The Life of Napoleon I Part 52

It would seem that the inequalities of the ground hid the strength of Pirch I. and Thielmann; for Napoleon still believed that he had ranged against him at Ligny only a single corps. At 2 p.m. Soult informed Ney that the enemy had united a _corps_ between Sombref and Bry, and that in half an hour Grouchy would attack it. Ney was therefore to beat back the foes at Quatre-Bras, and then turn to envelop the Prussians.

_But if these were driven in first, the Emperor would move towards Ney to hasten his operations_.[488] Not until the battle was about to begin does the Emperor seem to have realized that he was in presence of superior forces.[489] But after 2 p.m. their ma.s.ses drew down over the slopes of Bry and Sombref, their foremost troops held the villages of Ligny and St. Amand, while their left crowned the ridge of Tongrines. Napoleon reformed his lines, which had hitherto been at right angles to the main road through Fleurus. Vandamme's corps moved off towards St. Amand; and Gerard, after ranging his corps parallel to that road, began to descend towards Ligny, Grouchy meanwhile marshalling the cavalry to protect their flank and rear. Behind all stood the imposing ma.s.s of the Imperial Guard on the rising ground near Fleurus.

The fiercest shock of battle fell upon the corps of Vandamme and Gerard. Three times were Gerard's men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame.

Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French over its banks; lane, garden, and attic once more become the scene of struggles where no man thinks of giving or taking quarter.

Higher up the stream, at St. Amand, Vandamme's troops fared no better; for Blucher steadily fed that part of his array. In so doing, however, he weakened his reserves behind Ligny, thereby unwittingly favouring Napoleon's design of breaking the Prussian centre, and placing its wreckage and the whole of their right wing between two fires. The Emperor expected that, by 6 o'clock, Ney would have driven back the Anglo-Dutch forces, and would be ready to envelop the Prussian right.

That was the purport of Soult's despatch of 3.15 p.m. to Ney: "This army [the Prussian] is lost, if you act with vigour. The fate of France is in your hands."

But at 5.30, when part of the Imperial Guard was about to strengthen Gerard for the decisive blow at the Prussian centre, Vandamme sent word that a hostile force of some twenty or thirty thousand men was marching towards Fleurus. This strange apparition not only unsteadied the French left: it greatly perplexed the Emperor. As he had ordered first Ney and then D'Erlon to march, not on Fleurus, but against the rear of the Prussian right wing, he seems to have concluded that this new force must be that of Wellington about to deal the like deadly blow against the French rear.[490] Accordingly he checked the advance of the Guard until the riddle could be solved. After the loss of nearly two hours it was solved by an aide-de-camp, who found that the force was D'Erlon's, and that it had retired.

Meanwhile the battle had raged with scarcely a pause, the French guns working frightful havoc among the dense ma.s.ses on the opposite slope.

And yet, by withdrawing troops to his right, Blucher had for a time overborne Vandamme's corps and part of the Young Guard, unconscious that his insistence on this side jeopardized the whole Prussian army.

His great adversary had long marked the immense extension of its concave front, the ma.s.sing of its troops against St. Amand, and the remoteness of its left wing, which Grouchy's hors.e.m.e.n still held in check; and he now planned that, while Blucher a.s.sailed St. Amand and its hamlets, the Imperial Guard should crush the Prussian centre at Ligny, thrust its fragments back towards St. Amand, and finally s.h.i.+ver the greater part of the Prussian army on the anvil which D'Erlon's corps would provide further to the west. He now felt a.s.sured of victory; for the corps of Lobau was nearing Fleurus to take the place of the Imperial Guard; and the Prussians had no supports. "They have no reserve," he remarked, as he swept the hostile position with his gla.s.s. This was true: their centre consisted of troops that for four hours had been either torn by artillery or exhausted by the fiendish strife in Ligny.

And now, as if the pent-up powers of Nature sought to cow rebellious man into awe and penitence, the artillery of the sky pealed forth.

Crash after crash shook the ground; flash upon flash rent the sulphur-laden rack; darkness as of night stole over the scene; and a deluge of rain washed the blood-stained earth. The storm served but to aid the a.s.sailants in their last and fiercest efforts. Amidst the gloom the columns of the Imperial Guard crept swiftly down the slope towards Ligny, gave new strength to Gerard's men, and together with them broke through the defence. A little higher up the stream, Milhaud's cuira.s.siers struggled across, and, animated by the Emperor's presence, poured upon the shattered Prussian centre. No timely help could it now receive either from Blucher or Thielmann; for the darkness of the storm had shrouded from view the beginnings of the onset, and Thielmann had just suffered from a heedless a.s.sault on Grouchy's wing.

As the thunder-clouds rolled by, the gleams of the setting sun lit up the field and revealed to Blucher the full extent of his error.[491]

His army was cut in twain. In vain did he call in his troops from St.

Amand: in vain did he gallop back to his squadrons between Bry and Sombref and lead them forward. Their das.h.i.+ng charge was suddenly checked at the brink of a hollow way; steady volleys tore away their front; and the cuira.s.siers completed their discomfiture. Blucher's charger was struck by a bullet, and in his fall badly bruised the Field-Marshal; but his trusty adjutant, Nost.i.tz, managed to hide him in the twilight, while the cuira.s.siers swept onwards up the hill.

Other Prussian squadrons, struggling to save the day, now charged home and drove back the steel-clad ranks. Some Uhlans and mounted Landwehr reached the place where the hero lay; and Nost.i.tz was able to save that precious life. Sorely battered, but still defiant like their chief, the Prussian cavalry covered the retreat at the centre; the wings fell back in good order, the right holding on to the village of Bry till past midnight; but several battalions of disaffected troops broke up and did not rejoin their comrades. About 14,000 Prussians and 11,000 French lay dead or wounded on that fatal field.[492]

Napoleon, as he rode back to Fleurus after nightfall, could claim that he had won a great victory. Yet he had not achieved the results portrayed in Soult's despatch of 3.15 to Ney. This was due partly to Ney's failure to fulfil his part of the programme, and partly to the apparition of D'Erlon's corps, which led to the postponement of Napoleon's grand attack on Ligny.

The mystery as to the movements of D'Erlon and his 20,000 men has never been fully cleared up. The evidence collected by Houssaye leaves little doubt that, as soon as the Emperor realized the serious nature of the conflict at Ligny, he sent orders to D'Erlon, whose vanguard was then near Frasnes, to diverge and attack Blucher's exposed flank.

That is to say, D'Erlon was now called on to deal the decisive blow which had before been a.s.signed to Ney, who was now warned, though very tardily, not to rely on the help of D'Erlon's corps. Misunderstanding his order, D'Erlon made for Fleurus, and thus alarmed Napoleon and delayed his final blow for wellnigh two hours. Moreover, at 6 p.m., when D'Erlon might have a.s.sailed Blucher's right with crus.h.i.+ng effect, he received an urgent command from Ney to return. a.s.suredly he should not have hesitated now that St. Amand was almost within cannon-shot, while Quatre Bras could scarcely be reached before nightfall; but he was under Ney's command; and, taking a rather pedantic view of the situation, he obeyed his immediate superior. Lastly, no one has explained why the Emperor, as soon as he knew the errant corps to be that of D'Erlon, did not recall him at once, bidding him fall on the exposed wing of the Prussians. Doubtless he a.s.sumed that D'Erlon would now fulfil his instructions and march against Bry; but he gave no order to this effect, and the unlucky corps vanished.

At that time a desperate conflict was drawing to a close at Quatre Bras. Ney had delayed his attack until 2 p.m.; for, firstly, Reille's corps alone was at hand--D'Erlon's rearguard early on that morning being still near Thuin--and, secondly, the Marshal heard at 10 a.m.

that Prussian columns were marching westwards from Sombref, a move that would endanger his rear behind Frasnes. Furthermore, the approach to Quatre Bras was flanked by the extensive Bossu Wood, and by a spinney to the right of the highway. Reille therefore counselled caution, lest the affair should prove to be "a Spanish battle where the English show themselves only when it is time." When, however, Reille's corps pushed home the attack, the weakness of the defence was speedily revealed. After a stout stand, the 7,000 Dutch-Belgians under the Prince of Orange were driven from the farm of Gemioncourt, which formed the key of the position, and many of them fled from the field.

But at this crisis the Iron Duke himself rode up; and the arrival of a Dutch-Belgian brigade and of Picton's division of British infantry, about 3 p.m., sufficed to s.n.a.t.c.h victory from the Marshal's grasp.[493] He now opened a destructive artillery fire on our front, to which the weak Dutch-Belgian batteries could but feebly reply.

Nothing, however, could daunt the hardihood of Picton's men. Shaking off the fatigue of a twelve hours' march from Brussels under a burning sun, they steadily moved down through the tall crops of rye towards the farm and beat off a fierce attack of Pire's hors.e.m.e.n. On the allied left, the 95th Rifles (now the Rifle Brigade) and Brunswickers kept a clutch on the Namur road which nothing could loosen. But our danger was mainly at the centre. Under cover of the farmhouse, French columns began to drive in our infantry, whose ammunition was already running low. Wellington determined to crush this onset by a counter-attack in line of Picton's division, the "fighting division"

of the Peninsula. With threatening shouts they advanced to the charge; and before that moving wall the foe fell back in confusion beyond the rivulet.

Still, the French drove back the Dutch in the wood, and the Brunswickers on its eastern fringe, killing the brave young Duke of Brunswick as he attempted to rally his raw recruits. Into the gap thus left the French hors.e.m.e.n pushed forward, making little impression upon our footmen, but compelling them to keep in a close formation, which exposed them in the intervals between the charges to heavy losses from the French cannon.

So the afternoon wore on. Between 5 and 6 o'clock our weary troops were reinforced by Alten's division. A little later, a brigade of Kellermann's heavy cavalry came up from the rear and renewed Ney's striking power--but again too late. Already he was maddened by the tidings that D'Erlon's corps had been ordered off towards Ligny, and next by Napoleon's urgent despatch of 3.15 p.m. bidding him envelop Blucher's right. Blind with indignation at this seeming injustice, he at once sent an imperative summons to D'Erlon to return towards Quatre Bras, and launched a brigade of Kellermann's cuira.s.siers at those stubborn squares.

The attack nearly succeeded. The hors.e.m.e.n rushed upon our 69th Regiment just when the Prince of Orange had foolishly ordered it back into line, caught it in confusion, and cut it up badly. Another regiment, the 33rd, fled into the wood, but afterwards re-formed; the other squares beat off the onset. The torrent, however, only swerved aside: on it rushed almost to the cross-roads, there to be stopped by a flanking fire from the wood and from the 92nd (Gordon) Highlanders lining the roadway in front.--"Ninety-second, don't fire till I tell you," exclaimed the Duke. The volley rang out when the hors.e.m.e.n were but thirty paces off. The effect was magical. Their front was torn asunder, and the survivors made off in a panic that spread to Foy's battalions of foot and disordered the whole array.[494]

Ney still persisted in his isolated a.s.saults; but reinforcements were now at hand that brought up Wellington's total to 31,000 men, while the French were less than 21,000. At nightfall the Marshal drew back to Frasnes; and there D'Erlon's errant corps at last appeared. Thanks to conflicting orders, it had oscillated between two battles and taken part in neither of them.

Such was the b.l.o.o.d.y fight of Quatre Bras. It cost Wellington 4,600 killed and wounded, mainly from the flower of the British infantry, three Highland regiments losing as many as 878 men. The French losses were somewhat lighter. Few conflicts better deserve the name of soldiers' battles. On neither side was the generals.h.i.+p brilliant.

Twilight set in before an adequate force of British cavalry and artillery approached the field where their comrades on foot had for five hours held up in unequal contest against cannon, sabre, and lance. The victory was due to the strange power of the British soldier to save the situation when it seems past hope.

Still less did it redound to the glory of Ney. Once more he had merited the name of bravest of the brave. At the crisis of the fight, when the red squares in front defied his utmost efforts, he brandished his sword in helpless wrath, praying that the bullets that flew by might strike him down. The rage of battle had, in fact, partly obscured his reason. He was now a fighter, scarcely a commander; and to this cause we may attribute his neglect adequately to support Kellermann's charge. Had this been done, Quatre Bras might have ended like Marengo. Far more serious, however, was his action in countermanding the Emperor's orders' by recalling D'Erlon to Quatre Bras; for, as we have seen, it robbed his master of the decisive victory that he had the right to expect at Ligny. Yet this error must not be unduly magnified. It is true that Napoleon at 3.15 sent a despatch to Ney bidding him envelop Blucher's flank; but the order did not reach him until some time after 5, when the allies were pressing him hard, and when he had just heard of D'Erlon's deflection towards the Emperor's battle.[495] He must have seen that his master misjudged the situation at Quatre Bras; and in such circ.u.mstances a Marshal of France was not without excuse when he corrected an order which he saw to be based on a misunderstanding. Some part of the blame must surely attach to the slow-paced D'Erlon and to the Emperor himself, who first underrated the difficulties both at Ligny and Quatre Bras, and then changed his plans when Ney was in the midst of a furious fight.

Nevertheless, the general results obtained on June the 16th were enormously in favour of Napoleon. He had inflicted losses on the Prussians comparable with those of Jena-Auerstadt; and he retired to rest at Fleurus with the conviction that they must hastily fall back on their immediate bases of supply, Namur and Liege, leaving Wellington at his mercy. The rules of war and the dictates of humdrum prudence certainly prescribed this course for a beaten army, especially as Bulow's corps was known to be on the Liege road.

Scarcely had the Prussian retreat begun in the darkness, when officers pressed up to Gneisenau, on whom now devolved all responsibility, for instructions as to the line of march. At once he gave the order to push northwards to Tilly. General Reiche thereupon pointed out that this village was not marked upon the smaller maps with which colonels were provided; whereupon the command was given to march towards the town of Wavre, farther distant on the same road. An officer was posted at the junction of roads to prevent regiments straying towards Namur; but some had already gone too far on this side to be recalled--a fact which was to confuse the French pursuers on the morrow. The greater part of Thielmann's corps had fallen back on Gembloux; but, with these exceptions, the ma.s.s of the Prussians made for Tilly, near which place they bivouacked. Early on the next morning their rearguard drew off from Sombref; and, thanks to the inertness of their foes, the line of retreat remained unknown. During the march to Wavre, their columns were cheered by the sight of the dauntless old Field-Marshal, who was able to sit a horse once more. Thielmann's corps did not leave Gembloux till 2 p.m., but reached Wavre in safety. Meanwhile Bulow's powerful corps was marching unmolested from the Roman road near Hannut to a position two miles east of Wavre, where it arrived at nightfall.

Equally fortunate was the reserve ammunition train, which, unnoticed by the French cavalry, wound northwards by cross-roads through Gembloux, and reached the army by 5 p.m.[496]

In his "Commentaries," written at St. Helena, Napoleon sharply criticised the action of Gneisenau in retreating northwards to Wavre, because that town is farther distant from Wellington's line of retreat than Sombref is from Quatre Bras, and is connected with it only by difficult cross-roads. He even a.s.serted that the Prussians ought to have made for Quatre Bras, a statement which presumes that Gneisenau could have rallied his army sufficiently after Ligny to file away on the Quatre Bras _chaussee_ in front of Napoleon's victorious legions.

But the Prussian army was virtually cut in half, and could not have reunited so as to attempt the perilous flank march across Napoleon's front. We shall, therefore, probably not be far wrong if we say of this criticism that the wish was father to the thought. A march on Quatre Bras would have been a safe means of throwing away the Prussian army.[497]

To the present writer it seems probable that Gneisenau's action, in the first instance, was undertaken as the readiest means of reuniting the Prussian wings. But Gneisenau cannot have been blind to the advantages of a reunion with Wellington, which a northerly march would open out. The report which he sent to his Sovereign from Wavre shows that by that time he believed the Prussian position to be "not disadvantageous"; while in a private letter written at noon on the 17th he expressly states that the Duke will accept battle at Waterloo if the Prussians help him with two army corps. Gneisenau's only doubts seem to have been whether Wellington would fight and whether his own ammunition would be to hand in time. Until he was sure on these two points caution was certainly necessary.

The results of this prompt rally of the Prussians were infinitely enhanced by the fact that Wellington soon found it out, while Napoleon did not grasp its full import until he was in the thick of the battle of Waterloo. To the final steps that led up to this dramatic finale we must now briefly refer.

It is strange that Gneisenau, on the night of the 16th, took no steps to warn his allies of the Prussian retreat, and merely left them to infer it from his last message, that he must do so if he were not succoured. m.u.f.fling, indeed, says that a Prussian officer was sent, but was shot by the French on the British left wing. Seeing, however, that Wellington had beaten back Ney's forces before the Prussian retreat began, the story may be dismissed as a lame excuse of Gneisenau's neglect.[498]

From the risk of being crushed by Napoleon, the Anglo-Dutch forces were saved by the vigilance of their leader and the supineness of the enemy. After a brief rest at Genappe, the Duke was back at the front at dawn, and despatched two cavalry patrols towards Sombref to find out the results of the battle. The patrol, which was accompanied by the Duke's aide-de-camp, Colonel Gordon, came into touch with the Prussian rear. On his return soon after 10, the staff-officer, Basil Jackson, was at once sent to bid Picton immediately prepare to fall back on Waterloo, an order which that veteran received very sulkily.[499] Shortly after Gordon's return, a Prussian orderly galloped up and confirmed the news of their retreat, which drew from the Duke the remark: "Blucher has had a d---- d good licking and gone back to Wavre.... As he has gone back, we must go too." The infantry now began to file off by degrees behind hedges or under cover of a screen of cavalry and skirmishers, these keeping Ney's men busy in front, until the bulk of the army was well through the narrow and crowded street of Genappe.

And how came it that Napoleon and Ney missed this golden opportunity?

In the first case, it was due to their chiefs of staff, who had not sent overnight any tidings as to the results of their respective battles. Until Count Flahaut returned to the Imperial headquarters about 8 a.m., Napoleon knew nothing as to the position of affairs at Quatre Bras; while a similar carelessness on Soult's part left Ney powerless to attempt anything against Wellington until somewhat later in the morning.

But Napoleon's inaction lasted nearly up to 11.30. How is this to be accounted for? In reply, some attribute his conduct to illness of body and torpor of mind--a topic that will engage our attention presently; others a.s.sert that the army urgently needed rest; but the effective cause was his belief that the Prussians were retreating eastwards away from Wellington. This was the universal belief at headquarters. He had ordered Grouchy to follow them at dawn; Grouchy's lieutenant, Pajol, struck to the south-east, and by 4 a.m. reported that Blucher was heading for Namur. Such was the news that the Emperor heard from Grouchy about 8 a.m.--he refused to grant him an audience earlier.

Forthwith he dictated a letter to Ney to the following effect: that the Prussians had been routed and were being pursued towards Namur; that the British could not attack him (Ney) at Quatre Bras, for the Emperor would in that case march on their flank and destroy them in an instant; that he heard with pain how isolated Ney's troops had been on the 16th, and ordered him to close up his divisions and occupy Quatre Bras. If he could not effect that task, he must warn the Emperor, who would then come. Finally, he warned him that "the present day is needed to finish this operation, to complete the munitions of war, to rally stragglers and call in detachments."

A singular day's programme this for the man who had trebled the results of the victory of Jena by the remorseless energy of the pursuit. After dictating this despatch, he ordered Lobau to take a division of infantry for the support of Pajol on the Namur road. He then set out for St. Amand in his carriage. On arriving at the place of carnage he mounted his horse and rode slowly over the battle-field, seeing to the needs of the wounded of both nations with kindly care, and everywhere receiving the enthusiastic acclaim of his soldiery.

This done, he dismounted and talked long and earnestly with Grouchy, Gerard, and others on the state of political parties at Paris. They listened with ill-concealed restlessness. At Fleurus Grouchy asked for definite orders, and received the brusque reply that he must wait. But now, towards 11 o'clock, the Emperor hears that Wellington is still at Quatre Bras, that Pajol has captured eight Prussian guns on the Namur road, and that Excelmans has seen ma.s.ses of the enemy at Gembloux. At once he turns from politics to war.

His plan is formed. While he himself falls on the British, Grouchy is to pursue the Prussians with the corps of Gerard and Vandamme, the division of Teste (from Lobau's command), and the cavalry corps of Pajol, Excelmans, and Milhaud. The Marshal begged to be relieved of the task, setting forth the danger of pursuing foes that were now reunited and far away. It was in vain. About 11.30 the Emperor developed his verbal instructions in a written order penned by Bertrand. It bade Grouchy proceed to Gembloux with the forces stated above (except Milhaud's corps and a division of Vandamme's corps, which were to follow Napoleon) to reconnoitre on the roads leading to Namur and Maestricht, to pursue the enemy, and inform the Emperor as to their intentions. If they have evacuated Namur, it is to be occupied by the National Guards. "It is important to know what Blucher and Wellington mean to do, and whether they propose reuniting their armies in order to cover Brussels and Liege, by trying their fortune in another battle...."[500]

As Napoleon's fate was to depend largely on an intelligent carrying out of this order, we may point out that it consisted of two chief parts, the general aim and the means of carrying out that aim. The aim was to find out the direction of the Prussians' retreat, and to prevent them joining Wellington, whether for the defence of Brussels or of Liege. The means were an advance to Gembloux and scouting along the Namur and Maestricht roads. The chance that the allies might reunite for the defence of Brussels was alluded to, but no measures were prescribed as to scouting in that direction: these were left to Grouchy's discretion. It must be confessed that the order was not wholly clear. To name the towns of Brussels and Liege (which are sixty miles apart) was sufficiently distracting; and to suggest that only the eastern and south-eastern roads should be explored was certain to limit Grouchy's immediate attention to those roads alone. For he distrusted alike his own abilities and the power of the force placed at his disposal; and an officer thus situated is sure to inclose himself in the strict letter of his instructions. This was what he did, with disastrous results.

Grouchy had hitherto held no important command. As a cavalry general he had done brilliant service; but now he was launched on a duty that called for strategic insight. His force was scarcely equal to the work. True, it was strong for scouting, having nearly 6,000 light horse; but the 27,000 footmen of Vandamme's and Gerard's corps had been exhausted by the deadly strife in the villages and were expecting a day's rest. Their commanders also resented being placed under Grouchy. In fact, leaders and men disliked the task, and set about it in a questioning, grumbling way. The infantry did not start till about 3 o'clock and only reached Gembloux late that evening--nine miles in six hours! The cavalry, too, was so badly handled by Excelmans around Gembloux that Thielmann's corps slipped away northward. The rain fell in torrents, obscuring the view; but it seems strange that the direction of the Prussian retreat was not surmised until about nightfall.

Meanwhile, on the French left wing, Ney had been equally lax. He must have received Napoleon's order to occupy Quatre Bras, "if there was only a rearguard there," a little before 10 a.m.; but he took no steps beyond futile skirmis.h.i.+ng, and apparently knew not that the British were slipping away.

About 2 p.m., when the British cavalry was ready to turn rein, the Duke and Sir H. Vivian saw the glint of cuira.s.ses along the Sombref road. It was the vanguard of the Emperor's advance. Furious that his foes were escaping from his clutches, Napoleon had left his carriage and was pressing on with the foremost hors.e.m.e.n. To Ney he sent an imperative summons to advance, and when that Marshal came up, greeted him with the words "You have ruined France." But it was time for deeds, not words; and he now put forth all his strength. At once he flung his powerful cavalry at the British rear; and even now it might have gone hard with Wellington had not the lowering clouds burst in a deluge of rain. Quickly the road was ploughed up; and the cornfields became impa.s.sable for the French hors.e.m.e.n.

While the pursuers struggled in the mire and aimed wildly through the pelting haze, the British rearguard raced for safety. Says Captain Mercer of the artillery: "We galloped for our lives through the storm, striving to gain the hamlets, Lord Uxbridge urging us on, crying 'Make haste; for G.o.d's sake gallop, or you will be taken.'"[501] Gaining on the pursuit, they reached Genappe, and, filing over its bridge and up the narrow street, prepared to check the French. At this time the Emperor galloped up, drenched to the skin, his gray overcoat streaming with rain, his hat bent out of all shape by the storm.[502] He was once more the artillery officer of Toulon. "Fire on them," he shouted to his gunners, "they are English." A sharp skirmish ensued, in which our 7th Hussars, charging down into the village, were worsted by the French lancers, "an arm," says Cotton, "with which we were quite unacquainted." In their retreat they were saved by the Life Guards, whose weight and strength carried all before them.

At last, on the ridge of Waterloo, Wellington's force turned at bay.

Napoleon, coming up at 6.30 to the brow of the opposite slope, ordered a strong force to advance into the sodden clay of the valley. It was promptly torn by a heavy cannonade; and the truth was borne in on him that the British had escaped him for that day.

NAPOLEON'S HEALTH IN THE WATERLOO CAMPAIGN

As many writers a.s.sert that Napoleon at this time was but the shadow of his former self, we must briefly review the evidence of contemporaries on this subject; for if the a.s.sertion be true, the Battle of Waterloo deserves little notice.

It seems that for some time past there had been a slight falling off in his mental and bodily powers; but when it began and how far it progressed is matter of doubt. Some observers, including Chaptal, date it from the hards.h.i.+ps of the retreat from Moscow. This is very doubtful. He ended that campaign in a better state of health than he had enjoyed during the advance. Besides, in none of his wars did he show such vitality and fertility of resource as in the desperate struggle of 1814, which Wellington p.r.o.nounced his masterpiece. After this there seems to have been a period of something like relapse at Elba. In September, 1814, Sir Neil Campbell reported: "Napoleon seems to have lost all habits of study and sedentary application. He occasionally falls into a state of inactivity never known before, and sometimes reposes in his bedroom of late for several hours in the day; takes exercise in a carriage and not on horseback. His health excellent and his spirits not at all depressed" ("F.O.," France, No.

114). During his ten months at Elba he became very stout and his cheeks puffy.