Wellington's Hidden Heroes

The Dutch and the Belgians at Waterloo

Veronica Baker-Smith

• Publisher: Casemate
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781612003320
• eBook ISBN: 9781612003337
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

" A n excellent account of the contribution of the newly formed (and short-lived) United Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Allied victory" ( HistoryO fW ar.org ).
 
The Dutch-Belgians have been variously described as inexperienced, incompetent, and cowardly, a rogue element in the otherwise disciplined Allied Army. It is only now being tentatively acknowledged that they alone saved Wellington from disaster at Quatre Bras. He had committed a strategic error in that, as Napoleon advanced, his own troops were scattered over a hundred kilometers of southern Belgium. Outnumbered three to one, the Netherlanders gave him time to concentrate his forces and save Brussels from French occupation. At Waterloo itself, on at least three occasions when the fate of the battle "hung upon the cusp," their engagement with the enemy aided British recovery. Their commander—the Prince of Orange—has been viciously described as an arrogant fool, "a disaster waiting to happen," and even a dangerous lunatic. According to the assessment of Wellington himself, he was a reliable and courageous subordinate.
 
This book reveals a new dimension of the famous campaign and includes many unseen illustrations. For the first time, a full assessment is made of the challenge which Willem I faced as king of a country hastily cobbled together by the Congress of Vienna, and of his achievement in assembling, equipping, and training 30,000 men from scratch in eighteen months.
 
"An extraordinary and impressively researched, written, organized and presented history that sheds considerable new light on one of the most influential battles of 19th century Europe." — Midwest Book Review
 
"A fascinating read." — Military Heritage

CHAPTER 1

The Netherlands

NEDERLAND – literally ‘low country’ – refers in 1815 to the newly created monarchy that emerged from the Congress of Vienna, combining Belgium with the formerly titled United Provinces (of which Holland was only one) and incorporating modern day Luxembourg. But the very different histories of the two countries reveal the challenges that the Netherlands army (and thus the Allies) faced when, in March 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba, landed at Fréjus with a thousand men, and marched to Paris where he regained control of government and army without a shot being fired.

Belgium, (known then as the Southern Netherlands) had long been under Hapsburg control, first from Spain and then from Austria, though there was a history of protest against that rule. Norman Davies points out that the final ‘Belgian Revolt’ when Emperor Joseph II removed the ancient privileges of the noble estates of Brabant (most of modern Belgium) was an essential component of the French Revolution, occurring as it did at almost the same time in the late 1780s in two neighbouring countries that shared a common language.

British suspicions of Belgian sympathies were understandable; the country had suffered so much foreign domination and political change that their loyalties might well be “thoroughly muddled”, leading to military unreliability. After an Austrian army suffered defeat at the hands of the French at Fleurus in 1794, Belgium was overrun by France and remained effectively under French rule until 1814, though the paralysis of the Belgian economy and resentment of conscription for French wars meant that nationalism was never crushed. When Napoleon abdicated for the first time in 1814, Belgium was high on the agenda of the Congress of Vienna, and found itself unceremoniously joined to the neighbouring country – the Northern Netherlands (i.e. the United Provinces) – from which it had always been separated by religion, culture, economics and language.

This new state was to be ruled by a virtually unknown prince of the House of Orange. Napoleon himself commented: ‘All reasonable persons pronounce this to be madness’. It was the usual story of diplomats redrawing maps and creating new nations to safeguard their own interests, the key here being the security of the port of Antwerp. Antwerp’s strategic significance lay in its geographical position in the age of sail. Prevailing winds and currents could drive an invasion fleet directly to the Thames estuary, and, in addition, could enable whoever held Antwerp easily to challenge English Channel shipping. From the mid-1790s French control of the Low Countries had made Antwerp in the words of William Pitt, ‘a pistol’ aiming at the heart of London, and at last British diplomats had the opportunity to do something about it. On 1 August 1814 Belgium was joined to Holland, and on 24 August the Belgian army adopted the orange cockade as part of their uniform, although formal military amalgamation would take another six months of careful negotiation.

Much would depend on the forty-one year old man whom a patriotic insurrection after the Battle of Leipzig had brought back to his own country’s government. The measure of his achievement in providing the Allied Army under Wellington with around twenty-five thousand troops can best be understood by a brief reminder of the troubled history of the United Provinces. The House of Orange-Nassau had known many crises since William the Silent led the Revolt of the seven provinces of the Northern Netherlands from Spanish rule in the late sixteenth century, and established a Republic. Always known in English as ‘Holland’ this Republic became ‘the wonder of seventeenth century Europe’. Yet the fiercely independent seven provinces each retained its own government separately from the federal States-General in The Hague which was chaired by a Stadhouder (or keeper of the State). This post was usually held by the incumbent Prince of Orange, but there was always tension between him and the provinces and, indeed, among the provinces themselves, and the republican enthusiasm of the Dutch never died. In 1650 the future King William III of England was born posthumously and the stadhouderate held by his father was refused him. Twenty-two years later William’s military and political genius won him the title as the Republic’s economy collapsed and a coalition led by France threatened its borders. His authority held firm after his accession to the English throne in 1688, but when he died childless in 1702, it was argued that since the male line from William the Silent was broken, the stadhouderate must lapse again. The next two Princes of Orange derived their authority from the northern and least powerful of the provinces, and it was not until 1748 that foreign threat led to a popular revolt when a French army crossed the border, announcing that their action was merely a warning to the Dutch to break off relations with England whose Princess Royal, Anne (the daughter of George II) was married to the current Prince of Orange. It was a grave miscalculation on their part – a deputy to the States-General rounded on the French ambassador, ‘you’re ruining us, you’re making a stadhouder’.¹ Anti-French feeling fuelled a revolution that swept Anne’s husband to power as Stadhouder Willem IV, and republicanism died for a generation. The fact that his position was for the first time made hereditary seemed to ensure a stable future for the House of Orange, but the mistakes of his ineffectual son, Willem V, encouraged a new wave of opposition through the 1780s.

Pamphlets proclaimed the fact that it was the House of Orange which had suppressed Dutch freedom ever since 1572 when William the Silent had overcome the power of Spain, and newspapers and periodicals fanned the flames of revolt. Local coups all over Holland replaced governmental structures with ‘patriot’ councils, and Willem V’s wife, Princess Wilhelmina, was actually arrested by a Free Corps, or local militia, an action they soon regretted for she was an arrogant and forceful woman with a highly developed sense of her own superiority.

Her arrest was viewed by her brother, the King of Prussia, as an insult to the House of Hohenzollern, and in 1787 he sent an army of twenty-six thousand over the border. The ‘patriots’ were crushed, but his victory was short-lived: they “never went away” and began to draw strength from the wider Atlantic revolutionary movements beginning in America and continuing in France. By 1795 identification with French ideas of liberation and the abolition of tyranny, and the tide of revolutionary fervour sweeping north from France through Belgium, ensured an extraordinary welcome for another French invading army; it was almost like a carnival ‘being happily conducted’ as a fleeing British observer reported.² In January of that year French cavalry crossed the frozen Rhine, France seized the Dutch fleet while it was imprisoned in the ice of the Zuyder Zee, Willem V was driven into exile in England, and the United Provinces became the Batavian Republic as a satellite state of France, until the year of Willem’s death, 1806.

Once Napoleon had declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804, his enthusiasm for revolutionary or republican tendencies was markedly reduced, and he looked for a Dutch regime which would support his own military and economic demands. Still toying with the idea of an invasion of Britain, he needed a totally loyal state at his back, and he abolished the Republic; bronze plaques appeared all over Amsterdam proclaiming ‘homage à Napoleon le Grand’, and the town hall, through the centuries so often the chief symbol of Dutch resistance to the monarchical principle, became the royal palace of Louis Napoleon, the Emperor’s younger brother married to his stepdaughter Hortense.

The marriage was a precarious one (although it produced the later Emperor Napoleon III) but Louis took his role very seriously, immediately trying to master the language of his new subjects. However his first public speech as King went somewhat awry when he confused two similar Dutch words – koning and konijn – and declaimed, ‘Mijne heeren, ik ben uwe konijn’ (Gentlemen, I am your rabbit).

For four years he ruled the country well, beginning the transition from republic to monarchy on which the House of Orange would later be able to build. He also pioneered the strong link between ruler and people by his appearance at scenes of national disaster: when a ship loaded with gunpowder exploded in the central wharf of Leiden, Louis arrived the same evening to coordinate rescue work, help clear the devastation and promise compensation.

Louis’s success and independence did not escape his brother’s jealous eye since Holland was as important to France as it always had been to England. Napoleon continually chided him for his identification with his subjects, warning that ‘a prince who gets a reputation for good nature in the first year of his reign is laughed at in his second’. However, Louis proved him wrong: his insistence that his ministers (mostly provided by Napoleon) should speak Dutch and renounce their French citizenship, his refusal of his brother’s demand for Dutch troops to serve in central Europe, and, most of all, his description of the Emperor’s continental trade blockade as ‘barbaric’, while encouraging Dutch merchants to bypass it, brought him a popularity which Napoleon could not tolerate. In 1810 when he realised that Louis was secretly boosting the Dutch economy by such means, he despatched French troops to The Hague. They forced Louis to abdicate, (he was later to suffer mental instability and took no further part in his brother’s affairs). Holland was formally absorbed into metropolitan France.

The Dutch army (then numbering around twenty-seven thousand) thus became part of the Grande Armée invading Russia in 1812 and suffered accordingly. The terrible death-toll there is well-documented, but less well-known is the suffering of those taken prisoner by a Russian army totally unprepared for their care. Napoleon tended to use the Dutch troops to defend key strategic points behind his advance so in the chaos of retreat many of these surrendered. If they could prove their nationality, they were better treated than the French but their suffering was still appalling. Sergeant Jan Willem van Wetering had joined the Dutch army at the age of fourteen and had marched and fought all over Europe until he was captured while trying to hold a bridge over the Beresina river. He endured a forced march through deep snow, abused and beaten by his Russian guards, lying ‘s’nachts in de open lucht … zonder brand of voedsel’ (at night in the open without fire or food) existing on a few mouthfuls of raw horsemeat from Cossack ponies;³ one of only a hundred and fifty survivors from a regiment of nearly three thousand, he would live to fight at Waterloo.

After Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig and sent to Elba, the son of Stadhouder Willem V – yet another Willem – returned as Prince-Sovereign and was formally welcomed when a rowing boat launched from a Dutch warship brought him to the dunes at Scheveningen just north of The Hague on 30 November 1813. The print shows the welcome which he certainly received. (Slagtmaand, mentioned in the inscription, is the old Dutch word for November – the month in which beasts were slaughtered for winter food).

Fig. 1: Arrival of Willem I at Scheveningen (Royal Archive, The Hague PR2169)

The British moved swiftly, sending a small force into the Low Countries to besiege and take their long-time target – Antwerp; its commander, Sir Thomas Graham also brought with him twenty thousand muskets to hand over to the Netherlands army, though he at first refused to do so, judging that Willem’s authority was too shaky to take the risk.

Willem moved into the former royal palace of Huis den Bosch and set about laying the foundations of constitutional monarchy. However, such a concept was not entirely acceptable even to those Orangists who had kept the faith through the years, and the republican element in the Dutch psyche would survive well into the twentieth century, surfacing at times of crisis. In addition the ambivalent attitude to France meant that Willem had to tread carefully, while at the same time he was deeply suspicious of Prussian encroachment on Dutch territory along the Meuse.

His portraits reveal a man adopting the fashionable romanticism of the period; the British referred to him in private as “Frog”, a nickname perhaps originating with his wide-set eyes and thin lipped mouth. In time he would be referred to as “Old Frog”, and his son, the Prince of Orange, occasionally and rather unfairly, as “Young Frog” although he was physically quite unlike his father (he was more usually nicknamed Slender Billy on account of his slight build). Willem was a man of great stubbornness, whose acceptance in 1806 of various sweeteners from Napoleon had in no way reconciled him to exile, and he was excessively protective of his new status. Wellington summed him up in a private letter to London, ‘with professions in his mouth of a desire to do anything I suggest, he objects to everything I propose’; while Lord Clancarty described a meeting in which he ‘arrived late and was most humble’, an attitude which did not last more than a few minutes.

In March 1815, Napoleon’s return and the resulting European upheaval offered Willem an opportunity he seized: the Congress of Vienna accepted his proclamation of himself as King of the disparate Netherlands, although this was not formally ratified until 31 May. The Dutch army had accepted the new loyalty and most of that country rallied to the House of Orange as they had done in previous centuries. But the fault-line of the kingdom was there from the start – Belgium was resentful, unconvinced by Willem’s stirring invitation of 10 December 1813,

Wij, broeders, branden van begeerte om uwe pogingen te oversteunen. Bedenkt, … dat van Groningen tot aan Ostende slechts eene en dezelfde natie woont.

(We, your brothers, burn with determination to support your endeavours … Reflect … that from Groningen to Ostend, there lives now one and the same nation).⁴

In time of war there might be solidarity but it could not (and would not) last.

There was a third element to be incorporated into the army which Willem needed to establish his new status. Since the sixteenth century the Dutch stadhouders had held lands in Germany as Dukes of Nassau-Weilberg and Nassau-Usingen; these duchies provided troops for the ruling Prince of Orange though during the exile their soldiers had fought over most of Europe under varying commands. German troops were highly thought of, and these had performed well in the Peninsula mostly under French command until, in December 1813, their General, August von Kruse, was ordered ‘to manoeuvre over’ to the British side. After heavy losses there, many were raw if enthusiastic recruits, and their training was largely accomplished during the march north from the Duchies to Brussels. Their officers, at least, were mostly veterans, but the fact that Nassau had changed sides meant that there would be serious doubts about their loyalty.

These Nassau troops are too often treated by historians as part of the German-speaking element of the Allied Army – the Hanoverians and the King’s German Legion – and they were, indeed, German speaking, but since their affiliation was personally to King Willem, they must be treated as Netherlanders and their achievement acknowledged as such. They played a crucial part at Quatre Bras, Hougoumont and also on the left wing at Waterloo, but even recent studies have simply absorbed them with the King’s German Legion – the desperate defence of La Haie Sainte owed much to those Nassauers who were transferred by Wellington from Hougoumont for reinforcement, not least because, for once, their supplies of ammunition were adequate – they could have held out for longer.

CHAPTER 2

Creation of the Netherlands Army

KING WILLEM I had a military background, first in defence of his father against the French invasion, and then serving for eight years in the Prussian army, commanding a division at the battle of Auerstadt. He did therefore have some of the experience required for building an army, though it was rather unfortunate that his career had ended in front of an investigating committee accused of the shameful surrender of a key fortress for which he was cashiered. According to the historian, Peter Hofschröer, only the intervention of his brother-in-law, the King of Prussia, saved him from execution,⁵ and it was even more unfortunate for Willem that the presiding officer on that committee had been the later Chief of Staff to Blücher in the Waterloo Campaign, August von Gneisenau. There was at least one formal meeting between them which must have been a little stiff, when they met in Brussels for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Netherlands
• Chapter 2: The Creation of the Netherlands Army
• Chapter 3: The Armée du Nord
• Chapter 4: Coalition
• Chapter 5: Language
• Chapter 6: Brussels
• Chapter 7: The Netherlands Commanders
• Chapter 8: The Prince of Orange
• Chapter 9: Strategies
• Chapter 10: The French Advance
• Chapter 11: The Battle of Quatre Bras
• Chapter 12: Preparation
• Chapter 13: Waterloo Acts I and II
• Chapter 14: Waterloo Acts III and IV
• Chapter 15: Waterloo Act V
• Chapter 16: The Pursuit
• Chapter 17: The Myth of Waterloo
• Chapter 18: Concealment
• Chapter 19: Aftermath – the Netherlands
• Conclusion
• Postscript
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Colour Plates