dMAC Digest Vol 4 No 6 ~ Waterloo

Chapter 1 – What is so special about Waterloo?

Chapter 2 – Larrey

Chapter 3 – The Shoemaker’s son

Chapter 4 – Come the Revolution

Chapter 5 – The Flying Ambulance

Chapter 6 – Revolution Background

Chapter 7 – Marie Antoinette ~ Queen of France

Chapter 8 – A Whiff of Grapeshot

Chapter 9 – Josephine ~ Napoleon’s 1st Wife

Chapter 10 – Events in Paris

Chapter 11 – Italian interlude

Chapter 12 – 1798 ~ Egypt

Chapter 13 – Coup d’état

Chapter 14 – The Reign of Napoleon

Chapter 15 – Marie Louise ~ Napoleon’s 2nd Wife

Chapter 16 – 1812 ~ Retreat from Moscow

Chapter 17 – One Hundred Days

Chapter 18 – Allied discord

Chapter 19 – Napoleon’s Reforms

Chapter 20 – The Armies of Waterloo

Chapter 21 – The Allies Armies

Chapter 22 – Blücher

Chapter 23 – Wellington

Chapter 24 – Napoleon’s arrangements

Chapter 25 – Allied Forces

Chapter 26 – Weapons

Chapter 27 – 1 June 1815

Chapter 28 – Murat

Chapter 29 – 15 June ~ Belgium invaded

Chapter 30 – Duchess of Richmond’s Ball

Chapter 31 – 16 June ~ Quatre Bras & Ligny

Chapter 32 – 17 June ~ Prussian & Allies withdrawal

Chapter 33 – 18 June ~ Morning

Chapter 34 – 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Chapter 35 – 3:30 to 6:00 p.m.

Chapter 36 – Evening ~ the end game

Chapter 37 – Conclusion

Epilogue

That’s Life

Bibliography

About the Editor

Other Titles by Duncan MacDonald

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Chapter 1

What is so special about the Battle of Waterloo

The armed conflict that took place on Sunday 18 June 1815, near a small village called Waterloo in present day Belgium, shaped the European political scene for most of the 19th century. It ushered in almost half a century of international peace in Europe; no further major conflict occurred until the Crimean War in 1856.

It became a benchmark, with people of all walks of life using it to calculate their triumphs and tragedies. In luxurious London townhouses or in humble Scottish crofts, mothers would mention that their daughters had married, not in 1825, but ‘ten years after Waterloo.’ Or, sons would recall their fathers had died ‘five years before Waterloo.’

Battle of Waterloo

Three armed forces participated in the battle which is located about 13 km (8 miles) south by south east of Brussels. and about 2 km (1 mile) from the village of Waterloo.

The French Armée du Nord led by Napoleon, was pitted against an Allied army, comprising British, Dutch, Belgians and Germans, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, combined with a Prussian army led by Gebhard von Blücher.

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The site of the battlefield today is dominated by a large monument, the Lion’s Mound. In 1820, the Netherlands King William I, ordered the construction of this monument on the spot where it was believed his son, the Prince of Orange, had been wounded.

As this mound was constructed from earth taken from the battlefield itself, the contemporary topography of the battlefield near the mound has not been preserved.

Waterloo – Lion’s Mound Memorial – completed in 1825

Modern re-enactment of the battle

The Battle of Waterloo! The curious rushed to the scene the day after the battle. This cavalcade has continued ever since. Each year more people visit the site than many of Europe’s World War I and World War II battlegrounds. ~ Your Editor was fortunate to visit the battlefield in August 1978.

The outcome of the battle was in doubt until almost the end of the day. As the drama unfolded there were French and British cavalry actions that eclipsed the charge of the Light Brigade, for sheer madness.

The carnage wrought by cannon and canister on soldiers of both sides was unprecedented and only eclipsed by the machine guns of World War I (and that bloody atrocity went on for four years).

The French lost approximately 50,000 men killed or wounded, with 9,000 captured. Wellington’s army lost about 15,000, of whom 8,445 were British; Blücher lost about 6,700 at Waterloo, and 16,000 killed or wounded, at Ligny.

The French Cuirassiers charging the Highlanders

This edition examines Waterloo through different lens; the struggle of Napoleon’s outnumbered forces against the allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington, Prince Willem of Orange and Marshal Blücher.

We all know from our school days that Napoleon lost the battle, but with the evidence now available we can determine who actually won the battle.

The result may surprise you.

The main protagonists and some of their more colorful subordinates are evaluated, not just the generals, but influential characters such as Dominique Larrey, Surgeon to Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, who introduced first aid and Flying Ambulances to the battlefield, something that had not been practiced since the end of the Roman Empire, almost 1,400 years earlier.

Initially we will view this historical period through the eyes of Chief Surgeon Dominique Jean Larrey. It will be easier to comprehend the mindset that led to senseless slaughter, as great European armies fought for dominance over neighboring kingdoms and empires.

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Chapter 2 - Larrey

Before Dominique Jean Larrey, Surgeon to Napoleon’s Imperial Guard, the military machine was all important. Nothing was allowed to interfere with its efficiency - one simply cleared away the mess after it was over. In 1799 when Napoleon Bonaparte was getting into his stride ‘one would believe that the sick and the wounded cease to be men, when they can no longer be soldiers.’

Since the invention of firearms and cannons, armies had grown bigger, battles were fought over ever-increasing areas and casualties were numbered in the thousands, rather than in the hundreds or even tens. With few exceptions, notably Ancient Rome, medical officers were not found in armies before the 18th century; surgeons who went to war did so as the body of servants of monarchs and the nobility. The rank and file either looked after themselves, were tended by local inhabitants, or were treated by itinerant charlatans and camp-followers.

Battle casualties were no real problem from a logistical point of view; they either tagged along with the baggage wagons or were abandoned. Sickness was another matter, as communicable diseases could, and did, influence the outcome of a campaign. However, little could be done to bring them under control until their cause was discovered in the latter part of the 19th century.

The attitude of the soldier himself in this period can be seen in an episode told by Ambrose Paré, one of the handful of worthwhile military surgeons before Larrey. In a stable at the siege of Turin in 1537, he found three soldiers ‘leaning against the wall, their faces completely disfigured; they were unable to see, hear or speak. Their clothes were still smoldering from the gunpowder that had burnt them.

An old soldier came in and asked if there was any hope of curing them. Paré answered ‘No’.

So, the old soldier calmly cut their throats. Seeing this great cruelty Paré told him, ‘he was a wicked man.’ But the soldier said ‘he prayed to God, that if ever he should be in a similar condition, someone would do as much for him.’

The vast armies of the late 18th and 19th century, their attendant artillery and enormous baggage trains, churned the roads to quagmires and then needed space to maneuver and fight. Battlefields covering as much as ten square miles were not unknown. Battles that began as though on the parade ground, ended in chaos, tumult and mud. And throughout this-whole bloody-shambles the military machine had complete priority.

During the Peninsular War, even the Duke of Wellington (or Arthur Wellesley as he was then known) would allow nothing to interfere with the movement of his army. Casualties were a confounded nuisance and the regulations governing their disposal were founded on this belief. When appraised of Larrey’s new Flying Ambulances, by a visiting British navy captain who had met Larrey, Wellington replied:

The only carriages he would allow on his battlefield were gun carriages.

The existing regulations stated the ambulances - huge, cumbersome vehicles, known as fourgons, needing forty horses to draw them in the best conditions - together with their surgical personnel - should wait about three miles (5 kilometres) in the rear.

After the engagement, the wounded were collected at a convenient spot, to which the fourgons proceeded at all possible speed. All possible speed? Bogged down in the mud by their own weight, obstructed by artillery and wagons jammed in confusion, they never arrived in less than 24 or 36 hours. By which time many of those they were designed to help were already dead or beyond hope. Many, too, were left on the field, prey to the camp-followers and local inhabitants who swooped down like vultures to strip, rob and mutilate - friend or foe, dead or alive, it made no difference.

With the wars of the French Revolution, the situation deteriorated and become completely out of hand. Something had to done.

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But it needed a man of exceptional qualities, not the least of which, was the strength and the will to stand up to the might of the military authority. That man was Dominique Jean Larrey.

At the heart of the matter lay the status of the army medical service. In France it came under the wing of the ‘Administration de la Guerre’ whose head was the Minister of War. However, it would be more realistic to say the Administration had its claws in the medical service and was not going to let go.

Ministerial Regulation of 1796 took away the last vestiges of surgeon authority. The establishment and running of military hospitals, organization of ambulances and the movement of casualties, became the responsibility of the Administration and their local representatives, the Quartermasters.

Adding to this problem was the status of the medical officer himself. Socially this was low - and the condition of service did nothing to attract the best men. Pay was poor and particularly on active service, irregular.

Combat officers lined their pockets handsomely with the spoils of war. Indeed, it was expected of them and they petitioned their sovereign for rewards for services rendered. Decorations, favors, honors, land and great sums of money were heaped upon those whose sole interest was self. This was the way of life and a man was considered a fool if he did not conform.

Then came the Revolution with its Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. Fine ideals maybe, but they ignored human nature. So far as warfare as concerned it was ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same’ - only more so.

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Chapter 3 - The Shoemaker’s Son

The Seven Years War had placed a severe financial burden on France and reduced her prestige abroad. She had lost Canada and her conquests in Germany. Her navy was third rate, her army was beaten, demoralized, and leaderless. Yet in less than a decade after the end of that war in 1763, Napoleon and most of the men who were to become his marshals and carry a defeated France to the pinnacle of military glory were born.

Away to the south, in the remoteness of the High Pyrenees [now border between France and Spain] the country folk knew little about the affairs of government and cared even less. The foothills were farming country and the local population poor, but with their own high moral standards and an unswerving loyalty to each other.

Into this community, in the little village of Beaudéan, Dominique Jean Larrey was born on 8 July 1766. His family had lived in the district for generations - as tough and rugged as the Pyrenean mountains themselves. His father, Jean, was originally intended to stay home and help his father work the family farm, but his health was poor. Instead he became a master shoemaker.

Jean the shoemaker, married Philippine Perés, and they had three children; a girl; Geneviéve born in 1760; Dominique Jean born 1766; and Claude Francois Hilaire born in 1769. Dominique Jean was christened on the day of his birth and if there was any doubt as to his Christian names, just look at his godmother - Dominique Jeanne Piéra.

Dominique’s father died and he was sent to his uncle Alexis to continue his education. On May 10, 1780, a sad little boy of thirteen in his Sunday best, set off northwards down the rocky track on the 70-mile walk to Toulouse.

Alexis Larrey, Surgeon-in-Chief at the local hospital, had two sons of his own, both destined for the medical profession, yet he welcomed Dominique to his family. As the lad’s cultural and classical education left something to be desired, he spent two terms at the College of Esquille. When the rough edges had been smoothed away Alexis gave his nephew an excellent grounding in medicine and surgery. He was well rewarded for Dominique was an excellent pupil and at age nineteen won first prize among the students at the hospital. The following year he was again first in the examination for house surgeon and shortly after his twentieth birthday, defended his thesis on ‘The Surgery of Bone Caries [ decay ]’ with such brilliance that the University of Toulouse awarded him a medal bearing the arms of the city.

For nearly a year he continued to work at Toulouse but felt the need of wider experience and advanced training that only Paris could offer. So, armed with a letter of introduction from his Uncle Alexis, to the permanent secretary of the Royal Academy of Surgery, he set out on his long walk - public transport was not for him - it would make too deep a hole in his already shallow purse.

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Chapter 4

Come the Revolution

On the morning of July 14, 1789, Larrey, at the head of 1,500 young students, together with an immense crowd, attacked the Bastille. In less than four hours the ‘impregnable’ fortress fell. The governor, Marquis de Launay’s head was raise aloft on a pike as the seven prisoners, one a madman, were freed to the hysterical shouts of the crowd. With their bare hands the mob then completed the destruction that fire had begun. Stone by stone the looming symbol of all they hated and feared, was razed to the ground.

Storming the Bastille

These tumultuous events produced a large number of casualties. Many shattered wretches limped, crawled or were carried to the Hôtel Dieu where Monsieur Desault took advantage of the situation, to teach his medical students about gunshot wounds. In particular, about cutting out all dead and dying tissue and removing all foreign bodies from the wound - a procedure known as débridement that had first been implemented by Leonardo Botallo in the 16th century but had since been ignored. Larrey at once appreciated its significance and profited greatly from the lesson.

When limbs had been injured and the patient was a candidate for amputation, Desault always held back. Like almost every other surgeon, he believed that a delay allowed the patient to recover from the shock of wounding and become reconciled to the coming loss. This philosophy derived from the views of Jean Faure. After the French victory at Fontenoy in 1745 (British, Austrians and Dutch were defeated by the French in Belgium), the Royal Academy of Surgery had offered a prize for the best-reasoned answer, based on practical experience ‘Should one amputate immediately in cases of gunshot wounds, or should one delay?’ Almost 300 soldiers wounded in battle had had amputations, but only 30 survived. Ten of these had been operated on by Faure, after a delay of 15 to 20 days. No one looked closely into the true reasons for the heavy mortality rate, and Faure won the prize medal.

Richard Wiseman in the British navy in 1676 had written: "But among us aboard in that Service (the Navy) it was counted a great Shame to the Chirurgeon (Surgeon), if that operation was left to be done the next Day, when Symptoms were upon the Patient, and he spent with watching etc. Therefore, you are to consider well the Member (limb) and if you have no probable hope of Sanitation, cut it off quickly, while the Soldier is heated and in Mettle. But if there be Hopes of a Cure, proceed rationally to a right and methodical Healing of such Wounds; it being more for your Credit to save one Member, than to cut off many.'

Larrey, one hundred and thirteen years later, came around to Wiseman’s thinking when he saw the unhappy outcome of Desault’s delayed operations - a high mortality rate and a long and stormy convalescence for those who survived.

In the early days of the Revolution, surgery and the pursuit of liberty, fought on equal terms for Larrey’s attention. Larrey spent the whole of October 1789 on guard duty at Versailles. However, he eventually realised his surgical ambitions were best served in a hospital. When the job of assistant surgeon became vacant at the Invalides he was successful and abandoned the barricades. But all he received in return was food and lodging. To get some money he worked as a demonstrator at the school of anatomy attached to the University and also as district surgeon for Saint-André-des-Arts.

In October 1791 the Legislative Assembly had taken over the National Assembly. It was composed of the most fervent revolutionaries whose speeches thoroughly alarmed the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria. The time had come, these monarchs reckoned, to take active steps to rescue their royal brother, Louis XVI, from his plight. As they assembled their armies and prepared to march to the west, the French made what was perhaps the craziest declaration of war in history.

The country had no army worthy of the name. Its troops were few, lacking equipment and riddled with insubordination. The crack regiments, consisting of mercenaries such as the Swiss, had either been slaughtered in defense of the King, or had been disbanded only to cross the frontier and find employment with the armies of Prussia and Austria. Many of the officers, drawn from the aristocracy, had fled the country to enlist in the émigré forces. With few exceptions, discipline did not exist, and the soldiers, infected with the fever of revolution, did only what it pleased them to do.

Nevertheless, even an army such as this needed its medical officers, and Larrey was conscripted at a salary of 250 livres a month. Surgeon-Major Larrey took leave of Paris and his new-found girlfriend, Charlotte Elisabeth Laville, both vowing eternal love and reported to the headquarters of the Army of the Rhine on April 1, 1792.

By mid-September the French had been pushed back to within 130 miles from Paris. General Francois Christophe Kellermann marched from Metz, crossed the River Aube and took up a position on the plateau of Valmy. The next morning Kellermann’s men saw the might of Europe sweep into the valley, descend on the French army of General Dumouriez, situated next to them and sweep the French to their slaughter, at the hands of the