Prussian assault on Plancenoit. At 4 pm, even as Ney was preparing his grand cavalry assault on Wellington’s position, the Prussian vanguard was massing under the cover of the Bois de Paris forest along Napoleon’s right (eastern) flank. Here the lead elements of Von Bülow‘s IV Korps: two infantry brigades, two batteries of guns, and a regiment of Silesian Hussars were poised to strike toward the village of Plancenoit. Behind them and still marching forward was the rest of the Corps, in total some 32,000 men.
Map of battle at Plancenoit
The Young Guard at Plancenoit.
General Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow’s troops drove the French out of Plancenoit. It was gutter fighting, close-quarters carnage with bayonets and musket butts in alleys and cottage gardens. Cannon blasted roundshot and canister down narrow streets fogged by powder smoke and puddled with blood. A few French troops hung on to some houses on the village’s western edge, but they were in danger of being surrounded by Prussian troops advancing in the fields either side of the village.
Napoleon could not afford to lose Plancenoit. It lay behind
his line and would make a base from which Blücher’s troops could advance on the
Brussels highway. If that highway was cut, then the French would have no road
on which to retreat. They would be effectively surrounded, and so the Emperor
sent his Young Guard to retake the village.
The Young Guard was part of the Imperial Guard, those elite
troops so beloved of the Emperor. To join the Guard a soldier had to have taken
part in three campaigns and be of proven character, a requirement less moral than
disciplinary, and the successful applicants were rewarded with better
equipment, higher pay and a distinctive uniform. Traditionally the Guard, which
had its own infantry, cavalry and artillery and so formed an army within the
army, was held back from battle so that it was available to make the killing
stroke when it was needed. There was, naturally enough, some resentment within
the wider French army of the privileges accorded to the Guard, but nevertheless
most soldiers held the ambition of being chosen to join its ranks. Their
nickname, ‘the Immortals’, was partly sarcastic, referring to the many battles
when the Guard had not been called into action (the Guard called themselves
grognards, grumblers, because they found it frustrating to be held in reserve
when other men were fighting). But if there was resentment there was also
admiration. The Guard was intensely loyal to Napoleon, they were proven to be
brave men, they fought like tigers, and their boast was that they had never
been defeated. No enemy would ever underestimate their fighting ability or
their effectiveness.
The Young Guard were skirmishers, though they could fight in
line or square like any other battalion, and there were just over 4,700 of them
at Waterloo. When it became apparent that Lobau’s outnumbered men were being
driven from Plancenoit the Emperor despatched all eight battalions of the Young
Guard to retake the village. They were led by General Guillaume Philibert
Duhesme, a thoroughly nasty character who was a child of the French Revolution.
A labourer’s son, he had risen to high rank because he was competent, but he
was also corrupt, venal, cruel and sadistic. He had trained as a lawyer, then
become a soldier, and regarded Napoleon with some suspicion, believing, rightly,
that the Emperor had betrayed many of the principles of the French Revolution,
but Duhesme was too good a soldier to be ignored and Napoleon trusted him with
the Young Guard. Duhesme was an expert on light infantry tactics, indeed his
slim textbook Essai Historique de l’Infanterie Légère became the standard work
on the subject for much of the nineteenth century.
Light infantry, trained to think and act independently, were
perfectly suited to the counter-attack on Plancenoit. The Young Guard advanced
and took musket fire from houses on the village edge, but Duhesme refused to
let them answer that fire, instead leading them straight into the streets and
alleys that would be cleared by their bayonets. It worked, and the Prussians
were tumbled back out of the village and even pursued for some distance beyond.
General Duhesme was badly wounded in the head during the vicious fighting and
was to die two days later.
The Young Guard had done everything asked of it and upheld
the traditions of the Imperial Guard, but von Bülow’s men were being reinforced
minute by minute as more troops crossed the Lasne valley and made their way
through the woods to the battlefield. The Prussians counter-attacked, driving
the French out of the houses on the western side of the village and besieging
the stone-walled churchyard. Colonel Johann von Hiller led one of two Prussian
columns that:
succeeded in capturing a howitzer, two cannon, several
ammunition wagons and two staff officers along with several hundred men. The
open square around the churchyard was surrounded by houses from which the enemy
could not be dislodged … a firefight developed at fifteen to thirty paces range
which ultimately decimated the Prussian battalions.
The Young Guard was fighting desperately, but Blücher could
feed still more men into the turmoil and slowly, inevitably, the Young Guard
was forced back. The Prussians recaptured the church and its graveyard, then
went house by house, garden by garden, fighting through alleys edged by burning
houses, and the Young Guard, now hopelessly outnumbered, retreated grudgingly.
Napoleon had thirteen battalions of the Imperial Guard left
in his reserve. He had arrayed them north and south to form a defensive line in
case the Prussians broke through at Plancenoit, but to prevent that he now sent
two battalions of the Old Guard to reinforce the hard-pressed French troops in
the village. The two battalions went into the smoke and chaos with fixed
bayonets, their arrival heartened the French survivors and the fight for
Plancenoit swung again, this time in favour of the French. The newly arrived
veterans of the Old Guard fought their way back to the high churchyard,
captured it and garrisoned themselves inside its stone wall. Even they were
hard-pressed and at one moment their General, Baron Pelet, seized the precious
Eagle and shouted, ‘A moi, Chasseurs! Sauvons l’Aigle ou mourons autour d’elle!’
To me, Chasseurs! Save the Eagle or die around her! The Guard rallied. Pelet,
later in the fight, discovered Guardsmen cutting the throats of Prussian
prisoners and, disgusted, stopped the murders. For the moment, at least, Pelet
had stiffened the French defence and Plancenoit belonged to the Emperor, and so
the threat to Napoleon’s rear had been averted.
Yet von Bülow’s men were not the only Prussians arriving at
the battlefield. Lieutenant-General Hans von Zieten’s 1st Corps had left Wavre
early in the afternoon and taken a more northerly route than von Bülow’s men.
They had been delayed because General Pirch’s 2nd Corps was following von
Bülow’s southern route and von Zieten’s and Pirch’s Corps, each of several
thousand men with guns and ammunition wagons, met at a crossroads and there was
inevitable confusion as the two columns tried to cross each other’s line of
march. Von Bülow and Pirch had been sent to attack Napoleon’s right wing at
Plancenoit, while von Zieten’s men took the more northerly roads so that they
could link up with Wellington’s men on the ridge.
A History Changing Decision
General von Zieten’s men had been heavily engaged in the
fighting at Ligny, where they had lost almost half their strength. Now, in the
slanting sun of the evening, von Zieten led around five thousand men towards
Wellington’s position. They would have heard the battle long before they saw
it, though the pall of powder smoke, lit by the sheet-lightning of gun-flashes,
would have been visible above the trees. The first contact came when the
leading troops reached the château of Frichermont, a substantial building on
the extreme left of Wellington’s position. It had been garrisoned by Bernhard
of Saxe-Weimar’s Nassauer troops, the same men who had saved Quatre-Bras with
their gallant defence two days before. Saxe-Weimar had been fighting all
afternoon, staving off French attacks on Papelotte and La Haie; now suddenly he
was attacked from the rear. One of his officers, Captain von Rettburg, recalled
how his infantry was driven back ‘by numerous skirmishers followed by infantry
columns’:
Skirmishers even attacked me from the hedges in my rear.
When I drove them off I became aware that we were faced by Prussians! They in
turn recognised their error which had lasted less than ten minutes but had
caused several dead and wounded on both sides.
What von Rettburg does not say is that it was his bravery
that ended the unfortunate clash of allies. He made his way through the musket
fire to tell the Prussians their mistake. The Nassauers wore a dark green
uniform, which could be mistaken for the dark blue of French coats, and their
headgear was French in shape.
More chaos was to follow. General von Zieten’s men were
needed desperately on the ridge. Wellington knew another French assault was
likely, and if the Prussians reinforced his left wing he could bring troops
from there to strengthen his centre. General von Zieten sent scouts ahead and
one of them, a young officer, returned to say that all was lost. He had seen
Wellington’s army in full retreat. Just like Marshal Ney he had mistaken the
chaos behind Wellington’s line for defeat, thinking it was a panicked attempt
to escape when in fact it was just wounded men being taken to the rear,
ammunition wagons, servants and stray horses. Shells exploded among them and
roundshot, skimming the ridge, threw up gouts of earth where they landed. It
looked as if the French were cannonading the panicked mass, adding to the
impression of a rout. The Prussian officer could probably see little that
happened on the ridge itself, it was so fogged by powder smoke, but through
that smoke he would have seen the red flash of French cannons firing and the
smaller flicker of muskets, their sudden flames lighting the smoke and fading
instantly. Every now and then there was a larger explosion as a shell found an
artillery caisson, and the ‘cloud’ of French skirmishers was close to the
ridge’s crest, and so were some of the cannon, and behind the skirmishers were
prowling cavalry, dimly visible through the smoke. No wonder the young officer
believed that the French had captured Wellington’s ridge and that the Duke’s
forces were in full retreat. He galloped back to von Zieten and told him it was
hopeless, that there was no point in joining Wellington because the Duke was
defeated.
And at that same moment a staff officer arrived from Blücher
with new orders. The newcomer, Captain von Scharnhorst, could not find von
Zieten, so he galloped to the head of the column and gave them their orders
directly: they were to turn round and march south to help Blücher with his
stalled attack on Plancenoit. Wellington, it seemed, would not be reinforced;
instead the Prussians would fight their separate battle south of Napoleon’s
ridge.
General von Müffling, the liaison officer with Wellington,
had been waiting for von Zieten’s arrival. He had expected it much earlier, but
now, at last, von Zieten’s Corps was in sight at the extreme left wing of Wellington’s
position. Then, to von Müffling’s astonishment, those troops turned and marched
away. ‘By this retrograde movement,’ he wrote, ‘the battle might have been
lost.’ So von Müffling put spurs to his horse and galloped after the retreating
Prussians.
Meanwhile a furious argument was raging between
Lieutenant-Colonel von Reiche, one of von Zieten’s staff officers, and Captain
von Scharnhorst. Von Reiche wanted to obey the original orders and go to
Wellington’s assistance, despite the report of the Duke’s defeat, but von
Scharnhorst insisted that Blücher’s new orders must be obeyed. ‘I pointed out
to him’, von Reiche said:
that everything had been arranged with von Müffling, that
Wellington counted on our arrival close to him, but von Scharnhorst did not
want to listen to anything. He declared that I would be held responsible if I
disobeyed Blücher’s orders. Never had I found myself in such a predicament. On
one hand our troops were endangered at Plancenoit, on the other Wellington was
relying on our help. I was in despair. General von Ziethen was nowhere to be
found.
The troops had paused while this argument raged, but then
General Steinmetz, who commanded the advance guard of von Zieten’s column, came
galloping up, angry at the delay, and brusquely told von Reiche that Blücher’s
new orders would be obeyed. The column dutifully continued marching eastwards,
looking for a smaller lane that led south towards Plancenoit, but just then von
Zieten himself appeared and the argument started all over again. Von Zieten
listened and then took a brave decision. He would ignore Blücher’s new orders and,
believing von Müffling’s assurance that the Duke was not in full retreat, he
ordered his troops onto the British–Dutch ridge. The Prussian 1st Corps would
join Wellington after all.
The 1st Corps had its own guns, 6-pounder cannons and
7-pounder howitzers, and they were the first of von Zieten’s weapons to be
unleashed on the French. They were presumably firing along the face of the
ridge, probably aiming at the gun-flashes lighting the smoke around La Haie
Sainte, and fairly soon after opening fire the Prussian guns found themselves
being answered with counter-battery fire. Captain Mercer, of the Royal Horse
Artillery, tells the story best:
We had scarcely fired many rounds at the enfilading
battery, when a tall man in the black Brunswick uniform came galloping up to me
from the rear, exclaiming ‘Ah! Mine Gott! Mine Gott! Vat is it you done, sare?
Dat is your friends de Proosiens; ans you kills dem!’
The Prussian guns had been aiming at Mercer’s battery and
caused casualties, and Mercer, despite the Duke’s orders that forbade
counter-battery fire, had responded. That mistake too was eventually corrected.
Such errors were probably unavoidable: there were too many unfamiliar uniforms
in the allied armies and the smoke was casting a gloom over a battlefield lit
by the glare of flames. It was past seven in the evening now and the fortunes
of war had swung sharply against the Emperor, yet all was not lost.
Napoleon’s Imperial Guard was working its magic again. Ten battalions had been sufficient to stall the Prussian attack on Plancenoit, and eleven battalions remained in reserve. The French were pushing hard at Wellington’s line, they were close to the ridge top now, especially at the centre above La Haie Sainte. Ney had pleaded for more troops so he could launch a killer blow at Wellington’s centre and Napoleon had refused him, but now, with Prussian numbers increasing, it was time to throw the best troops of France, if not of all Europe, at the Duke’s wounded line.
