Chevalier Plays AGEOD Let's Play/AAR

[aetryn]

I know the American Civil War doesn't strictly belong to your European plans here, but I would LOVE to see this kind of Historian's Corner on that (and your take on the AGEOD game in that time period as well)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I know the American Civil War doesn't strictly belong to your European plans here, but I would LOVE to see this kind of Historian's Corner on that (and your take on the AGEOD game in that time period as well)

Ironically, the ACW is my favorite time period in history, and probably the one I am most expert in. AGEOD's Civil War 2 is also how I got into AGEOD games, and it's probably their most polished. I saw ironic because it's the entry I'm planning to skip! I'm starting to get kind of burned out but i do want to finish To End All Wars. I will take a break for a while and come back to do Civil War 2 at some point, for certain. 

Historian’s Corner: September 1813 - Converging on Leipzig

September arrived with Napoleon having gained no ground at all. He had won a smashing victory against a larger army at Dresden, only to have it completely undone in the space of a week by reverses on all other fronts.



French soldiers drowning in the swollen Katzbach, August 1813

Clearly, he needed to regroup and re-evaluate his strategy. With Schwarzenberg reeling in retreat back over the Bohemian mountains (even if he, uh, was completely overrunning Vandamme’s corps as he did so), the moment was ripe for another good ol’ drive on Berlin. He placed Ney with some reinforcements in charge of Oudinot with orders to sort out the mess on the northern front. Why he didn’t summon his most reliable marshal, Davout, from where he was wasted defending Hamburg, I don’t know. After signal service in 1805-7, 1809, and 1812, the Iron Marshal was sidelined for the entirety of this, the most vital of all of Napoleon’s campaigns. Anyway, Ney didn’t get all the reinforcements Napoleon promised, since Macdonald was retreating as fast as his feet could carry him and the Emperor decided he needed to shore that flank up instead. So, September found him rushing eastward once more, leaving only 2 ½ corps (St. Cyr, Victor, and the remnants of Vandamme’s command) at Dresden.

Blucher retreated, again.

Napoleon was seriously pissed off now, but there was nothing he could do. The allies refused to face him in a standup battle but kicked his subordinates’ asses anywhere he wasn’t. Word came from St. Cyr - as soon as Napoleon hied himself off to the east, Schwarzenburg had reversed course and was barreling down on Dresden, again. Napoleon rushed back to that town on September 8, and immediately the coalition army reversed course and ran the hell away, again.



Berlin front in the autumn 1813 campaign, showing Grossbeeren and Dennewitz. Note Torgau, on the Elbe, and Leipzig, in the south - both will be significant soon.

While Napoleon was ping-ponging between Dresden and Silesia, trying desperately to catch one army to beat it without his other front collapsing entirely, Ney led his men straight at his old colleague Bernadotte at Dennewitz on the northern front - and promptly got his ass kicked, too. The bravest of the brave had plunged into the fighting, personally, sword in hand, which is a commendable example were he not the general commanding and the headless French forces had been routed by the less heroically courageous but more level-headed Bernadotte. Ney was forced to retreat to Torgau, on the left bank of the Elbe, and defend there.

The weather turned muddy in September. Rains fell on the hard-slogging Marie-Louises, as the boys trudged back and forth across Saxony seemingly without end. Roving Cossacks raided French communications constantly. Bernadotte advanced against Ney. Schwarzenburg advanced against Dresden. Blucher advanced from the east. Napoleon turned now this way, then that, at bay - unable to come to grips with any of his enemies, unable to hold any of them off without his personal presence. The Trachenburg plan was wearing him down, as bit by bit the teenage conscripts’ endurance gave out and they dropped away from the army. The army was starving, as the food convoys could not struggle up the muddy German roads through the Cossacks, nor could it endlessly forage in the same country it was marching up and down in. Through battle, desertion, and disease 150,000 French soldiers had been lost over the month, with 50,000 more in hospital. By 24 September, Napoleon concluded that only a withdrawal to the near bank of the Elbe could save his army. He still had 260,000 men, but he could not endlessly march them and wear them out - he had to contract the front and hope the coalition screwed up enough to give him a good shot at one of their armies.

The same day, the strategic situation transformed when Bennigsen’s fresh army of 60,000 newly-trained men arrived from Poland, taking over for Blucher in the area of Silesia. That in turn enabled Marshal Vorwarts! to make a flank march of his own, shifting north and west to join Bernadotte’s Army of the North and put some steel in the cautious Crown Prince’s spine. Schwarzenburg and the coalition monarchs in Bohemia meanwhile decided to strike not at Dresden, but to shift their blow to the west, towards the base of Napoleon’s communications at Leipzig. Once Blucher met up with the Crown Prince of Sweden, the combined army moved down to the Elbe and seized a bridgehead downstream from Torgau, at Wartenburg, on October 3. Coalition leadership decreed that the rendezvous point for all armies would be “in the camp of the enemy.”



Schematic of the final moves in the German campaign, as the coalition shifts around both Napoleon’s flanks to threaten his base at Leipzig.

Napoleon, falling back west towards Leipzig, now had the better part of 250,000 men between a coalition army of 140,000 (the Army of the North) and one of 180,000 (the Army of Bohemia). If he could catch either one, he could beat it before the other came up in support. But catching it was the trick.

He ordered Murat with 3 corps to hold off Schwarzenburg in the south as long as he could, while speeding north with the rest of his army to join Ney and force a battle against Blucher/Bernadotte. Fatefully, he left St. Cyr with his entire corps to hold Dresen, instead of abandoning his base there to contract everything back to Leipzig.



Map view as Blucher joins Bernadotte at the Elbe, Napoleon coming up to Ney’s aid.

On 9 October, the Emperor whirled north, coming up behind Blucher and Bernadotte as they moved beyond the Elbe. Bernadotte, ever-cautious, promptly ordered a dignified scuttle back behind the river, but Marshal Vorwarts! disobeyed orders and took his army even further west, scooting across the nearby Saale river just ahead of Napoleon’s vengeful columns. Bernadotte had no choice but to order his army to conform to Blucher’s movements, and so the fiery Prussian dragged Bernadotte kicking and screaming towards the decisive moment. With no real light cavalry, Napoleon had no idea where the two armies had run away to, to his considerable frustration.



Blucher and Bernadotte slip away, Napoleon must cover Leipzig.

The situation was growing serious. He could not pursue Blucher with Schwarzenberg bearing down on Leipzig - lose that city and he’d be cut off in Saxony and his entire army destroyed. But if he swung south against the army of Bohemia, then they would scuttle back to the safety of the mountains and the Army of the North could come down on Leipzig. Through the second week of October, Napoleon waited to see where he could concentrate - north or south? Murat fought an excellent delaying  campaign against Schwarzenberg, bloodying the Austrians even in the face of considerably superior numbers. Meanwhile, he was athwart Blucher and Bernadotte’s communications, and while Bernadotte desperately wanted to retreat back over the Elbe, Blucher, with his hatred of Napoleon, his patriotism, and his distaste for retreat, refused. Instead, damning his communications, he set off south for Leipzig himself.

Now, Napoleon had no choice but to concentrate everything he could on Leipzig, in one last desperate effort to beat one of the enemy armies before the other could come to its assistance. Murat was still fighting south of that city against Schwarzenberg’s advance; now Napoleon needed to speed to his aid. He put his corps on the road, writing, “All my army will be putting itself in motion; all of it will have arrived [near Leipzig] by the morning of the 14th, and I shall be able to fight the enemy with 200,000 men.” The whole of Europe’s armies were now converging on a single battlefield - Leipzig.

The allied monarchs could feel the weight of the moment. They were to a man nervous about finally taking the Ogre on in person, but Blucher was emphatic, writing to them on 13 October: “The three armies are now so close together that a simultaneous attack against the point where the enemy has concentrated his forces might be undertaken.” Over half a million troops - Swedes, Prussians, Austrians, Russians, Saxons, Poles, Dutch, Italians, and of course French, were within a day’s march of the little town as the sun set on 14 October. The next day, Leipzig - the Battle of Nations - would begin.



The Battle of Leipzig, 16 - 19 October, 1813

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

[b]Historian’s Corner: October 1813 - The Battle of Nations

Leipzig is sometimes called “The Battle of Nations.” It was the largest battle in European history before the 20th century - over half a million men from a dozen nations engaged. There were French, of course, and Russians, Prussians, and Austrians. But there were also huge numbers of Poles fighting alongside the French for the dream of an independent Poland, there were Saxons, Dutch, Italians, and even some lingering Portuguese and Spanish soldiers impressed into the Army of the Elbe. There were Czechs and Croats, Slavs, Serbs, Magyars, Bosnians, and Ukrainians with the Austrian army, and Cossacks, Georgians, Armenians, Finns, and Balts with the Russians. Sweden was present - even a small British troop of rocketeers were part of the coalition. Damned near every nationality in Europe was represented.




The battlefield at Leipzig is radial - a vast circle sectored by a few rivers and streams, creating a massive concentric battle centered on the city itself. The Pleisse and Elster join at Leipzig, creating a marshy, inaccessible bottomland between them just west of the city. The main road from Dresden towards the Rhine runs through the city and then along a high embankment through this area. Beyond the marsh are two roads running through flat, open terrain for a few miles. South of the city, the Pleisse runs southeast, away from the southerly flowing Elster, creating a second sector. To the north, the Parthe river runs to the northeast, creating a northern sector of broad, flat terrain and many good roads running towards the Elbe. The final sector is to the east and south, lying between the Parthe and the upper Pleisse, dotted with hills and low ridges, the broadest approach to the city but easily defensible terrain. The city itself was ringed by a low medieval wall.

Ney with his northern force was deployed astride the northern sector, between the Parthe and the Elster, facing Blucher’s Prussians, who had come on despite Bernadotte’s protests - the Swedish prince was dragging his feet some miles away. Napoleon took personal command with his reinforcements over Murat’s southern force in the arc from the Parthe to the Pleisse, facing the massive Army of Bohemia - Prince Schwarzenberg in official command, but with the Tsar, Emperor Francis, and King Frederick William all peering over his shoulder and shouting ‘suggestions.’

Napoleon planned an offensive battle, obviously. The Allies were approaching over a broad front and would have difficulty concentrating their entire force at once. The best French chance for victory was to hit them in detail. So, Murat with VIII, II, and V Corps and the cavalry, about 37,000 strong, would pin the Army of Bohemia in front, while Napoleon threw XI Corps and a further cavalry corps around their right flank, 23,000 men. Then, the Guard, IX Corps, and two more cavalry corps (plus either Bertrand or Marmont’s corps drawn from Ney) would be hurled forward to break the allied army and send them into headlong retreat. Then to whirl on Blucher and defeat the irritating marshal at last. Meanwhile, Ney with III, IV, VI, and VII Corps would hold the north. Overall, there are 177,000 French present on the field, and 120,000 of them would be thrown at the Army of Bohemia. The French spent the whole of 15 October moving into position.

Schwarzenberg initially proposed a plan so bad he was practically accused of treason, wanting to send the main weight of the coalition attack up the far side of the Pleisse to cut Napoleon’s retreat - in other words, marching 50,000 of the allies’ best troops into a damned swamp. The Tsar himself intervened and demanded a new plan. Blucher was to move on Leipzig from the northwest, of course, and 19,000 men were to move to the high road to cut the French retreat. The main offensive would be in the south, where the army of Bohemia would move forward en masse under Barclay’s command. Barclay in turn delegated the actual conduct of hte assault ot General Wittgenstein, who dispersed the assaulting formations over a massive 6-mile front.



The Battle of Leipzig, 16 October 1813

In an effort at simplification, I’ll cover the massive fighting on October 16 sector by sector, as all three armies present launched enormous attacks on each other and fighting raged in every corner of the battlefield.

In the north, Marmot’s VI Corps was initially slated to march to the southern front to aid Napoleon. The Emperor, deprived of cavalry, reckoned that Blucher had already slipped south to join up with the main army and that Bernadotte was days away - but in actuality the Prussians were already on the field and deploying to attack Ney (Bernadotte was days away, though). Blucher stormed forward and launched a furious assault against the town of Mockern, which anchored the French line from the Pleisse eastwards. Instead of going to Napoleon, then, VI Corps was diverted by Ney to reinforce this key strongpoint and fighting raged there all through the day.




Instead, Ney sent Bernard’s IV Corps south to take Marmont’s place in the grand attack Napoleon was preparing. But before this corps could get going, crisis on the western front (the army’s escape route through the village of Lindenau) caused Ney to divert this corps, too, to the relief of the west. Instead he sent only two divisions of III Corps, leaving himself to hold the north with a thin screen as best he could.

There was a lull, however. After the early morning battles, Blucher became uncharacteristically cautious - he had little idea how much of Napoleon’s force was facing him, and Bernadotte would not be up before the 17th. He didn’t launch his main attack until 2 pm. But it was a doozy when it came - the thunder of Blucher’s guns distracted Napoleon even as the action in the south was climaxing. The heroic Poles defending the village of Mockern held as long as they could, and charge and countercharge flowed up and down the streets of the tiny hamlet. Houses burned and smoke choked the entire battlefield. Ney grew so concerned that he recalled even the two divisions of III Corps he had sent to Napoleon, and so the Emperor received no reinforcements all that day.

The fight for Mockern took the whole of the day on the northern front. Blucher stubbornly put in attack after attack, refusing to accept defeat. One division would reel back in bloody ruin, only to be replaced by another. The French would pursue a routed Prussian division - only to be overrun in turn by the entirety of the Prussian cavalry reserve. As evening came, the French were driven out of the village, outnumbered and outfought.

To the west, at Lindenau, an Austrian corps under Gyulai was tasked with coming up from the south and cutting the road, sealing off Napoleon’s line of retreat. Fighting there began at about half past ten, but soon Ney sent IV Corps from the northern sector, and by noon the situation here was resolved. Bertrand was tied down, though, and unable to support the massive brawl in the south.

In the south, the allied assault pre-empted the French. Multiple corps surged forth, albeit poorly coordinated and extremely dispersed. Murat’s holding force surged forth to meet them, and all morning fighting in the south centered on the little village of Wachau. Multiple corps on both sides were drawn into the fighting, a brutal slugging match of crashing muskets from densely packed battalions fighting at close range, artillery whipping roundshot and canister through the ranks, cavalry surging to and fro around the edges of the formations. By 11 in the morning, the coalition had managed - just - to push the French out of the village, but their momentum was largely spent.



Austrian column of assault

In response Napoleon cursed the absence of Marmont and Bertrand, but assembled a grand battery of 150 cannon to batter the coalition center. Napoleon would advance on a broad front - Poniatowski on the right holding the line of the Pleisse (one column of the enemy attack had shoved itself into that swampy dead ground), Victor on the right center shoving past Wachau, Lauriston on the left center, and Macdonald on the far left to outflank the coalition. Augereau and Mortier’s corps would be passed through the gaps between the forward corps to maintain the attack. Behind the bombardment, Murat would take 12,000 horse right into the allied center and carve a path through their army.

The southern army swept forward just past noon, but Macdonald made less progress than expected - IV and VI Corps might have made the difference but they were pinned down elsewhere. At 2, as the attack ground forward, Napoleon decided he could wait no longer and unleashed his main blow - the grand battery opened and Murat pounded forward. At the same time every single corps regrouped and renewed its efforts. The allied center practically disintegrated under the onslaught, reeling backwards before reserves could come up to stem the bleeding. Murat’s cavalry poured in, sabering their way practically to the Tsar’s command post itself - the imperial guard cavalry actually got their swords wet, as a whirling cavalry melee erupted beneath Alexander’s nose. By 3:30, though, the fresh allied cavalry had stabilized the situation, and the crisis passed. The Army of Bohemia was battered but not broken.



Marsh and forest fighting on the French right, 16 October 1813

As the afternoon wore into evening, the coalition columns over in the swamp on the allied left finally forced their way over the Pleisse and hit Poniatowski’s corps. Fresh reserves came up and piled on, and soon the Polish prince was in serious peril. Napoleon put in the Guard and what reserves he had of III Corps (most of it was in the north) and stabilized, and the sun slipped below the horizon on the first day’s fighting at Leipzig. It had been a draw. 25,000 Frenchmen would never see home, nor would 30,000 coalition soldiers.

The evening of the 16th, Napoleon began to prepare to retreat to the Rhine. He knew that although honors of the day had been even, he had needed to win a decisive victory against one or the other of the allied armies. WIth Bernadotte hastening to catch up to Blucher and Bennigsen’s fresh army coming in from the east, the odds were increasing against the French, and by the 18th the Coalition would have more than 300,000 soldiers against less than 200,000 French. But then he made one of the final mistakes of his career: in the hopes of more reinforcements reaching him, or allied nerve cracking, he opted to hold through the entire day of 17 October, instead of retreating. He contented himself to abandon most of his perimeter and pull to a shorter line closer to Leipzig. The allies, meanwhile, were content to wait through the day, as Bennigsen and Bernadotte at last trickled in. A series of six converging, sledgehammer attacks were prepared from all directions to fall upon the city. The decisive battle was set for 18 October.



The fighting on 18 October

The fighting on the 18th was confused and heavy. Like every battle since the Wagram campaign, there was no finesse, no maneuver, just straight-ahead slugging, corps against corps. Marshal Poniatowski - the only non-Frenchman to be given the marshal’s baton by Napoleon, promoted in the wake of his tough performance on the first day - still held the French right hard by the Pleisse, where he fended off Austrian corps. In the west, IV Corps again smashed aside Gyulai’s corps, and Bertrand was sent to secure the bridges over the Saale to the west for the impending withdrawal to the Rhine. To the north, nothing much happened in the morning since Bernadotte was characteristically dragging his feet. Finally, to the east, Macdonald and Reynier’s newly arrived corps linked up with Ney to complete the French perimeter, facing Bennigsen’s advent on the field.



Fighting outside Leipzig, 18 October 1813

After noon, the fighting raged all around the perimeter, but the French held - except in the east. Bennigsen’s fresh troops put a severe dent in the French line here, and the French kept the line intact only with difficulty. Just as they seemed to get a grip on the situation, Bernadotte at last slouched onto the field and put in his own attack, while Bennigsen came in again. The northeast began to collapse, and Napoleon ordered the Imperial Guard into action. Ney, still in overall command in the north, began to pull back to shorten the line, when disaster - all of the Saxons in his army deserted! Saxony joined Bavaria, Wurtemburg, and other wavering German states in defecting from Napoleon, and two entire brigades went over to the coalition, leaving a gaping hole in Ney’s line. A new attack came in just before sunset, and by the time the battle petered out in darkness the French had been driven practically into Leipzig itself.

Clearly, it was time to go.

In the early hours of 19 October, the French army began to withdraw, tacitly conceding the German campaign that had begun back in April. Battalion after battalion filed over the single bridge in Leipzig, while the perimeter quietly shrank back to the town walls itself. VII, VIII, and XI Corps were designated the rearguard, meant to hold the town through the 19th so the rest of the army could escape. Napoleon still had over 150,000 men, even after battle casualties, and might yet make a good stand on the Rhine.

At 7 am, as the sun came up, the Coalition cottoned on to what was going on. Napoleon stalled them a bit longer with negotiations for peace, and it wasn’t until ten that the Coalition began attempting to come over the walls to give the French a stern talking to. Napoleon crossed the bridge at about 11, and while the army was beginning to show signs of disorder, it appeared he was going to bring off a triump to rival the crossing of the Berezina the year before.



Street fighting in Leipzig, 19 October 1813

Disaster for Napoleon at Leipzig came from the dumbest fucking accident.

For whatever reason, the planned demolition of the single, slender bridge out of town was delegated to an unreliable general, who in turn delegated to a colonel, who made a command decision that some of those bullets were coming entirely too close, hey? and used privileges of rank to delegate to a miserable corporal. At one in the afternoon on 19 October, as the army was calmly marching battalion by battalion over the bridge, while Oudinot’s rearguard was holding magnificently at the walls, this goober panicked at the sight of a few enemy horsemen that appeared on the far bank, concluded the bridge (which was packed full of French troops) was about to fall into enemy hands, and lit the fuse.




Napoleon retreats from Leipzig, as the bridge explodes in the background.

Hundreds of men went up with the bridge, fragments of wood and stone whirling through the air and plunging to earth all up and down the river. At a stroke, 30,000 men were cut off in the city, hundreds of guns and stores were lost. The rearguard fought into the afternoon, but outnumbered 10:1 was eventually forced to surrender.

The battle at Leipzig cost the allies 54,000 killed, wounded, or captured. The French had lost about 30,000 battle casualties, plus the defection of the German vassals, but then the disaster of the bridge doubled their total and cost the army its remaining heavy equipment. Already shorn of cavalry, now the French army would be required to fight without artillery, too. Politically, the defections of Bavaria and Saxony set off a chain reaction that ended in the disintegration of the Confederation of the Rhine, as each state in turn backed the winning horse. Napoleon’s entire empire beyond the Pyrenees and the Rhine lay in ashes, after Leipzig.

The Emperor made it back to that river safely enough. On 23 October 100,000 ragged but fighting-fit survivors made it to Erfurt, regrouped and re-equipped, and set off again for Frankfurt on the Main. Cossacks were a nuisance and Blucher had set off on a northerly parallel route, while the Army of Bohemia sluggishly came on in the east. The Bavarian Wrede (patriotic member of the coalition since 5 minutes ago) tried to block the retreat at Hanau with 45,000 men and got run right over by the retreating army (“I made him a Count, but could not make him a general,” Napoleon wearily commented) on 30 October. After straggling and losses from disease, about 70,000 survivors of the army reached the Rhine on 2 November.

Close on their heels came the four Armies of the Coalition - the North, Silesia, Bohemia, and Poland. There would be no winter pause in campaigning this year. They were determined to put an end to the Corsican Ogre once and for all.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: Winter 1814 - November 1813 to January 1814



Situation 1 January 1814

The military situation for anyone except Napoleon looked hopeless by December, 1813. The Emperor had maybe 80,000 soldiers to pit against the 300,000 in the four coalition armies on the Rhine. To the south, Wellington’s 120,000 Anglo-Portoguese-Spanish soldiers had forced the defenses of the Pyrenees and were invading southern France. The beleaguered garrisons along the Vistula, Oder, and Elbe were surrendering one by one. Eugene in Italy was being driven back by 75,000 more Austrians. Holland and Belgium were seething with revolt, and the people of France itself were exhausted from two decades of war, blockade, and hardship.

The Emperor issued appeals to French patriotism, calling on the spirit of the levee en masse of 1792 - now as then the country was in danger. He released the Pope from house arrest, offered to put Ferdinand of Spain back on his throne, and summoned all the reserves left in France to make one final effort to resist. He hoped that he would have until March or April 1814 to fully prepare himself. The Coalition must be exhausted after the German campaign; they would need time to integrate the new German allies into their command structure, and their leadership was divided amongst itself. All that should buy him time.

The three monarchs in the Coalition camp were divided, it is true. Francis of Austria was Napoleon’s father in law, and destroying the French Empire would not only weaken his family but strengthen the Prussians and the Russians. Bernadotte privately was hoping to be offered the throne of France himself, if he wasn’t too aggressive against Napoleon. Frederick William of Prussia wished to avoid prolonging hte war. Britain wanted to maintain the balance of power on the Continent and avoid strengthening Russia. Tsar Alexander, though, wanted to drive on Paris in revenge for Moscow, as did Blucher and the Prussian soldierly, bloodthirsty and eager to topple Napoleon forever. In November, as the armies arrived on the Rhine, the allies met in Frankfurt to hash out their differences.

The resulting basis for peace, the Frankfurt treaty, was rejected out of hand by Napoleon. It required France to be reduced to her natural frontiers - the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Rhine. It meant the end of the kingdom of Italy, the reversal of everything Bonaparte had accomplished since 1796. He didn’t think he was beaten, not yet.

On December 22nd, the first coalition armies began crossing the Rhine.

In order to feed their enormous armies, the Coalition was forced to split up the massive force that had triumphed at Leipzig. Bernadotte’s Army of the North was dispatched to keep Davout penned up in Magdeburg and invade the Low Countries, raising revolt there and rendezvousing with a British expedition. Blucher’s Army of Silesia, reinforced to 100,000, would invade the central Rhine near Coblenz. The Army of Bohemia with all the monarchs would head for Colmar and the upper Rhine. Then, they would push to make contact with Wellington on the left flank, and all forces, 400,000 strong, would converge on Paris by the middle of February, 1814.



Episode from the Campaign in France, 1814

There were only skeleton forces to oppose this massive armament. Napoleon had not yet even partially rebuilt his formations shattered in the German campaign. No recruits came to the colors. The national guard was called up, but few men came. Most French by this point were tired of dying for la gloire of their emperor. Even Cossack raids did not rouse a popular insurrection against the invaders, which Napoleon had been banking on after his own experiences in Spain and Russia.



Situation by the end of January, 1814

Schwarzenberg crossed the Rhine unopposed via Switzerland and Strasbourg (the same invasion route my own Austrians took in our 1809 campaign, I might note), then crossed the Moselle at Nancy as Marshal Victor fell back before the Army of Bohemia’s overwhelming numbers. By January 17, the French army, such as was left of it, was behind the Meuse, which Blucher’s Army of Silesia crossed on 22 January. By 23 January he had even reached the Marne - 75 miles into France in only 9 days. Schwarzenberg was more cautious, but he reached the Langres Plateau by the 17th as well and halted there for a week through another round of peace negotiations. However, he was only two day’s march from linking up with Blucher’s northern column. Napoleon could only leave Paris on 25 January, and on the 26th of that month he once more took the field against the might of the Coalition.

His overriding concern was to defend Paris at all costs (still the obsession with national capitals! Why Napoleon never learned from experience, I don’t know - perhaps too enamored of his own considerable genius? Didn’t think he had anything to learn? It’s such a weird blind spot in an otherwise brilliant mind. He would have been better served in a hit and run campaign against Allied communications rather than an all-out defense of the capital), and secondly to prevent the reunion of Blucher and Schwarzenberg’s armies. He had perhaps 40,000 men available to do this, plus another 40,000 static troops holding vital points. Against him, Schwarzenberg had 150,000 men in 3 columns approaching from the southeast, moving down the river Aube towards Paris. Blucher was to the east, coming from Metz, with another 100,000, although half of those were tied up in sieges at this point. More armies were invading the Low Countries, but that was a problem for Tomorrow Napoleon, not Today Napoleon.



The campaign in France, 1814. Sorry about Napoleon’s frenzied marches clogging up the map - the main thing I want to point out is the rivers, all running more or less in arcs from the southeast to the west, converging on Paris. The rivers were both lines of communication for the Allies trying to move down them and obstacles that blocked movement unless you held the appropriate bridge. The campaign can be summarized as Napoleon bouncing between the two main armies - Schwarzenberg to the southeast and Blucher to the east - halting whichever one he faces but losing ground to the other, in accordance with the Trachenberg Plan. The movements today are at lower right center.

Napoleon first hustled off to face Blucher, who was closest to Paris. Marshal Vorwarts! had allowed his troops to become considerably spread out, perhaps thinking all the fight had gone out of the French, and had only about 25,000 troops in his main body. The Emperor hoped to catch him halfway across the Marne. Unluckily, though, he arrived a few hours too late, catching only the tail end of the Prussians as they headed south to join up with Schwarzenberg. Napoleon pursued to Brienne, again catching the rearguard near Brienne, bloodying a few Prussian noses, but Blucher, fully aware that Napoleon was on his heels, was rapidly concentrating. A copy of Napoleon’s orders had been captured by the omnipresent Cossacks, and in the nick of time Blucher got into a defensive position at Brienne on 29 January. Ney and Victor pitched into the Prussian positions around the little village, which was soon riddled with musketballs and cannon shells. Napoleon narrowly evaded capture at one point by a party of Cossacks, while Blucher and his chief of staff Gneisenau had to scramble out the back gate of a chateau even as French troops kicked in the front door. Brienne proved a French tactical victory but Blucher was forming up and had been joined by the Army of Bohemia.



La Rothiere campaign, 26 January - 1 February, 1814

Over the next two days, in heavy snowfall, Napoleon tried to work out where his enemies were. He knew they were in the south in some strength, but were they concentrated? Turns out, yes, yes they very much were. Blucher and Schwarzenberg came up on February 1 towards Brienne from a little hamlet to the south, La Rothiere, and launched a powerful attack on Napoleon with 110,000 against possibly 40,000 French.




The Battle of La Rothiere was a hard-fought affair despite the French disadvantage in numbers. The infantry tenaciously clung to the village in the face of intense coalition assaults, while on either side cavalry swirled around each other and artillery gleefully poured fire into the masses. A blizzard raged all day, obscuring visibility and creating miserable conditions.



La Rothiere, 1 February 1814

It seemed the French might hold the village all day, but as the shadows lengthened around four, suddenly coalition reinforcements poured onto the field - a fresh corps entered on the French left and another came up through the center and renewed the attack on the village. There was desperate fighting in the snowy woods and fields on the left as a scratch force of Young Guards held back the onslaught, while the last French reserves drove the allies once more out of La Rothiere, and as night fell Napoleon skillfully extricated his men from the untenable position. Two days and two nights the French retreated, and thousands of conscripts dropped from exhaustion and exposure. 6,000 Frenchmen had died in exchange for about the same number of coalition troops, and thousands more and 50 guns were lost in the retreat. The allies announced a fresh peace conference while they tried to sort out their differences, while the 30,000 survivors or so of Napoleon’s little army sought what food and shelter they could. The Emperor’s fortunes had reached their lowest point, but he wasn’t beaten yet, not by a long shot. The next month would be acclaimed by some historians as the finest campaign in Napoleon’s long career.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: February - 1814 - the Six Day’s Campaign

In the wake of their victory at La Rothiere, the allies grew complacent. Had they not just beaten Napoleon, again, in open battle? The man was not invincible, and their forces were so overwhelming that as long as they didn’t blunder catastrophically, there was no way they could lose!

The allies proceeded to try their best to lose.

Schwarzenberg was worried about his lengthy supply lines back towards Austria, and the large number of French troops to the south, and nervously began to edge to the south. Blucher, meanwhile, was disgusted at the Army of Bohemia’s mismanagement of La Rothiere (only Schwarzenberg’s sluggishness in supporting him had allowed Napoleon to escape, the marshal felt). So Marshal Vorwarts! cried “Vorwarts!” and the Army of Silesia moved off to the north, seeking the remnants of the French army so he might destroy it. Once again, the Prussian allowed his men to begin spreading out over the countryside.




Suddenly, Napoleon dropped like a thunderbolt onto the middle of the Army of Silesia. 20,000 men led by the Emperor himself erupted into Blucher’s center at Champaubert. At 10:00 in the morning of 10 February, the last army between Blucher and Paris suddenly attacked one of Blucher’s isolated corps, a Russian force under one General Olssufiev - 5,000 men. Barely a thousand escaped.

Napoleon, after vacillating for a week following his defeat at La Rothiere, had learned of the growing gap between Blucher and Schwarzenberg. Slipping his army into that gap, he had crept along past Blucher’s forward positions, and then made his surprise attack on Olssufiev. Suddenly he was planted right smack in the middle of Blucher’s widely separated corps, able to concentrate on each in detail. Blucher desperately sent out orders to regroup, but Napoleon was between his corps.



Situation after the Battle of Champaubert - Napoleon’s 20,000 army in the middle of 3 times their number of enemies.

The next day, 11 February, Napoleon erupted out of the woods at Montmirail, falling on a second Prussian corps. Their commander, General Sacken, was attempting to obey his orders to rejoin Blucher when he ran smack into Napoleon, marching hard west from Champaubert. Napoleon had lost some men to mud and the pace of his advance, but he was in the midst of 60,000 Prussians and couldn’t afford to give anyone time to regroup. All morning, Sacken’s 18,000 tried to break through the roadblock Napoleon’s 10,000 threw up in the road, while the Emperor waited for his reinforcements to reach the field. The young French conscripts threw back attack after attack, while the nearby corps of General Yorck, with another 18,000 men, hurried south to Sacken’s aid.



Battle of Montmirail, 1814

Yorck took his time, and Mortier arrived with the Imperial Guard first. Napoleon wasted no time - Ney was placed at the Guard’s head and led an assault that broke Sacken’s flank, and the Emperor poured in his last cavalry reserves. The men of Sacken’s corps decided that they’d rather be anywhere other than Montmirail, and the entire force dissolved into flight. Then Napoleon turned and bopped Yorck’s leading formations on the nose, and that force, too, withdrew.



Day 2 of the 6-day Campaign: Montmirail

On 12 February, the remaining Prussians skedaddled back over the Marne, nipping ahead of Macdonald’s pursuing forces, and Napoleon needed a full day to get bridges in place to pursue them. Blucher got word that the Army of Bohemia had bestirred itself at the news of Napoleon’s latest exploits, and came on to attack and pin Napoleon down. The Emperor wasn’t done yet, though, and he threw himself at Blucher head-on on 14 February at Vauchamps, the third battle in five days. Grouchy skillfully led his small cavalry force and turned Blucher’s flank and the Prussians were again put to flight. The French cavalry got astride his line of retreat, but the doughty old marshal was able to savagely fight his way clear of the trap and continue his expeditious move to the rear with all haste. The Prussians left behind 7,000 men on the field. With 30,000 men Napoleon had launched an offensive against an army more than double that number, had beaten it three times, inflicted 20,000 casualties for less than 10,000 losses, and captured dozens of guns. It was Napoleon at his best.

But it wasn’t enough. Blucher was shaken up but still combat effective, and Napoleon could spare him no more time - the Army of Bohemia had lurched into motion to the south, and he desperately needed to head it off. Schwarzenberg was already getting nervous again, though. The French populace was beginning to turn on the invaders, for one - columns were harassed and sniped at, foraging parties ambushed, the rumblings of a popular war like Russia or Spain. For another, his communications were dangerously exposed to gathering French forces at Lyon to the south. Finally, there was the word that Napoleon had routed Blucher and was now speeding south to confront him. All in all, no, no, things were not good for the 150,000 men of the Army of Bohemia, Schwarzenberg decided. By February 17 he had already issued orders to pull in his outlying corps and fall back a bit.

Napoleon left Montmirail on the 15th. He piled his infantry onto requisitioned wagons and carts, and in 36 hours moved 47 miles, arriving late on the 16th near Schwarzenberg. He summoned all the militia and men he could from the Paris defenses, and with French morale rising in the wake of the victories against Blucher men flocked to the colors. He had nearly 60,000 now to confront the Army of Bohemia. On the 17th, his cavalry swarmed over some of Schwarzenberg’s outlying corps, but Marshal Victor’s columns were laggardly and slow - a maneuver meant to cut Schwarzenberg’s retreat arrived too late and ran head on into prepared defenses instead at Montereau. Victor was relieved for his incompetence.



Moving south on the 16th

The battle of Montereau, on 18th, saw the French storm this town on the Seine, routing an entire corps, and the vital bridges fell into Napoleon’s hands. By the end of the day, the coalition had lost 6,000 men and 15 guns. Only due to Victor’s slowness did Schwarzenberg safely get to the safe bank of the Seine, away from Napoleon. The Emperor, heady with victory, rejected a last offer of armistice on less than suitable terms, and in so doing probably  sacrificed his last chance of survival as ruler of France. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg retreated for Troyes and summoned Blucher to join him as their only chance to face Napoleon’s army. He believed the Emperor was at the head of 180,000 men (he had 74,000 in reality) and that his communications with Austria were in serious danger. He continued his retreat past that city, which Napoleon reached on the 24th.



Napoleon and his marshals in France, spring 1814

In the space of a month since taking command on January 26th, Napoleon had fought half a dozen small battles, won all but one of them, and driven both enemy armies in turn into retreat. In operation terms, the campaign thus far was one of his best. But the realities of grand strategy were against him - there were too many enemies, more columns closing in from the north and from the south, and the armies he had fought were hardly destroyed, just roughed up a bit. In fact, by the time he was received in triumph in Troyes, Napoleon had scarcely more than a month left on his throne.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: March 1814 - the Fall of Napoleon

On March 1, another conference of Coalition leadership ratified all the monarchs’ intention to continue the war against Napoleon for twenty years, if need be. No separate peace was to be signed. Britain pledged more subsidies, and one final offer was made to Napoleon - immediate cease-fire and peace based on the frontiers of 1791. Napoleon once again rejected the terms.

Blucher began the final phase of the campaign by renewing his drive on Paris almost immediately. He had been joined by fresh reinforcements from the campaigns in the Low Countries, and was determined to reach the French capital or die trying. He jumped to the north bank of the Marne and blew the bridges behind him, Napoleon was frustrated and stuck on the wrong side of the river. His men’s morale was shaken after the Six Days campaign, but he was resolved to push on regardless. Vorwarts! He moved for the Aisne. The only bridge at Soissons was held by a French garrison, but the commander immediately decided that he had no desire to die for la gloire and surrendered practically before the Prussians arrived. Blucher escaped beyond the Aisne and linked up with the corps from the north, bringing his strength back up to 100,000. At the same time, Napoleon heard that Troyes had fallen, again, behind him - Macdonald could not hold the city since Schwarzenberg screwed his courage to the sticking place and came on again. “I cannot believe such ineptitude,” the Emperor raged. “No man can be worse seconded than I am.”



The campaign of Craonne and Laon.

Well, nothing for it. He would have to beat Blucher (again), and then hurry south to beat Schwarzenberg (again), and then hope at some point a miracle happened, I don’t know. Anyway, he hurried after Blucher as soon as he got over the damned river, having to divert all the way to Berry from Soissons to do it. Soon enough on 6 March he came upon a rearguard at Craonne. Ney was ordered to dive in straight away, and the bravest of hte brave didn’t hesitate a moment. Good thing, too, since Blucher’s entire army was skulking on the far side of a ridge, waiting to pounce on Napoleon. The French came on so rapidly, though, that Blucher hadn’t quite readied his counterstroke yet. The next day Ney’s attack blundered when the marshal went in too early, before Napoleon’s intended double envelopment was ready, but the Prussian counterattack also fell to pieces in the marshy ground to the north, and Blucher disgustedly ordered a retreat a short ways to Laon. 5,000 men on both sides fell.



The Battle of Craonne, 6-7 March 1814

Now, Napoleon thought hte force he had just beaten was the rearguard of the Prussians, and even though he only had 40,000 to face Blucher’s 100,000 with, believed that he could harry him north on the road to Belgium a bit. So he hurried north to Laon, where he ran smack into Blucher again, waiting for him, on 9 March. Blucher thought he was facing 100,000 Frenchmen, and assumed the sharp frontal attacks he was facing from the 30,000 before him must be some kind of trap (thus the Prussians vastly overestimated the French even as the French vastly underestimated the Prussians). The cautious fighting lasted all day, dying down at 5.



Battles of Craonne and Laon, 7-10 March 1814

Marshal Marmont had been hastening up with his ‘corps’ (more of a division) to join the Emperor, and at sunset he put his men in bivouac on the far right of the French line, a few miles distant from the main body. Blucher sniffed this out, and launched a surprise attack at 7 pm that utterly routed VI Corps, the formation being saved from complete destruction only through a few strokes of luck. Blucher put his whole army in motion, trying to swing around Napoleon’s right and cut him off from Soissons. Napoleon only heard of the debacle at dawn on the 10th.

Chance alone saved the French army. Blucher fell ill on the 10th, and Gneisenau was far more cautious. Napoleon coolly stood and invited attack all day, diverting attention from Marmont’s wreckage, and the Prussians, still suspecting a trap, pulled in their horns. As darkness fell Napoleon slipped away to Soissons. The two day’s fighting cost the French 6,000 and the allies another 4,000. A weary Napoleon wrote to Joseph (now prime minister in Paris since he was no longer King of Spain):

I have reconnoitered the enemy’s position at Laon. It is too strong to permit an attack without heavy loss. I have therefore given word to fall back to Soissons. It is probable that the enemy would have evacuated Laon for fear of an attack but for the crass stupidity of the Duke of Ragusa [Marmont], who behaved himself like a second lieutenant. The enemy is suffering enormous losses; he has attacked the village of Clacy today five times - and been repulsed on each occasion.

Unfortunately the Young Guard is melting like snow. The Old Guard keeps up its strength, but the Guard cavalry is also shrinking a great deal. It is vital that General Ornano should remount all dragoons and chasseurs - and even old soldiers - using all the means in his power. Orders must be given for the construction of redoubts at Montmartre.

By mid-March, Napoleon’s armies both north and south were reeling in retreat. Two triumphant enemy armies lay on the Seine and on the Aisne, 200,000 men between them, and Napoleon ahd not 75,000 to face them with. Soult was being driven into Toulouse by Wellington, Bordeaux was revolting, Italy was teetering on the brink of total collapse, the Low Countries were in open revolt and the French were fleeing that area, and Davout still held Hamburg, deep in Germany.




Napoleon fought on. He swept eastwards, across the face of Blucher’s army on the far side of the Aisne, to Rheims, where he routed a Russian corps, inflicting 6,000 losses in exchange for 700 of his own. He swept south, towards Swarzenberg’s communications again. Once again Schwarzenberg (now sick with gout, so stressed was he) scuttled back to Troyes. Once again peace was offered, once again it was rejected. It would be a fight to the finish.

Early on the 20th, Napoleon attempted to hit the Army of Bohemia’s communications at Arcis-sur-Aube. This blow would discomfit Schwarzenberg and hurry his retreat, giving the Emperor time to hurry north and stop Blucher’s latest lunge at Paris. He had miscalculated, though - Schwarzenberg once again found his nerve and abruptly swung about in his retreat, also coming at Arcis (where he found Napoleon, to his own considerable surprise). Napoleon had occupied the town early in the morning and was supremely confident that the allies were retreating - as at Laon two weeks before he was stunned to find the entire army coming at him.
A mass of hostile cavalry abruptly swept in his pickets and then swept his handful of cavalry away, too. Marshal Ney led the defense and fought heroically, as usual, and only when the Guard itself rushed to the battlefield was the situation stabilized.



Napoleon rallies routing troops on the bridge at Arcis-sur-Aube, 20 March 1814

Napoleon himself was in the thick of the fighting, nearly being blasted to pieces by a howitzer shell (he later said he was disappointed it hadn’t killed him). By nightfall, the French held their positions at Arcis, and even a twilight cavalry charge drove back two divisions of allied cavalry. They still had no idea that they had repulsed only a part of the enemy army, not all of it, and the rest was massing to crush them in the morning.



Arcis-sur-Aube, 20-21 March 1814

By dawn on 21 March, Napoleon had less than 30,000 men at Arcis facing over 80,000 Coalition soldiers. Schwarzenberg was convinced that Napoleon had a hundred thousand men with him and his courage was fast trickling out, while Tsar Alexander did not approve of the offensive. It was not until 3:00 that the offensive at last began - and by that point Napoleon, whose eyes had bugged out of his head a little when he mounted the ridge outside town and saw the vast host gathered against him, had been retreating for hours. Oudinot led a heroic rearguard and kept the allies out of town for three hours, only blowing the bridge and pulling his men out at six pm. Another 7,000 combined casualties on both sides.

The footsore army slogged north, back to the Marne - St. Dizier, in fact, which coincidentially was the same town they had tried to trap Blucher in back in January, 2 months of the most intense marching and fighting in any grognard’s memory ago. From there, Napoleon would continue trying to harass the enemy communications and drawing them after him.

But by now they were sick and tired of Napoleon’s bullshit. Perhaps out of frustration, the Tsar intervened and with Blucher ordered the army to get their asses to Paris, come hell or high water. Let Napoleon do what he wanted to the communications, they would have his capital.

Both armies moved out on 25 March, and on the 28th they rendezvoused for the third and last time at the very gates of the French capital. 22 years before, revolutionaries had chopped off King Louis’s head in that city. The combined monarchs of Europe had declared war in an effort to avenge that murder - and now, after two decades, fighting from Lisbon to Moscow, and hundreds upon thousands of deaths, they had at last reached their goal.



The Battle of Paris, 30-31 March, 1814

Marshals Marmont and Mortier led a staunch defense of the capital on 30 March, but at 2 am on the 31st it was clear resistance was hopeless, and they surrendered. Paris went over to the enemy. Talleyrand, former foreign minister, rallied a rump government ot his standard and declared Napoleon deposed. Bonaparte had reached the end of the road at last.

After a half-hearted attempt to convince his marshals to march with him on the capital, he bowed to the inevitable. Marmont defected to the Coalition, Ney said the army would not march, and all over his position was collapsing. Napoleon on 6 April dictated the following from Fontainbleau:

The Allied powers having proclaimed that the Emperor Napoleon is the only obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his oath, declares that he renounces, for himself and his heirs, the thrones of France and Italy, and that there is no personal sacrifice, not even of life itself, that he is unwilling to make the interest of France.

On April 20th, Napoleon bid farewell to his Guard, the last soldiers by his side. Then, as King Louis XVIII was placed on the throne, he went into exile, ruler of the small isle of Elba. And that was the last that anyone ever heard of Napoleon Bonaparte.



Napoleon bids farewell to his guards, 6 April 1814

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: 1814 - The Congress of Vienna

Early in May, 1814, the War of the Sixth Coalition formally came to an end with the Treaty of Paris (not to be confused with the other Treaty of Paris), which restored the Bourbons to France and reset the borders to the 1792 status quo ante. Then the four victorious powers, and Bourbon France represented by Talleyrand, hied themselves to Vienna for the Congress of Vienna - a first. Instead of the 18th century system of cumbersome exchanges of notes between capitals and myriad one on one negotiations around Europe, for the first time all the major stakeholders would be assembled in a single location to hash out what a post-Napoleonic, post-Revolutionary Europe would look like.




For months, the assembled princes and notables of Europe - over 200 states and royal houses in total - met and negotiated (and danced, like, a lot - there were far more balls than actual negotiations. To be fair, a great deal of negotiation probably happened at these informal social events) and redrew the map of Europe. For example, the old Duchy of Warsaw went to Russia, but was forbidden from being united into a greater Kingdom of Poland since this would greatly empower the Tsar. This became known as Congressional Poland and was under Russian rule until 1915. Prussia was compensated with ⅗ of Saxony, which had chosen the wrong side in the last war and waited too long to defect. Other adjustments were made to Austria, Sweden, Denmark, overseas colonies, etc.

The goal of the Congress was to prevent another general war like Napoleon had provoked, and to secure the peace of Europe for the future. The five Great Powers (Talleyrand had quickly and skillfully inserted France as an equal in the process) would act in concert to preserve national borders and the status quo. Liberalism and nationalism were to be suppressed as dangerous and destabilizing. The Congressional system thus created would prove the foundation for a period of peace and expansion the likes of which Europe had never known, lasting with greater or smaller incident right up to the assassination of the Austrian heir to the throne in 1914.

One of those little incidents rudely interrupted proceedings in March, 1815, when shocking news arrived from France: Napoleon had escaped from Elba, and was marching on Paris!

—-




I think Napoleon tried to make a fair go of Elba, he really did. He busied himself improving the small island’s roads and infrastructure and reforming its tiny army, making brigades of mules. However, events quickly conspired against him. King Louis XVIII, for one, absolutely was not going to pay the specified 2 million annual pounds of upkeep specified for Napoleon in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. For another, there was talk in the Congress of relocating Napoleon someplace more remote from Europe, possibly the Azores or St. Helena, to keep him out of trouble.

Meanwhile, things looked ripe for him in France. Louis XVIII was another Bourbon mediocrity like his unfortunate uncle, and behind him was an enormous train of emigres eager to slide back into their old positions and privileges, as if the preceding quarter-century had never happened. The soldiers and peasants were deeply suspicious of the restored monarchy, which quickly dissipated its goodwill through ineffectual, unfocused government amidst a time of economic crisis and popular instability. Napoleon had nothing to lose - he was unlikely to be allowed to stay in quiet retirement on Elba in any case - and possibly an empire to gain. So, late in February 1815, he gave his lax watchers - not captors, not yet, not until St. Helena - the slip and sailed for France with 1,000 men in his personal bodyguard.

He landed in France, where the local authorities - Marshal Massena, in Marseilles - made no real attempt to apprehend him. Panic spread amongst the Bourbon loyalists and abroad as word got out that the devil was unchained, and Louis dispatched Marshal Ney to arrest his old master. Ney vowed to bring Bonaparte back “in an iron cage.”

Outside Grenoble, the first real check appeared, as the 5th Line Regiment confronted the weak band of adventurers. It looked as if real civil war might break out, but Napoleon coolly stood his men down and advanced. The moment was recorded:

“Soldiers of the 5th! Don’t you recognize me? Well, if there’s any man here who wants to shoot his Emperor…here I am!” he declared, baring his chest to the leveled muskets of the 5th. With one accord, the soldiers broke ranks and flocked to their old commander, bellowing “Vive l’Empereur! Vive l’Empereur!” Grenoble opened its gates and the citizens gave a feverish welcome. As Napoleon recalled, “Before Grenoble I was an adventurer, after Grenoble I was a ruling prince.”

The moment of the 5th’s defection is captured in the 1970 film Waterloo, which is an excellent movie if you’re interested in this stuff:


Every army sent by Louis to arrest Napoleon instead defected to the Emperor. His magnetic charisma pulled everyone into his wake. Some wag posted a large noticeboard in Paris: “From Napoleon to Louis XVIII - My good brother, there is no need to send any more troops. I have enough!” Louis could tell well enough which way the wind was blowing and got the hell out of town. Napoleon entered Paris on March 20th. The Hundred Days, as they were later known, officially began.

The Emperor immediately put out peace feelers to Vienna, which were immediately rejected. Already in Vienna assembled, the allies pledged themselves to a Seventh Coalition, raising over half a million men, with orders to march on Paris and have a very serious conversation with Napoleon about his mischievous behavior. England and Prussia already had 150,000 men in the field, and Austria and Russia began mobilizing.

Napoleon, hesitant to mobilize the French people, still war-weary from 20 years of bloodshed, had no real choice. He had about 200,000 men to meet five times that number in the field, and by June 1 had managed to raise that number to only about 280,000 of uneven quality, with 150,000 more fresh conscripts behind that, to meet a nearly bottomless well of Coalition manpower.



Situation at the start of the Hundred Days. France is badly outnumbered on all fronts.

Against that, the Coalition fielded five armies, eventually. The Duke of Wellington was hurried from Vienna and placed in command of an Anglo-Dutch army of about 110,000 at Brussels - his old Peninsular army backed by fresh Dutch conscripts. Blucher with 120,000 Prussians was camped around Namur. Schwarzenberg was placed back in command of an army of over 200,000 Austrians on the upper Danube, who would advance over the Rhine, and 75,000 more were in Italy. Finally, Barclay de Tolly was given 150,000 Russians and would march west as rapidly as he could. Napoleon could either await this converging mass and prepare near Paris to repeat his defensive campaign of 1814 - but with 300,000 instead of 90,000 men, against Allies tired of marching and with great strategic wastage. This way he might hold out long enough to negotiate a ceasefire and retain the throne of France. Or, he could attempt to take the field right away against the nearest allied armies - Wellington and Blucher. He had only 125,000 men against 230,000 Coalition troops, but a sudden victory here might knock England and the Netherlands out of the war, and then leave him free to concentrate solely on the Austrians and Russians.

Napoleon resolved to attempt a repeat of his brilliant Italian campaign of 1796: A blow against the ‘hinge’ of the two allied armies near Brussels would drive them apart - the British falling back towards the Netherlands and the sea, the Prussians towards the Rhine. Then he could beat each in detail. By mid-May, Napoleon was on the move north. He intended, once his army was assembled early in June, to strike a sudden blow over the Sambre river and seize the vital lateral road linking Blucher with Wellington before either could react. Civilian traffic was clamped down, the frontier was closed, and the troops moved in utmost secrecy: neither Blucher nor Wellington had any inkling what was afoot until June 15, when Napoleon erupted across the frontier.

The Armee du Nord consisted of five corps, the Guard, and reserve cavalry. I Corps and II Corps were assigned to the left wing, under Marshal Ney. III and IV Corps made up the right wing, under newly minted Marshal Grouchy, who you may recall from Friedland, Wagram, or the Russian campaigns. The Guard and VI Corps made up a central reserve. Each wing would engage an enemy army and then the reserve would be thrown against one or the other to decide matters.

Early in the morning on June 15, 1815, the army suddenly leaped over the border at their British and Prussian enemies. Three days of marching and fighting would bring them to a small village just south of Brussels - Waterloo.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: June 1815 - The Waterloo Campaign (I): June 15-16: Ligny

The Battle of Waterloo is, possibly, the most famous battle in the English-speaking world. The locations of the battle - Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, Placenoit, Wavre, Mont Saint Jean - are as familiar to military history readers as their own neighborhoods. And the specific episodes the battle - the heroic defense of Hougoumont, the exchanging of grand cavalry charges, the fall of La Haye Sainte and the crisis in the English center, the last charge of the Imperial Guard - are all well-known as well. So I don’t think I’ll add much detail to the battle itself, but I will sketch the rough outlines for people to dig in more if they like. I will try to add detail to the campaign, especially why certain decisions where made or why soldiers reacted a certain way - why DID Wellington react so shocked at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball? Why fight so hard for Quatre Bras? Why did Grouchy let Napoleon down so badly? Without getting too bogged down in details, I STILL find myself splitting this post up into three or four parts to cover only a few days, when I’ve skipped entire decades in previous posts. So, I crave your indulgence and forgiveness, and patience in my errors. That said, let’s dive in and get Chev’s take on Waterloo.




Waterloo campaign

The first thing you have to understand is that there IS no “battle of Waterloo” as such. What there is is a series of four closely interconnected battles - Ligny, Quatre-Bras, Wavre, and of course the great showdown on the ridge at Mont Saint Jean. In World War I or World War II we’d probably term all of these part of one bigger battle - after all, they’re closely connected in time and in place, fought by armies under unified commands. So, the “preliminary” actions on June 16 and the sister fight at Wavre on the 18th are just as important as the grand affair at Mont St. Jean.

Really, by the time of Waterloo, warfare is inceasingly coming to resemble the modern system - loosely connected corps independently maneuvering in support of each other, with numerous smaller battles erupting as rival corps come in contact, rather than single formal setpiece battles where each side rides up, arranges its men just so, and then dives in. You see this pattern develop pretty much as soon as the enemies of Napoleon began introducing corps themselves in 1807 - 1810, with the frequency and severity of battles noticeably ticking up in the later campaigns compared with the first wars. So, Waterloo is not just the final battle of the Napoleonic Wars, but also one of the first “modern” battles (with Wagram, Borodino, and Leipzig) in history. In this post, I’ll try to get us as far as Ligny, and cover Blucher’s discomfiture in that fight, then cover Quatre-Bras, and then finally the grand finale on June 18th.



Napoleon opens the campaign with a move on Charleroi, while Blucher concentrates too far forward

At half-past two in the morning, the first French troops were roused out of their bivouacs by their sergeants and pushed into marching columns. Behind the cavalry, three columns (Grouchy’s left, Ney’s right, and the Emperor himself with the center) began to converge on the river Sambre. Their goal was the lateral road running from Quatre-Bras to Sombreffe, the main link between Wellington’s army near Brussels and Blucher’s near Namur. Take that road and Napoleon would drive a wedge between the two, allowing him to beat the two armies in detail. Quickly the French corps became snarled in confusion as the precise timetable broke down (Marshal Berthier, for twenty years Napoleon’s chief of staff, had died in mysterious circumstances early in the Hundred Days and Marshal Soult had been made Chief of Staff - Soult, one of Napoleon’s best independent commanders, probably should have taken Grouchy or Ney’s place), but by the afternoon of the fifteenth they had managed to eject the Prussian garrison from the bridge town of Charleroi and seize the crossings of the Sambre.

The Allied armies were caught completely flat-footed by Napoleon’s sudden lunge forward - most hadn’t even known that he was concentrated yet! Blucher reacted rapidly, ordering three of his corps to concentrate at Sombreffe, which would link him up with Wellington on his right flank and let the two armies cooperate against l’Armee du Nord. This was a very dangerous plan if Napoleon moved rapidly - much like Berthier’s bungling of the opening stages of the 1809 campaign, concentrating too far forward risks opening yourself to a defeat in detail as your formations come up one by one.



June 15 - Napoleon is concentrated against Blucher while the British are still scattered.

For his part, Wellington opened the campaign with a serious blunder. He spent the 14th and 15th enjoying the summer amusements of Brussels while the armies of the Coalition slowly assembled. Word of the French advance didn’t reach him until 3 pm on the 15th, as he was enjoying a cricket match, when he received notice that the Prussian outposts were being driven in southwest of Charleroi. The French offensive had been underway for nine hours already but Wellington was still unaware. He concluded that Boney’s most likely move was an envelopment of his right flank - an attempt to turn the British and cut them off from the Channel. He ordered a concentration on his right flank to forestall this - notably this meant the British were concentrating away from the Prussians. Just what Napoleon wanted! Wellington’s blunder is inexcusable. If the British were operating alone, a move to cut their line to the Channel would make sense, but they were part of a coalition. Bonaparte would hardly turn the British right and then drive them into the Prussians’ waiting arms. Instead, just as he had done in 1796, had repeatedly sought to do in 1813 and 1814, he would try to drive the allies apart and beat them one by one. Wellington claimed to have studied those campaigns (“The campaign of 1814 gave me a clearer appreciation for his genius and his methods than any other,” he later said), but completely missed this. The Allies were lucky that Blucher’s too-forward concentration and Wellington’s too-westerly concentration didn’t doom their armies right from the start.




Ney took the left wing forward through the afternoon of the 15th, careful to keep in touch with Grouchy who had the duty of shoving back Blucher. The French right fought its way through Fleurus by early evening, but then the pace slowed. Ney encountered enemy pickets near Quatre-Bras and halted for the night. Crucially, he did not occupy the vital crossroads (nor was he ordered to).

Wellington, for his part, had also neglected to order the occupation of Quatre-Bras. He was obsessed with his right, not his left, and seems to have completely forgotten that he and Blucher had previously arranged to closely cooperate in the face of a French attack. Instead, the little crossroads was garrisoned by General Constant de Rebecque, chief of staff of the Prince of Orange, responsible for the considerable Dutch portion of the Anglo-Dutch army. The chief had dispatched one brigade to the town as part of Wellington’s general concentration, then on receipt of news of the French approach had reinforced it with another brigade. Soon after nightfall, an order had reached the division to concentrate entirely at Nivelles, 8 miles from Quatre-Bras. General Perponcher, divisional commander, intelligently declined to obey this order and instead dug in at the crossroads.

The full scope of the French offensive boiling out of Charleroi wasn’t made clear to Wellington until late on the night of the 15th. Famously, the Duke had gone to attend to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball with virtually all of his senior officers. The military men, glittering in dress uniforms, danced with the daughters of society, while hard through the night a messenger rode with the crucial news of Napoleon’s invasion. The moment is recorded:

The Prince of Orange came back suddenly, just as the Duke of Wellington had taken his place at the supper table, and whispered some minutes to his Grace. The Duke of Wellington remained nearly twenty minutes after this, then said to the Duke of Richmond, ‘I think it is time for me to go to bed likewise’; and then, whilst wishing him goodnight, whispered to ask him if he had a good map in the house. The Duke of Richmond said that he had, and took him into his dressing room.

The Duke of Wellington shut the door and said ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God! He has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.’ The Duke of Richmond said, ‘ What do you intend doing?’ The Duke of Wellington replied: ‘I have ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre-Bras; but we shall not stop him there, and if so, I must fight him here’ (at the same time pressing his thumbnail over the position of Waterloo). He said then adieu, and left the house by another way out.

Once more messengers spurred out into hte night, riding hard to the scattered Anglo-Dutch formations, all bearing orders to concentrate all possible force at Quatre-Bras. Everything would depend on how long the little crossroads could hold against Ney’s legions, to see if Napoleon would succeed in his scheme of driving the two armies apart.

We will return to the battle of Quatre-Bras tomorrow. For now, let’s turn our eyes on Blucher, and the fortunes of the Prussian army through June 16, at Ligny.




Napoleon began that day intending to fall upon “Monsieur Villainton” and drive him back upon Brussels, thinking Blucher would be retreating. Ney was to occupy Quatre-Bras and wait for the reserves to come up, Grouchy would occupy the Prussians. In this dispatch is included these famous paragraphs:

For this campaign I have adopted the following general principle - to divide my army into two wings and a reserve. The Guard will form the reserve, and I shall bring it into action on either wing as circumstances may dictate. Also, according to circumstances, I shall draw troops from one wing to strengthen my reserve.

Situation, noon 16 June 1815

However, Blucher (naturally) had not retreated, but was courting battle near Ligny. Napoleon instantly swapped his attention to the Prussians, but could not launch an attack through most of the morning - all l’Armee du Nord wasn’t up yet due to Soult’s inexperienced staffwork, so it took time to concentrate for battle. Blucher, too, was concentrating as rapidly as he could, and would have about 84,000 men available for the day’s action. They defended an extensive 8-mile front and deployed most of their troops similar to Russian practice - on the forward slopes of hills just behind the frontline. Wellington visited that day (rumor has it he and Blucher saw Napoleon in their telescopes - the three most famed commanders of the day all in one place), and later said,

I told the Prussian officers, in the presence of Hardinge [The British commissioner attached to Blucher] that according to my judgment, the exposure of the advanced columns, and indeed of the whole army to cannonade, standing as they did so displayed to the aim of the enemy’s fire, was not prudent. The marshy banks of the stream made it out of their power to cross and attack the French, while the latter on the other hand, though they could not attack them, had it in their power to cannonade them and shatter them to pieces, after which they might fall upon them by the bridges at the villages. I said that if I were in Blucher’s place with English troops, I should withdraw all the columns I saw scattered about in front, and get more of the troops under shelter of the rising ground. However they seemed to think they knew best, so I came away very shortly.

Wellington would have the chance to take his own advice very shortly.

Napoleon’s plan was familiar, by this point - you can probably predict it yourself. Grouchy’s wing would pin down Blucher with a frontal assault through the day. Ney’s wing would pass through Quatre-Bras and move down the lateral road into Blucher’s right-rear. Finally, the reserves would be committed at this point to fully shatter and rout the Prussian army. Blucher would be completely smashed - if any Prussians at all escaped they would be driven on Liege, and l’Armee du Nord would be free to turn on Wellington.



The Battle of Ligny, 16 June 1815

The Battle of Ligny very nearly decided the campaign - a smashing Napoleonic victory, the last Napoleonic victory, in fact. But for Soult’s faulty staffwork and Ney’s mistakes at Quatre-Bras, Napoleon probably would have completely triumphed in the opening act of the War of the Seventh Coalition (and then most likely been squashed by the oncoming Austrians and Russians, but never mind). The French frontal assault got underway at about half past two. Grouchy expertly used his cavalry on the flank to contain and drive back the Prussian reserves, and his infantry divisions smashed ahead into the villages that Blucher had made strongpoints along his lines. The fighting was bitter, and the dense Prussian reserves were flayed by the French artillery just as Wellington had predicted. One captain of the line described the fighting for the village of Ligny:

When within 200 yards of the hedges which concealed thousands of Prussian sharpshooters, the regiment took up battle order while still on the march. The charge was sounded and the soldiers went through the hedges. The 1st Brigade’s left half-battalion, to which I belonged, went down a hollow track blocked by felled trees, vehicles, harrows, and plows, and we got past these only after considerable difficulty and under fire from the Prussians hidden behind the hedges, which were extremely thick. Eventually we overcame these obstacles and, firing as we went, entered the village. When we reached the church our advance was halted by a stream, and the enemy, in houses, behind walls and on rooftops, inflicted considerable casualties, as much by musketry as by grapeshot and cannonballs, which took us from front and flank.

In a moment, Major Hervieux, commanding the regiment, and two battalion commanders, Richard and Lafolie, had been killed; another battalion commander, Blain by name, was slightly wounded and had his horse killed under him; five captains were killed and three wounded, two adjutants and nine lieutenants and sub lieutenants were killed, seven wounded, and close on seven hundred rank and file killed and wounded.

Four times the regiment charged into Ligny, and four times they were driven out again with heavy casualties, but the fifth time they succeeded and turned the Prussians out of the village. Soon the Prussians were cracking all along the front, but holding - narrowly. Napoleon’s pinning attack was proceeding as planned, so he fired off a note to Ney:

in front of Fleurus, 3:15 PM, June 16, 1815

Marshal -

I wrote to you an hour ago to inform you that, at 2:30 PM, the Emperor would attack the position taken up by the enemy between the villages of St. Amand and Brye. At this moment the action is in full swing.

His Majesty desires me to tell you that you are to maneuver immediately in such a manner as to envelop the enemy’s right and fall upon his rear; the fate of France is in your hands.

Thus do not hesitate even for a moment to carry out the maneuver ordered by the EMperor, and direct your advance on the heights of Brye and St. Amand so as to cooperate in a victory that may well turn out to be decisive. The enemy has been caught in the v ery act of carrying out his concentration with the English.

However, word soon came from Ney that he was hotly engaged with over 20,000 enemy troops, so the Emperor amended his orders to request only d’Erlon’s corps. A note was scribbled to that affected and fired off to Ney’s battlefield.


Ligny, 16 June 1815

The battle for Ligny raged on through the afternoon. The villages along the Prussian front changed hands again and again as each side fed in reinforcements, but by 5 pm Blucher’s men were entirely tied down. Napoleon summoned up the Guard and was on the verge of releasing them for the  coup de grace, when suddenly word reached him of a new corps of unidentified troops appearing on his right flank, 20,000 strong. Unable to risk his last reserve until this emergency was handled, Napoleon canceled hte attack. Blucher made use of the respite to shore up his crumbling position, praising his men for their heroic fighting through the day.

Soon, word came from the strange column - it was d’Erlon’s corps, coming in behind the French flank instead of the Prussian, and not having sent word ahead of its advance. Staff officers furiously tried to chivvy the general onto the correct axis of attack, but an hour later, word came that d’Erlon was on his way back to Quatre-Bras, and would not be intervening on the Ligny battlefield at all. Blucher further confused matters by launching a sudden counterattack, led by Marshal Vorwarts! in person. The Guard repulsed it with some difficulty, but the sun crept on towards evening.



Situation, 8 pm 16 June 1815

Finally, by 7:30 Napoleon had cleared the distractions and unleashed the Imperial Guard with a massed battery of 60 guns. Heavy downpours of rain came down, billows of powder smoke obscured the battlefield, but Napoleon’s finest troops slammed into Ligny and the Prussian line collapsed to pieces. Blucher led a desperate charge by the Prussian cavalry - the Guard smoothly formed bayonet-tipped squares and shattered that attack, too - and the battle of Ligny was won. Blucher was injured and pinned beneath a fallen horse, but the French cuirassiers rode right over the fallen 72-year old without noticing their prize, and soon Blucher was headed north with his fast-retreating troops.


The Prussians had lost 25,000 men, but Blucher had narrowly survived (personally) and the army was intact. d’Erlon’s wanderings, the delays in the attack - chance and fortune had saved the Prussians. Napoleon had suffered 12,000 casualties himself, and the Emperor himself was sick and weak. Exhausted, he ordered Grouchy to begin the pursuit at daybreak - not the same night as the battle. So the Prussians were able to fight another day, if only just barely, and Blucher himself would ensure that they were present on the decisive field in two days’ time. Meanwhile, Napoleon slept troubled - what had happened to Ney at Quatre-Bras?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: The Waterloo Campaign (II) June 16 - 17 1815: The Battle of Quatre-Bras

Marshal Ney, the Bravest of the Brave, was never the same after Russia, I think. At Austerlitz and Eylau he had demonstrated energy, initiative, and intelligence. Sure, he had blundered a bit at Jena, but it was a sin of overzealousness. Since his ordeal at Krasnyi, though - fighting the ragged survivors of his corps through a ring of encircling Russians in the midst of winter, hundreds of miles back to his own lines - he was the hero of the army, but his energy and judgment had been compromised. He had failed at Bautzen, at Dennewitz, and compromised the Emperor’s plans at Leipzig. Now he would do the same at the battle of Quatre-Bras*, fought simultaneously with Ligny on 16 June, 1815.

*Quatre-Bras means “the Four Arms”, referring to the four roads that led away from the village

Ney, despite being verbally briefed the night before on the importance of Quatre-Bras, did not move to occupy the town overnight, nor did he have his army formed up and ready for assault early. The crossroads, remember, was the only good road between the Prussians and the British, and was held (contrary to Wellington’s orders!) only by two brigades of Dutch infantry. Instead, Ney lay inactive all morning, until he at last got orders from Napoleon, taking no initiative of his own. Six hours went by with no action. They would be fatal.



Dutch officers planning the defense of Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815

Only at noon did the multiple corps of the French shake out into columns and begin their assault on the village, which all morning had been defended by only two brigades. Wellington had belatedly realized the importance of Quatre-Bras and had spent hte morning rushing reinforcements to the hamlet - but they were hours away.

Shortly after two, Reille’s corps led the way into hte village, his guns opening up on the Dutch defenders in the cornfields and woods outside. Reille had fought the British before - a Peninsular War veteran, he was cautious about plunging his men ahead too rapidly, lest a previously-concealed line of redcoats suddenly rise from a low ridge and shred his columns with the most ferocious musketry in Europe. The tall corn provided excellent concealment and the general suspected Wellington had more force in hand than what he had shown thus far. Step by cautious step, the French probed forward, and by three pm, they had taken the outlying farms around the village. However, the Dutch bloodily resisted attempts to clear the Bossu Wood just south of town, and Prince Jerome Bonaparte (former King of Westphalia) brought up his division to clear the wood out.

The Dutch line shuddered under the pressure, cracked, and was on the verge of breaking - but just in time, thundering down the road from Nivelles came van Merlen’s brigade of cavalry, and tromping down the Brussels road was Sir Thomas Picton’s division, 8,000 strong. The numbers equalized, the line grew stable, and Ney had suffered his first check. The Prince of Orange even launched a counterattack - too soon, he was bloodily repulsed - but Picton’s division was filing in, and now the DUke of Brunswick’s division had arrived on the field.



Brunswickers at Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815

It was now that orders arrived from Napoleon (dictated that morning) impressing on Ney the vital need to take the crossroads. Spurred, the Marshal summoned d’Erlon’s corps from the reserve and flung his men in again. Picton’s ferocious musketry checked the latest assaults, but just a little more push would break through.

However, remember the ferocious fighting at Ligny - Napoleon had only just gotten word that Ney had somehow become embroiled in a murthering great battle at Quatre-Bras, and so the Emperor limited his request to merely d’Erlon’s corps. Recall his intention - to flank the Prussians and render Blucher’s army hors de combat, so he could then round on Wellington with all his strength. At this point, it was more important that he get the reinforcements than that Ney take the crossroads. So D’Erlon duly marched off towards Ligny - but through a mixup he moved not behind the Prussian flank but behind the French flank, where he would delay the attack of the Imperial Guard.



Battle of Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815

So, Ney, who was impatiently awaiting his reserves, suddenly learned that every man of them was marching away from his battlefield. The fiery Gascon lost his temper. Frustrated beyond belief, he vented on a staff officer: “Tell the Emperor what you have seen. I am opposed by the whole of Wellington’s army. I will hold on where I am; but, as d’Erlon has not arrived, I cannot promise any more.” Shortly afterwards, more British reinforcements arrived and launched more counterattacks on the French positions south of Quatre-Bras. Ney decided that, Emperor’s order or no, he had to have d’Erlon if he was even to hold his positions.



The Black Watch at bay, Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815

Ney’s order recalling d’Erlon back to Quatre-Bras arrived even as the general was moving into sight of Ligny. Had I Corps intervened at Ligny, Blucher’s flank would have been crushed and the Prussian army soundly beaten. Had I Corps intervened at Quatre-Bras, the British would have been tumbled out of the crossroads and driven into retreat a full day earlier than otherwise. Instead, d’Erlon turned his men about, no doubt thinking not his to reason why, and countermarched. I Corps spent all of 16 June marching back and forth between the two battlefields without intervening in either.



The 28th Regiment in square at Quatre Bras, 16 June 1815

By 5 pm, around the time d’Erlon was arriving at Ligny, Wellington got up more reinforcements, and at last outnumbered the French. In desperation, Ney flung in his only reserve, a single brigade of Kellerman’s cavalry. The charge, hell-for-leather from the beginning, actually swept aside and badly mauled some British regiments that failed to form line in time, and in fact, briefly overran the crossroads itself. However, Ney had nothing to follow the troopers up with, and a murderous fire of cannon and musket fire soon drove them back to French lines. By 6:30, the French were played out, and a massive British counterattack threw them back on all fronts. When fighting ended at nine pm, the lines were back where they had started at noon that day. The French lost some 4,000 men, the Allies about 5,000 (see how much smaller the scale of the fighting here was compared with Ligny, which had about 4x the combined casualties).

So the bloody day’s fighting ended in a draw, with the French still having the edge. Blucher was beaten and retreating, Wellington had held but was badly exposed in a forward position. It’s possible Napoleon could yet have mauled him on the 17th.

The most important decision in the Waterloo campaign, in the end, was made not in Wellington’s camp defending Quatre-Bras nor in Imperial Headquarters on the field at Ligny, but by Chief of Staff Gneisenau, amidst the wreckage of the retreating Prussian army. Gneisenau was not a happy man. The army was defeated and Marshal Blucher was missing, presumed dead. Gneisenau had assumed command, but he was not a field commander. He was a staff officer, part of the nascent Prussian General Staff that would one day revolutionize warfare. His instinct was to retreat to Liege - Wellington had clearly offered no support at Ligny, despite his promise, and to rely on the unreliable British would be to court the doom of his army. However, the Prussians had already fled past the shortest road to Liege. So, Gneisenau decided to continue the retreat to the north for another day or so. Squinting at poor maps in flickering candlelight, the staff officers threw out possible rendezvous points, but each town was shot down as hard to find - until Wavre was mentioned. Everyone could spot Wavre and so it was arbitrarily set as the Prussian rendezvous point.

Blucher rolled into camp a few hours later, near dawn on the 17th. Blucher talked things over with Gneisenau, approving the choice of Wavre, but categorically rejecting a retreat to the east past that point. The honor of Prussia demanded that they support Wellington. They would find away come hell or high water to get their men to the aid of the British if and when Napoleon attacked them.

Napoleon, still sick and tired, arose late on the morning of the 17th (6 am). Early cavalry scouts indicated that the Prussians were fleeing down the road towards Namur, and that, surprisingly, Wellington still held Quatre-Bras. Napoleon could either pursue Blucher with his whole army, leaving Ney to hold Wellington, detach Grouchy with a weak force ot harry the Prussians and fall on Wellington with everything else, or send Grouchy with his main strength (30,000 men) to fight Blucher while the remainder of the army (70,000) hit Wellington. Napoleon opted for the third course.

But it was not until 11 am that Napoleon belatedly ordered Ney to attack Wellington and fix him in place at Quatre-Bras. Once again an entire morning ahd been wasted in idleness. The British had not wasted the time - Wellington learned early that morning that Blucher had been thrashed at Ligny, and was retreating upon Wavre. The British must retreat, too, and at once. A message was fired off to Blucher - Wellington would stand and fight at Mont-St.-Jean if Blucher could promise the aid of two corps. Then the British began to abandon Quatre-Bras and go up the Brussels road. Meanwhile, Ney (not having received orders from the Emperor) sent his men to lunch.

It was not until 2 pm that Napoleon came spurring up to the crossroads town, finding all quiet. He furiously ordered d’Erlon to take the cavalry and pursue the escaping English, but fate intervened. Another summer rainstorm like the day before opened up on the French, and soaked the roads. The pursuit straggled through the mud and elements, but the British were gone. They had passed a low ridge at Mont-St.-Jean and were setting up defensive positions on the far side. Napoleon and his cavalry escort, at the head of the whole army, reached a small in, La Belle Alliance, and set up headquarters. The army was summoned up to join him and take positions to attack Wellington in the morning. Sodden and miserable, the soldiers of both sides flung themselves into an exhausted sleep.



Movement of the armies on 17-18 June, 1815 - to Waterloo

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Historian’s Corner: June 18, 1815 - The Battle of Waterloo



For one of the most famous battles in world history - perhaps the most famous battle? - the field at Waterloo is surprisingly small. There are two small ridges - to the north, Mont St. Jean, to the south, La Belle Alliance - separated by about 1,500 yards, less than a mile. From Hougoumont in the west to the little village of Papelotte in the east it’s less than 5,000 yards, or three miles. On the morning of 18 June, 1815, more than 140,000 men were packed into these three square miles, with more than 400 guns and tens of thousands of horses, wagons, caissons, and the other impedimenta of a great nineteenth century army. The battlefield is divided in half by the Brussels-Charleroi road, which runs from La Belle Alliance straight across the valley, past the little chateau of La Haye Saint, and over the ridge.



Deployment at Waterloo, 18 June 1815

Napoleon had massed I and II Corps to either side of the Brussels road. d’Erlon’s I Corps was comparatively fresh apart from some hard marching on 16 June, while Reille’s II Corps had been a bit roughed up at Quatre-Bras but nothing major. Behind these frontline formations with their 7 divisions he massed his cavalry, the Guard, and VI Corps under Lobau. 50,000 infantry, 15,000 cavalry, and over 7,000 gunners serving 250 guns - about 72,000 men in total. Not a patch on the great armies he’d commanded in Russia or Germany, but about the same force he had on the field at Austerlitz ten years before. In quality, of course, these were old veterans or young conscripts, without the years of experience and training that had made the Grande Armee of 1805 so formidable.

Wellington, meanwhile, was counting on Blucher marching to his aid. The Iron Duke placed most of his strength on his right flank, trusting the Prussians to aid his left before the day was out. Most of the Anglo-Dutch army was massed behind the ridgeline, out of sight of Napoleon from his position near La Belle Alliance. The Prince of Orange led the British First Corps in the center. East of the highway was General Picton’s division and 2 more brigades of the 6th Division, while the left was held by Saxe-Weimar’s division. Lord Uxbridge led the cavalry reserve behind the right-center. On the south side of the ridge, Wellington garrisoned a few key strongpoints to his front to break up the French attacks. Nassau and Hanoverian troops held the fortified chateau of Hougoumont on the right. The King’s German Legion held La Haye Sainte in front of hte center. And on the left, the village of Papelotte was garrisoned by further detachments. In all, Wellington had 50,000 infantry, 12,000 horse, and 6,000 gunners with 150 cannon - about 68,000 men.




The battle of Waterloo is traditionally broken into 5 distinct phases or episodes, somewhat overlapping with each other, which I shall follow in the interest of simplicity. I have nothing new to add to this battle, after all, just a summary for people wanting context for AGEOD (that’s how this whole mess started back in November, recall). So, the battle of Waterloo:

1. The French attack upon Hougoumont, lasting all day
   
2. d’Erlon’s infantry assault on the British center
   
3. Ney’s massed cavalry charges on the center
   
4. The fall of La Haye Sainte and the arrival of the Prussians
   
5. The final assault of the Imperial Guard
   

Napoleon lost the battle before it even began, with his first decision of the day. The heavy rains of the preceding days had soaked the ground, making it impossible to maneuver his mass of cannon. Since this was really his only advantage over Wellington’s army, as a glance at the strengths above will show, the Emperor decided to wait for the sun to dry the ground somewhat, which would let him form his favored mass battery tactic and blast a hole in Wellington’s center. Had the French attacked a few hours earlier, it is entirely possible that they would have broken the Anglo-Dutch army  before Blucher arrived. As it was, the French gave the allies just enough time. But Napoleon was not expecting Blucher. The Prussians would retreat east, not north, and they would not be in position to join the British for days at least - especially not with Grouchy’s sword in their backs! “We have ninety chances in our favor, and ten against us!” So the Emperor calculated, and so the battle was lost, and the empire with it.

Napoleon’s plan for the battle was simple - Wellington would be cracked like an egg with a series of sledgehammer frontal attacks:

Directly the army has formed up, and soon after 1 pm the Emperor will give the order to Marshal Ney and the attack will be delivered on Mont-St.-Jean village in order to seize the crossroads at that place. To this end the 12-pounder batteries of the IInd and the VIth Corps will mass with that of the Ist Corps. These 24 guns will bombard the troops holding Mont-St.-Jean, and Count d’Erlon will begin the attack by first launching the left division, and, when necessary, supporting it by other divisions of the Ist Corps.

The IInd Corps will also advance, keeping abreast of the Ist Corps.

The company of engineers belonging to the Ist Corps hold themselves in readiness to barricade and fortify Mont-St.-Jean directly it is taken.

Historians like David Chandler suggest that Napoleon, possible due to his illness and his exhaustion, left the tactical conduct of the battle to Marshal Ney, which explains the lack of sophistication in the French tactics and the unusually disjointed attacks. It’s possible - Napoleon, like at Borodino, was unusually disengaged from this battle, making almost no decisions once the actual cannons started booming.

Meanwhile, Blucher was whipping his men into action and getting two corps onto the road towards Mont-St.-Jean by 11 in the morning. Gneisenau protested - had not Wellington failed to support them at Ligny? If they marched to the British aid and the unreliable redcoats had already retreated, the entire Prussian army might be destroyed. The risk was too great, and the army should remain concentrated to defend against Grouchy and retreat to the east. But Blucher was adamant: he had given his word to Wellington, and he would not break it.

All morning, Marshal Vorwarts! road back and forth along the lines of marching Prussian troopers. “Lads, you must hurry! Hurry, boys - I have promised Wellington! You will not let me break my word?” Morale was high and the Prussian soldiers, many in their first campaign, cheered their hero as he rode along. Gneisenau was left at Wavre with 2 corps to fend off Grouchy while the old marshal rode off to aid his ally at all costs. Blucher saved the campaign.

For his part, Grouchy lost it. He was the newest marshal in the French army, minted after Napoleon had ridden in triumph into Paris back in March, and all his experience was leading (quite ably) cavalry formations in the various victorious campaigns. He was not experienced in independent command. He had been sluggish and laggardly pursuing the Prussians on the 17th, and slow in notifying Napoleon that they were gathering at Wavre instead of Namur or points east. Then, when the sound of cannon erupted off to the west, he rigidly insisted on sticking to the absolute letter of his orders and pursuing dead ahead north, instead of marching to the sound of the guns and reinforcing Napoleon just when the Prussians arrived. And so Grouchy lost the battle.



Nassau troops at Hougoumont

The battle opened at Hougoumont around the same time Blucher took to the roads, about 11 am. Jerome Bonaparte, former prince of Westphalia, who had NOT distinguished himself in the Russian campaign, had via the joys of nepotism secured a divisional command in his brother’s army, part of II Corps. He was tasked iwth launching a diversionary assault on the chateau to draw in British reserves and weaken their center for the main assault. But the Nassau and Hanover troopers resisted so stubbornly from the chateau’s thick walls and barred gates that Jerome flung in his entire division, 4 regiments, into a series of frontal escalades with ladders. Time and again the French were hurled back from the walls, and time and again they came on once more. Jerome summoned Foy’s division to reinforce him and take the objective at all costs, quite losing his head and forgetting the entire purpose of his attack. And it wasn’t enough. Hougoumont, which ought to have been blasted to pieces by massed artillery, instead survived as a bastion amidst a sea of French infantry, and most of Reille’s corps was drawn into the struggle. Thus, the opening diversion backfired on Napoleon.

In the center, a grand battery of 84 guns had been amassed and was pounding Wellington’s center. However, remember most of the British army was out of sight, deployed as was Wellington’s custom in Spain on the further side of the ridge, mostly in cover and out of danger. The wet ground absorbed cannon shots nicely, and so for all the sound and fury the grand bombardment really signified very little. Nevertheless, by one pm Napoleon considered the British sufficiently battered to sending a warning order to d’Erlon to prepare to advance - when suddenly troops were spotted advancing from the east. Could it be Grouchy, come to join the sound of the guns?

Soon enough, an officer captured by French vedettes revealed the truth: 30,000 Prussians were marching on the army’s vulnerable right flank. Napoleon turned to Soult: “This morning we had ninety chances in our favor. Even now we have sixty chances, and only forty against us.” He fired off a message to Grouchy urging him to lose not a moment in joining the main army, as the Prussians were in view and about to attack his right flank. Of course, this message didn’t reach Grouchy until five pm, when it was far too late. Meanwhile, the Emperor moved some cavalry reserves and his reserve VI Corps to guard the right flank - about 10,000 infantry with some cavalry to oppose Blucher’s 30,000 marching onto the field.

While this was going on, the struggle for Hougoumont was still raging, and Wellington reinforced the chateau with a brigade of the Coldstream Guards, and all the while the grand battery was booming in the center. d’Erlon finally put in his attack at about 1:30, flinging his four divisions across the valley and up the far ridge of Mont-St.-Jean to politely but firmly explain to the British just how things stood. However, I need to explain a bit of grand tactics, which I have tried to avoid as needlessly complicated so far: d’Erlon advanced in an extremely outdated tactical formation, a column of battalions.

Now, the line vs. column debate is well-known amongst Napoleonic nerds. The basic tactical unit of the era is a battalion - about 500 - 1000 men, divided into companies for administrative purposes but all marching and fighting together. The battalion’s companies can be formed in a few ways, but the basic question is whether to string all your troops out in a long thin line or mass them in a heavy column. The long thin line (a thin red line, if you will) maximizes your firepower, as every man in the battalion can bring his musket to bear on the enemy. However, lines are difficult to move - try and advance at all, or god forbid change direction, and the entire thing will fall to pieces unless you move extremely slowly with very precisely drilled soldiers (Frederick the Great’s Prussians were good at this). Easier to maneuver is a column - pack the men a bit more densely and you give up a small amount of firepower but gain massively in mobility and tactical flexbility.

Now, don’t get it wrong - a battalion in column of assault or column of divisions is not a marching column. Don’t picture four poor bastards up in front with a long snake of troops behind them charging into enemy fire. A column is still quite a bit wider than it is deep. A column of attack, for example, might form the 8 companies of a battalion into a 2 x 4 formation - that is, 2 companies in front, each leading 3 companies behind it. But the company itself will have its 120 men divided into 3 ranks of 40 men each. So, a 4x2 battalion column of attack will actually have 80 men in the front line, 12 ranks deep. Something like this:



Now, typically an attack would be delivered in “mixed order,” in which the division would attempt to gain all the advantages of each formation. A few companies would be thrown out in front as skirmishers to screen the main lines and keep back enemy skirmishers. The front of the regiment would see a battalion deployed in line, to offer its firepower. Behind this, to offer mass and flexibility, would be two more battalions each deployed in column of companies, like so:




But d’Erlon’s divisions were formed into single-battalion frontages, a truly massive column. Instead of spreading his battalions out in line, d’Erlon’s division each marched with one battalion in front and the rest stacked up behind, forming a mass about 200 men across and something like 24 - 27 ranks deep. As you can imagine, a single cannon shot hitting the front of that mass will plow through all 20-odd ranks and instead of killing only 2 or 3 men will mow down dozens. The British artillery fire on d’Erlon’s massive unwieldly assault force was magnified many times over by the strange choice of formation.



D’Erlon’s corps attacks the center. Note the enormous French divisions.

One captain wrote,

The Third [Division], to which my regiment belonged, had to advance like the others in deployed battalions, with only four paces between one and the next - a strange formation and one which cost us dear, since we were unable to form square against cavalry attacks, while the enemy’s artillery shot could plough through our formations to a depth of twenty ranks.”

Further, although artillery was used to soften up the enemy, no cavalry accompanied the main attack. French doctrine dictated combined-arms warfare - the presence of cavalry required enemy battalions to form square, or else the horsemen could easily saber a long-extended line, and an entire force would be massacred in minutes. But forming square necessarily reduced your firepower to ¼ of its usual amount, disadvantaging you in an infantry firefight - so cavalry was able to ease the task of the infantry. But d’Erlon did not do this, and the British met his charge with fully dressed lines that blasted in the face of his columns with furious musketry.




On the left of the attack, one French division stormed ahead as far as La Haye Sainte, where the fierce fire from its walls checked their progress. East of that, the central two divisions of the corps shattered the British defenders on the front face of the ridge and swept over the top, and on the right flank Papelotte was cleared of its defenders by d’Erlon’s last division. But now Picton’s division, 4,000 strong, came up to the ridge, and though General Picton himself fell in this engagement, the disciplined British volleys broke d’Erlon’s corps and soon the French were scrambling back down the south face of the ridge into the valley.



Scotland Forever! Elizabeth Thompson’s famous painting of the charge of the Union Brigade.

Now Lord Uxbridge could contain himself and the British cavalry no longer. Thundering forward, Wellington’s cavalry reserve swept down on the fleeing French soldiers, sabering right and left. Over 3,000 were forced to surrender, 2 regimental eagles, were captured, and ⅔ of d’Erlon’s corps was completely shattered. The British charge carried them right across the valley and into Napoleon’s grand battery, sabering the gunners. Napoleon coolly launched his own cavalry reserves into the blown troopers at this point, and the weary and disordered British had no chance. Right back down into the valley they were tumbled, losing thousands of their own in return, and the Union Brigade effectively ceased to exist. It was about 3 pm, and a lull settled momentarily over the smoky ridge of Mont-St.-Jean (except Hougoumont, where Jerome continued his mindless assaults). Wellington reformed his lines, secured the areas that d’Erlon had temporarily overrun, and prayed for Blucher or night.

Now began phase three. Napoleon ordered Ney to seize La Haye Sainte at all costs. With only a few brigades of d’Erlon’s corps available now (Reille was by now fully engaged at Hougoumont and Lobau with the Prussians), this attack was predictably repulsed, BUT amidst the chaos a few support troops behind Wellington’s lines panicked and fled for the rear. Whilst atop the crest, Ney saw this, and concluded that the British were crumbling. To be fair to the Marshal, there is a lot of debate whether what followed was intentional on his part or an accident caused by overzealous French cavalry, but what is known is this:

Ney ordered at least one cuirassier brigade to convert the retreat into a full-scale rout. Then the rest of the cuirassier division followed, then the entire cavalry corps, followed by the light horse corps, too. By 4:00 fully 4,000 French cavalry were pounding up the slope towards Mont-St.-Jean and the British army still hidden behind the crest. The French horsemen had no idea what they were riding into - a retreating army, perhaps, and victory? Instead, with no French batteries or artillery to worry about, they found the BRitish infantry formed into 20 squares, ready and waiting.



Ney (famous for his red hair) leads the French cavalry forwards at Waterloo.

British gunners manned their pieces until the very last instant, then raced for the squares and dove beneath the protective hedge of bayonets as the cuirassiers vented their fury. The French cavalry lapped around the squares like the sea around remote islands, one of the last great cavalry charges of history. An ensign of the Foot Guards recalled:

Not a man present who survived could have forgotten in after life the awful grandeur of that charge. You perceived at a distance what appeared to be an overwhelming, long moving line, which, ever advancing, glittered like a stormy wave of the sea when it catches the sunlight. On came the mounted host until they got near enough, while the very earth seemed to vibrate beneath their thundering tramp. One might have supposed that nothing could have resisted the shock of this terrible moving mass. They were the famous cuirassiers, almost all old soldiers who had distinguished themselves on most of the battlefields of Europe. In an almost incredibly short period they were within 20 yards of us, shouting “Vive l’Empereur!” The word of command, “Prepare to receive cavalry!,” had been given, every man in the front rank knelt, and a wall bristling with steel, held together by steady hands, presented itself to the infuriated cuirassiers.

For over an hour the French cuirassiers galloped around the squares (arrayed corner to corner, not face to face so that all men could fire their muskets without fear of hitting the neighboring square). Corpses strewed the top of the ridge, as Napoleon’s horse refused to accept defeat but came on, was driven back by fire and steel, and reformed and came up again. Wellington was everywhere, encouraging the men, sheltering inside a square whenever danger came close, usually at the point of maximum crisis, and the British line held.



A British square battles French cuirassiers at Waterloo

At the same time (while Napoleon was furiously denouncing Ney for making the same mistakes as he had at Jena, nine years before), Lobau’s VI Corps charged Blucher’s oncoming Prussians outside Plancenoit. Outnumbered three to one, there was only one way that could end, and the French were gradually driven back through the village, step by step. Soon the Charleroi road was itself under fire from the PRussians, and the Emperor sent in his Young Guard division to retake the village.

All the while the struggle for Hougoumont raged. The French would now and again burst into the courtyard, only to be hurled out again and the survivors bayoneted, while a lively fire blazed from the walls at the encircling bluecoat infantry. The last French cavalry reserves were flung into the ongoing brawl in the center to try and extricate Ney - a second massed cavalry charge, now more than 10,000 horsemen thundering around the British squares. This one had a small battery of horse artillery and the canister wrought fearful havoc on the helpless British infantry. But though shaken, and though all of their reserves were expended, the squares held, and the French reeled back down the slope in bloody ruin by six in the evening.




Phase four. By now, Ney was belatedly realizing that the bastion of La Haye Sainte in the center was breaking up and ruining all his attacks, and so now the full fury of the Bravest of the Brave was directed on this little farm. Cannons rolled up, infantry stormed forward, cavalry hovered outside, and at last the chateau fell. Only a few survivors of the King’s German Legion got out and made it up the ridge to the main line, and the French occupied the site with batteries and began blasting Wellington’s center at close range. d’Erlon had reformed some of I Corps by now and a fresh French assault loomed. The British center wavered, was on the verge of cracking under the enormous pressure of the guns and the cavalry and now the forming infantry. Ney sent to Napoleon for fresh troops to complete the victory.



Fall of La Haye Sainte

“Some troops! Where do you expect me to get them from? Do you want me to make some!?” Napoleon demanded. As he had at Borodino, Napoleon refused to commit the Guard, his last reserves. He didn’t know how shaken Wellington really was, over there behind the ridge - hadn’t Ney fucked up badly already today? And over to the east, the Bluchers’ Prussians had stormed through Plancenoit again and routed the Young Guard. Napoleon needed to stop Blucher taking the Charleroi road at all costs, or the entire army would be destroyed. The crisis passed, and Wellington survived - thanks to Blucher.



Prussians storm Plancenoit

It was a near-run thing, though. Wellington’s center had been practically annihilated by the fall of La Haye Sainte - the French guns were literally blasting huge holes in his line and two brigades had been effectively wiped out. Wellington placed his own person at the head of his last brigades of Brunswickers and plugged the hole. But he was fast summoning troops from his right to reinforce the center, and a second Prussian corps was now making contact with his left, only just in time after many false starts through the afternoon.



Napoleon leads the Guard forward at Waterloo

At seven pm, the final phase of Waterloo began. Napoleon’s Guard momentarily drove Blucher’s Prussians away from the Charleroi road, and now nine battalions had returned to the reserve - enough for the Emperor to try one last gamble. Napoleon himself rode at their head across the valley to the base of the Mont-St.-Jean ridge, and handed over command to Ney. Messengers rode up and down the lines, waving their hats and shouted, “Voila Grouchy! Grouchy has arrived!” (He hadn’t, but who gives a damn about the lie? If the French won, it wouldn’t matter, and if they lost, well, it also wouldn’t matter). A thousand voices took up the shout, “Voila Grouchy! Voila Grouchy!”, officers bellowed, “En avant!” and the Guard made its last charge.

The big drums beat the pas de charge for the final time, the Old Guard - which had never yet been beaten on the battlefield, not in Russia, not at Leipzig, not in France - tromped in their enormous bearskin hats up the slope, and the last blow was delivered at Wellington. They passed up the slope, through the billowing clouds of gunsmoke and past the burning chateau of Hougoumont (which was still defiantly rimmed in musket fire), and over the top of the ridge.

As if by magic, an entire line of redcoats suddenly materialized in front of the Guard. The British soldiers had been lying down, sheltered from the storm of French fire. From only twenty yards, Wellington’s voice rang out, “Up Guards! Ready!” The British Guards poured a devastating fire into the head of the Imperial Guard column. On the flank, a British regiment wheeled parallel to the mighty Guard column and added its fire, too. Men fell like grain in front of the reaper from the Guard’s ranks, and for a moment, just a moment, they wavered, and the advance stalled. Then, roaring, the British infantry came on with the bayonet. The melee that followed was bloody, and brief - and the Imperial Guard was recoiling backwards.

“La Garde recule!”

The sight of the Guardsmen scrambling back over the crest of the ridge and fleeing down the slope stunned the French army, troops staring aghast from all around that enormous amphiteater. Suddenly the French soldiers began to realize that they…might not win this battle. To the west, Hougoumont blazed with fire and smoke, but still checked the waves of Jerome’s infantry. To the east, Zeiten’s Prussian corps cleared Papelotte and drove d’Erlon’s remnants from Wellington’s left flank. At Plancenoit, Blucher led a new Prussian attack that broke out of the village and began to race for the Charleroi road. At this instant, Wellington sensed the moment, and, waving his hat, put the 40,000 surviving infantry of the Allied army into motion. All along the slope, after the hard day’s pounding, the British and Dutch soldiers swept forwards. They charged down the ridge, cheering as they came, and the tired soldiers of l’Armee du Nord began to take one step backwards, then another. Finally, the morale snapped. “Sauve qui peut!” and abruptly, the army dissolved into one mass fleeing backwards. Unit after unit collapsed into a horde of fugitives, and Napoleon’s army and his empire came crashing down to pieces.



The end at Waterloo

Napoleon tried to rally and stem the route, flinging three final battalions of the Guard into the path of the allied tidal wave to try and buy some time. Summoned to surrender, the Guardsmen simply responded, “Merde!” and made their last stand. On the right, the Young Guard clung the burning remnants of Plancenoit until 9, just long enough for the fugitives of the army to make good their escape down the highway. Napoleon lingered in one of the squares for a while, then reluctantly joined his army in the rout.



“Merde!”

Blucher and Wellington shook hands at La Belle Alliance at about nine, once the Young Guard too had collapsed, and the relatively fresher Prussians (led by old Marshal Vorwarts!) took up the pursuit. They had lost about 15,000 men from the Anglo-Dutch army and a further 7,000 Prussians. The French lost 25,000 men on the day of, and 16,000 more during the pursuit.

They were not the last men to fall in the Napoleonic Wars - there were skirmishes and battles after Waterloo. Wellington and Blucher pursued Napoleon to the gates of Paris, weakened by detachments to numerical parity with the garrison of the city. Blucher was actually repulsed in his first attack on the city by Davout - who accordingly maintained his undefeated record in battle - while Schwarzenberg suffered some bloody checks as he came over the Rhine, and there were even French victories in the south and in Italy. But the French people were done with their Emperor, done with bleeding and dying, done with war for a generation. By June 21 the Chambers in Paris had declared Napoleon deposed. On the 22nd, Bonaparte abdicated for the last time. By the middle of July, he was bound for St. Helena. He would not escape again.

The Wars of Napoleon were over.