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| Dispositions as of dusk on the 16th (turn two) |
The third day of campaigning proved to be the deciding day - across two major battles the Allies defeated the French armies and forced them back onto the defensive. It was also the last day of active campaigning; the French realising the hopelessness of their position and electing to negotiate rather than fight another rearguard campaign as they had done only a year before.
For all the above, the outcome wasn't inevitable and on day three of the Waterloo campaign we will see perhaps the biggest 'what-if' of all.
First though, the third day of the campaign began in earnest overnight as both sides attempted to extricate their forces from variously sticky situations.
This is post five in a series of seven; the others are:
Overnight Actions
Pushed back into Nivelles during the previous afternoon by General Thielmann, General Vandamme and his men broke out Southeast during the small hours in what was nearly a textbook operation - the only real blemish being that they were forced to abandon their guns and wounded. Dawn saw them back within French lines and holding positions immediately to the North of Charleroi.
Overnight the French also put into action the plan that would seal their defeat. Now too weak to defeat Wellington on his own, Marshal Ney ordered General d'Erlon to march overnight from Lens SE past Mons and approach Binche from the West. Ney would attack from the East at the same time, and with superiority in numbers would crush the British between their two armies.
The first part went surprisingly well. General Hill had himself ordered the Dutch troops to d'Erlon's south to make a night march back to his position, which left d'Erlon's line of retreat conveniently clear, and by dawn he had extracted all of his men back across the Sambre and left a rearguard to slow the British pursuit. The race to Binche was very much on.
The Battle of Espinoit
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| I have no words |
As for what Ney did next, I can only assume that he was drunk when he sent the orders around midnight and had forgotten about them in the morning, because his first action was to detach all of his light cavalry to make a feint around the British positions and make them believe that there were enemy troops attacking from Bray...which just happened to be exactly where d'Erlon was coming from.
The British, of course, saw the mass of light cavalry followed by an infantry column and so swung Westwards to deal with this immediate threat, leaving only a single infantry division and a brigade of heavy cavalry to slow down the anticipated French right hook, which led to the situation pictured.
I cannot readily explain the decisions that followed. It's true that Marshal Ney had sent away all of his light cavalry, and so had very little idea exactly how many British troops were in front of him. It's also true that he was (like everyone else) under the impression that he was supposed to fight a holding action. However you look at it though, it took him nearly three hours to twig that he was in no danger and then execute what was to his credit a neat double-envelopment, bagging the British division along with the Prince of Orange.
Whether the fact that this surrender was almost immediately followed by news of General d'Erlon's surrender mere miles to the West spoilt his mood, history does not record. In any case, he then made the prudent decision to fall back towards Thuin on the Sambre, from where he could more easily stop the British from threatening the main French army's supply lines.
The Battle of Bray
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| Situation just prior to the attack at Bray |
I think that, on balance, d'Erlon has the greatest reason to complain of any of the generals. He did fail to defeat Hill even with large early advantages, but his withdrawal from Lens was very impressive, and against all the odds made it to Bray on the Sambre just West of Binche at the allotted time.
As we've seen though, Ney didn't arrive, and the battle was a bit of a foregone conclusion. Trapped with a river against their backs and attacking uphill against superior numbers, the French made a valiant effort but were swiftly defeated.
Sometimes the real interest is at the operational level, not the tactical - that said, a counterfactual (counter-counter-factual?) battle where Ney actually turns up would be very intriguing.
The Battle of Fleurus
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| Dispositions prior to the Prussian attack (and further reinforcement) |
If the twin battles of Bray & Espinoit sealed the French left flank's fate like Grouchy at Wavre, then the second day at Fleurus was this campaign's equivalent of Waterloo.
Now very much outnumbered, the French elected to hold and wait for Ney to defeat the British (you may have detected something of a pattern here). The Prussians did too, pausing until the early afternoon for yet more forces to turn up, and then once they'd assembled their whole army they began a slow, methodical advance.
Simultaneous attacks by multiple divisions pushed the French out of Wagnee and Heppignies - both relatively costly frontal assaults, but both successful. There followed a pause to regroup, and then the Prussian steamroller continued Southwest; they succeeded in breaking the Young Guard and 14eme Division on the French right, but the French centre held until dark and the Prussian pursuit on their left didn't make it far enough to seriously threaten the French rear.
General Thielmann also continued his duel with General Vandamme, attacking Gosselies. While Thielmann was eventually bested here, it took the arrival of the Middle and Old Guard on his flank - removing them from the main action at Fleurus for much of the afternoon - to do so, and prevented Vandamme himself from providing Grouchy with desperately needed reinforcements.
Nonetheless, the French army in Fleurus was now defeated, and with Ney falling back too, Napoleon agreed to Blucher's suggestion of a ceasefire and negotiations to begin the following morning.
The Prussian caution had ensured a solid, unspectacular victory without gravely damaging the Prussians' ability to fight - at the cost, of course, of leaving the French army very much still in being.
Final Positions
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| Dispositions at dusk, day three |
At the end of the day the French were bested, but crucially not a spent force, and had extracted most of their forces back towards the Sambre - it was clear that the campaign was now only a matter of time, but they were in a position to make the British and Prussians pay dearly to finish it, which would hand Austria and Russia a large advantage in the balance of power.
Thus, all sides held several useful cards, and agreed to negotiate peace preliminaries the next day; we'll review those in the next post.