Waterloo: The Defeat of Napoleon's Imperial Guard

Henry Clinton, the 2nd Division and the End of a 200-year Old Controversy

Gareth Glover

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781848327443
• eBook ISBN: 9781848329515
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 19th Century History
• Index: History

"This in-depth study of the nuts and bolts of a single division is without a doubt the best book I have ever read on Waterloo."— The Napoleon Series
 
Winner of the 2017 Society for Army Historical Research Templer Medal
 
This is the most detailed account of the 2nd Division at Waterloo ever published. It is based on the papers of its commander Sir Henry Clinton, and it reveals for the first time the previously unrecognized vital role this division made in the defeat of Napoleon. 
Author Gareth Glover explains how the division was placed ahead of the main allied squares thus impeding the charges of the French cavalry, and how the 2nd Division supported the defense of Hougoumont, considered by the Duke of Wellington as the key to his victory on 18 June 1815.
Perhaps the most significant aspect of this book is the description of the defeat of Napoleon's Imperial Guard. Just how the incomparable Guard was stopped and then driven from the battlefield is explained in detail. Once and for all, this 200-year controversy is finally resolved.
 
"Does a superb job of dissecting the controversy over whether it was Adam's Brigade or the Guard's Brigade that was instrumental in defeating the Imperial Guard."— The Napoleon Series

Chapter 1

The Clintons

Any history of the 2nd Division during the Waterloo campaign must firstly look upon Sir Henry Clinton and his family and how he came to command the division throughout the campaign.

The earliest mention of the Clintons is when Geoffrey de Clinton was made Treasurer and Chamberlain to King Henry I and by the late 1200s their heir John de Clinton had been created 1st Lord of Maxstoke.¹ It is clear, however, that at this stage the Clinton family, although of noble Norman extraction, was far from a rich family; but a number of strategic marriages saw a steady improvement in both its standing and wealth.

A link with the upper echelons of the armed forces also began to strengthen significantly, beginning with Edward Fiennes Clinton (1512-85), who was Lord High Admiral to King Henry VIII’s fleet.

By the eighteenth century the family was deeply entrenched within the upper strata of society, having risen through the Earls of Lincoln to the heady heights of Dukes of Newcastle.

Admiral George Clinton (1668–1761) will be readily recognised by most Americans as the Governor of New York, and his eldest son General Sir Henry Clinton (1738–95) is extremely well known to all Americans as the Commander-in-Chief of land forces in America during the American War of Independence. Sir Henry Clinton had married Harriet Carter in February 1767 and the couple had four children.

The oldest son, William Henry Clinton (1769–1846), became a General in the army and married Louisa Holroyd, the daughter of the Earl of Sheffield. Throughout the Waterloo campaign William remained in England, anxiously but vainly awaiting the summons to join Wellington’s army.

The second child, Henry Clinton, is the man we are particularly interested in and we will look at his career in great detail shortly.

His sister Augusta eloped and married Henry Dawkins, who became an MP thanks to the influence of the Duke of Newcastle, but never really amounted to much; as Lord Herbert commented:

Sir Henry Clinton … being in bad circumstances, can allow his daughter little or nothing and Dawkins having so very large a family cannot allow his son above £600 a year and neither of their dispositions seems much adapted to rigid economy.²

The couple did, however, produce six sons and five daughters, two of the boys being closely connected to their uncle Henry during the Waterloo campaign.

Finally there was Harriet, who had married Harry Chester in 1799; he eventually became a Major General.

As can be seen, this was an extremely well-connected family by the time of late Georgian Britain.

Our Henry Clinton was born on 9 March 1771 in Weybridge, Surrey, and can only be described as a ‘career soldier’. Following the premature death of his mother at the tender age of only twenty-six years-old, and with his father rather preoccupied by events in America, Henry was sent to Eton to join his brother. He left education three years later and Henry received his commission as an Ensign in the 11th Foot³ on 10 October 1787. However, he soon received leave of absence and set off for France and Germany, where he toured with his brother William.

In October 1788 he volunteered to serve in the Brunswick Corps raised by an old friend of his father, General Riedesel,⁴ who was acting with the Russian army in the Netherlands.

In March 1791 he gained rapid promotion by purchase, becoming a Lieutenant in the 1st Foot Guards and then a Captain in the 15th Foot⁵ within a month. He then transferred back to the Guards in the ensuing October.

With the advent of war with France in 1793, Henry was appointed as an aide-de-camp to Prince Frederick, the Duke of York, and went on to serve under him in the disastrous Flanders campaign of 1794. He was promoted Brevet Major in April 1794 and on 10 May was wounded at Camphin during the Battle of Willems.

He was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel in the 66th Foot⁶ in September 1795 and promptly sailed to join his regiment in the West Indies. Henry was present at the landing on St Lucia by General Sir Ralph Abercromby and the subsequent capture of Morne Fortune. In 1796 he exchanged back into the 1st Foot Guards and sailed from the Isle of San Domingo to join his regiment, but his ship was captured by a French cruiser and he was made a prisoner of war until the summer of 1797, when he was released (presumably by exchange of prisoners).

He was then appointed as aide-de-camp to Lord Cornwallis in Ireland and was present at the surrender of the French invasion force under General Humbert.⁷ He was then attached to Lord William Bentinck’s mission with General Suvorov’s Russian army and was present at the battles of Trebia and Novi in Italy in the summer of 1799.

Returning home, Henry found time to marry the Honourable Susan Charteris, who was three years his junior, the second daughter of Francis, the 7th Lord Elcho. Their marriage seems to have been a loving one, but they were not fortunate enough to ever have any children. Susan was clearly headstrong and she insisted in travelling with Henry to Switzerland in 1800 when he was appointed as a military assistant to William Wickham⁸ and was then attached to the Austrian army in Swabia and was present at the Battles of Eugen and Moeskerch. Susan’s attendance was not appreciated by Wickham, who later complained that she kept Clinton in bed when he should have been in battle.

He was appointed as Assistant Adjutant General in the Eastern District in June 1801, but in January 1802 he was appointed as Adjutant General in India, where he served until 1805. He was promoted to Colonel on 25 September 1803 and he and his brother were described by King George III at this time as soldiers of ‘uncommon abilities’. While serving in India, where his organisational abilities were shown to great advantage, he also commanded the right wing of the army at the Battle of Laswari.

Henry was then appointed British military attaché to the Russian army of General Kutuzov in 1805 and as such was an eye witness at the Battle of Austerlitz. He returned home after the defeat of the Austro-Russian army.

He commanded the garrison of Syracuse in Sicily from December 1806 to November 1807, during which time he met and became a great friend of General Sir John Moore, famous for his light infantry training. Henry was promoted to Brigadier General in January 1808 and accompanied General Sir John Moore on his unsuccessful expedition to Sweden (where Moore was placed under arrest by the King of Sweden and was forced to flee and to sail away with his army).

On 21 August 1808, Henry Clinton landed in Portugal, having been appointed as Adjutant General to General Sir Harry Burrard who had just taken the command of the army in Portugal, but on the following day found he had a new commander, Sir Hugh Dalrymple. With the public furore following the signing of the Convention of Cintra, whereby the French army of Portugal, which had surrendered, was allowed to be repatriated to France in British ships, the senior officers returned home to face an inquiry and Henry was delighted to hear that his friend John Moore was to take the command.

Henry Clinton proved a very capable deputy but he did gain a reputation as a disciplinarian. According to one of Henry’s victims, a Captain Cochrane, he ‘loaded me with such a torrent of abuse as could not have been merited by the most “worthless” individual in the army’.⁹ In fact Clinton’s charges against Cochrane of disobedience and neglect of duty appear to have been a counter to Cochrane’s charges of Clinton’s unreasonable conduct towards him. The action was ultimately unsuccessful.

Two days before the Battle of Corunna, which ended the campaign, Henry Clinton was taken ill with dysentery and his deputy, Colonel Anderson, took his place and it was he who was present when Moore was mortally wounded. Henry was, however, the first to take up his pen to defend Moore’s conduct of the campaign when it came under severe criticism from some quarters.¹⁰

Before sailing for Sweden, Henry had also become a Member of Parliament in 1808, joining his brother William as the joint MP’s for Boroughbridge, seats controlled by the patronage of the Duke of Newcastle. He continued his political career for ten years although it never became his primary focus, indeed according to Hansard he rarely attended Parliament and never took part in any debates.

Henry was promoted to Major General in July 1810 and he requested to serve abroad on campaign. His request was granted and he joined the army under the Duke of Wellington in the Iberian Peninsula in October 1811. He was first appointed to the command of the 6th Division on 9 February 1812. During the Battle of Salamanca, his division played a key role by defeating French General Clausel’s counterattack and he was granted the rare privilege of an independent command on the River Douro whilst Wellington marched to take Madrid. He then led his division at the abortive siege of Burgos.

Absent from the Peninsula from January to June 1813 due to illness, he was made a Brevet Lieutenant General in April 1813. Returning in time to lead his division at the Battle of Vitoria, Clinton was made a Knight of the Order of the Bath.

He returned home again due to illness for a short time but did return to take part in the subsequent actions at the battles of Nivelle, the Nive, Orthes, Caceres, Tarbes and Toulouse. At the end of the Peninsular War he was made a substantive Lieutenant General and Inspector General of Infantry in England and was awarded the Army Gold Cross with one clasp, the Portuguese Order of the Tower and the Sword, and he was made Colonel of the 1st Battalion of the 60th Foot.¹¹

In August 1814, Henry Clinton was appointed second-in-command to the Prince of Orange, who commanded the British, Hanoverian and Dutch-Belgian troops in the Netherlands. Later, when Napoleon escaped from Elba, Henry was very pleased to have the Duke of Wellington take command.

Henry Clinton was – as an inspecting officer should be - very unforgiving of the troops, and even the most minor failures were highlighted in minute detail. But he also was undoubtedly a very experienced officer with a strong command over his troops. His rigid insistence on total obedience to orders was renowned. He was uncompromising in enforcing regulations, and as such he would never be destined to be adored by his troops or regarded as the soldier’s best friend, but he was admired. He was also a very conspicuous person on any battlefield, obstinately wearing his cocked hat across his head (like Napoleon) when the current military fashion was to wear the headgear pointing ‘fore and aft’. The Duke of Wellington, no friend of fools, was very content to have Henry Clinton as a senior officer commanding one of his best divisions – this fact alone speaks volumes as to the abilities of the man.

In 1815 during the Waterloo campaign, Clinton led the 2nd Division, which Wellington posted in reserve behind his right flank. The 2nd Division included the 3rd British Brigade (Major General Frederick Adam), the 1st King’s German Legion Brigade (Colonel du Plat), the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade (Colonel Hugh Halkett) and Lieutenant Colonel Gold’s two artillery batteries (Bolton Royal Artillery (R.A.) and Sympher KGL). His troops helped to defeat and pursue Napoleon’s Imperial Guard at the end of the battle. Following the battle Henry Clinton was granted the Austrian Order of Maria Theresa, the Russian Order of St George and the Order of William of the Netherlands, and on 9 August 1815 he was made Colonel of the 3rd Foot (The Buffs).¹²

Unfortunately, fate was not kind to Henry Clinton and he died in 1829 almost a recluse. This period of his life will be discussed later in this volume.

Chapter 2

Clinton’s Command

The 2nd Division, as commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton at Waterloo, was only formed on the orders of the Duke of Wellington on 11 April 1815.

However, we are very fortunate that many of the units that were to form the 2nd Division were already established in the Netherlands for some considerable time before April 1815 and as such came under the experienced eye of Sir Henry Clinton at numerous regular reviews and inspections. His reports on these units are very frank and are most enlightening as to the troops’ honest abilities, strengths and weaknesses. These reports provide a very different view of these troops and their commanders from the traditional version that is handed down, which is heavily coloured by their supposed actions during the Waterloo campaign.

But firstly we must explain how a number of British troops were already in Belgium in 1814, and how Sir Henry Clinton came to be in the position that is so useful to our investigations.

As the war, by a more or less combined Europe against Napoleon’s France edged towards the final close in 1814, the French stranglehold on Italy, Germany and the Low Countries faltered. The Dutch populace began to rebel against their occupiers, who had controlled the country for more than two decades. The hereditary ruler, the Prince of Orange, who had been banished by the French twenty years earlier, was invited back to head the revolt. In fact he sent his son, now a British army officer, also confusingly referred to as the Prince of Orange. Military support by way of troops was also supplied by Prussia and Britain, and soon the weakened French forces were forced to abandon their hold on most of the country, concentrating all of their forces in the defence of the principal fortresses such as Antwerp and Bergen op Zoom.

A British force commanded by Sir Thomas Graham landed in Holland in early 1814 and eventually besieged Bergen op Zoom, but during a bungled assault, although the British infantry broke into the fortress, the defenders rallied and successfully captured the majority of the British troops within, expelling...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Clintons
• Chapter 2: Clinton’s Command
• Chapter 3: Napoleon Returns
• Chapter 4: The 2nd Division is Born
• Chapter 5: Preparations for War
• Chapter 6: War Clouds Gather
• Chapter 7: War Breaks Out, 15–16 June
• Chapter 8: The Retreat, 17 June
• Chapter 9: A Night to Forget
• Chapter 10: Starting Positions
• Chapter 11: Battle Commences
• Chapter 12: Into the Cauldron
• Chapter 13: The Cavalry Charges
• Chapter 14: The Guard Advances
• Chapter 15: The Aftermath
• Chapter 16: The March to Paris
• Chapter 17: Paris
• Appendix 1: Evidence of Colonel Hugh Halkett’s Capture of General Cambronne
• Appendix 2: The Controversy of the 52nd
• Notes
• Select Bibliography