Battle of Waterloo.
The battlefield is a short, ten miles drive south from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium,; through bucolic country which reminded this Blogger of the Amish country in Pennsylvania.
The field itself is dominated by this Mayan pyramid of a monument, with a British Lion at its apex.
On this field, on June 18, 1815, 200,000 men met in mortal combat. It is a small field for a massive battle, merely five square miles.
It was the bloodiest battle on European soil since the Romans had slaughtered the Gauls,and Hannibal had slaughtered the Romans at Cannae. It was bloodier than Agincourt or Borodino.
It was the bloodiest battle on European soil until those moronic battles of World War I, when demented Generals hurled their troops at machine guns; in the hope that the machine guns would run out of bullets.
The battle was the culmination of the Second Hundred Years War between England and France, started under the French Bourbon king Louis XIV in 1688, when he opposed the Protestant love duo, William and Mary.
The Battle of Waterloo was also the culmination of the Hundred Days.
By the time of Waterloo, Napoleon had been fighting Great Britain for twenty years, with a short break for peace; during that break he had sold the Louisiana Purchase to the United States, and attempted to re-conquer Haiti from rebellious black slaves( he lost an entire army trying to do that).
In June, 1812, Napoleon had invaded Russia with 600,000 men, the Grand Armee; after his defeat, he limped home with 27,000 men fit for duty.
After that defeat, Russia, Great Britain, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, and some German states formed the Sixth Coalition; they offered peace to Napoleon. He could remain Emperor of France, if France withdrew to its pre-French Revolution borders. Napoleon rejected the deal.
Rejected, the Sixth Coalition defeated him in battle,”The Battle of the Nations” forcing him to abdicate after Russian troops enveloped Paris.
Napoleon was named Emperor of Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean.
The victorious allies named Louis XVIII, King of France. Louis XVIII was the obese brother of the decapitated by revolutionaries, Louis XVI, and the uncle of the missing, disappeared unto apparent death, Louis XVII, son of the 16th Louis. (However some sources said the boy King escaped to America and lived as bird watcher, James Audubon).
Louis XVIII was obese, had gout, was sterile, perhaps impotent;he enjoyed inhaling snuff from the breasts of his mistress, Zoe Talon.
Napoleon, sitting in Elba had a son, the King of Rome, whose mother, a Princess from the Austrian House of Hapsburg, had been raped by the Corsican at their first meeting; Napoleon decided that France needed a rapist Emperor more than an impotent King, so he came back from exile landing near where they currently hold the Cannes Film Festival on March 1, 1815.
Louis XVIII sent the brave Marshal Ney, the “Bravest of the brave”, a Napoleonic grandee to arrest Napoleon. Ney promised to bring Napoleon back to Paris in a cage.
That did not happen; when Ney met Napoleon, he switched sides.
Louis fled; Napoleon raised another army, of 200,000 men and the Allies sent the Duke of Wellington with an Anglo-Dutch force, and Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher to bring Napoleon to heel.
Napoleon lunged into Belgium, to defeat the two armies separately before they could join and defeat him.
NAPOLEON Emperor of France-
The Emperor was a very adept rapist, but this Blogger considers him an over-rated General. He was sensational when his opponents were armies led by inbred Princes, Archdukes or Heirs. He was the lower class bully from Corsica beating up on the effete upper classes. But when his enemies started to promote based on merit; when meritocracy took over, the Russians under Kutuzov, the British under Wellington, he was toast.
Field Marshal Gebhard von BLüCHER of Prussia-
The Prussian Field Marshal was ancient for his time, 73 years old at the time of Waterloo. A protégé of Frederick the Great, he felt that Napoleon had humiliated Prussia after a Napoleonic victory, and he hated Napoleon, and France. He had ancient values, his word was his bond; he gave Wellington absolute loyalty; if Wellington was in trouble, he would come to his aid. He gave his word.
His orders to his soldier were very specific; he told them that he would shoot any Prussian soldier who showed mercy to the French.
The Duke of WELLINGTON of Great Britain-
The finest soldier of the Napoleonic Era; an English General greater than Marlborough or Henry V or the Black Prince, almost as great as the best of the English generals, Oliver Cromwell.
What Lord Horatio Nelson was to the British Navy, Wellington was to the British Army. (Wellington’s relationship with Nelson was interesting. They only met once, in a waiting room in the War Office. Wellington walked into the room, saw Nelson waiting; Wellington recognized Nelson, and tried to shake his hand, but Nelson snubbed him. Nelson was called in to his meeting, and seemingly during that meeting was informed that the other gentleman in the waiting room was Wellington. When Nelson came out of the meeting, he was suddenly Wellington’s best friend).
Part of the Anglo-Irish gentry, founded by Cromwell, Wellington started his military career in India, where he showed an aptitude for killing wogs, like Clive and Hastings, By the time of the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington had defeated the best of Napoleon’s Marshals in Spain and Portugal.
Wellington, being ever the aristocrat did not like his troops: "This army is composed of the scum of the earth, I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God they terrify me!".
His troops liked him, for he did everything possible to minimize their deaths. He perfected the reverse slope tactic:” A reverse slope defence is a military tactic where a defending force is positioned on the slope of an elevated terrain feature such as a hill, ridge, or mountain, on the side opposite from the attacking force. This tactic hinders both the attacker's ability to observe the defender's positions as well as reducing the effectiveness of the attacker's long-range weapons....”
Wellington was cranky.” The Duke was not a man to be dominated or threatened by anyone and his reply to a discarded mistress, who threatened to publish the love-letters he had written to her, was "Publish and be damned!"
Men liked to fight for Wellington, for like Cromwell, Caesar, Sherman and Eisenhower, he offered the best chance of victory with the best chance of staying alive.
There is something cosmological about Wellington and the Battle of Waterloo; he had seen the battlefield in 1814, and for some inexplicable reason had explored it thoroughly. He could never give a logical reason why he had been on the site in 1814, or why he had inspected it so thoroughly. But he did, as he later said, “I had it in my hip pocket.”
From that inspection, he knew where to hide troops on a reverse slope.
On June 15, 1815, in Brussels, the most famous ball in history took place, The Duchess of Richmond's ball. Wellington was there, with his entire staff, except for three generals. The officers were in full dress uniform, and the women were in wondrous gowns. As the ball was in high form, word came to Wellington that Napoleon had moved his army forward. Wellington let the Ball continue, as he sent officers into the dancing couples to bring out needed staff members.
As some officers left, the other officers knew what was happening, and the most famous farewell to arms in history occurred. The officers left their wives, fiancées, lovers, mistresses, and whores for the night to go to battle, leaving the ballroom to quiet musicians and forlorn women. There is nothing as Romantic in History as Wellington’s men saying goodbye to their women, a farewell to arms for the ages.
Waterloo is really three battles, a clash on June 16th at Quatre Bras; a battle on the same day at Ligny, in which Napoleon defeated the Prussians, and finally Waterloo itself on June 18th.
Napoleon had left his best remaining generals, Marshals Davout and Suchet in France. After defeating the Prussians at Ligny, he left a third of his army under a mediocre Marshal, Grouchy, to shadow the Prussians, and he personally went after Wellington at Waterloo.
Napoleon believed that the Prussians had been so shattered, they could not come to Wellington’s aid; Napoleon under estimated Blucher’s hatred of the French, or the strength of his commitment to Wellington.
The Battle itself was a slug fest. Later, Wellington was embarrassed that the battle was fought in the same old way, without maneuvers.
The French attacked, the British held.
The French attacked, and the British held.
The French attacked and attacked Wellington’s center, near La Haie Sainte farm.
Then Wellington ordered an adjustment in his dispositions, and Marshal Ney thought it was a retreat; so Ney decided to turn Wellington’s adjustment/retreat into a rout. Ney attacked with full force with all the French cavalry, unsupported by infantry, a no-no.
“Marshal Ney, launched his 9,000 cavalrymen against the British centre in a desperate bid to win the battle. The British battalions formed into squares to meet the French charge.”
This Blogger once attended a polo match in Hemet, California, having a picnic on the ground. During the match, all the horses started racing toward him, at full throttle, the earth itself shook. This Blogger can only imagine what the British troops felt as 9,0000 horses came at them, shaking the earth.
Wellington was calm; he told his men to break the charge by shooting the horses.
The French overran the British artillery, forcing the British artillerymen to hide in the squares. However Ney’s men had forgotten to bring nails with them, and failed to spike the British guns for lack of nails.
The British were able to recapture the guns when the French cavalry withdrew.
They later used them to devastating effect on the massed French infantry columns as they advanced on the British line.
As the Battle wore on, Grouchy lost contact with the defeated Prussians; Blucher outflanked him, and raced toward Waterloo to save Wellington.
Alerted by his scouts that the Prussians were coming, Napoleon threw his best troops, “THE OLD GUARD” against Wellington. The Old Guard had never been defeated, not even in Russia.
The Old Guard marched up to La Haye Sante for the attack. Wellington had used his knowledge of the terrain to hide troops behind a knoll. Now he called to the brigade commander “Now Maitland. Now’s your time”. The hidden troops stood, fired a volley and charged with the bayonets, driving the Old Guard back down the hill. Within fifteen minutes Wellington appeared on the skyline and waved his hat to give the signal for a general attack in pursuit of the French troops. The British, Belgian, Dutch and German troops poured forward and the French retreat became a rout.
Wellington by that time had transformed himself into the Iron Duke; his British scum of the earth had held against the Old Guard.
The Prussians entered the fray.
Three battalions of the Old Guard fought to the end to enable the Emperor to escape from the battlefield as the Allied troops including the Prussians closed in.
Wellington offered the Old Guard opportunity to surrender, telling them that they had done all that honor demanded.
General Cambronne, the commander of what was left of the Old Guard replied:“The Guard dies but does not surrender”.
The Iron Duke gave orders to slaughter the remaining Old Guard with the unspiked artillery; which was done.
By the end of June 18th, over 50,000 men and 10,000 horses laid dead or dying within a five miles radius.
The best description of the Battle was given by John Kinkaid of the 95th Rifles, “I had never yet heard of a battle in which everybody was killed; but this seemed likely to be an exception, as all were going by turns.”
It was the Iron Duke’s last battle, and he was shaken by the blood bath. He supposedly said:“Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.” Or more accurately:”Thank God, I don’t know what it is like to lose a battle; but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many of one’s friends.”
Nearly all the British officers who had been at the Duchess’ Ball were dead on the battlefield.
Wellington became Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1828..
His final comment on the Battle was: “…the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life”.
The best characterization of Wellington was Christopher Plummer as Wellington in the epic film, WATERLOO.
The battlefield itself became ghoulish:’’a “landscape of carnage, observed through the silvered filter of moonlight”. Amid the cries of dying men and horses, the clinking of hammer against chisel beside the burial pits could be heard—the sound of teeth being removed from dead men by entrepreneurial camp followers intending to supply denture-makers in London….Paul O’Keefe.”
Blucher died in 1819, in his own bed, a Prince of Prussia.
Napoleon surrendered to the British, asking for a manor home in England, in which to end his years living as an English gentleman. Instead the Brits shipped him to a faraway destination, St. Helena, where they discreetly poisoned him to death.
Louis XVIII went back on the French throne, and in December, 1815, he executed Marshal Ney for treason.
Napoleon’s son, the Prince of Rome aka Napoleon II, died at the age of 21; suggestions have been made he was murdered by his Hapsburg relatives.
Napoleon’s Hapsburg Empress, Marie-Louise, the one he raped at their first acquaintance, married twice after his death. The first to a gentlemen in charge of the Hapsburg horses; after his death, she married her chamberlain, a life worthy of D.H. Lawrence.
Finally, toward the end of the Iron Duke’s life there is an incident which gives clarity into his battlefield genius.
The Victorians had built the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park for the Great Exposition of 1851. The Palace was a great glass enclosure enclosing trees and grass. Alas, sparrows had nested in trees which had been enclosed by the construction, and they were busy engaging in pooping on the high and mighty Victorians strolling around the Palace Grounds.
The conventional wisdom was to bring in a mass group of sharpshooters to kill them, but their shots would have shattered all the beautiful panes of the Palace.
Queen Victoria asked the Iron Duke for help.
The Iron Duke dragged himself off his death bed, and went to the Palace.
The Iron Duke was angry that they had dragged him in for such a problem whose resolution was obvious. He told them to bring in a sparrow hawk, and when the hawk had finished killing all the sparrows, bring in one sharpshooter to kill the hawk.
All the sparrows dead, with one window pane lost.
Ney's Charge against the British Squares
Duke of Wellington
WATERLOO Monument
Ney's Charge against the British SquaresDuke of WellingtonWATERLOO Monument
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