Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1: From Elba to Ligny and Quatre Bras

time.

Preface

THERE ARE MANY BOOKS ON THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

, and fine Ones, too. Why should another be written? Is there so much new material?

To the first question my answer is that this book offers a new approach, with much more attention paid to the inception of the campaign and the aftermath. For the battle, although titanic, was merely the culmination of a long period of ‘undeclared war’ during which Allied statesmen and generals tried to establish how best to contain and beat a resurgent Napoleon, ‘disturber of the world’s peace’. Moreover the battle, though decisive, was also the preparatory step towards Napoleon’s final exile, and peace negotiations that ended in a remarkably moderate treaty. The extreme sanction of going to war can be justified only if it leads to a better world where disputes can be settled peacefully by reform, accommodation, and diplomacy, and the peace treaty of November 1815 ended serious war in Europe for half a lifetime and world war for a century. Thus Waterloo (and the actions at Charleroi, Ligny, Quatre Bras and Wavre) was the hinge between two vital and lengthy episodes of enormous importance, that deserve more attention than usually they receive.

Far too little consideration has in the past been given to logistics in this campaign, to food supply (and payment), and the integration of many small independent contingents into the two armies under Blücher and Wellington in Belgium. These problems complicated the establishment of an agreed Allied strategy in Belgium, and even when the main differences had been resolved, there remained the further complication of determining how to use the vast numbers of German, Austrian and Russian forces moving slowly across Europe to form up on the Rhine. The problems of coalition in 1815 were daunting, and they demanded an immense amount of time and effort to resolve before the Allies could be ready to invade France. Not to study these matters is to falsify the story of the actual campaign. It is as though, following the evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, the story jumped immediately to D-Day 1944, ignoring the effect of the Russian Front, ignoring the time it took to re-equip the British Army, jumping past the Allied integration and planning (PLUTO, the Mulberry harbours, the deception plans), that for three years went into making ‘Overlord’ something more than a wild gamble.

Slowly through the spring and early summer of 1815 the different contingents assembled, sought food and forage and pay, all massed inside a small Allied country. Agreement had to be sought on whether to differentiate between Napoleon and France: was the country a victim or a collaborator in his adventure, and should it be punished? How to co-ordinate the plans of Blücher and Wellington in Belgium was gradually resolved in a sensible way, although not without leaving bruises, but the further integration with the massed Allies moving westwards towards the Rhine was never satisfactorily settled, due to deep dissensions at headquarters in Germany, much to the frustration of Blücher and Wellington.

The campaign was short, bloody, and decisive; it was a world event. But essentially it lasted four days. And on 19 June, although Napoleon’s army was ruined there was still much else to do, which is why the aftermath of Waterloo is so interesting: what to do about Napoleon, about the Bourbons, about France – whether to dismember it, reduce it to the status of a minor country, or leave it a place among the community of European powers. And what kind of community of powers was there to be? Absolutist Russia dominated the continent, and neither Austria nor Prussia could significantly control the Tsar. In the settlement much came to depend upon the role of Britain, and that, too, makes the story so interesting. Aside from that, the myth of Napoleon and a succession of his admirers have together enveloped the French account of the period after Waterloo in partisan history and curious argument, and it has been one of the tasks of this book to sort likely truth from emotional rhetoric to see more clearly what must have been.

All this affects the way in which my book has been constructed, for the narrative and analysis concentrate on why and how those at the head of affairs understood and handled matters. Its standpoint is that of the rulers and commanders and it does not pretend to recount the thoughts and experiences of the men whom they led, such as Corporal Stiles of the Royal Dragoons, Private Rem of the Dutch Militia, Private Strantz of the Prussian III Corps, or Corporal Canler of the 28e Ligne. Their accounts, and those of hundreds of others, are already admirably presented in a shelf-full of excellent works. Nor does it offer a minute-by-minute relation of the battle, for the finest account of it is, I believe, not in histories but in Fabrice’s experiences in the early chapters of Stendhal’s masterpiece, La Chartreuse de Parme.

As to the second question, of new material: some is indeed still surfacing, but mainly confirmatory of what we knew before, or sometimes changing a detail: for instance, throwing a new light on Mercer’s famous description of his battery’s experience, or Barnard of the 1/95th giving an unvarnished account of some unsteadiness in that élite battalion. But a great deal of evidence has been in the public domain for well over a century, although perhaps too cursorily scrutinised. Some of it is contradictory or leaves us suspended in mid-story, and national pride can add to the contradictions. The present work seeks to apply reasoning and inherent probability to the many questions, to set out in detail a line of argument that readers can follow to the end and test for themselves, to join the author in his judgement or have the means to form a different conclusion. This is the case, for example, with the march of the Reserve from Brussels to the forest of Soignies and thence to Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815, of the performance of Trip’s cavalry at the great battle, and of the deployment of the Moyenne Garde at the climax of the battle. All these topics and many others form appendices to the narrative chapters in the hope of sweeping away old and persistent myths and leaving the battle in a clearer light.

The first words of what was to become this book were written many years ago for a learned journal. They were written as an aside, for at that time I was deeply immersed in research on the First World War. But the era of Marlborough and Wellington had been a constant interest of mine since boyhood, with volumes of Fortescue and Oman packed as companions on postings to distant parts of the world during thirty years’ service with British Petroleum. Then, in the 1990s, the re-emergence of an old Prussian thesis on Allied dissensions in the 1815 campaign gave a new topicality to ‘the matter of Waterloo’. Almost without design I found myself drawn ever more deeply into examining its sources, and a succession of papers was the result. But articles and essays are fated to languish in library back-stacks to which bound volumes of old periodicals are soon relegated; a book is still the one sure way to place a serious argument before the public, and so now, nearly twenty years later, I submit my story to the verdict of the educated reader. I have striven to meet the dictum of the great Latinist A. E. Housman, quoted in my epigraph; how far short I have fallen I can only guess, but my readers will soon see.

Among many friends who offered help and encouragement I recall the late Marquess of Anglesey whose telephoned advice and charmingly worded postcards written in a lovely script were always a tonic; the late John Gorton, a lifelong friend whose help and advice were invaluable in the early phases of this work; the late David Watkins, the tough-minded editor of First Empire, who despite pressure to drop my work gave me a platform to set out my ideas across some seven years till his magazine closed; Gary Cousins, whose determination to get at the real meaning of many controversies about Waterloo made him a splendid man to debate with, and whose open and frank support meant much at certain difficult moments; Gareth Glover, who having published a mass of Siborne’s papers then turned to exploring archives all over this country, and who has kindly shared his Waterloo opinions and insights with me; Philip Haythornthwaite, a generous encourager to all who research topics about this era, whose offers of recondite information, comment and support have made our correspondence a constant surprise and delight – some of the illustrations that appear in this book also come from Philip’s own collection; Lionel Leventhal, whose continued encouragement and advice kept this project alive when it seemed about to die; Colonel David Miller, whose friendship and almost daily exchanges of views for some sixteen years have become almost a way of life, and whose books on Lady De Lancey and the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball are the best tributes to his diligence in research; Dr Gregory Pedlow, at that time in charge of NATO’s Historical Office, whose unexpected telephone call to me in 1999 began an ongoing discussion and exchange of ideas, and whose superb grasp of the campaign is married to an expertise in German that he unfailingly placed at my disposal when some text was proving beyond my skills to translate – it is not too much to say that the German sources used here owe almost everything to his assistance; Stephen Walzer, wisest and most perceptive of lawyers, whose comments and friendly advice have saved me from many a slip; and my dear stepchildren Clare and Alan Hartley, particularly Alan who has helped in more ways than he knows or than I can ever persuade him to believe.

In 2003 the Belgian authorities set up an international Historical Committee to advise on the restoration of the battlefield of Waterloo, and I was selected as the British representative, a post I held until my wife’s serious illness and medical troubles of my own forced me to resign in 2007. Among those who became my closest friends were the late Dr Jacques Logie of Plancenoit and Philippe de Callataÿ,

OBE

, former honorary curator of the Wellington Museum at Waterloo, ex-Chairman of the Belgian Friends of Waterloo, and a bibliophile whose private collection of books on the campaign is probably unrivalled. Both were unstinting in their advice and encouragement, and it was a personal pleasure for me to translate Philippe’s deeply informative article on the French army’s concentration in June 1815. To other members of our committee, Belgian, Dutch, German and French I am likewise most grateful for the exchanges of ideas during those years.

During the First Empire years (2003–11) I made friends by correspondence with two Dutchmen, Erwin Muilwijk and Pierre de Wit. Erwin’s primary interest was in the Netherlands forces in 1815 and he provided me at times with much information. He has since published four stout volumes in English; if we do not always arrive at the same conclusions yet it is a pleasure to recall those past discussions. Over the last decade Pierre de Wit has produced the best internet account of the campaign, making available hundreds of documents, old or freshly discovered by him, all in their original languages; and since he is also blessed with an acutely analytical mind and a willingness to debate with good humour, we have had many a long conversation, usually with agreement on the big things. Happily, I believe that I have at last persuaded him to issue his great internet work as a book.

A number of archivists, professional researchers, and librarians have generously given of their time to answer questions and furnish material, and notably Professor Christopher Woolgar and his team at the Hartley Library, the University of Southampton; the staff of the British Library and of the Royal United Services Institute Library, Whitehall; and Mrs Pauline Eismark, a researcher who has greatly helped in my quest for material at the National Archives, Kew. But above all there is the Mecca of scholars, the London Library, whose vast collections and generous lending conditions have enabled me to work at home with a dozen volumes at the side of my desk for months on end. And its staff have turned a professional relationship into one of friendship and gratitude, just as they have for innumerable other writers.

One other friend’s name must be mentioned here. It was my great privilege to become a friend and indeed intimate of the late John Terraine, the most enduring and determined of those who by the time of his death were known as ‘revisionist’ historians of the First World War. John began that lonely task nearly sixty years ago when the views of Liddell Hart were everywhere dominant, and lonely it still appeared when we first met in the 1980s. His understanding was broad and deep; though he wrote mainly on warfare in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries his grasp of events from, say, the sixteenth century through to 1945 and after was immense. He was never afraid of standing alone against the fashion of the day, arguing persistently for his views when encountering much opprobrium or indifference, and in the end his views did become the fashion. What I learned from him was invaluable and immeasurable in our ten years and more of close friendship. He would have regretted (as Lord Anglesey sometimes did) that I had turned aside from writing of the much maligned Sir Douglas Haig, but I hope that he would have appreciated some of the fruits of our lunches and conversations appearing within the context of another great struggle, 1815.

Had matters gone according to plan my manuscript would have been submitted by 2014. Certain events made that impossible, but thanks to Lionel Leventhal’s quiet encouragement, the semi-abandoned work was revived and pushed through to a belated conclusion, by which time the Waterloo bicentenary celebrations were over. But though it is ‘belated’ by appearing in 2017, in a few years – if it finds favour and lives – its belatedness will soon be of no importance.

No words can sufficiently express my gratitude for Hew Strachan’s thoughtful Foreword; so generous and kindly an appraisal from such an authority has surpassed all my hopes and expectations.

Finally, I must thank my production team led by Lionel’s son Michael Leventhal (whose patience has been exemplary), and notably Donald Sommerville who brilliantly turned a long script into a cleanly edited narrative, while my inexpert sketches have been transformed by Peter Wilkinson’s beautiful maps, whose copiousness should be a steady help to readers as they learn of rumours of invasion, and follow the tramp of marching columns across the Belgian countryside of two centuries ago. I also thank Douglas Matthews for his work on the index.

If by inadvertence I have overlooked anyone I offer my sincere apologies. In thanking all these helpers I must add that any mistakes are all my own: and I and the publishers will be grateful for any corrections to errors.

Illustration and Other Acknowledgements

I thank the National Portrait Gallery, for permission to use Thomas Heaphy’s 1813 watercolour of Wellington, ref NPG 1914 (18); my thanks are also owed to Peter Harrington and the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, Brown University Library, of Providence, RI, who have been most helpful in providing a variety of images. The volume epigraph is slightly adapted from A. E. Housman’s Preface to Manilius’ Astronomica (1930), Book 5, p. xxxv.

Editorial Conventions

As the corps system was used to a greater or lesser extent by all three armies in the 1815 campaign, I have adopted Roman numerals for the Allies and Arabic numerals and italics for the French, so as to make the difference plainer for the reader. Thus: British II Corps, Prussian II Corps, but French 2e Corps. The same non-italic and italic rule applies to smaller units in the respective armies: 1/52nd Foot, 13th Infantry Regiment, 13e Ligne.

Chapter 1

Europe’s Experience of Napoleon

1797–1814

I

THE HUNDRED DAYS AND THE CAMPAIGN OF

1815 comprise a great drama in themselves, but are also the final episode in the extraordinary Napoleonic adventure. Thus they do not stand totally apart from the preceding events; and nor did the participants of the time think they did. If we are to understand the minds and actions of the sovereigns and politicians – and the generals who fought their battles – we need to remember that although ‘the return from Elba’ was indeed the act that brought on fresh troubles, the key to what followed lies in their long experience of Napoleon. There were, of course, other factors as well. The ‘return’ would have been impossible without the discontents in France that arose from the Bourbon Restoration in 1814. But in addition, international disputes in the winter of 1814/15 almost wrecked the victorious alliance of spring and summer 1814, and brought its members to the point of war - this, too, encouraged Napoleon in his dreams. Just as he, the inveterate calculator of odds, gambled upon negotiating some form of settlement with individual European powers once he was again in possession of France, so the powers – wise from their experience of seventeen years’ dealings with Bonaparte as general, consul and emperor, and the experience of Napoleonic domination – refused all compromise and sought his total overthrow.

The statesmen of Europe’s response to the ‘return’, thus stemmed from Europe’s own knowledge of Napoleon’s aims and Napoleon’s methods. To wage war, to extend his rule ever further afield, to dream of universal empire, to use diplomacy to divide his enemies and chicanery to confuse his allies (and the terms enemy and ally could become interchangeable in any situation), to mislead by propaganda, to impose an authoritarian system of government promoting across Europe policies mainly to benefit France, these were the hallmarks of his rule. But it went further, for it was not so much a pro-French rule but a personal rule, whereby everything had to depend upon Napoleon’s own predilections and contribute to his own position. And since he relished his genius for war¹ it meant the imposition on France and tributary Europe of the hated conscription, the levying of heavy taxes, and the burden of a mercantilist Continental System. How had this come about? How was it to end? The answers lie in the personality of that child of the Revolution, Napoleon himself, and that necessitates a retrospective digression that yet is not wholly a digression.

II

The French Revolution in its domestic aspect had in the space of three or four years destroyed much of the old administration of the country, secularised the Church and then abolished Christianity (to the horror of many French people and certainly of the Pope), changed the system of land tenure, altered and upset the finances of the country, and had proposed (with popular endorsement) three new constitutions of 1791, 1793 and 1795 (and implemented the first and third – though not the embarrassingly liberal constitution of 1793). It had seen government more than ever centralised in Paris, and this Paris at the mercy of extremists vying with each other in a revolutionary fervour that culminated in the Great Terror. It had seen most of the old ties of society dissolved, the monarchy and aristocracy abolished, the King and Queen and countless others executed, down to ordinary citizens against whom private grudges could be turned into death sentences in people’s courts. It had resulted in civil war in the west and south, and troubles elsewhere. Such were the singular and bloody outcomes of the great ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen’ of October 1789 and the call for ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’. After a decade of upheaval and destruction, France was a country in need of calm and order, of stable and firm administration, and good government. That is what Bonaparte boldly promised in 1799.

Europe’s attitude to the French Revolution was at first benign, in that most statesmen expected France to be so engaged in internal reform that it would play no active part in the affairs of the world. This meant that it would no longer concern itself with the balance of power, leaving its operation to other states. For the balance, the ‘just equilibrium’, had been fundamental to Europe for centuries, and it operated as a constant adjustment between states to restrain the ambitious from interfering with the independence of the rest. ‘Political relations,’ wrote Clausewitz, ‘with their affinities and antipathies, had become so sensitive a nexus that no cannon could be fired in Europe without every government feeling its interest affected.’ And he noted that this sensitivity created counter-balancing interests against a war-bent monarch, so that ‘his conquests rarely amounted to very much’.² Thus great coalitions had formed against the over-mighty – as in Louis XIV’s time – but then evolved into different combinations once their work was done. But there was a second principle, partition, that could be invoked in defence of the balance (as over the future of the Spanish dominions in the 1690s) or when a state was so weak, isolated and friendless, that it could be taken apart without risk of a general war (as in the case of Poland, 1772–95).

What was not expected in 1789 and 1790 was the revolutionary, militant, and universal doctrine that emerged from Paris, declaring France the friend and champion of all oppressed peoples regardless of frontiers and old treaties. The Revolution demanded ‘the natural frontiers’ of the Rhine, the Alps, the Pyrenees, and soon demanded annexations even further afield. (It is one of the quirks in that revolutionary extremist Robespierre’s character that he was against war with Europe.) Despite occasional successes, the allies against France, working on the old principles and watching against the ambitions of their partners in areas far from western Europe, failed to check the revolutionary impetus. France, though initially almost broken by defeats and poor organisation, made desperate efforts to rebuild its army and instituted the levée en masse that produced some 800,000 soldiers (although this had fallen to some 365,000 by late 1797). After France’s leaders promoted a new generation of ruthless commissioners and threatened its commanders with victory or death, able generals emerged, like Hoche, Bernadotte, Moreau, Joubert – and Bonaparte. That the Revolutionary Wars gave France so many victories and produced so many annexations thus was due to factors positive and negative: to propaganda; to deployment of its abundant manpower (only Austria and Russia had similar numbers, and these were heterogeneous and poorly organised); to the divisions and backslidings among German states that hampered any Allied plans; to the diversion caused by the partitions of Poland between Austria, Prussia and Russia; and to the distracting hopes of Austria and Russia for a dismemberment of Turkey. The cautious exponents of the traditional balance of power and of the Realpolitik of partition between friends were challenged by a messianic universalist creed and a mass army.

Under this impulsion, France’s ‘natural frontiers’, including parts of Rhenish Germany and all Belgium were soon attained.³ Holland was overrun. France’s new government of five Directors had little part in all this; it was the initiative of their generals that brought success. The legal incorporation of Austria’s Belgian provinces into France was confirmed internationally by Bonaparte’s Treaty of Campo-Formio in 1797 with Austria, which gave international recognition to the natural frontiers, left Piedmont under military occupation, created satellite republics in north-central Italy, and partitioned the venerable Venetian Republic with Austria. It was also a treaty that Bonaparte negotiated without consideration for the French government’s views or for their authority, being the outcome of his astonishing Italian campaigns of 1796 and 1797 that took him to within a hundred miles of Vienna. In 1798 Switzerland was overrun and the Papal States and the Kingdom of Naples became satellite republics. Then came the unsuccessful campaign beyond the Mediterranean in Egypt and Palestine.

III

Seventeen-ninety-seven thus marks a fundamental change in French policy, with France now seeking frontiers beyond even the natural ones; drawing upon its allies and the cluster of satellites round its frontiers for its war finance and manpower: as Napoleon instructed Marshal Soult in 1810, ‘war should feed war’. Whatever may be said for the first phase of the war, from 1797 the ‘idea’ of the Revolution was subordinated in the mind of France’s leading general to mere power politics.⁴

The five-man Directorate was divided within itself. Having failed to isolate and subdue this semi-independent Bonaparte, who acted like a co-equal, some Directors (with the aid of Police Minister Fouché) decided to use him for a coup against the others. The outcome, famously, was 18 Brumaire, Year VIII (9 November 1799). Given what was to follow in the next fifteen years, there is an irony in Bonaparte’s public declaration on that morning that he had come to ‘save … and uphold … a republic founded on liberty, on equality, on the sacred principles of national representation’.⁵ The next day troops suppressed the legislature at bayonet point. Throwing over his duped sponsors, Bonaparte became First Consul with vast powers.

What followed during the Consular years (1799–1804) was a great and astonishingly complete set of organisational reforms that are a tribute to Napoleon Bonaparte’s amazing genius and constitute his most enduring claim to fame, reforms that in any biography would fill many chapters; indeed, studies of Consular and Imperial social and administrative developments are now as frequent as military ones.⁶ But Napoleon’s purpose was always clear: to enforce uniformity, and do so for the purpose of raising men and money for ever more extended war. The great French historian Albert Vandal summed up 18 Brumaire and Bonaparte’s organisational reforms of Year VIII (essentially the prefectorial system) as ‘the single will from above penetrating and directing every level and all parts of society to impose uniformity’; its defect (Vandal said) was to hand all power, governmental and administrative, to the agents of the central authority: the ‘citizens’ of the great Declaration of Rights found themselves without any share in the management of their own interests through directly elected representatives, so that in public and collective life they were left impotent:⁷ those who hoped Bonaparte had come to save the republic found themselves under a new autocracy. The Napoleonic police state watched everyone, controlled everything. Censorship suppressed independent thought: Mozart’s Don Giovanni was only allowed to play when Napoleon was satisfied that the audience would learn nothing dangerous from it. The press suffered repeatedly: in 1800 seventy-three newspapers were suppressed, and in 1803 - ‘in order to secure the liberty [sic] of the Press’ - a reviewing committee was established to check whether proposed news items merited censorship. Only four newspapers were allowed in Paris, and all had to follow the Moniteur’s line, which was written in the Ministère des affaires étrangères. And there was too casual an attitude to justice and fair process, and a savagery in punishing all opposition – such as the deportation of inconvenient Jacobins to Cayenne and the Indian Ocean, the death of Frotté, the murder of the Duc d’Enghien – that stains the regime.⁸

This defect, already grave during the Consulate, worsened under the Empire, and it posed a terrible risk. The Constitution of Year VIII (1799) had aimed at a separation of powers between institutions (named from Roman precedent): an executive elected Consulate to whom ministers reported, a Tribunate of the people to propose and debate laws, a Legislature limited to voting silently and in private on the proposed laws but not to debate them, and a Senate to guard the laws. Bonaparte swiftly brought these bodies to heel by a continual series of changes that they seemed powerless to withstand. By 1807 the Tribunate had been gagged and virtually disappeared through his decision to place it within the silent Legislature that itself had become a mere confirmatory registrar for executive proposals. Although the Senate was empowered to amend the constitution by issuing a ‘sénatus-consulte’ (such as that emasculating the right of trial by jury), all such proposed changes had to emanate from a demand by the Consulate (later the Emperor). Richly rewarded for its docility, the Senate became notorious for its servility towards the executive. Judicial independence was weakened by requiring each judge first to serve a five-year probationary period, with final confirmation depending on a Senate committee nominated by the Emperor. Imprisonment for political matters thus became easier.⁹ The individual suffered; but so did the health of the state, for the risk to the state was that, should the central authority fail, the country might lack the power to manage for itself. And with Napoleon’s mania for centralisation and personal rule, exactly that was to happen in 1814.

Externally, the expansion continued. By the short-lived peace treaties of Lunéville in 1801 and Amiens in 1802, additional lands were gained for France, but the principal advantage for Napoleon was his right by treaty to involve himself in the constitutional affairs of Germany.

War against Britain was renewed in 1803 and, once Pitt had constructed a Third European Coalition in 1805, the struggle spread to the Continent, and at a terrible cost. The first step had been the French occupation of Hanover (despite its declared neutrality) prior to Napoleon handing it to Prussia in 1805. The fears of Russia and Austria in 1805 and their coalition with Britain led only to Allied disaster at Austerlitz, and the cession by Austria of three million subjects and of Venetia and the Dalmatian coast to Napoleon in his new role as King of Italy. The year 1806 saw the establishment of the French protectorate in Germany with the Confederation of the Rhine stretching from south Tyrol to well north of Cologne. Prussia’s belated declaration of war led to the disasters of Jena and Auerstädt and to the loss of all its lands west of the Elbe (including Hanover) and much of its Polish territory. Indeed, but for Tsar Alexander’s intervention, Prussia might have been totally dismembered; as it was, it survived as a submissive vassal to Napoleon’s cause until 1813.¹⁰ France meanwhile approached the Ottoman Empire with an opportunistic suggestion to carve away parts of Russia. Napoleon’s onslaughts against Russian armies at Eylau and Friedland forced Alexander to the conference at Tilsit (end of June 1807), where France and Russia settled the balance of Europe between them, and Napoleon blithely discussed a joint attack on the Ottomans and India.

That year saw a Franco-Spanish treaty for the partition of Portugal, and in consequence the movement into Spain of French armies. Following this the revered if degenerate Spanish royal dynasty were collectively inveigled to Bayonne, imprisoned and deposed in favour of vain, well-meaning Joseph Bonaparte. It was a direct challenge to legitimacy and national institutions: monarchies like Austria that were dynastic and not national had growing cause for apprehension. In 1809 Rome was annexed. Pope Pius VII retaliated by excommunicating Napoleon; the Emperor ordered Murat to seize him; and the Pope found himself imprisoned in France. Everywhere thrones and titles were given to inadequate or frivolous Bonaparte brothers and sisters. No hereditary crown was safe.

French troops were now holding Poland, which by 1809 had become the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, created from former Austrian and Prussian possessions. The Confederation of the Rhine had expanded north and eastwards. Austria’s decision to challenge Napoleon in a fresh war in 1809 merely led to the loss of its Salzburg province and more of its Balkan lands of Carniola and Croatia. By 1810 all Holland, plus north-west Germany¹¹ as far east as the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck, plus the Swiss Valais, plus Catalonia, and almost half Italy, were integral parts of Imperial France. Virtually all Europe was either ruled by Napoleon or held by his family, or by his satellite allies like Bavaria and Saxony; and in the zone beyond, the beaten rulers of Austria and Prussia had to conform to his demands.

IV

Only three major powers still stood out: Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Britain.¹² Nothing so far had broken Britain’s opposition to the Revolution and Napoleon. Plans to invade the islands had come to nothing and, although Britain’s armies had scored few successes, its navy’s dominance had culminated in the annihilating victory of Trafalgar (1805). Napoleon reacted with two measures: one local, one general. He determined on the creation of a vast naval base at Antwerp (‘the pistol pointing at England’s heart’). But the naval imbalance was too great, and the immense efforts at Antwerp, though frightening to the British government, were undone by organisational weaknesses.¹³ Secondly, in 1806 he established his Continental System to strangle British exports. From the Baltic, west through the North Sea, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, to the Adriatic, no European consumer should buy British goods. The measures did indeed seriously hurt Britain, but the policy failed nevertheless as European consumers still sought British manufactures, and so, to enforce his will, he had to increase coercion across occupied Europe and extend it to new territories. That was one reason for Napoleon’s disastrous Iberian adventure. And although at first Russia had undertaken to apply the System, Tsar Alexander was seldom willing to take guidance for long from his over-ambitious fellow emperor, and the economic costs to Russia were too serious. The embargo was eased inside Russia, despite Napoleon’s fury. Napoleon’s Treasury Minister, Comte Mollien, in five successive instructions between February and April 1811, was ordered to put in place the financial resources for a Russian expedition, nearly a year and a half in advance.¹⁴

Alexander was arming likewise. He disliked the ominous French occupation of Poland (indeed the Tsar had successfully insisted that this dangerous national name should not be used for Napoleon’s Grand Duchy) and he rightly feared that Napoleon intended the destruction of the Tsarist Empire. If security could be guaranteed along Russia’s frontiers with Sweden and the Ottomans (and British diplomacy was helpful in both instances¹⁵) then an open breach could be risked. And so came the war of 1812.¹⁶

V

Even before the Russian disaster there were men who could see that the interests of France were not identical with those of Napoleon, that to gamble everything upon the continual success of one man was madness.¹⁷ Talleyrand, in some ways the most astute and cynical of those who had served the Revolution and Empire, and who had been out of favour since 1808, repeatedly made that distinction; his venality and scandalous way of life, his imperturbable attitude to state crime, have blinded some from perceiving that France in large measure was saved from Allied vengeance by his great skill in assigning all blame to Napoleon the man.¹⁸

Undaunted by an experience that would have crushed all but the greatest egoists, Napoleon by the spring of 1813 had assembled a remarkably good army in Germany to face his gathering enemies, Russia and Prussia. His military gifts still terrified his enemies. Had he sought a negotiated peace he might have retained many of his earlier conquests, for Austria was still outwardly his ally, and the June meeting of Napoleon and the Austrian minister Metternich at the Marcolini Palace in Dresden might have resulted in a counter-balance to the Russo-Prussian alliance and a chance of a compromise peace. It was not Metternich but Napoleon who threw away that chance, just as he would again and again in the next final months.¹⁹ Faced with the alternative threats of a domineering Napoleon and a Russia potentially capable of domination, Austria reluctantly chose alliance with the latter, and declared war on France.²⁰ After the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, 16-18 October, Germany was lost to Napoleon. Talleyrand was heard to say, ‘I think it is the beginning of the end.’

So divided were the Allies in their counsels, so daunted by the Emperor’s reputation, that their offer of peace in November 1813 (the Frankfurt proposals) was generous.²¹ True, Metternich’s modest summer terms had been dropped, but now, if Napoleon would abandon all claim to Spain, Italy, Switzerland and Germany; if he would accept the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Rhine as far as the sea as his frontier – in effect ‘the natural frontiers’ of the swollen French Republic of 1797 – then war could end and France would be spared what almost all Europe had suffered, the horrors of invasion. This would have left to Napoleon Belgium and the Dutch lands south of the Rhine, the German départements west of the Rhine, plus Savoy and Nice. But to give up Holland was intolerable to him – he declared to his Council of State, ‘rather than give it up I will break down the dykes’, and he spoke of revenge against his former satellites such as Bavaria: ‘Munich must burn, and burn it shall!’²²

Belatedly, on 2 December, Napoleon told Caulaincourt, his foreign minister, to give an interim, though not formal, assent to Allied proposals. But the moment had gone. On 18 December 1813 the Allied supreme commander in Germany, the Austrian Marshal Prince Schwarzenberg, publicly announced that, Napoleon having rejected the liberal terms offered to him, the Allies had determined to enter France.

On other fronts Napoleon’s hold was slipping. By November Wellington was at St Jean de Luz, north of the Pyrenees barrier, and pushing back Marshal Soult; in mid-November came a national uprising in Holland (fully annexed to France since 1810 and treated as a mere province); while in the north Italian plain the Austrians were advancing against the Emperor’s viceroy, Eugène de Beauharnais.

But in central Europe Allied disagreements still continued. The Tsar wanted to thrust at Paris and effect regime-change, but the Austrians opposed him, preferring to dominate south-central France first. What seems to have been decided was that four armies, some 450,000 men, were to invade France from the north and east: a Swedish–Prussian force (around 50,000 troops) moving into Holland, then turning south; Field Marshal Blücher with 82,000 Prussians advancing from Mainz upon Metz and Lorraine, with a large Russian force aiming at Alsace; Schwarzenberg himself with 200,000 German and Austrian troops marching from Basle upon Langres, while an Austrian corps cleared Switzerland (despite the Tsar’s adamant insistence that no troops should trespass on Swiss soil – thus creating further tensions within the Alliance). Additionally an Austro-Italian force of 55,000 men would advance from Lombardy into south-eastern France and the Dauphiné.

The Allied plan assumed that Napoleon could not muster against them much more than 110,000 men, even including Marshal Augereau’s 20,000 men in the Lyons-Jura sector. Soult in the far south was tied down by Wellington and could send no men, and the French northern and eastern fortress belt required substantial numbers for garrisons. Napoleon would be pulled in different directions by the widely separated invading columns, and so any local Allied setback would have little effect on the general advance. Similar discussions and plans would re-emerge in the spring of 1815, and we shall note how much (or little) had been learnt in the interval.²³

Initially the Allies faced little opposition: Napoleon was forced to stay in Paris confronting growing domestic problems; his advanced forces amounted to no more than 60,000 as against the Allied 220,000. But Schwarzenberg moved with excessive caution. From Basle to Langres was a five-day march and there were few French troops to defend the sector: yet instead of reaching Langres by 27 December, the Austrians took until 17 January. Blücher’s advance in the north-east, meanwhile, was taking his army further and further away from the main force, and his individual corps were likewise becoming separated. Whether at this time Blücher recognised the risks implied by this dispersion is not entirely clear. It was a lesson to be learnt and applied in the different circumstances of 1815.

VI

Suddenly, in late January 1814, Napoleon moved to the front and attempted to smash the Allied main army in a series of engagements between the Marne and the Aube, and although the results were indecisive they shook Schwarzenberg and halted him. Then Napoleon turned against Blücher and in a week of hard fighting in mid-February won a succession of victories over the old Field Marshal’s dispersed formations, while Schwarzenberg, though called upon, did extraordinarily little in support of the Prussians. What impressed contemporaries was that Napoleon achieved all this with so tiny an army, rarely totalling much more than 20,000–25,000 men and often many fewer, and though composed of some veterans like the Garde, yet with a high proportion of fairly raw material: it is not surprising that good judges, Wellington among them, held that the 1814 campaign was Napoleon’s finest.²⁴

Meanwhile discussions had periodically taken place at Châtillon-sur-Seine between the Allies and Foreign Minister Caulaincourt (who served in this post again during the Hundred Days of 1815), the Allies offering peace with the frontiers of 1792, Napoleon once again over-playing his hand by demanding Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine and certain other concessions. But Napoleon now withdrew Caulaincourt’s authority and launched a new offensive against Schwarzenberg, winning a series of victories (17–24 February 1814). The Allies panicked and the Tsar called for an armistice, while Schwarzenberg advocated a general retreat. It even seemed that Napoleon might have saved his throne.

Tough-mindedness by British and Prussian statesmen overcame the panic and secured agreement. The forces in Holland were ordered to march to Blücher’s support, just as Napoleon was turning against him once more. The French attacked at Craonne and drove onwards to Laon, but the reinforcements from Holland reached Blücher just in time and turned the tide. There followed on 9 March the Allies’ four-power Treaty of Chaumont, declaring that they would remain united not merely until the war against France was won but for twenty years after. Meanwhile in the south came Wellington’s victory at Orthez (27 February), and on 12 March the maire of Bordeaux raised the Bourbon fleur de lys as Wellington’s forces approached.

Events now moved quickly. Foiled at Laon, Napoleon intended the daring step of manoeuvring past the Allies and throwing his main forces at their lines of communication into Germany. On 20 March the capture of a French courier en route to Caulaincourt yielded final proof that Napoleon’s peace proposals were false:

HM the Emperor desires that you remain vague on everything concerning the relinquishment of the fortresses of Antwerp, Mainz and Alessandria, if you should be obliged to consent to these cessions, it being his intention, even after ratification of the treaty, to take into account the military situation.

From this time onwards all the Allies were determined not to treat further with Napoleon; the capture of other messages on the 23rd disclosed where his troops were concentrated and that he was operating ‘so as to push the enemy further from Paris’.²⁵ At this point (28 March) he allowed an Austrian diplomat to carry a message to the Emperor Francis indicating his readiness to renounce all pretensions in Germany, Italy and Switzerland, to recognise Holland north of the Rhine, provided he was left with the frontiers of 1804 (in Napoleon’s words, those ‘at my accession to the throne’). This must have been a most attractive bait for the Austrian emperor, whose narrowness of view and desperation for peace were well known.²⁶

Meanwhile, Napoleon and the main French contingent thrust towards Lorraine and the Allied rear. Such a thrust would in the past have thrown Schwarzenberg onto the defensive, but the Allies were now determined to strike home. Paris was declared the objective; on 25 March they issued a Declaration to the People of France placing the miseries of invasion at Napoleon’s door, and at a dinner in Dijon they toasted the Bourbons. Napoleon was unaware of the danger to Paris until mid-morning on the 27th, but then he dashed west, reaching a hostelry called Le Cour de France (near the modern airport of Orly) at 10 p.m. on 30 March, the day on which Schwarzenberg and Blücher had attacked Paris. The Governor of Paris, exking Joseph Bonaparte, and the Empress Marie-Louise, fled south-west to Blois as the troops under Marshals Marmont and Mortier retreated south-east to Essonnes. On the 31st Napoleon gave Caulaincourt full powers to negotiate and conclude peace, promising to ratify whatever his minister should agree, while still speaking of pivoting his army on Orléans. As late as 3 April he still spoke publicly of ‘attacking Paris in a few days’, while the next day he ordered Caulaincourt to try for more negotiations while he himself planned further military operations: a victory would bring an honourable peace.²⁷

VII

On 31 March the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia entered Paris. The crowds were welcoming.²⁸ Talleyrand met the monarchs and secured their agreement to recall the legitimate family to govern France. A proclamation was immediately issued declaring that no peace or truce would be made with any of the Bonapartes. On 1 April Talleyrand named a provisional government and on the next day, the formerly servile Senate and Legislature declared Napoleon deposed. The vast centralised Bonapartist system of government collapsed like a house of cards.

Napoleon was at Fontainebleau with an army of some 36,000 men. Marmont now took a decision for which the French have never forgiven him, although it could be argued that it saved France from further useless fighting and loss: he decided to accept the Senate’s declaration, he stipulated for Napoleon’s personal safety, and he undertook to march his troops westward from Essonnes to Versailles, leaving the Fontainebleau road open. The news provoked a heated debate around the Emperor, but Marshals Ney and Macdonald were firm for peace. Eventually they persuaded their master to sign an act of abdication in favour of his son, the little King of Rome. The two marshals and Caulaincourt (with Marmont joining them on the road) took the document to Alexander late on 4 April.

Tsar Alexander had declared against the entire Bonaparte family but he retained doubts: if the French army and the marshals were still prepared to fight for the part-Corsican and part-Austrian child, and might hold out against a different choice of ruler, then perhaps a regency was the best choice. The Prussian king had no views, and the Austrian emperor was absent. Only Talleyrand persisted. The Bourbons had already been proclaimed in France, a regency under Marie-Louise would give Austria undue influence, and the ambitions of the Bonaparte family were such that the child’s father would return in no time at all. At this point news came that General Souham had arrived at Versailles with Marmont’s troops (night 4/5 April). This was decisive. Napoleon was still in arms, but the army was no longer solidly united behind him or his son, and thus the conditional abdication (and the claims of Napoleon II) could be disregarded.

On 11 April Metternich and Stadion for Austria, Razumovsky and Nesselrode for Russia, Hardenberg for Prussia, and Ney and Caulaincourt for Napoleon, signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Napoleon ratified it the following day. He renounced for himself and his heirs all claim to the French Empire and all other countries, but retained his own rank and titles; this concession was extended to the Bonaparte family; he was to hold Elba in full sovereignty, with a revenue of two million francs per annum (half of which was for his wife), plus sums for the divorced Josephine and ‘the Family’, so that the total cost of the entire Bonaparte clan would be almost six million francs, to be paid by the French government; the Empress would hold several Italian sovereign duchies for herself and her descendants. The allied powers formally undertook that the French government would honour these terms.²⁹

Great Britain was not a signatory to this document. Lord Castlereagh, the British Foreign Secretary, reached Paris only on 10 April, and disagreed with many of the terms until Talleyrand pointed out that the matter was a virtual fait accompli. Alexander, on his own initiative and without consultation, had unfortunately offered Napoleon the choice of ruling Elba, or Corfu, or Corsica. (Caulaincourt told Castlereagh privately that Napoleon would really have preferred a residence in England!) Napoleon chose Elba, close to Murat’s kingdom of Naples and to France; by autumn Alexander’s generosity was so much regretted that there was serious discussion of moving Napoleon to a remoter exile, but nothing came of it.³⁰

Napoleon at first rejected the Fontainebleau treaty and sought to recall his letter of abdication. He took poison, but to no lasting effect. Later he told his prefect of the palace ‘I abdicate, but I yield nothing,’ thus adopting the reservation of signing under duress, which could make the document potentially valueless. A week later, with some four million francs still in his possession, he drove away from Fontainebleau, accompanied by Prussian, Austrian, British and Russian officers. At first the journey was uneventful, but in southern France he had to run a gauntlet of hostile crowds, to wear disguise, and ride in postilion’s clothes as he went south to his exile. The First Empire was no more; Napoleon was apparently gone for ever.

Chapter 2

Losing the Peace

1824–1815

I

FEW FRENCHMEN WOULD HAVE SEEN

the Bourbon restoration as a solely French initiative, but Talleyrand’s skill in handling the allies likewise stopped it from being judged as a purely foreign imposition on France. Throughout the country there was a universal desperation for peace and an end to the hated conscription, while financial exhaustion, repeated defeats and the shock of an invasion in overwhelming numbers, and fear especially of the wild Cossacks and Uzbecks who roamed beside the regular armies, all played their part. It was no small consolation that Louis XVIII was of true French blood, and that Tsar Alexander had guaranteed France a constitution that should save the country from despotism or a return of the old monarchical system of the eighteenth century.¹

Before mid-March 1814 there had been no fleur-de-lys banner flying over any town in France. By the first week of April the tricolor was being pulled down almost everywhere. Within that space of time a new system of government had been summarily established, although how it should be fashioned in detail remained as yet unclear. Inevitably, too many of the new leaders were inexperienced, or strangers to modern France, and they had to handle at one and the same time the all-powerful Allies and the French temperament. They had to control and conciliate a domestic population of twenty-eight million that – though submissive in this month of April – had become used to a ‘Revolution settlement’ that had materially changed the basis of life in France, a France that had for years been used to enforcing its law on thirty-two million other Europeans as well as seeing its desires and demands accommodated by the rulers of Austria, Prussia and Russia. It was a daunting task, and although the story of the ‘regime-change’ of the First Restoration is usually treated as one of failure and even of bathos, those who have lived through the post-1989 exercises in regime-change may feel a twinge of sympathy for the bewildered French rulers of April 1814.

What this Restoration government had to do – and the honeymoon time granted was very short – was to formulate the promised constitution; tackle the vast financial deficit and the linked problem of the colossal budget of the army; to save as much as possible in a peace treaty and obtain the withdrawal of foreign troops; somehow to reintegrate in one society the returned but triumphant and hungry émigrés within a population that had so greatly benefited from the Revolution and its consequences, especially in land and property; and finally to balance the Concordat, the Napoleonic subordination of the Church, with older ideas of the Church’s privilege and pre-eminence.

Louis XVIII had returned together with his promise of a constitution, ‘the Charter’. This guaranteed freedom of worship, the independence of the judiciary, jury trial, and (most importantly) the maintenance of the French Revolution’s land settlement. And in consequence it was accepted. It somewhat resembled the British ‘Revolution Settlement’ of 1689 whereby a divine right monarch had been overthrown and replaced by one chosen by a convention parliament, to be crowned in return for a contract of rights for the people. To have accepted this British precedent would have been wise, but unexpectedly Louis then declared that he returned by divine right, by the grace of God – and not by contract; the Charter would still be implemented, but through his ‘granting’ and ‘conceding’ it, and not by agreement. The benefits were there, but the manner of their ‘granting’ awoke old suspicions.²

The allies who marched into eastern France had found no sentiment for the Bourbons, and the privations of the invasion and ‘les cossacques had hardened opinion there against the Bourbons because of their allies. Only in the west and in the south-west was royalist enthusiasm visible. A government was established with several able men, but as Wellington remarked there were ministers but no ministry. The returned princes sat with the ministers, and the King’s next brother the ultra Comte d’Artois formed his own court and promoted a policy that contrasted unhappily with the King’s. And some ministerial choices were unfortunate. General Dupont, whose capitulation at Baylen in 1808 had so badly affected the opening stages of Napoleon’s conquest of Spain, was made Minister for War. This was seen as a slur on the army’s honour. Others lacked the tacte des choses and ruffled the feelings of those whom they should have conciliated.

This may have been the problem of the efficient Baron Louis as Finance Minister. He knew that the Allies feared the continuance of a large French army, and he saw that there was an inherited war deficit of 759 million francs.³ Swingeing reductions in expenditure would help on both counts, and so in May 1814, with a peace treaty in sight, the infantry was reduced from 206 to 107 regiments, the cavalry from 99 to 61 regiments, the artillery from 339 to 184 companies, and other branches similarly, throwing vast numbers of troops onto the streets or at best on half-pay. In the interests of the regime it might have been wiser to spread the cuts over a much longer period than was chosen, but in some respects the ministry was limited in its freedom because of foreign pressure. So the budget was balanced and the funds rose, and that seemed enough.⁴ Yet a great pool of discontent had been created in the most disciplined and powerful element in French society, the soldiery, while the return of nearly 70,000 embittered prisoners of war from Britain, and others from central Europe, added to the pool, and nothing was done for them. General Dupont was ineffectual and the princes indifferent. The army underwent sweeping reductions, but at the same time émigrés were actively recruited to the army and a special royal garde set up beside the imperial garde that had been saved from abolition. An entire promotion of generals was exclusively of émigrés and other loyalists: experienced half-pay officers were ignored. The army’s cherished Legion of Honour was preserved, but awarded to many civilians, and was outranked by the royalist Order of St Louis.

As to the Navy, of the 55 seaworthy ships of the line, 31 were ceded by the peace treaty, and many others were sold to reduce the deficit, so that by March 1815 the French navy had only 1 ship of the line, 11 frigates and 76 smaller vessels. With such few captaincies remaining it is possible, perhaps probable that, subject to the essential technical skills of the profession, royalists were given many of these posts.⁵

Moreover there was the insult of Allied occupation. A convention had stipulated that Allied withdrawal would coincide with French relinquishment of fortresses abroad and the return home of their garrisons. This fair and moderate convention had been signed on 23 April (less than two weeks after the Fontainebleau treaty) and the Allied withdrawal began well before the French garrison in Mainz accepted to withdraw (4 May), or that in Hamburg (27 May), while the evacuation of fortresses in Spain was not completed until June.⁶ What should have been recognised as a remarkable escape from dismemberment and occupation was seen only as an ignoble humiliation, and King Louis’s government was not forgiven. As Houssaye wrote: ‘The ‘natural frontiers’, that had been abandoned with a joyful heart two months earlier in order to obtain peace, were now lamented upon their loss.’⁷ What had been saved from the wreck was as nothing; for France, so used to imposing a victorious peace on others, this was ‘humiliation’.

II

The ‘émigration’ of the early nineties had deeply scarred the royalists, and in the first years of the Revolutionary Wars and during the Chouan (royalist) revolts of Brittany and the Vendée there were repeated massacres in loyalist defeat. Exile had been long and bitter. The Bourbons were now rewarded with their throne, and their followers looked to share in the rewards: the Chouans of the Vendée expected to be free of taxes; the gentry wanted compensation for lost lands. Although the Restoration had guaranteed the security of the land transfers and legal changes of the past quarter century, the populace at large was still doubtful and, as time passed, increasingly distrustful. They saw several straws in the wind and imagined many more, for the returned royalists did not abate their claims either swiftly or with good grace. Aristocratic airs and a sublime sense of entitlement on one side, and peasant mistrust, tenacity and a dogged sense of righteousness on the other seldom promote a desire for compromise.

The Church had been sufficiently subservient to Napoleon for some to expect it to be viewed with disfavour under the Restoration. The reality was otherwise. But religious ceremonies and exaltation of doctrine became a too prominent part of ordinary life. The processions, the public bewailing of past sins, proclamations of the need for submission to the Church and for repentance were both offensive and ominous in the minds of many for whom stories of the ancien régime’s abuses were still not forgotten.

Perhaps no people can be so caustic or capable of ridicule as the intelligentsia of Paris. A great Parisian actress, Mlle Raucourt, had in her later life given much money to the Church; its priests frequented her dinners. In January 1815 she died, and though officially still excommunicate, she had wished for a religious funeral. Like the actress, the Comte d’Artois had led a dissipated early life, but he was now a dévot and the court frowned on irreligion. Her beneficiaries and former guests the priests refused her a church service, and on 17 January a riot ensued in the middle of the capital with the coffin forcibly borne into the church of St Roche. This affair redounded against the bien-pensants and the returned aristocracy, but it left a darker legacy. For a few days later, on the occasion of the expiatory services for Louis XVI’s execution (21 January), so widespread was the tension that Carnot, the great hero of the Revolutionary Wars, stayed up all night, armed. And others feared likewise.

III

As early as midsummer 1814 Foreign Minister Talleyrand, and former Police Minister Fouché (now unemployed), two veterans in conspiracy, had become so concerned at the King’s failure of leadership that they thought France needed a different ruler, one capable of standing with dignity even when compared with the man of Elba. Louis, elderly, shrewd in a negative way, grossly fat, was someone whose image could have