Voices from the Past

History's Most Famous Battle Told Through Newspaper Reports, Official Documents and the Accounts of Those Who Were There

John Grehan

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783831999
• eBook ISBN: 9781848329157
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Biographies militaires

For more than twenty years Europe had been torn apart by war. Dynasties had crumbled, new states had been created and a generation had lost its young men. When it seemed that peace might at last settle across Europe, terrible news was received Napoleon had escaped from exile and was marching upon Paris. Europe braced itself once again for war. The allied nations agreed to combine against Napoleon and in May 1815 they began to mass on France's frontiers. The scene was set for the greatest battle the world had yet seen.Composed of more than 300 eyewitness accounts, official documents, parliamentary debates and newspaper reports, Voices from the Past tells the story of Napoleon's last battles as they were experienced and reported by the men and women involved. Heroic cavalry charges, devastating artillery bombardments, terrible injuries, heart-breaking encounters, and amusing anecdotes, written by aristocratic officers and humble privates alike, fill the pages of this ambitious publication. Many of these reports have not been reproduced for almost 200 years.

1

Boney Returns

On 11 April 1814, the Emperor Napoleon issued the following Act of Abdication from the Palace of Fontainebleau:

The Allied Powers having declared that Emperor Napoleon was the sole obstacle to the restoration of peace in Europe, 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, even that of his life, which he is not ready to do in the interests of France.¹

Following his abdication, Napoleon was exiled to the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba. That, it seemed, was the end of the ‘scourge’ of Europe. The world turned its back on Napoleon Bonaparte.

The nations of Europe, after more than twenty years of almost continuous warfare, sought to find a means of ensuring peace. The representatives of the great powers and the smaller nations met at Vienna in September 1814, to re-draw the map of Europe. Britain was represented by Viscount Castlereagh, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, who was in turn replaced by the Duke of Wellington on 3 February 1815. Despite the months of talks, agreement on the future shape of Europe was not achieved and it seemed that much negotiation still remained. That was until 7 March, as Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington wrote to Viscount Castlereagh, from Vienna, on 12 March, 1815:

I received here on the 7th inst. a dispatch from Lord Burghersh, of the 1st, giving an account that Buonaparte had quitted the island of Elba, with all his civil and military officers, and about 1200 troupes, on the 26th Feb. I immediately communicated this account to the Emperors of Austria and Russia, and to the King of Prussia, and to the ministers of the different Powers; and I found among all one prevailing sentiment, of a determination to unite their efforts to support the system established by the peace of Paris.

As it was uncertain to what quarter Buonaparte had gone, whether he would not return to Elba, or would even land on any part of the continent, it was agreed that it was best to postpone the adoption of any measure till his farther progress should be ascertained; and we have since received accounts from Genoa, stating that he had landed in France, near Cannes, on the 1st March; had attempted to get possession of Antibes, and had been repulsed, and that he was on his march towards Grasse. No accounts had been received at Paris as late as the middle of the day of the 5th of his having quitted Elba, nor any accounts from any quarter of his farther progress. In the meantime the Sovereigns, and all persons assembled here, are impressed with the importance of the crisis which this circumstance occasions in the affairs of the world.

All are desirous of bringing to an early conclusion the business of the Congress, in order that the whole and undivided attention and exertion of all may be directed against the common enemy; and I don’t entertain the smallest doubt that, even if Buonaparte should be able to form a party for himself in France, capable of making head against the legitimate government of that country, such a force will be assembled by the Powers of Europe, directed by such a spirit in their councils, as must get the better of him.

The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia have dispatched letters to the King of France, to place at His Majesty’s disposal all their respective forces; and Austrian and Prussian officers are dispatched with the letters, with powers to order the movement of the troops of their respective countries placed on the French frontiers, at the suggestion of the King of France. The Plenipotentiaries of the eight Powers who signed the Treaty of Paris assembled this evening, and have resolved to publish a declaration, in which they will, in the name of their Sovereigns, declare their firm resolution to maintain the peace and all its articles with all their force, if necessary … Upon the whole, I assure your Lordship that I am perfectly satisfied with the spirit which prevails here upon this occasion; and I don’t entertain the smallest doubt that, if unfortunately it should be possible for Buonaparte to hold at all against the King of France, he must fall under the cordially united efforts of the Sovereigns of Europe.²

Napoleon had been kept informed of the lack of unanimity in Vienna and the dissatisfaction that had grown in France under the restored monarchy of Louis XVIII and he believed that not only would he be welcomed back by the people of France, but that he would also be able to exploit the discord between the nations at the Congress of Vienna.

In France, with the country no longer on a war footing, large numbers of Napoleon’s former soldiers were out of work. The army had been reduced from 500,000 to just 200,000, with the ranks of the unemployed being swollen by the return of 400,000 prisoners of war. One of them had declared that, in losing Napoleon, ‘French military men had lost everything’.³

Napoleon left Elba, as Wellington noted, on three Elban ships along with 1,100 loyal soldiers, forty horses and two cannon. It was, as has been remarked, probably the smallest invasion force that ever set out to conquer a nation of fifty million people.⁴

Colonel Marie Antoine de Reiset was an officer in Louis XVIII’s bodyguard and was present at the Tuileries Palace when, on 4 March 1815, the king received the news of Napoleon’s landing at Golfe-Juan. De Reiset noted the following in his journal:

An astounding piece of news arrived yesterday. We learnt, by telegraph, that Bonaparte had landed at Cannes, near Fréjus.

Monsieur de Vitrolles [one of the King’s secretaries] had come back to his office at about one o’clock, after the Sunday court, when Monsieur Chappe brought him, for handing to His Majesty, a sealed dispatch which had just been transmitted by means of the apparatus he had invented. The Director of Telegraphs seemed extremely agitated. He is a large and corpulent man and had run so fast that he was all out of breath and unable to speak. When he was eventually in a state to articulate a few words, he merely begged Monsieur de Vitrolles personally to take the message, as the news was important. The King, who is very unwell, is at present suffering from an attack of gout which principally affects his hands, so much that he had great difficulty in opening the envelope. Having read its contents he remained silent, then spent several moments with his head in his hands, deep in thought.

‘Do you know what this telegraph contains?’ he at length asked Monsieur de Vitrolles, who was waiting for orders.

‘No, Sir, I do not.’

‘Well I will tell you. It is revolution once more. Bonaparte has landed on the coast of Provence. Have this letter taken instantly to the Minister of War, so that he can come and speak to me at once and decide what steps are to be taken.’⁵

The Minister of War was Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the Duke of Dalmatia, formally one of Napoleon’s most able generals who had accepted a position under the restored monarchy. The step that Soult decided to take was to warn the National Guard and its commanders that, should Napoleon seize power again, it would inevitably lead to war, with all its inherent evils. His ‘Order of the Day’ to the ‘National Guards of France’ was dated Tuesday, 7 March 1815:

A telegraphic dispatch and a courier have announced to the King that Buonaparte has quitted the Island of Elba, and disembarked at Cannes, in the department of the Var, with a thousand men and four pieces of cannon; and that he was marching in the direction of Gap, across the mountains, the only road which the weakness of his detachment allowed him to take. An advanced body which presented itself at the gates of Antibes has been disarmed and arrested by the Governor. The same dispatches announce that the Governors and Commanders of military divisions have marched to meet him with the troops and the National Guards, Monsieur is gone towards Lyons with Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, and several general officers.

A proclamation of the King convokes the two Chambers. An ordinance of the King prescribes the urgent measures requisite for the suppression of this attempt. The National Guards of the kingdom are called upon to give their assistance to the execution of these measures. In consequence of which, the Prefects, the Sub-Prefects, and the Mayors, officially, or on the demand of the competent authority, will require, and the inspectors and commanders of the National Guards will execute all those measures, whose object is to second the acts of the troops and of the gendarmerie, to maintain the public tranquillity, to protect persons and property, to restrain and repress the factious and the treasonable. For this purpose, the inspectors and commanders, under the authority of magistrates, will complete and perfect, as well as circumstances permit, the organization of the national guards which exist, and will organize provisionally those whose lists and skeletons are ready.

At the same time that the King convokes the Chambers, he calls to the defence of the country and of the throne, the army whose glory is without stain, and the national guards, who are no other than the nation itself armed to defend its institutions. It is, then, the interest of the nation itself which the national guards must have before their eyes.

Whether the measures adopted at the Congress of Vienna to settle the peace of Europe, by removing still further the only man interested in troubling it, have thrown this man upon a desperate enterprize; whether criminal intelligence has flattered him with the support of some traitors, his very partizans know him, and will serve him less from affection than in hate, in defiance of the established Government, or from personal motives of ambition or avarice.

Free from such passions, strangers to such calculations, the national guards will see with other eyes the re-appearance of that man, who, himself destroying his own institutions, and under the pretence of a regular government, exercising the most arbitrary and despotic power, has sacrificed the population, the riches, the industry, the commerce of France to the desire of extending his rule beyond all limits, and of destroying all the dynasties of Europe to establish his own family. That man who, to say all in one word, gave to the world a new and terrible example of the abuse of power and fortune, when ambition is without bounds, passions without check, and talents without virtues. He re-appears at a time when France is just recovering its breath under a moderate government: when violent parties, checked by the charter, are reduced to vain murmurs, and are without power to disturb the public peace: when the nation is about to receive from the King and the Chambers the completion of its institutions: when capital so long shut up is applied to agriculture, to industry, to foreign commerce, with a development which awaits only the proclamation of the basis adopted by the Congress for the balance and peace of Europe. He returns; and conscription, continental blockade, indefinite war, arbitrary power, public discredit, re-appear in his train, preceded by civil war and revenge. Does he hope that France is willing to reassume his yoke, to be again the slave of his passions, to combat again for 15 years, and to give its blood and treasures to glut the ambition or the hatred of a single man?⁶

It was all very well for Soult to issue such orders from Paris, but just how the French troops would react when they came face to face with Napoleon remained to be seen. That question was answered on the same day that Soult issued his Order of the Day:

Three leagues from Gorp the Emperor found a battalion of the fifth regiment, a company of sappers, &c. in all, seven or eight hundred men, stationed to oppose him. He accordingly sent [Captain] Raoul to parley with the men, but they would not hear him. Napoleon then alighting from his horse, marched straight for the detachment, followed by his guard, with arms turned downwards:— ‘What, my friends,’ said he ‘do you not know me? I am your Emperor; if there be a soldier among you, who is willing to kill his General, his Emperor, he may do it: here I am,’ placing his hand upon his breast. ‘Long live the Emperor!’ was the answer, in an unanimous shout.⁷

These are the words of Colonel Charles Angélique François Huchet comte de La Bédoyère, who commanded the 7th Regiment. He had managed to hide his regiment’s Imperial eagle and tricolore and now, with these emblems at its head, the 7th Regiment marched to join the Emperor’s tiny band.

Worried that the French National Guard appeared unable to stop Napoleon, the dignitaries in Vienna put aside their differences and agreed to combine forces to resist Bonaparte should he succeed in reestablishing himself at the head of the French nation. Rough plans were quickly made by the various representatives at Vienna. This was explained by Wellington to Castlereagh on 12 March:

I have but little to add to my dispatch regarding Buonaparte’s invasion of France. The intention is, as soon as it shall be ascertained that he can make head against the King, to assemble three large corps: one in Italy, solely Austrian, which will consist of 150,000 men; one on the Upper Rhine, Austrian, Bavarian, troops of Baden and Wurtemberg, which will eventually consist of 200,000 men, but will at first consist of only the troops of Bavaria, Baden, and Wurtemberg; the third on the Lower Rhine, consisting of the Prussian corps of Kleist, the Austrian garrison of Mayence, and other troops on the Moselle, to be joined to the British and Hanoverians in Flanders. Of this corps they wish me to take the command. The Russian army, 200,000 men, is to be formed in reserve at Wurtzburg, &c. &c.; the remainder of th...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Waterloo campaign area 1815
• Introduction
• Sketch map of the Battle of Waterloo
• Chapter 1 Boney Returns
• Chapter 2 Peace and War
• Chapter 3 Advance to Contact
• Chapter 4 Quatre Bras
• Chapter 5 Battle of Ligny
• Chapter 6 Withdrawal to Mont St Jean
• Chapter 7 The Battle of Waterloo: Morning
• Chapter 8 The Struggle for Hougoumont
• Chapter 9 The French Artillery Bombardment
• Chapter 10 The Attack Upon the Allied Centre
• Chapter 11 The French Cavalry Charges
• Chapter 12 The Fall of La Haye Sainte
• Chapter 13 The Arrival of the Prussians
• Chapter 14 The Attack of the Imperial Guard
• Chapter 15 The End of the Battle
• Chapter 16 The Battle of Wavre
• Chapter 17 The Pursuit
• Chapter 18 The March on Paris
• Chapter 19 The Fall of Napoleon
• Chapter 20 The Occupation of Paris
• Chapter 21 The Fallen
• Chapter 22 The Survivors’ Stories
• Chapter 23 Recriminations
• Chapter 24 Travellers’ Tales
• Chapter 25 Honouring the Brave
• Chapter 26 After The Battle Anecdotes
• Notes
• Bibliography & Source Information