A Model Victory. Malcolm Balen

and their forces operated in different parts of the country, which made coordination difficult. Wellington’s base lay in Brussels, and his supply lines ran from Ostend and Antwerp. Blücher’s headquarters were being transferred from Liège to Namur, and his supply lines ran in the opposite direction to those of Wellington. If the two armies were forced to retreat, they would be pulled even further apart. But the two leaders had, at least, agreed on tactics. They planned to advance into France on 27 June to attack Napoleon, and to try to defeat him through the use of overwhelming force. If the plan failed, then the Allied army and the Prussians would try to protect each other. Now, although they did not know it, the plan was failing, and their pact would be tested to destruction.

      The alliance with the Prussians was, in any case, an unlikely one, because in battle as in life, Wellington and Blücher were polar opposites. Blücher was born to be obstinate, and he had lived his life according to his own drumbeat in a military career which was as rich as it was varied. A member of a military family, he had joined the Swedish army as a cavalryman in 1742 and had taken part in three campaigns against Prussia’s Frederick the Great. When he was captured by his enemy in 1760, he changed sides and became a loyal, but uncontrollable soldier. He then served with distinction against France’s revolutionary armies, but the disastrous 1806 campaign had led to his enforced retirement. When Prussia again took up arms against the French in 1813, Blücher returned to fight with typical ferocity until the emperor was defeated at Laon, forcing his abdication. Now the two rivals were to face each other again, with Blücher, at seventy-two, the oldest man on the battlefield, and the only man to have beaten Napoleon more than once in battle.

      In contrast, Wellington was cautious and conservative, a methodical commander who considered defence was the best form of attack, who wanted to lure his enemy into making mistakes, and who instinctively eschewed unnecessary risks. He had never met Napoleon directly in battle though the two had circled each other warily. The Duke had forced the Emperor into exile on Elba the year before, and there was a certain inevitability in their meeting now, the scion of the establishment ranged against the avowed outsider, the imperial usurper of monarchy and tradition. The son of an Irish aristocrat, albeit an impoverished one, Arthur Wellesley had been educated at Eton, and had then taken a commission in the 73rd Infantry. India was the making of him. The war with France had effectively moved there, with the French encouraging native princes to resist the East India Company’s control. As brigade commander under General George Harris in 1799, Wellington impressed his superiors throughout the Seringapatam expedition against the rebellious Tippoo Sahib of Mysore, who had been stirred into action by his French allies, and he was made administrator of the conquered territory.

      It was the Peninsular War against the French in Spain, however, which had cemented Wellington’s growing reputation and which taught him a mastery of defensive warfare. Between November 1809 and September 1810 he had supervised the construction of protective lines of trenches and redoubts, north of Lisbon, stretching from the Atlantic to the Tagus. The ‘Lines of Torres Vedras’ were crafted out of two successive ridges of hills. Buildings, sunken lanes, olive groves and vineyards were all erased from the landscape, denying any cover to an attacking force. It was a brilliantly successful tactic, and after driving the French from the Peninsula, Wellington pushed on into France itself in 1814 until Napoleon, pressed by Wellington in the south and by a triple alliance of Prussia, Russia and Austria in the north and east, had been forced to abdicate.

      But a year later, with every mile of Belgian countryside covered by his light dragoons, his hope of revenge was growing. After securing the crossing at the River Sambre, his Armée du Nord had moved fast to form a wedge between its two enemies. Marshal Ney led the left wing towards Frasnes and Quatre Bras, while Marshal Grouchy took the right wing towards Fleurus and Sombreffe. A mobile reserve was kept at Charleroi to reinforce either of the commanders. By seizing Quatre Bras, the French would control the main highway, and the chances of the two armies joining up against them would be as likely as this year’s harvest failing, and already the crop was as high as the tallest cavalryman. Instead, Wellington and Blücher would be forced to fall back across country, slowed down by the rutted landscape and the sun-baked soil. The Emperor had sprung his trap before his enemies knew anything about it. Soon, he would be the conqueror of Brussels.

      

      That evening, in a large room on the ground floor of the Duchess of Richmond’s residence, the young ladies of Brussels were dancing with the British officers, resplendent in their scarlet, gold and white uniforms. The ball, it should be said, was the scene of the first of many myths which came to cloak the history of the Battle of Waterloo. As William Siborne was to find, the imprecision of legend began even before the combatants reached the battlefield.

      The building in which the ball was held has long since disappeared, enabling novelists, painters and poets to let loose their imaginations, so that the ball has entered the classical literature of England without regard to fact. Over the years, it became a grand affair, in a magnificent ballroom, with sparkling chandeliers, great sweeping curtains and sumptuous furniture. But it was a memory based on fiction, created partly by Thackeray, by Turner, who painted a ornate ballroom modelled on an entirely different building, and especially by Byron, who ensured that romanticism prevailed, rather than historical accuracy. It was left to the son of a Waterloo veteran, Sir William Fraser, to prove, though not conclusively, the mundane truth: that the ball had in fact taken place, not in a high hall, but in a long, low-ceilinged room supported by square wooden posts.

      The guest list for the ball is, however, well documented. More than two hundred people had been invited: His Royal Highness the Prince of Orange was there, and the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Nassau and the Duc d’Aramberg and a clutch of counts and countesses. There were more than eighty British officers, too, on the guest list, many of whom would play a prominent part in the battles which lay ahead, including the Earl of Uxbridge, Wellington’s deputy; Maj.-Gen. Lord Edward Somerset; Lord Hill; Lt.-Gen. Sir Henry Clinton, and his wife, Lady Susan; Lt.-Col. Lord Saltoun; Sir John Byng; Sir William Ponsonby; Maj.-Gen. Sir Hussey Vivian and Maj.-Gen. Sir James Kempt. They did not know that the room they occupied had more humble origins as the storeroom of a coachbuilder who still owned the rented property, for its rose and trellis wallpaper camouflaged its previous existence from the party-goers, as if their evening’s pleasure was a veneer which could be stripped away.

      During the morning of 15 June, there had been rumours in the city that the Emperor had invaded the country. But although there is a dispute about when reports reached Wellington, it seems there was no definite information on which he could rely. A messenger on a good horse would take only three hours to gallop the distance which separated the city from the border. And yet there had been no definite sighting, not even a suggestion of a cloud of dust created by an army on the move. Besides which, the Duke of Wellington needed to keep up appearances: there were too many supporters of Napoleon in the city who resented the yoke of the Dutch rule. It would not do to raise their hopes or give them encouragement, which was why he intended to go to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball.

      By mid-afternoon, Wellington knew that there had been an attack, but he could not discern if it was merely sabre-rattling by the Emperor or if a full invasion had been launched. A clash of Prussian and French skirmishers did not tell him anything, for he knew enough of Bonaparte’s brilliance not to be lured into a false move: the attack might simply be a feint, to mask his true intentions. Was Napoleon really heading directly through Charleroi? Or would he attack more centrally, with a strike at Mons? Perhaps further east still, darting between Condé and Tournai? It was impossible to judge. If the Duke was tricked into sending his men to Charleroi, then the road from Mons would lie open. In the end, he thought his army was most vulnerable to an attack on its supply links to the Channel, and so he issued orders for his divisions to gather at their assembly points in readiness for battle, a decision which pulled men away from Brussels, in the opposite direction to where they were needed.

      At nightfall, more reports arrived. Wellington learned that the Prussians were mobilising at Sombreffe, against a French push east; he learned too, from the young Prince of Orange, that there had been the sound of gunfire near the border. But still he was unable to calculate the position of the main French force. So he did not commit his men to Quatre Bras, as he should have done, and its strategically vital crossroads remained unguarded.

      In