WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

Sir Walter Scott, in his "Life of Napoleon," remarks of Waterloo that "the scene of this celebrated action must be familiar to most readers either from description or recollection." The narratives of Sir Walter himself, of Alison, Gleig, Siborne, and others, must have made the events of the battle almost equally well known. I might perhaps, content myself with referring to then pages, and avoid the difficult task of dealing with a subject which has already been discussed so copiously, so clearly, and so eloquently by others. In particular, the description by Captain Siborne of the Waterloo campaign is so full and so minute, so scrupulously accurate, and, at the same time, so spirited and graphic that it will long defy the competition of far abler pens than mine. I shall only aim at giving a general idea of the main features of this great event, of this discrowning and crowning victory.

When, after a very hard-fought and a long-doubtful day, Napoleon had succeeded in driving back the Prussian army from Ligny, and had resolved on marching himself to assail the English, he sent, on the 17th, Marshal Grouchy with 30,000 men to pursue the defeated Prussians, and to prevent their marching to aid the Duke of Wellington.


Great recriminations passed afterward, between the marshal and the emperor, as to how this duty was attempted to be performed and the reasons why Grouchy failed on the 18th to arrest the lateral movement of the Prussian troops from Wavre toward Waterloo. It may be sufficient to remark here that Grouchy was not sent in pursuit of Blucher till late on the 17th, and that the force given to him was insufficient to make head against the whole Prussian army; for Blucher's men, though they were beaten back, and suffered severe loss at Ligny, were neither routed nor disheartened; and they were joined at Wavre by a large division of their comrades under General Bulow, who had taken no part in the battle of the 16th, and who were fresh for the march to Waterloo against the French on the 18th.

But the failure of Grouchy was in truth mainly owing to the indomitable heroism of Blucher himself, who, though severely injured in the battle at Ligny, was as energetic and active as ever in bringing his men into action again, and who had the resolution to expose a part of his army, under Thielman, to be overwhelmed by Grouchy at Wavre on the 18th, while he urged the march of the mass of his troops upon Waterloo.

"It is not at Wavre, but at Waterloo," said the old field marshal, "that the campaign is to be decided;" and he risked a detachment, and won the campaign accordingly. Wellington and Blucher trusted each other as cordially, and co-operated as zealously, as formerly had been the case with Marlborough and Eugene.

It was in full reliance on Blucher's promise to join him that the duke stood his ground and fought at Waterloo; and those who have ventured to impugn the duke's capacity as a general ought to have had common sense enough to perceive that to charge the duke with having won the battle of Waterloo by the help of the Prussians is really to say that he won it by the very means on which he relied, and without the expectation of which the battle would not have been fought.

Napoleon himself has found fault with Wellington, for not having retreated beyond Waterloo. The short answer may be, that the duke had reason to expect that his army could singly resist the French at Waterloo until the Prussians came up, and that, on the Prussians joining, there would be a sufficient force, united under himself and Blucher, for completely overwhelming the enemy.

And while Napoleon thus censures his great adversary, he involuntarily bears the highest possible testimony to the military character of the English, and proves decisively of what paramount importance was the battle to which he challenged his fearless opponent. Napoleon asks, "If the English army had been beaten at Waterloo, what would have been the use of those numerous bodies of troops, of Prussians, Austrians, Germans, and Spaniards, which were advancing by forced marches to the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees ?"

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