Waterloo

BLÜCHER

“Captain Blücher has full permission to resign, and to go to the devil, if he likes.”

Thus endorsed by Frederick the Great, Captain Blücher’s written request for leave to retire from the Prussian Army went into effect.

Yet this headstrong, boisterous, hard-drinking, hard-riding, hard-fighting, indefatigable Blücher became one of the most thorough and effective soldiers that ever led an army to battle. He possessed some of those very qualities which made Washington, Cromwell, and Frederick so great. He was tireless, he was iron-willed, he was true-hearted, he was fearless, he was not to be discouraged, and he never could be whipped so badly that he did not come back to fight again, harder than ever.

Something of a national hero, something of a typical German soldier, something of an ideal patriot, he was something of a ruthless Goth. He had gone to England after the Campaign of Paris, in 1814, and rode conspicuously in the great procession through London. As he looked upon the wealth displayed on every side, he growled, “What a town to sack.” Yet he was a devoted husband, a most loyal subject; a generous, faithful, daring ally.

He had fought against the French a greater number of times than any other commander. He had been whipped oftener and harder than any other commander. He had been captured, and had grazed annihilation oftener than any other commander.

After Jena, his king owed his escape from being made prisoner to a bold falsehood—to General Klein—that an armistice had been declared. At Bautzen he just did get out of the trap Napoleon laid for him, and he did it because Ney, in making the turning movement, stopped to do some fighting which gave the Prussian his warning. In 1814 he just did miss being bagged time and again—but he missed it. And now in 1815 his pluck, his dash, and his luck were to save him, as by fire, again and again. He was beloved by his troops. Wherever he sent them, he was ready to go himself. He shirked nothing, and was whole-hearted in everything. Like the Russian soldier, Skobeleff, he was sublime on the field of battle, and led his men in person. With a kindly word, “Come, comrades, follow me!” he could lead them into the jaws of hell. With a plea like this, “Comrades, I gave my word to be there; you won’t make me break it!”—he could inspire them to superhuman efforts, to drag the heavy guns through the mud, and thus reach his ally in time to save.

Heading a cavalry charge at Ligny, his horse was shot under him, and the French passed over him twice—once in advancing, once in retreating—and the darkness was his friend each time. Dragged by one of his officers from under his horse, he was borne off the field bruised, almost unconscious. In two days, he is leading charges again. Too generous to suspect an ally, he stands and fights at Ligny on Wellington’s promise of support, and when the support doesn’t come he still does not suspect his ally of calculating selfishness. His staff does. Hence it was that his staff opposed him when he wished to yield to Wellington’s plea for help, on the night of the 17th. Long did Gneisenau resist Blücher, contending that Wellington meant to leave them in the lurch again. But at length the chief of staff consented that the promise of relief be sent, and old Blücher was happy. The promise was sent, and Wellington knew it would be kept! Hence he fought at Waterloo, with the knowledge that his task consisted in holding out until the Prussians could arrive.

The heroic struggle of Blücher to make progress over the terrible roads, his enormous energy, his magnificent devotion to the common cause, his unselfish renunciation of credit for the victory which was due to him more than to Wellington, raise him to the pinnacle of military glory. No student of this last campaign of Napoleon can fail to reach the conclusion that while Wellington was delaying at Brussels, sending out orders not suited to the condition of things at the front, and taking his supper at Lady Richmond’s ball, it was Blücher who was where he should have been, and doing what he should have done. But for the skilful retreat of Thielman, followed by the bold concentration at Ligny and the stubborn fight there, the French would have gone into Brussels without firing a shot.

On the night of the 18th, Blücher followed the pursuit as far as Genappe, where his strength gave out. He went into the inn to go to bed, but before undressing, wrote his wife:

To a friend he wrote:

Blücher was seventy-three years old. Napoleon and Wellington were nearly the same age, both being born in 1769, and therefore forty-seven years old.

Blücher was notoriously a hard drinker, and had been so all his life. Both Napoleon and Wellington were extremely sober men; yet Blücher had shown more energy than the other two together.

NEY

A mournful interest must always attach to Ney.

As Napoleon said, his “Bravest of the Brave” was no longer the same man. First of all, in this campaign he was not handled right. The Emperor should have employed him sooner, or not at all: should have trusted him further, or not at all. The manner in which he was caught up at the last moment and cast into the activities of the campaign was most unwise.

In spite of the bad behavior of Ney in 1814, the troops were glad to see him in their midst. Their nickname for him was “Red-head,” and they called him this to each other as they saw him join the Emperor at Beaumont. “All will go well now—Red-head is with us!”

But Ney was not at himself. There is no other phrase that will do,—all of us know what it means. When the orator whom we know to be a heaven-born orator fails to move us, we say, “He is not at himself.” When the brilliant writer is dull; when the expert mechanic is awkward; when the painter’s brush misses the conception, when the sculptor’s chisel cannot follow his thoughts, when the master musician makes discord, we have nothing better to say than “He is not at himself.”

So it was with Marshal Ney. Advancing upon Quatre Bras, he stopped, afraid of going too far. When had Ney been timid before?

Realizing at length what was expected of him, he fought furiously to take the position which would have been his without a fight had he simply not stopped in sudden fear the evening before. Then, having been the Ney of old on the 16th, he became timid again on the morning of the 17th, and let Wellington draw off without any attempt to molest the retreat. Why no reports to the Emperor all that day of the 16th? Why none on the night of the 16th? Very near to the treason for which officers are shot, was this sullen silence. He was not at himself. Then at Waterloo, the Ney of old comes out again. He is not only bold, but rash. He is possessed of a devil of fight. He is no longer a general: he is just a reckless brigadier. Headlong charges, blind rushes, frantic management which is calamitous mismanagement; premature sacrifice of cavalry, false formation of columns of attack, then wild rage and despair, and prayers for death! The soldier never lived that fought harder and longer than Ney at Waterloo. As darkness closed down, and the torrents of retreat ran past him, this heroic and ill-starred soldier, his face black with powder smoke, his uniform in tatters, the blood oozing from bruises, a broken sword in his hand, cried out, “Come and see how a Marshal of France dies!” But alas, the flood of disaster bore him away, and this leonine Frenchman was left to make a target for French muskets. All of Ney’s horses had been killed under him, and he owed his life—a bad debt, as it turned out—to a faithful subaltern.

The restored Bourbons were determined to put Ney to death. Instead of leaving his fate in the hands of his old companions in arms, as his lawyer wanted him to do, Ney foolishly gave preference to a trial by the civilians of the Chamber of Peers. This tribunal condemned him, and he was shot. So says History.

But Tradition is persistent in claiming that the execution was a fake: that blank cartridges were fired, that Ney fell unhurt, and that his body was spirited away, and that he was shipped off to America, and that he lived in North Carolina, a school-teacher, until he died a natural death.

Many a time I have ridiculed this tradition, and marshaled in convincing array the evidence against it. I must confess, however, that a statement in the book of Sir William Fraser, called “Wellington’s Words,” startled me. He expresses a doubt as to the genuineness of the execution of Marshal Ney, and Sir William was close to Wellington. Indeed, the account which Sir William gives of the alleged execution is somewhat suggestive of a mock execution.

It was a beautiful morning, and the Garden of the Luxembourg was filled with children, attended by their nurses, taking the morning air, amid the trees and birds and flowers. A closed carriage drove up to the gate and four men, leaving the carriage, entered the garden. One was Marshal Ney, the others an officer and two sergeants. The officer placed Ney against the wall, called the picket guarding the gate, gave the word “Fire!” and Ney fell on his face. The body was immediately put into the carriage and driven off. The nurses and the children had not realized what was happening. Says Sir William Fraser (who had this account from Quentin Dick, an eye-witness), “I confess to have got a lingering doubt whether Ney was shot to death.”

But Sir William himself supplies a bit of evidence which resettles my own conviction that Ney was shot to death. The second Duke of Wellington was invited by Queen Victoria to meet at Windsor Castle the Emperor of the French. In the train of Louis Napoleon, the French Emperor, was the son of Marshal Ney. The Emperor said, “I must introduce two great names,” leading the Duke of Wellington to the Prince of Moscowa. The Duke made a low bow: the Prince did not return it. He remembered the murder of his father, and knew that the first Duke of Wellington should have prevented it. In answer to the Emperor’s whispered remonstrance, Ney’s son firmly declared that he did not wish to make the acquaintance of Wellington’s son. To my mind this is conclusive. Had Ney’s life been saved by the first Duke of Wellington, as Sir William Fraser broadly hints, two things are certain: (1) Ney’s son would have known it, and (2) Ney’s family would have gratefully honored Wellington’s memory, instead of detesting it.

No: the lion-like Ney did not teach school in North Carolina; he died a dog’s death in the garden of the Luxembourg. A victim to the cold perfidy of Wellington, a bloody sacrifice to the vindictive ferocity of Bourbon royalism, the magnificent French soldier was shot to death by Frenchmen—shot like a dog, and fell on his battle-worn face dead, dead, while the song of birds was in the trees, and the innocent laughter of children rang in his ears. Well did he say when they were reading his death-sentence, in which all of his high-sounding titles were being enumerated, “Just Michel Ney—soon to be a handful of dust.”

Full of error, yet full of virtue: pure gold at one crisis, mere dross at another; superbly great on some occasions, and pitiably weak on others; true as steel one day, unsubstantial as water the next; dangerous to the enemy on some fields, fatally dangerous to Napoleon in the last campaign, the truth remains that this strenuous soldier had been fighting the battles of France all his life, had never failed her at any trial, had never joined her enemies, and must have died of heart-break as well as bullet-wound when he heard a French officer give the word, and saw French soldiers raise their guns to shoot him down.

Honor to the son of Ney who refused to take the hand of Wellington’s son, although a Queen was the hostess, and an Emperor whispered a remonstrance!