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Great Events from History: The 19th Century

Great Events from History: The 19th Century
June 18, 1815: Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo ended Napoleon's bid to regain his throne and led to his permanent exile.

Locale: Waterloo, Belgium
Category: Wars, uprisings, and civil unrest

Key Figures
Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742-1819), commander of the Prussian
     forces
Napoleon I (Napoleon Bonaparte; 1769-1821), emperor of France,
     1804-1814, 1815
Emmanuel de Grouchy (1766-1847), commander of detached wing of
     French army
Michel Ney (1769-1815), Napoleon's field commander at Waterloo
Duke of Wellington (Arthur Wesley or Wellesley; 1769-1852), commander of
     the Anglo-allied forces at Waterloo

Summary of Event
On March 1, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to France from the island of Elba, where he had been exiled by the victorious allies. Napoleon believed correctly that the French people, especially the army, despised the restored Bourbon monarchy. Upon his landing, he was universally hailed, and thousands of troops rallied to their long-victorious standards--the imperial eagles. Even Marshal Michel Ney, who had sworn he would return with Napoleon "in an iron cage, " fell under the charismatic power of his former commander and deserted the Bourbon cause.

Napoleon also hoped that emerging differences between the allies--Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia--would prevent them from responding effectively to his return. There was some reason for this, since Austria, Russia, and Prussia had come close to war over the issue of controlling Poland, while Britain adopted a generally aloof and unhelpful role. The issue of Poland had been resolved, however, and so great was their mutual hatred and fear of the French emperor that the allies were determined on his destruction. By the time Napoleon entered Paris in triumph on March 20, the allies had already begun to assemble their response: An Austrian army of two hundred thousand was being prepared to invade France, with a Russian force of 150, 000 to follow later during the summer. To the north, an Anglo-allied army under Arthur Wellesley, the duke of Wellington, was forming in the Low Countries, supported to the east by a Prussian force commanded by General Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Once the four allied armies were ready, they would launch a coordinated attack on Napoleon, pushing him into Paris. There, he could be reduced by siege, thus denying him a chance to outwit his opponents on the battlefield, as he had so often done in the past.

Napoleon's options were to adopt a delaying strategy, holding off the allies until they agreed to a negotiated peace, or taking the initiative. Typically, he chose the more active course. His decision was to strike first against the Prussians and Anglo-allied forces in Belgium, defeating them before they could unite and forcing each to retreat to its base of operations--Wellington to the Channel ports, Blücher to the Rhineland. The destruction or even the disruption of these two armies would make the north secure, so Napoleon could swing to the south and east and face the Austro-Russian threat. Still married to the daughter of the Austrian emperor, Napoleon hoped the Habsburgs might be disposed to a peace treaty that would allow him to retain his throne.

Quickly raising an army of some one hundred thousand, Napoleon moved his forces skillfully and secretly to the Franco-Belgian frontier. While the allies remained unaware of Napoleon's location, he crossed the Sambre River on June 16 to a position that threatened both Wellington's and Blücher's forces. A detachment under Marshal Ney struck at the British forces in position around the village of Quatre Bras, while French troops led by Marshal Emmanuel De Grouchy fell on the Prussians at Ligny. Ney's attack on Wellington was inconclusive, but the British withdrew during the night to take up defensive positions near the village of Waterloo. The French defeated Blücher's troops and, although reinforcements requested from Ney were recalled before they could rout the Prussians, Napoleon believed Blücher would continue retreating eastward and was therefore no immediate threat. As a result, he promptly turned to crush the Anglo-allied force, leaving part of his army under Grouchy to contain any Prussian countermarch.

The bulk of Wellington's army was not made up of British soldiers, but was composed of German, Dutch, and Belgian units, many of them suspected by Wellington as being unreliable and perhaps pro-French. Wellington's doubts were reflected in his disposition of his forces in taking up a defensive position on the road to Brussels: The weaker allied units were stationed on the flanks where presumably they could do little harm, while the more reliable continental troops, such as the King's German Legion, were placed among the more steady British forces. The British right flank was anchored by a strong point, the Château de Hougoumont, and the left flank by a cluster of farmhouses and cottages. Napoleon's forces were drawn up across from Wellington's army. Becoming aware that Blücher had not continued his retreat and therefore was a threat, Napoleon decided against a battle of maneuver and instead opted for direct, forceful frontal attack to break Wellington's composite army.

The battle opened just before midday on June 18, with a French advance against Hougoumont to deprive the British of that stronghold. This engagement quickly degenerated into a vicious, hand-to-hand exchange, which lasted throughout the rest of the battle without materially affecting it. Meanwhile, Napoleon ordered an intensive bombardment of Wellington's center by a "grand battery" of some eighty cannon. This cannonade, designed to break the morale of the allied troops, was followed by an infantry attack under General Comte d'Erlon, which bent but failed to breach the allied line. Marshal Ney, mistakenly believing the allies about to break, ordered a series of cavalry charges; the British troops quickly formed squares and repulsed the cavalry with considerable losses for the French. A countercharge by the British cavalry extended too deeply into the French lines, and the British horsemen in turn experienced heavy casualties.

As the afternoon wore on, however, two events brought the battle to a crisis point. In the center, the French captured the strong points of Le Haye Saint, a collection of buildings and its nearby sandpit. This development placed the already-battered center of Wellington's line in great danger. On the right of the French line, Blücher's Prussians, who had not been contained by Grouchy's troops, began to drive in Napoleon's flank. Grouchy himself and the forces under his command remained out of contact with Napoleon and never appeared on the battlefield, even though Grouchy was desperately urged by his officers to "march towards the sound of the guns."

Now desperate to force a conclusion, and believing that the British center must at last be weakened to the point of collapse, Napoleon gambled on one last move. Around seven o'clock, Napoleon committed his last, and probably his best troops, the Imperial Guard, to a frontal attack against Wellington's right center. Having carefully held his reserves intact throughout the day, Wellington was able to reinforce the point of impact with relatively fresh and solid units. Concentrated and deadly British volley fire caught the soldiers of the Imperial Guard on their front and flanks, breaking their charge. When the Imperial Guard turned in retreat, Wellington sensed the tide of battle had turned irreversibly. He ordered a general advance of the entire Anglo-allied line. At the same time, the Prussians broke through Napoleon's right flank, and the French army collapsed.

During the ten-hour battle, the French lost some twenty-five thousand killed and wounded, with nine thousand captured. Wellington's army had approximately fifteen thousand in casualties, while Blücher's Prussians, coming late but decisively to the field, suffered about eight thousand casualties.

Significance
defeat at Waterloo was the end for Napoleon and his dream of empire. He attempted to raise a second army, but his Marshals refused to support him and his enemies in Paris conspired against him. Abdicating for a second time on June 21, and fearing revenge from the other allies, he surrendered to the British, who exiled him--more successfully this time--to the distant south Atlantic island of St. Helena.

Michael Witkoski

Further Reading
Corrigan, Gordon. Wellington: A Military Life. London: Hambledon and London, 2001. Corrigan, a former soldier, examines Wellington's claims to military greatness, concluding he was the first modern general.

Gneisenau, August Wilhelm Anton, Graf Neidhardt von. The Life and Campaigns of Field Marshal Prince Blücher of Whalstaff: From the Period of His Birth and First Appointment in the Prussian Service Down to His Second Entry into Paris in 1815. Translated by General Count Gneisenau and J. E. Marston. London: Constable, 1996. A reprint of a biography written by Gneisenau, Blücher's chief of staff.

Hamilton-Williams, David. Waterloo: New Perspectives. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1993. Uses archival and documentary evidence, much of it French and Prussian, to argue that Dutch, Belgian, and German forces have had their contributions eclipsed by a focus on the British army's role.

Howarth, David. Waterloo: Day of Battle. New York: Atheneum, 1968. A rapid moving overview of the battle that draws heavily on records and narratives of actual participants.

Keegan, John. The Face of Battle. New York: Viking Press, 1976. A classic study of warfare that gives a masterful presentation of the battle. Especially good for giving a view of the battle as it must have appeared to participants.

Schom, Alan. One Hundred Days: Napoleon's Road to Waterloo. New York: Atheneum, 1992. Concentrates on Napoleon's return and the campaign prior to the battle, outlining the goals and strategy of his campaign against Wellington and Blücher.

Uffindell, Andrew. The Eagle's Last Triumph: Napoleon's Victory at Ligny, June 1815. London: Greenhill Books, 1994. A military history of the battle at Ligny.

Weller, Jac. Wellington at Waterloo. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1967. Weller presents a novel study by restricting himself to what Wellington would have known at any given moment of the battle.

See Also
Nov., 1815: Second Peace of Paris; Feb. 23, 1820: Cato Street Conspiracy; Oct.-Dec., 1830: Delacroix Paints Liberty Leading the People.

Related articles in Great Lives from History: The Nineteenth Century, 1801-1900: Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher; Napoleon I; Michel Ney; Duke of Wellington.