he received the appointment than be began expostulating and raising objections. Yet whom else could Napoleon choose ? Murat was no longer with him. Davoilt was Minister of War and Commandant of Paris—he could not be spared. These were the two men who should have been in Ney's place and Grouchy's. Launes, Dessaix, or Massena would have well filled the post instead of Grouchy, but Lannes and Dessaix were dead, and Masthia's services were not available. Napoleon was not now served by his lieutenants as he had been of old, and his generals were not of the stuff which had composed his earlier subordinates. The truth is that be could no longer ignore the claims of rank and seniority. In former days, be could promote to the highest ranks those whom he chose, and those 'who had yet a name to make."

Discovering, after a series of blunders, that the enemy before him was not Blucher's entire army, but only the single corps of Thielemann, who was retiring, not, as was supposed, on Liege, but on a northern line, Grouchy at last flanked round in the proper direction, finally arriving, after twenty-four hours of ill-occupied time, on the river Dyle, in front of Wavre. How Blucher, leaving the corps of Thielemann to check Grouchy's advance by holding on to that village and the adjacent banks of the Dyle, marched off with the rest of his army to the field of Waterloo, where Billow's arrival gave the French their final coup de grace : how Thielemann suffered a partial defeat,—these and other episodes of the chapter of the Belgian campaign are told by Mr. Kelly with a clearness and brio which separate his narrative manner from the dryasdust pages of so many of our military authors.

When the news of the catastrophe which had overwhelmed the Emperor at Waterloo reached Grouchy, his abandonment of Wavre became imperative, and he withdrew to the Belgian frontier, redeeming by the ability and dogged tenacity dis- played in his retreat the errors committed in his previous advance, Thielemann, on the other hand, being no longer at his best. These operations are described with a fulness unusual in Waterloo writers, and, like the earlier episodes of the campaign, their significance is heightened by a series of appendices, illustrated by useful and very readable references to the history of war, ranging from Thrasymene to the Yalu. We read in the preface : "I trust I shall not offend German susceptibilities by omitting the prefix 'von' in the Prussian names and titles." The apology was superfluous ; Mr. Kelly, like M. Jourdain, talks prose without knowing it. The polished German does not couple a naked " von " to a family name (except sometimes in a signature or on a visiting-card) : he inserts that preposition as a buffer between such name and an aristocratic or official title. Just as the educated Parisian (pace many of our feuilletonistes !) does not write "tie Russet" or "de Maupassant," so the German who says "von Billow" or "von Thielemann" is adopting the bourgeois or plebeian style.