Читать книгу The Battle of Waterloo - John Codman Ropes - Страница 12

1. Marshal Ney was acting under considerable disadvantage during this afternoon and evening. We have spoken of this subject before. His difficulties are well pointed out by Colonel Maurice in a recent paper,94 in which much stress is laid, and very justly, on the fact that Ney had not with him a proper staff. It is true that Ney was no neophyte in the practice of war, and that he was perfectly well known to his corps-commanders, and in fact to his entire command. But he arrived at the front late in the day,—at nearly five o’clock in the afternoon,—and with but a single staff-officer. It was only natural and right that he should personally occupy himself with the conduct of the advance to Frasnes, that he should accompany the cavalry, and should attend to the posting of Bachelu’s infantry division in support. And he may very possibly have found the leading division of the 1st Corps, Durutte’s, between Jumet and Gosselies95 on his return, late in the evening, from Frasnes to the latter place. That the 1st Corps had not fully executed its part of the programme must have been, however, only too plain to him; and the necessity of exerting himself energetically to bring it up to the front96 if he would have his whole command well in hand for to-morrow’s work must have appeared, in view of d’Erlon’s slowness, most imperative. At least, there is every reason to suppose this.

2. As to whether Napoleon accomplished as much as he had intended to accomplish, or as much as he ought to have intended to accomplish, on this day of the fifteenth of June, writers have differed. Those who, like Jomini and Charras,97 maintain the theory that his intention was to seize both Sombreffe and Quatre Bras at once, and those who, like Rogniat, insist that this ought to have been his intention, whatever it may in reality have been, hold that the operations of this first day were incomplete. Jomini says:—98

“Napoleon had to renounce the idea of pushing on the 15th as far as Sombreffe and Quatre Bras, which were to be the pivots of all his after movements.” “One may feel assured,” says Charras,99 “that the haste which Napoleon intended should characterize the march of the army had for its object the occupation of Quatre Bras and Sombreffe on the first day of the campaign. This occupation failed, in consequence of a considerable loss of time; the principal avenue of communication between Blücher and Wellington remained free, although menaced; it is for this reason that we hold that Napoleon told the truth in writing that ‘this loss of time was very injurious’ and that we add,—the day of the 15th had been incomplete.”

The passage to which Charras here refers is to be found in the Memoirs,100 and it runs thus:—

“On the same day [the 15th], the attack of the woods before Fleurus, which had been ordered to commence at four o’clock in the afternoon, did not take place until seven o’clock. Night came on before the troops could enter Fleurus, where it had been the project of the chief to place his headquarters that very day. This loss of seven [sic]101 hours was very injurious at the opening of a campaign.”

A. Let us first consider this question so far as it affects the operations of the centre and right of the army,—that is, with reference to the non-occupation of Sombreffe on the 15th.

Rogniat’s criticism, that the Emperor ought to have aimed at seizing Sombreffe on the 15th, is especially interesting, as it was answered by Napoleon himself from St. Helena.

“He [Napoleon] ought to have carried his whole army the same day as far as Fleurus, by a forced march of eight to ten leagues, and to have pushed his advance guard as far as Sombreffe; but, instead of hastening to arrive in the midst of his enemies, he stopped at Charleroi, whether because he was retarded by the bad weather or for other motives.”102

To this Napoleon replied:—103

“The Emperor’s intention was that his advance guard should occupy Fleurus,104 keeping [the bulk of] his troops concealed behind the wood near this city;105 he took good care not to let his army be seen, and, above all, not to occupy Sombreffe.106 This [the occupation of Sombreffe] would of itself have caused the failure of all his manœuvres; for then Marshal Blücher would have been obliged to make Wavre the place for the concentration of his army, the battle of Ligny would not have taken place, and the Prussian army would not have been obliged to give battle [as it did] in its then not fully concentrated condition, and not supported by the English army.”

In his “Réponse aux Notes critiques de Napoléon,”107 Rogniat criticises this observation as follows:—

“In occupying Sombreffe on the 15th, Napoleon would have won, without striking a blow, the immense result of isolating the two opposing armies in order to fight them separately, a result which the victory of Ligny, so dearly purchased, did not obtain for him.”108

While Rogniat thus condemns Napoleon for not having proposed to himself to occupy Sombreffe on the 15th, Charras109 summarily dismisses Napoleon’s statement just quoted, as unworthy of serious attention. Not to have aimed at occupying Sombreffe on the 15th, he says, would have been contrary to “the very principles of his strategy.” He accordingly finds that in this respect Napoleon had failed on the evening of the 15th to attain his objective point.

Jomini’s view110 of Napoleon’s plan, as we have seen above, coincides with that of Charras.111

In respect to these criticisms, we observe in the first place that these writers have adduced no sufficient reason for distrusting Napoleon’s own account of his plan and intentions. That account is perfectly clear and consistent throughout. He wanted, he tells us, to fight at the outset a decisive battle with one of the allied armies. He looked for great results from such a battle. He expected, he says, that the Prussians would be promptly concentrated, and would offer battle near Fleurus,—to the south of Sombreffe; and that owing to the unreadiness of the Anglo-allied army, and his proposed seizure of Quatre Bras on the first day of the campaign, he would be able to fight the Prussians, isolated, for the time being, from the English.112 While he claims to have ordered the occupation of Quatre Bras on the first day, he nowhere says that he proposed to occupy Sombreffe on the first day. When he is criticised for not having attempted this, he maintains that he was right. He considered, he says, that Blücher’s object in fighting a battle at this stage in the campaign must be the maintenance of his communications with his allies;113 the Prussians would, therefore, fight, if they fought at all, to the south of the Namur-Quatre-Bras turnpike, somewhere to the south of Sombreffe. And, as he expected great and perhaps decisive results114 from such a battle, he contented himself on the 15th of June with threatening with his centre and right this turnpike, and purposely abstained from occupying Sombreffe. For if Blücher should find Sombreffe occupied and his line of communications with Wellington actually in the enemy’s hands, it was probable, so Napoleon thought, that he would retire to some point further north, where a union of the two armies could easily be effected, and so this opportunity of fighting the Prussians alone and isolated from the English would be lost.

In the second place, we fail to see that the plan which Rogniat blames Napoleon for not having adopted, and which Jomini and Charras believe he really entertained, but failed to carry into effect, that is, the plan of occupying both Sombreffe and Quatre Bras on the 15th, was an improvement in any way over Napoleon’s plan as described by himself, as stated above. These writers would have Napoleon begin the campaign by separating the two hostile armies by occupying two points on the road by which they communicated with each other. Napoleon says that if he had done this, while the two armies would certainly have been separated, his chances of dealing decisively with one of them, alone and unsupported by its ally, would most likely have vanished. And the probabilities are that Napoleon was right in this opinion. Blücher would naturally have retired, if he had found the Namur-Quatre-Bras road occupied at Sombreffe by the French in force; he would have tried to concert with Wellington some combined operation in the neighborhood of Wavre or Brussels; and thus the opportunity which Napoleon had at Ligny, where the Prussians were exposed to the attack of the main French army without the assistance of a single English soldier, would not have been offered by Blücher.

It seems to us that Napoleon is right in his contention, and that the great chance which he had at the battle of Ligny of defeating one of his two adversaries alone and unsupported, was in exact accordance with his expectations, and, was, as much as such things ever are, the result of his well-calculated dispositions.

We conclude, therefore, that there is no good reason to suppose that Napoleon intended on the evening of the 15th to push forward to Sombreffe and hold the Namur-Nivelles road at that point. He may very possibly have expected to fix his headquarters at Fleurus, but, although he did not succeed in doing this, his object had been substantially attained at the close of the first day of the campaign, so far as the operations of the right and centre were concerned.

B. Let us now consider the other branch of the question,—Did Napoleon intend to occupy Quatre Bras on the 15th?

(1.) If we are correct in the view taken above, namely, that Napoleon did not intend to seize Sombreffe on the 15th, because he feared that if Blücher found his line of communications with Wellington occupied in force at Sombreffe, he would retire to the northward, and there form a junction with the Anglo-Dutch army, it would seem at first blush as if Blücher might be expected to take the same course if he found the turnpike to Nivelles occupied in force by the enemy at Quatre Bras. But this seems to be pushing the argument too far. Blücher could hardly be expected to be affected by the report of the occupation of Quatre Bras so much as by the expulsion of Zieten’s Corps from Sombreffe, and by the occupation of that place by the main French army. Theoretically, so to speak, the seizure of any one point on the Namur-Nivelles turnpike ought to produce the same effect on Marshal Blücher’s mind, and, therefore, on his subsequent movements, as the seizure of any other. Yet one can easily see that, practically, this might not be so. On the other hand, there was certainly the risk that Blücher would not fight at or near Sombreffe unless he thought he could count on receiving aid from Wellington, and this expectation could hardly be entertained, if he knew that the French were in possession of Quatre Bras. Still, the importance of preventing Wellington, by an early occupation of Quatre Bras, from assisting the Prussians in their resistance to the attack which he hoped to make upon them the next day, may well have induced Napoleon to give on the 15th to Marshal Ney orders to occupy Quatre Bras at once, and to take the chance of the result of this step being the withdrawal of the Prussian army to Wavre or Brussels.

(2.) But the matter is really of very little consequence, so far, at least, as the successful carrying out of Napoleon’s plan is concerned. Let us assume that Napoleon is correct in his statement that he gave a verbal order to Ney on the 15th to push forward to Quatre Bras. We have nevertheless just seen that the Memoirs testify to the Emperor’s general satisfaction on the evening of the 15th with the progress that had been made during the day, notwithstanding the non-occupation of Quatre Bras. Napoleon has in fact nowhere said that it was necessary to occupy Quatre Bras on the 15th. The written orders to Ney, on the morning of the 16th, which we shall shortly have occasion to consider, imply that, at the time he wrote them, Napoleon was content with Ney’s having on the 15th occupied Frasnes and threatened Quatre Bras, and that he then desired the movement on the latter point to take place on the forenoon of the 16th, while he himself was massing his troops for the advance on Sombreffe and the expected battle with the Prussians in the afternoon. In truth, when we consider that the bulk of the army under Napoleon in person could hardly have been in condition to engage the Prussians at daybreak of the 16th, we can easily comprehend that Napoleon,—whatever he might have enjoined on Ney at five o’clock in the afternoon before, when he no doubt expected that much more progress would be made before the next morning than actually was made,—should have been quite content with Ney’s not having reached a point so far to the front as Quatre Bras.115

As for Jomini116 and Charras,117 they admit that, when Napoleon perceived the impossibility of seizing Sombreffe on the 15th, he ceased to desire the occupation of Quatre Bras, and was quite content with Ney’s advance remaining for the night at Frasnes. In their conclusion we may, for the reasons we have just given, well agree, without committing ourselves to their theory of Napoleon’s plan, which, as we have seen above, differs materially from his own account of it.

We conclude, therefore, that the result of the operations of the first day had also been satisfactory so far as the non-occupation of Quatre Bras was concerned. But Marshal Ney’s command was far from being well in hand at the close of the day, as we have had occasion to point out above.118

3. But, it may fairly be asked, in view of what has been said, assuming that Napoleon gave Ney a verbal order at five o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th, why, if the non-occupation of Quatre Bras by Ney on that evening did not really disarrange Napoleon’s plans, did Napoleon blame Marshal Ney for not having occupied it? Because, in the first place, it was a disobedience of orders; secondly, because Napoleon believed that Ney’s stopping at Frasnes, this side of Quatre Bras, was dictated by an exaggerated caution, which it was equally surprising and annoying to find in a man like Ney; and, thirdly because when he came to write his narrative of the campaign, he connected this hesitation to take risks, which Ney had evinced on the 15th, with Ney’s very singular management of his command on the next day,—of which we can here say nothing without anticipating our story. It was to Ney’s supposed faulty arrangements on the 16th that the Emperor—who never knew all the facts of the case, by the way,—naturally attributed the failure of the 1st Corps to take part either in the battle of Quatre Bras or in that of Ligny. Hence we find Napoleon severe on Ney for not boldly pushing out to Quatre Bras on the evening of the 15th, not because it was necessary to occupy the cross-roads that night,—for the next morning would have done quite as well,—but because Ney’s hesitation seemed to the Emperor to indicate in him a lack of that boldness and energy on which he had always counted hitherto with entire confidence.

4. In what has just been said, we have assumed that Napoleon gave to Ney a verbal order at five o’clock on the 15th to push forward with the two corps and seize Quatre Bras. But was this the fact?

This question has been the subject of a great deal of controversy, as every student of the campaign knows to his cost. In our view, as we have just pointed out, it is not a matter of much consequence. Napoleon nowhere claims that the failure of Marshal Ney to carry out this order was a serious matter, although he does attribute his failure to carry it out to an undue prudence and an unnecessary caution, for which he censures him. Still, the matter has been so hotly contested, that it may be best to address ourselves to it briefly.

The statements in Gourgaud’s narrative119 and the Memoirs,120 that Napoleon ordered Ney, at their meeting near Gilly, to advance boldly to Quatre Bras with his two corps and to take up a position beyond it, with guards on the roads to Nivelles, Brussels and Namur, are exceedingly positive and explicit. These statements were written in 1818 and 1820. The only piece of strictly contemporaneous evidence that we have is the statement in the official bulletin of the army,121 which was sent off from Charleroi on the evening of the 15th, that Ney’s headquarters were that evening at Quatre Bras,—and it certainly is a very strong confirmation of Gourgaud and the Memoirs.122

Again, the reason given in Gourgaud123 and the Memoirs124 as inducing Ney to halt this side of Quatre Bras, namely, that he deemed it unwise to advance further to the front than the main body had proceeded,—judging by the sound of the cannon, which came from the neighborhood of Fleurus and Gilly,—is a very natural125 one. It is no doubt the reason he gave to the Emperor at their interview that very night at Charleroi.

Neither Ney nor Soult have left any statements in writing126 about the matter. Nor is it claimed that Ney ever made any verbal statement on the subject. Thiers127 asserts that Soult “frequently said * * * that on the afternoon of the fifteenth of June he heard Napoleon order Marshal Ney to proceed to Quatre Bras,” and he cites the memoirs of General Berthezène, who commanded one of Vandamme’s divisions, to the effect that Soult had told him that Napoleon gave these orders to Ney.

On the other hand we have a statement of Ney’s son, then Duke of Elchingen, that Colonel Heymès, Ney’s aide-de-camp, said in 1841 to him,128 that the name of Quatre Bras was not pronounced in the conversation between the Emperor and Marshal Ney on the afternoon of the 15th. The Duke furthermore tells us129 that in 1829, Marshal Soult told him and Colonel Heymès that the Emperor had no idea of having Quatre Bras occupied on the evening of the 15th, and gave no orders to that effect.

But how is it possible to reconcile this hearsay evidence, with the undeniable fact that the official bulletin states Ney’s headquarters on the evening of the 15th to be at Quatre Bras? It is surely much more likely that these reports by Marshal Ney’s son, of statements by Heymès and Soult, of their recollections, given respectively fourteen and twenty-six years after the occurrence, are defective in some way, than that the bulletin made up on the very evening should have contained a statement that Ney was at Quatre Bras when he had never been directed to go there. The contents of the bulletin must have been known to Soult, the chief-of-staff of the army; in fact, the bulletin itself must have been either actually composed by him or under his immediate direction; and it is simply incredible that he should have inserted a statement that Ney’s headquarters were, on the evening of the 15th, at Quatre Bras if he knew that the Emperor had no intention of having Quatre Bras occupied that evening, and had given no orders to that effect. It is to be noted also that Charras makes but an incidental mention of the bulletin,130 which is the only bit of contemporaneous evidence that we have, and confines his discussion of the testimony to an examination of these reported sayings of Soult and Heymès. When we take also into account that, in his carefully drawn Narrative,131 Heymès does not explicitly state that Quatre Bras was not mentioned, that there is nothing whatever from Soult over his own signature, that these sayings of Soult and Heymès rest on mere hearsay evidence, and that they were spoken, if spoken at all, many years after the campaign, it is evident that the statement in the bulletin is by far the best evidence that we have. The mention of Quatre Bras in the bulletin was made at the time,—before any controversy had arisen,—it was moreover a mere incidental mention, and cannot be supposed to have been intended to serve a purpose of any kind.

Where the evidence is so conflicting, it is impossible for many persons to make up their minds. As we remarked before, the matter is not one of any great importance in its bearing on the fortunes of the campaign. The question, whether Ney received at five in the afternoon of the 15th of June verbal orders to seize Quatre Bras that evening, is of consequence mainly with reference to the scope of Napoleon’s plan at that moment, and also with respect to his reproach of unwarrantable hesitation on the part of Marshal Ney. It seems to us, we frankly say, on the whole, almost certain that the order was given. At any rate, we can hardly doubt that, when the bulletin was sent off that evening to Paris, it was believed at the headquarters of the army that Marshal Ney was at Quatre Bras; we must admit this, unless we gratuitously invent an intention to deceive the public on a point of this kind. And as Ney could hardly have been supposed to occupy Quatre Bras without orders, he must have been supposed by those who drew up the bulletin,—that is, Soult, the chief-of-staff of the army, and the Emperor himself,—to have proceeded to Quatre Bras in conformity with the verbal order given him that afternoon.132

The fact that the subsequent written orders to proceed to Quatre Bras, issued on the morning of the 16th, make no mention either of this verbal order, or of Ney’s failure to comply with it, does not seem to us to tend in any way to show that the verbal order had not been given. There would not only be no need of referring to such a fact in a subsequent written order, but such a mention of it would be unusual and unmilitary.133 What light, if any, the contents of the written orders throw on the question of the previous giving of a verbal order, is a matter that will be considered hereafter.