XV.

EXTRACT FROM WELLINGTON’S “MEMORANDUM ON THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.”

SUPPLEMENTARY DESPATCHES, &c., of the Duke of Wellington: vol. x, pp. 523 _et seq._

But what follows will show that, notwithstanding the extension of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, such was the celerity of communication with all parts of it, that in point of fact[840] _his orders reached all parts of the army in six hours after he had issued them_; and that he was in line in person with a sufficient force to resist and keep in check the enemy’s corps which first attacked the Prussian corps under General Zieten at daylight on the 15th of June; having received the intelligence of that attack _only at three o’clock in the afternoon of the 15th, he was at Quatre Bras before the same hour on the morning of the 16th,[841] with a sufficient force to engage the left of the French army_.

It was certainly true that he had known for some days of the augmentation of the enemy’s force on the frontier, and even of the arrival of Buonaparte at the army; but he did not deem it expedient to make any movement, excepting for the assembly of the troops at their several alarm posts, till he should hear of the decided movement of the enemy.

The first account received by the Duke of Wellington was from the Prince of Orange, who had come in from the out-posts of the army of the Netherlands to dine with the Duke at three o’clock in the afternoon. He reported that the enemy had attacked the Prussians at Thuin; that they had taken possession of, but had afterwards abandoned, Binch; that they had not yet touched the positions of the army of the Netherlands. While the Prince was with the Duke, the staff officer employed by Prince Blücher at the Duke’s headquarters, General Müffling, came to the Duke to inform him that he had just received intelligence of the movement of the French army and their attack upon the Prussian troops at Thuin.

It appears by the statement of the historian[842] that the posts of the Prussian corps of General Zieten were attacked at Thuin at four o’clock on the morning of the 15th; and that General Zieten himself, with a part of his corps, retreated and was at Charleroi at about ten o’clock on that day; yet the report thereof was not received at Bruxelles till three o’clock in the afternoon. The Prussian cavalry of the corps of Zieten was at Gosselies and Fleurus on the evening and night of the 15th.

Orders were forthwith sent for the march of the whole army to its left.

The whole moved on that evening and in the night, each division and portion separately, but unmolested; the whole protected on the march by the defensive works constructed at the different points referred to, and by their garrisons.

The reserve, which had been encamped in the neighborhood and cantoned in the town and in the neighborhood of Bruxelles, were ordered to assemble in and in the neighborhood of the park at Bruxelles, which they did on that evening; and they marched in the morning of the 16th upon Quatre Bras, towards which post the march of all the troops consisting of the left and centre of the army, and of the cavalry in

## particular, was directed.

_The Duke went in person at daylight in the morning of the 16th to Quatre Bras_, where he found some Netherland troops, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, which had been engaged with the enemy, but lightly; and he went on from thence to the Prussian army,[843] which was in sight, formed on the heights behind Ligny and St. Amand. He there communicated personally with Marshal Prince Blücher and the headquarters of the Prussian army.

In the meantime the reserve of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras. _The historian asserts that the Duke of Wellington had ordered these troops to halt at the point at which they quitted the Forêt de Soignies. He can have no proof of this fact,[844] of_ _which there is no evidence_;[845] and in point of fact the two armies _were united about mid-day_ of the 16th of June, on the left of the position of the Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington. These troops, forming the reserve, and having arrived from Bruxelles, were _now_ joined by those of the _1st division of infantry,[846] and the cavalry_; and notwithstanding the criticism of the Prussian historian on the positions occupied by the army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and on the march of the troops to join with the Prussian army, _it is a fact_, appearing upon the face of the History, _that the Allied British and Netherland army was in line at Quatre Bras, not only twenty-four hours sooner than one whole corps of the Prussian army under General Bülow, the absence of which is attributed by the historian to an accidental mistake, but likewise before the whole of the corps under General Zieten, which had been the first attacked on the 15th, had taken its position in the line of the army assembled on the heights behind Ligny, and having their left at Sombref_.

It was perfectly true that the Duke of Wellington did not at first give credit to the reports of the intention of the enemy to attack by the valleys of the Sambre and the Meuse.

The enemy had destroyed the roads leading through those valleys, and he considered that Buonaparte might have made his attack upon the Allied armies in the Netherlands and in the provinces on the left of the Rhine by other lines with more advantage. But it is obvious that, when the attack was made, he was not unprepared to assist in resisting it: and, in point of fact, did, on the afternoon and in the evening of the 16th June, repulse the attack of Marshal Ney upon his position at Quatre Bras, which had been commenced by the aid of another corps d’armée under General Reille. These were the troops which had attacked on the 15th, at daylight, the Prussian corps under General Zieten, which corps the Allied troops, under the Duke of Wellington, relieved in resistance to the enemy.