Battle of Waterloo

“ No one can tell you more than this—he was the man at Waterloo who would not surrender. "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders." "Among those giants then," says Hugo, "there was one Titan—Cambronne. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was not Napoleon, put to rout; not Wellington, giving way at four o'clock, desperate at five; not Blücher, who did not fight. The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne. To fulminate at the thunderbolt which kills you, is victory." ”

“ What we admire before all, in an encounter like Waterloo, is the prodigious skill of chance. The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him—all this cataclysm is marvelously managed.
There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants. Napoleon's three-quarters of a league. Wellington's half a league, and seventy-two thousand combatants on either side. ”

“ There is much richness, in fact; and the artist has, with very great skill, avoided a gaudy effect. So the Battle of Waterloo must derive its great value from the truth of the portraits. It is any thing, however, but an heroic representation of a battle. Perhaps the object of the painter was confined to the facts of a military description, of positions of brigades and battalions—to our unmilitary eyes, there is wanting the vivid action, the energy, the mighty conflict—possibly only the ideal of a battle—-which may, after all, be in appearance a much more tame sort of thing than we imagine. ”

“ When the cannon and infantry had staggered the masses of the enemy, and somewhat calmed their fury; round the extremity of the cross road, full on the flank of the foe—horse, in perfect condition; men, in steady determination—wheeled, like a whirlwind, the Royals Greys, and Enniskillens—England, Scotland, and Ireland, in high rivalry and irresistible union. ”

“ Distrust and even demoralization would almost certainly have appeared in most of his foreign contingents; and with only his English regiments and those of the King’s German Legion he could not have mustered a sufficient force to justify him in accepting battle at Waterloo, even if he had been otherwise disposed to do so. In fact, one may safely conclude, that the battle of Waterloo would not have been fought had not d’Erlon’s Corps been turned aside by the unauthorized act of the staff-officer. We may, and in fact we must, even go further. ”

“ Nothing could be more tremendous than the mode of attack; it was headed by artillery, which discharged showers of iron grape shot, each bullet larger than a walnut. It was a battle, on the part of the French, of cavalry and cannon, both equipped as if by magic, and much more formidable than had ever been known in the French armies, even to take the field. ”

“ The battle of Waterloo, which was won—to say nothing of God’s goodness—by forethought, prudence, knowledge, self-possession, confidence, and superior tactics on the part of the commander, and by obedience, steadiness, promptitude, endurance, and invincible courage on the part of the officers and men, cost England much; much in treasure, and more in manly hearts ”

“ Very often a battle lost is progress gained, and less of glory, more of liberty. The drummer is silent and reason speaks; it is the game of who loses wins. Let us, then, speak of Waterloo coldly from both sides, and render to chance the things that belong to chance, and to God what is God's. What is Waterloo—a victory? No; a prize in the lottery, won by Europe, and paid by France; it was hardly worth while erecting a lion for it.
Waterloo is the strangest encounter recorded in history; Napoleon and Wellington are not enemies, but contraries. ”

“ At first there was a dreadful preponderance of British slain, which looked very ill; but more in advance, the revenge made itself dreadfully marked, for ten, French lay dead for one British. The field was so much covered with blood, that it appeared as if it had been completely flooded with it; dead horses seemed innumerable; — and the peasantry employed in burying the dead, generally stript the bodies first. Of Course these people got a vast booty, when they returned out of the neighbouring wood, after the battle; many of them some hundred pounds. ”

“ Immense as the direct and immediate consequences of the battle of Waterloo certainly were, being the total loss of the campaign, and the entire destruction of Napoleon's fine army, the more remote contingencies to which it gave rise were so much more important, that it may be doubted whether there was ever in the civilized world a great battle followed by so many and such extraordinary results. ”

“ The battle of Waterloo, however, is a good starting place, the battle that decided the peace of Europe after its long years of war, when the Allied Powers, led by the Duke of Wellington, defeated the French, who had rallied around Napoleon for a last stand. ”

“ In any case, it is a great thing for a nation to have won a victory in a rightful cause. The reward of virtue remains and gladdens the heart in the day of disaster and distress. Whatever may chance to us, there will always lie in store for us the consolation of reading the history of the battle of Waterloo ”

“ The French are a brave people, and no troops in the world surpass, if any equal them, for impetuosity of attack; but many men will stand fire and face distant danger, and yet shrink from the struggle when closing in desperate grasp with an enemy. It is not bravery alone which decides the battle, calmness is often absolutely necessary, and in this, the most valiant are at times found wanting. Never did a battle require more cool and determined courage than that of Waterloo. Nothing can be more trying to troops than passive endurance of offence ”

“ They were led by generals of undoubted skill and gallantry, who with their brave troops had won laurels in many a hard-fought battle, and who believed themselves to be, what their ambitious chief had so often declared, invincible, and as such they were still regarded by most of the continental nations. At Waterloo we had to contend against soldiers of undaunted spirit, full of enthusiasm and careless of life. Never did these heroic men, grown grey in victories, better sustain their reputation than on this occasion. ”

“ The battle of Waterloo is often mentioned as the sole cause of Napoleon's downfall; and it is said, that, had he gained that day, he would have secured his throne. It seems to be forgotten that a complete victory would have left him with weakened forces, and that he had already exhausted the resources of France in his preparations for this one campaign ”

“ Those who wish to form a distinct idea of the battle of Waterloo, need only imagine a capital A laid on the ground. The left leg of the A is the Nivelles road, the right one the Genappe road, while the string of the A is the broken way running from Ohain to Braine l'Alleud. ”

“ In truth, the British army were a mile and a half from the nearest skirts of the wood, and never had one man within it; and so far from being crushed and overlaid, the masses, and of the French guard too, were often routed by the bold dash of an almost incredibly small proportion of their numbers,—nay sometimes, as will afterwards be told of the Highlanders and Scotch Greys, and it happened in many other parts of the field besides, by the prodigies of nearly insolated, individual valour. ”

“ Formation of the Lines of Battle at Waterloo 17th June 1815.
Thus was Waterloo fought, and lost, and won. “All might have failed, but for the astonishing staunchness of the English and German infantry in Wellington’s army. Nothing, in war or in peace, is so trying to the nerves as passively to await deadly peril, making no effort to avert it. And never probably in war was greater strain of this nature put upon troops, than fell on Alten’s and Picton’s divisions at Waterloo. ”

“ Never was there a better leader of men in a time of sore anxiety. He knew he could call upon the personal hatred of Prussians, who remembered, themselves or through their people, the French occupation of their country not many years before. His cheering cry in that heavy march, of “Kinder, ihr wollt doch nicht dass ich wortbrüchig werden soll” touched the heart of every weary, tired man, and “Englishmen ought never to forget it,” because it made Waterloo not merely a victory, but a rout. The hard defensive battle is due to the men, both Germans and English, Wellington commanded. ”

“ The day before the battle of Waterloo, captain Elphinstone, of the 7th hussars, was grievously wounded and taken prisoner. His condition was noticed by Napoleon, who immediately sent one of his surgeons to dress his wounds; and perceiving that, from loss of blood, Elphinstone had swooned away, he sent a silver goblet full of wine from his own store. On the arrival of the Bellerophon in England, lord Keith presented his grateful thanks to Napoleon, for having saved the life of his nephew. ”

“ Many of these qualities are in evidence in the days before Waterloo, but during the actual battle upon which his fate and the fate of the world turned, the tired, broken, ill man is drowsily nodding before a farmhouse by the road, while Ney, whose superb and headlong courage was not accompanied by any corresponding military ability, wrecks the last grand army. ”

“ As we stood on our commanding spot, the first thought was most naturally of the numbers of the contending armies respectively. The British were stated by Buonaparte himself, at 80,060 and certainly they have never been made out to have been more. Marshal Blucher estimates them at the same number. Of these not more than 30,000 were actually British; the rest were Germans, Belgians, and Dutch. There were assuredly no corps of Prussians in the battle before the evening.
The French army certainly were 130,000 [1] making the enormous balance in their favour of 50,000 men ”

“ Grouchy's movements, on the 17th and 18th, form so striking a feature in the history of this Campaign, and exercised so important an influence upon the fate of the decisive Battle of Waterloo, that it becomes an essential point in the study of that history, to examine how far he complied with, and carried into effect, the instructions received from his Master, and to what degree his proceedings, consequent upon his ascertaining the direction of the Prussian retreat, coincided with the general plan and object of Napoleon's operations. ”

“ Line was with admirable alacrity formed for a greater breadth of fire than the squares afforded, immediately on seeing the back plates of the cuirasses; when masses of French infantry approached with a heavy fire of musketry, They did 'go through their works’ as Napoleon often muttered, ‘unlike any troops he had ever seen.’ Such were the dreadful visits of cannon and cavalry, that, as I have been assured, these interludes of infantry battles were a kind of refreshment, after their toil with other arms.—They never took the trouble to look at the numbers ”

“ Until Colonel Chesney wrote the Waterloo Lectures, all foreign students of the campaign looked askance at the claim of the British army to have been, as for long years it was asserted to be, the only great factor in the great fight. No proud nation should fear to recognise such external help, and yet, less than fifty years ago, all British soldiers were led to believe that they alone had won the hard-fought battle, and that Prussian help at Waterloo was a mere incident, not a great element in the victory that is due to both. ”

“ In that event he surrendered himself, and was received within the square, till he could be sent prisoner to the rear; — a generosity ill-merited, when it is considered that the French spared very few lives, which it was in their power to take. Many officers were murdered, after giving up their swords; and when prisoners were collected, cavalry were sent to cut them down, when circumstances at the moment prevented their removal! A young officer of the Greys, well known to the author, was shot by a French officer whose life he had preserved. ”

“ This one success of Waterloo— (which, after all, was not a success, as France clearly gained the battle, only she quitted the field in disgust!) —we cannot forget; we cherish it, we riot in it; we blazon the name everywhere to flatter our national pride and humiliate the foreigner. And, curious enough, the foreigner is humiliated! He turns his head away as he passes Waterloo-house; he declines crossing Waterloo-bridge, or crosses it in a passion; and even his national dread of rain cannot induce him to ride in a Waterloo omnibus. ”