Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo () was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Walloon Brabant in Belgium south of Brussels. An Imperial French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by combined armies of the Seventh Coalition, a multi-national army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of German-Prussian Generalfeldmarschall Gebhard von Blücher (de). It was the culminating battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days' return from exile.
Belligerents and Strength
The North Army of the French Empire invaded Belgium (part of the Netehrlands at the time) and fought against the Seventh Coalition consisting of troops from the Kingdom of Prussia, the United Kingdom, the Kingdom of Hanover, the Duchy of Nassau, the Duchy of Brunswick, and the United Netherlands.
The numbers below are those of the soldiers taking part in the battle, but the armies were much larger. Napoleon had as of 1 June 1815 550,000 men (800,000 had been his goal): 363,000 men line troops (line infantry), 112,000 men national guard, and 45,000 men navy and costal guard. His main army, the "Army of the North" (Armée du Nord) including the "Reserve Army" (Armée de la Réserve), for the campaign in Belgium as of 15 June 1815 and gathhered in Charleroi had a strength of 124,000 to 130,000 men.
Wellington had as of 16 June 1815 93,218 men to his disposal, 36,299 Germans, 32,418 British (with 6,371 King's German Legion, therefore also German), and 24.501 men from the Netherlands.[1] Von Blücher's "Niederrhein-Armee" had three corps[2] with 83,000 men and a fourth corps under General der Infantere von Bülow with 47,000 men and 176 guns still marching from direction of Lüttich (Liège).
France
- 72,000 to 73,000 men[3] (who took part in the battle)
- 50,700 infantry
- 14,390 cavalry
- 8,050 artillery and engineers
- 252 guns
Seventh Coalition (de)
- 118,000 to 120,000 men (who took part in the battle)
- Wellington's international army: 68,000 men (including 7,000 British and German veterans of the Peninsula campaign)[3]
- 25,000 British
- 6,000 King's German Legion (Königlich Deutsche Legion)
- Netherlands: 17,000
- Hanover: 11,000
- Brunswick: 6,000
- Nassau: 3,000
- 156 guns
- Von Blücher's Prussian army: 48,000 to 50,000 men[4]
- I. Korps Generallieutenant von Zieten
- II. Korps Generalmajor von Pirch I
- IV. Korps (partial) General der Infantere von Bülow
- Wellington's international army: 68,000 men (including 7,000 British and German veterans of the Peninsula campaign)[3]
History
After Napoleon's escape from the island of Elba and his return to power in 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilise armies. Two large forces under Wellington and von Blücher assembled close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the Coalition. The decisive engagement of this three-day Waterloo Campaign (16 June – 19 June 1815) occurred at the Battle of Waterloo. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life."[5]
Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon on 18 June to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont St Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, Wellington's Anglo-allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.
The battlefield is in present-day Belgium, about eight miles (12 km) SSE of Brussels, and about a mile (1.6 km) from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield is today dominated by a large monument, the Lion Mound. As this mound used earth from the battlefield itself, the original topography of the part of the battlefield around the mound has not been preserved.
- "In the middle of the position occupied by the French army, and exactly upon the height, is a farm, called La Belle Alliance. The march of all the Prussian columns was directed towards this farm, which was visible from every side. It was there that Napoleon was during the battle; it was thence that he gave his orders, that he flattered himself with the hopes of victory; and it was there that his ruin was decided. There, too, it was that, by happy chance, Field Marshal Blücher and Lord Wellington met in the dark, and mutually saluted each other as victors." - General Gneisenau[6]
A French view of the reasons for Napoleon's defeat
General Antoine-Henri Jomini, one of the leading military writers on the Napoleonic art of war, had a number of very cogent explanations of the reasons behind Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo:
- "In my opinion, four principal causes led to this disaster: The first, and most influential, was the arrival, skilfully combined, of Generalfeldmarschall Blücher, and the false movement that favoured this arrival;[7] the second, was the admirable firmness of the British infantry, joined to the sang-froid and aplomb of its chiefs; the third, was the horrible weather, that had softened the ground, and rendered the offensive movements so toilsome, and retarded till one o'clock the attack that should have been made in the morning; the fourth, was the inconceivable formation of the first corps, in masses very much too deep for the first grand attack."
Casualties
France
- Total: 48,000
- 25,000 killed and wounded
- 8,000 captured
- 15,000 missing / deserted[8]
Allies
- Total: 24,000
Bibliography
- Barbero, Alessandro (2006), The Battle. A New History of Waterloo (translated by John Cullen) (paperback ed.), Walker & Company, ISBN 978-0-8027-1500-5
- Chappell, Mike (2000) The King’s German Legion 1812–1816, London
- Chesney, Charles C. (1874), Waterloo Lectures: A Study Of The Campaign Of 1815 (3rd ed.), Longmans, Green, and Co
- Hofschröer, Peter
- (1999), 1815: The Waterloo Campaign. The German Victory, 2, London: Greenhill Books, ISBN 978-1-85367-368-9
- (2005), Waterloo 1815: Quatre Bras and Ligny, London: Leo Cooper, ISBN 978-1-84415-168-4
External links
Encyclopedias
- Encyclopedia Britannica: Battle of Waterloo
- Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 Edition: Waterloo Campaign
- Encyclopedia.com: Waterloo campaign
References
- ↑ Wellington's army
- ↑ I. Korps Generallieutenant von Zieten (29,096), II. Korps Generalmajor von Pirch I (30,026), and III. Korps Generallieutenant von Thielmann (23,544)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Hofschröer, pp. 72–73
- ↑ Chesney 1907, p. 4.
- ↑ Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, citing Creevey Papers, ch. x, p. 236
- ↑ August Wilhelm Antonius Graf Neidhardt von Gneisenau (27 October 1760 – 23 August 1831) was a German-Prussian field marshal. He was a prominent figure in the reform of the Prussian military and the War of Liberation.
- ↑ This "false movement" was the detachment of Grouchy's force in pursuit of the Prussians – Napoleon had overestimated the extent of his victory at Ligny and underestimated the resilience of the German-Prussians. He also seems to have discounted the presence of Bülow's substantial corps, which had not been in action at Ligny (de). Had Napoleon retained Grouchy's 30,000 men as a guard for his right flank it is likely that these troops could have held off the Prussians and allowed the rest of Napoleon's army to attack Wellington's army unmolested.
- ↑ Barbero 2005, p. 420.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Barbero 2005, p. 419.