So, after all the build up (and a couple of weeks late), we arrive at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June, 1815.
I mentioned in last week’s blog post just how small the field at Waterloo was. Marshall-Cornwall writes that Wellington’s front extended 4,000 yards (so around 2¼ miles or just over 3½ km). Wellington’s famous despatch after the battle describes his position:
The position which I took up in front of Waterloo, crossed the high roads from Charleroy and Nivelle, and had its right thrown back to a ravine near Merke Braine, which was occupied: and its left extended to a height above the hamlet of Ter la Haye, which was likewise occupied.
Wellington had placed his army on high ground. It’s not that high, as you can in the photo below. This gives a bird’s eye view of the battlefield (from the Lion’s Mound). We’re looking toward the French lines and you can see that there is a definite slope for them to climb up, but it’s a shallow ridge rather than a steep hill. Even so, it was a wet day and the ground was very muddy, making the advance toward the British lines that much more difficult and dangerous, as every second that you spent on that slope you were exposed to their fire.
Field at Waterloo from the top of the Lion’s Mound
The picture below gives a better idea of the reality of that slope on the ground. The sign you can just see in the foreground says that this was the point at which the French cavalry attacked the British. In fact the British were probably a little further back from this, as we’ll discuss below, but it’s close enough. What you can see quite clearly here is that there is a dip in the ground beyond where the crop (sugar beet?) is growing. The cavalry would have charged up from that lower ground and, again, galloping through the mud would have slowed and winded the horses.
The French had taken up their position on a similar ridge facing the British, although in their case the ridge offered no real benefit as Napoleon chose to play an offensive game so his troops were soon moving ahead of his lines. Wellington, on the other hand, was fighting an essentially defensive battle. He did not put his troops on the top of the rise, but deployed them just the other side of the high ground, on what military tacticians call “the reverse slope”. This protected them from much of the French fire. Napoleon had started his career as an artilleryman and was usually very effective in his use of cannon fire. Battles started with an exchange of artillery but at Waterloo much of the French shot was wasted. The British were protected from direct fire by sheltering just below the rising ground. This would not normally have been too much of a problem for the French gunners, as cannon were usually aimed short of the enemy so that the balls would hit the ground and then bounce repeatedly, moving at just the right height to take out the maximum possible number of troops before eventually coming to rest. On that day, though, the mud again favoured Wellington. The cannon balls ploughed into the mud on the French side of the slope and stopped there. Relatively few balls bounced across the top to wreak havoc on the British lines behind.
Napoleon took up his post at the rear of his army near to the inn of ‘La Belle Alliance’ which was to become famous as the point where Blucher and Wellington would meet at the end of the battle. From Napoleon’s vantage point to the Allied lines was less than a mile.
Elizabeth Longford estimates that Wellington had 67,661 men against Napoleon’s 71,947. This means, she writes, that there was “a total of nearly 140,000 men and over 400 guns, not to mention 30,000 horses, all crammed into under three square miles.” At a time when battles could be fought across rivers, around mountains, and might include the odd town, this was an unusually small field for a major conflict. The result was that, although Waterloo was not a particularly awful conflict in terms of the absolute numbers killed, this three square miles was, by the end of the day, to be one of the bloodiest killing fields of the Napoleonic era.
Although the battlefield is small, there were two distinct conflicts within it (and, later in the day, a third, which we will come to).
Wellington wanted to hold strong points ahead of his line. He chose to place men in the chateau at Hougoumont on the right (west) of his line and at a farm called La Haye Sainte at his centre.
In front of the right centre and near the Nivelle road, we occupied the house and garden of Hougoumount, which covered the return of that flank; and in front of the left centre, we occupied the farm of la Haye Sainte.
Wellington’s Waterloo dispatch
Wellington knew that he was outnumbered by Napoleon and, with his troops exhausted after the battle of Quatre Bras only two days before and a day’s marching in heavy rain, he did not have the strength he needed to take the fight to the enemy. He was relying on holding his line until Blucher could arrive with the Prussians to move the battle decisively in the Allied favour.
I looked oftener at my watch and at anything else. I knew that if my troops could keep their positions till night, then I must be joined by Blucher before morning, and we would not leave Bonaparte an army next day.
Wellington
Wellington’s fundamental strategy, then, was hardly subtle. His men were to remain on the ridge line (or, for much of the day, sheltering on the reverse slope) and hold the line as Napoleon threw the French forces against them. If the British and Allied soldiers absorbed the French fire all day without breaking, Wellington was confident that the Prussians would relieve them and that the Allies would win. It meant a particularly brutal battle, but one in which, although there were to be individual acts of heroism, the reality for most of the Allied force was that they were to stand and take their punishment or die and fall at their posts.
Napoleon probably did not believe that the Prussians would arrive and may not have attached enough importance to the speed at which he had to gain the victory. He had initially planned to start his attack at nine in the morning but nobody was ready by then. Troops were still coming up from Quatre Bras and the ground was so sodden that the heavy guns were difficult to move. In the end, the battle did not commence until around 11.30.
Various authorities give different times for the start of the battle. Frankly, the idea that anybody knows exactly when it was is straightforwardly ridiculous. Even if people had looked at their watches at the exact moment of the first cannon sounding (and many probably did) the watches would all have given different times. There was no Greenwich Time signal and people would have set their watches to the sound of a church clock, possibly days earlier in Brussels. Watches could be quite accurate, but not as accurate as today and definitely not keeping good time if they had been worn by somebody galloping on a horse, as would almost always have been the case. So “around 11.30” will have to do and anybody who claims greater accuracy is kidding you.
Whether the battle started at 11.30 or up to half an hour later, the important thing was that Napoleon had wasted several hours that he could have used to pound away at the Allies – hours that would prove critical as the Prussians drew closer to the battlefield.
The first French assault was not a massed attack on the British centre. Instead they French force moved off to the left to attack the chateau at Hougoumont. The battle there was to continue all day and the defence of the chateaux has become, for the British, one of the defining incidents of Waterloo. We’ll look at just what happened there next.
References
There are thousands of books about this battle. The two I’ve directly referred to are:
General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall (1967) Napoleon as Military Commander and Elizabeth Longford (1969) Wellington: the Years of the Sword
Image at top of page is Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Hillingford
A Word from our Sponsor
There is a lot of detail about elements of the Battle of Waterloo Burke at Waterloo. (“A good general account of the battles described.” – Amazon review.) Burke at Waterloo is available on Kindle at a ludicrously cheap £3.99. If you enjoy my blog, you might consider buying it. mybook.to/BurkeWaterloo
While Napoleon was chasing off the Prussians (see last week’s blog post) he had left the bulk of his force heading directly for Brussels under the command of Marshal Ney. Ney was ordered to head for a hamlet called Quatre Bras. He should sweep up any Prussian rearguard on his route and prepare to be joined by Napoleon for a triumphant entry into Brussels.
Ney was a courageous general, fiercely loyal to Napoleon, but he was no great military strategist. He moved northward in “a leisurely fashion” (Marshall-Cornwall). On 16 June, as Napoleon engaged the Prussians at Ligny, Ney ordered his leading commander to dislodge the enemy holding the crossroads at Quatre Bras.
In England, a tiny hamlet like Quatre Bras would probably be called Four Ways. It was a few houses and some farms clustered around a crossroad on the main route north from Charleroi to Brussels.
Wellington had not expected Napoleon to move into Belgium through Charleroi and only a small force was positioned on that road. Unfortunately for Ney, Wellington had reacted quickly to news of the attack on Charleroi and the leisurely advance of the French meant that by the time they arrived at Quatre Bras some reinforcements were already in place there.
Quatre Bras was held by about 7,000 men and eight guns. They were Dutch-Belgian troops under the command of William, Prince of Orange. William was far too young and inexperienced to be in command of anything important, but Wellington had not realised until too late where Napoleon’s main thrust would be made. British troops were on the way from Brussels, but until they arrived William was to face the French – 20,000 men and 60 guns – on his own. More than 20,000 Frenchmen were marching north to join them. There was, it seemed, no realistic prospect of Prince William’s troops holding the position. Indeed, by 2:30 the French were close to taking the crossroads. Prince William’s forces had increased to sixteen guns and 8,000 men, but this was all that stood between Marshall Ney and Brussels.
Nobody knows why Ney hesitated. It seems likely that Napoleon’s orders had been unclear and that Ney was reluctant to commit himself without definite instructions. His reserve had already been ordered away from Quatre Bras to support Napoleon at Ligny (nobody thought to tell Ney) and he was finding the Dutch-Belgian resistance greater than he had expected. Napoleon’s orders weren’t helping – in the midst of the battle Ney received an order from Marshal Soult at Ligny:
“His Majesty intends that you should attack whatever is in front of you and, after driving it back vigorously, that you should move to our support and help to envelop the enemy.”
It was the first of a series of command blunders that suggest that Napoleon was no longer the brilliant general in complete command of his forces, as he had been before Elba. Some of his most solid and dependable marshals were no longer available to him and Ney was simply not a good enough general to cope on his own in the absence of clear instructions. He hesitated, and Wellington took advantage of Ney’s uncertainty, taking personal command of the Allied troops and moving more and more forces from Brussels to reinforce his position at Quatre Bras.
Brunswickers at Quatre Bras by Richard Knotel
Throughout the afternoon both sides moved more troops into the fight. On several occasions, it seemed that the Allied positions must be overrun, but, every time, reinforcements arrived at the critical moment. The fighting was intense. Much of it was in fields of rye which grew up to eight feet high. The infantry could not see each other. (It’s quite possible that if Prince William had been able to see how many French he faced at the beginning of the fight, he would have withdrawn.) There was extensive use of skirmishers and the cavalry often advanced in very loose order, unable to group for a classical charge because of the amount of woodland at key points around the battlefield. The result was a very fluid fight, much of it very close quarters. At one point, the Duke of Wellington himself was almost captured, riding a little too far ahead of his line. He famously escaped by fleeing at a gallop toward his own troops and ordering them to lie flat as his horse jumped across the British soldiers who then rose to their feet and drove off the French cavalry that had been pursuing their general.
Black Watch at Quatre Bras by William Barnes Wollen
At the end of the day, both armies were in a similar position to where they had been when the engagement had started. To the east, though, Napoleon’s troops had been successfully driving back the Prussians at Ligny. Wellington feared that, as the Prussians withdrew, Napoleon would be able to do exactly what he had planned: defeat the British the next day at Quatre Bras and then turn his army against the isolated Prussians. Wellington therefore took the decision to withdraw back toward Brussels, in the hope that he would be able to form a common front with the Prussian army further north. We now know that that was exactly what happened. The Prussians were able to join up with Wellington’s forces at Waterloo, and it was their arrival which finally produced an Allied victory. At the time, though, Wellington was taking an enormous gamble. With no proper communications with the Prussian army, he could not be sure that they would not just retreat for home.
For the French, Quatre Bras was a victory. The day after the battle, the British were withdrawing northward, and the French were in pursuit. The British, though, have always considered Quatre Bras as an Allied victory. An overwhelming French force was held at bay for a full day, with the British making an orderly withdrawal to a previously planned position in order to meet up with the Prussians at a strategically optimal point.
In fairness, Quatre Bras is best regarded as a score draw. The French were not defeated, but they were delayed. The British were able to withdraw in good order and prepare themselves at Waterloo for the battle that would take place there two days later. What is clear is that if Ney had smashed through Prince William’s lines at the point when he had overwhelming superiority, the French troops would have been on Brussels before the British could position themselves to mount an effective defence. It is quite probable that Napoleon would have ended by defeating the British. The Prussians, already beaten at Ligny would have withdrawn to Prussia, leaving Napoleon in control of Belgium. Many of the Belgian army would have rejoined the Eagles.
Could victory at Quatre Bras have saved Napoleon? In the long-term, probably not, but he would have seen off the British and Prussian Armies and been in a much stronger position to negotiate some sort of settlement with the great powers. It is possible that the young Prince William, inexperienced and totally out of his depth – and maybe only trying to hold the position because he lacked the strategic understanding that it should have been impossible to do so – changed the course of European history. It is also clearly true that the British victory at Waterloo was made possible because of the outstanding courage of the Dutch and Belgian troops who were later to be dismissed as “Waterloo cowards”.
References
General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall (1967) Napoleon as Military Commander
Picture at head of page is ‘The 28th Regiment at Quatre Bras’ by Elizabeth Thompson
A Word from our Sponsor
The battle of Quatre Bras features in Burke at Waterloo. (“A good general account of the battles described.” – Amazon review.) Burke at Waterloo has just been republished and is available on Kindle at a ludicrously cheap £3.99.
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Ligny, one of the often forgotten battles that made up the Waterloo campaign. 27,000 people died in that battle, so here is an extra blog post to remember just why they were fighting.
__________________________
Back in 1815 there was no such country as Germany. Instead, there were a number of German states, some quite large and others just tiny principalities. Amongst all these states, the dominant one was Prussia. Prussia had been around since 1525 and it was not only large but, because of its militaristic approach to international relations, it was powerful too.
During the Napoleonic Wars the conflict between Prussia and France had been particularly vicious. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, some Prussians saw this as providing an opportunity to take the revenge that they felt they had been robbed of when the French surrendered in 1814 before Prussian troops could sack Paris.
The Prussian army was to work with Wellington’s troops to protect Belgium from attack. Naturally enough, the British line was toward the west of the country, because they had arrived by sea in Ostend, while the Prussian line was more to the East with their supply train heading back towards Prussia. This is shown very crudely in the picture below.
This doesn’t show the substantial reserves that the British held around Brussels, but it does show how Napoleon’s strike at Charleroi achieved his first goal of splitting the Prussian and British forces. As they withdrew, the Prussians pulled back on their supply lines, moving north eastward, leaving the road north unguarded.
The Prussian troops were commanded by Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Blücher was 72 years old but in robust health and a general who (as was common in those days) believed in leading from the front. Blücher was a professional soldier, who would probably have been happy to fight anybody, but he was particularly enthusiastic about fighting the French, his hatred of that nation being almost pathological.
As Blücher pulled back, Napoleon divided his forces. He personally led 38,000 men in pursuit of the Prussians while sending his Marshal Ney to take what he believed to be the undefended (or virtually undefended) road north to Brussels with 45 to 50,000 men.
Napoleon had, however, seriously underestimated the strength of the Prussian army. Blücher commanded his forces personally and concentrated 70,000 men on the battlefield, substantially outnumbering Napoleon.
The Prussians made their stand near the village of Ligny. Although Napoleon was outnumbered, neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. Casualties on both sides were enormous, with neither the French nor the Prussians inclined to take prisoners. 16,000 Prussians and 11,000 French died on the field.
After they had been fighting all day, Napoleon sent a column of his elite Young Guard to smash into the Prussian centre. Faced by these fresh troops after a day taking horrendous punishment, the Prussians broke and fled northward.
During the fighting Blücher’s horse had been killed and had fallen on the Field Marshal. Blücher was trapped for some time while the battle ebbed and flowed across him. His aide-de-camp, Count Nostitz, threw a greatcoat over his commander, to hide his rank and the French never knew that they had the opportunity to take or kill him.
Blücher’s injuries were quite severe and he was not really in any condition to ride, but he insisted on resuming command. Bandaging his damaged ribs and self-medicating liberally with schnapps he was soon back in the saddle.
What happened next was to prove decisive. Blücher had agreed with Wellington that they would join forces and make a stand together. Many of Blücher’s senior officers considered that the idea of trying to swing the army round toward the West to rendezvous with the British was madness. Surely, faced with the whole of Napoleon’s army heading toward Brussels, the British would withdraw. If they did, then if the Prussians headed west they could find themselves exposed to Napoleon’s forces who had just defeated them once and would surely defeat them again. And even if Wellington did make a stand, what was to say that he would fare any better than they had at Ligny? Far more sensible, surely, to take the wise course of withdrawing along their lines of communication, heading east back towards Prussia.
Blücher would have none of it. He had given his word to Wellington and it is reasonable to think that he was also determined to have another crack at Napoleon’s army. The army was to swing westward towards Waterloo.
Some authors have suggested that the orders for the line of march were deliberately confused by senior officers who hoped that the delays caused would mean that the Prussians would arrive on the field after Napoleon had won and they could then withdraw without a fight. If this was the plan, it didn’t work. The Prussian army made good time towards Waterloo. What happened when they got there is a story for later.
A word from our sponsor
Why am I writing about the Waterloo campaign (besides the fact that it’s quite interesting)? Well, this is the background to Burke at Waterloo, which, besides being a great spy story with beautiful women and assassination plots and desperate pursuits on horseback, does include quite a lot about the battle. It’s a jolly good read and you’ll know more about an important part of European history after you read it. And it’s available as an e-book at the usual ridiculously low price these things are sold at. So why not treat yourself to a copy and pretend it’s because you want to study the period?
Fans of Napoleonic history (and my blog readership statistics show that there are a lot of you out there) will be very familiar with the term “The Hundred Days”. But what does it actually mean, and what did Napoleon achieve during these hundred days?
It’s an odd idea, really. In the same way as presidents and prime ministers are increasingly rated at the end of their first hundred days in power, so Napoleon’s return to France is also talked about in terms of this magic number. The ‘Hundred Days’ are regarded as starting on Napoleon’s return to Paris on 20 March, 1815 and ending with the restoration of King Louis on 8 July. Constitutionally, it’s important, because it marks the period while France was, yet again, without a king, though if you count it up it adds to 110 days. In reality, though, it’s a fairly arbitrary slice of the calendar. It doesn’t mark the period of Napoleon’s ascendancy. The failure of Louis’ men to stop Napoleon on his march north marked the end of any real power for the king, and Waterloo, though not technically the end of Napoleon’s rule, was the end of his control of France.
For students of Napoleon’s life, though, the Hundred Days are interesting because they showed the way that Napoleon had to adapt his once absolute rule to take account of the changed circumstances in which he found himself.
Napoleon (right) was often compared favourably with the obese King Louis (left)
Despite the astonishing success of his march from the south coast to Paris, France was far from united in supporting his return. The somewhat meandering route that he took carefully avoided those areas – especially in the south and west of the country – where the population remained loyal to Louis. The king had been seen as weak and ineffective and some of the measures he’d taken to restore aristocratic privilege had caused resentment amongst the people, but this did not mean that they were necessarily going to support Napoleon. The French army had relied on conscription and hundreds of thousands of young Frenchman had been taken from their homes and families and led to their deaths, especially during the Russian campaign. This alone meant that many people were unhappy to see the Emperor back in charge.
Army reform
Professional soldiers (as opposed to conscripts) were the backbone of Napoleon’s support. He had led them, they believed, to victory (the dead of the Russia campaign were, after all, not there to argue) and he could restore French glory again.
Napoleon was well aware of the importance of the army and took care to keep the favour of the soldiery. He reinstituted the Legion of Honour and frequently inspected troops at the Tuileries, taking the opportunity to speak to the men and ensure their loyalty. At the same time, he instituted military reforms, for he recognised that he would need active military support to put down revolt at home and to protect himself against enemies abroad.
Louis XVIII had left him with few resources. The Chamber of Representatives refused to allow him to reintroduce conscription, but he was able to recall those conscripted in 1814. Officers who had served under him in the past had been stood down on half pay under Louis and they flocked to return. National Guardsmen, who were not technically available for regular military service, were swallowed up. Estimates of how many troops were recruited during the Hundred Days are unreliable. Chesney, whose Waterloo Lectures are widely regarded as an important source, considers that some of the very high estimates given are essentially propaganda by partisan Bonapartists and that, for example, they include many men who were in no fit state to be deployed. He considered that by the beginning of June Napoleon could deploy fewer than 200,000 men – a significant achievement but much less than the 560,000 that Napoleon claimed.
Liberal Reform
An Englishwoman, Helen Maria Williams, living in Paris at the time described how Napoleon had to adapt to the new situation. Her account is partisan, but accurate.
Bonaparte, conscious that his enchanter’s rod was now broken, that he was no longer believed to be invincible … had recourse to new arts. He deemed it necessary to propose a voluntary decent from the height of his ancient dictatorship, and to declare himself the patron and popular chieftain of a free government.
Bonaparte decided that his new rule would be based on a more liberal constitution that would, amongst other things, guarantee press and religious freedom and allow the possibility of an extension of the franchise. Other liberal measures were to be implemented immediately (for example, slavery was abolished on 29 March) but the Constitution was to be put to the people of France in a plebiscite.
Voting was organised throughout the areas of France where Bonaparte exercised control. The plan was that representatives would travel from all over France to Paris where twenty or thirty thousand would meet at a great festival to be held in May. This “Field of May” was supposed to reflect a feudal assembly of ancient French history, where the monarch met with representatives of the nobility and the church, which was as close to a parliament as would have been known in those days. No such assemblies, though, had been held for a thousand years. Essentially, Napoleon (as he had often done in the past) was inventing a ritual to legitimise his status.
There were obvious dangers in having so many “electors” in Paris at a time when much of the country was still in turmoil. Measures were therefore taken to reduce the number who might turn up. They were to receive no money toward travelling expenses or accommodation. It was explained that when they did arrive there was to be no discussion of the new constitution but their role would be limited to verifying the registers and counting the votes.
Even with the best will in the world, the circumstances prevailing at the time would have made a plebiscite difficult. As it was, the electoral registers were drawn up locally and included only “active citizens” the definition of which was largely down to the officials. Obviously, prior to the election, Bonaparte expelled from office all those officials who were known to be favourable to the Bourbon regime. It probably goes without saying that it was not a secret ballot.
By now, Bonaparte felt that he needed the support of the people. He had been used to ruling autocratically, but now he found that the ministers he appointed would argue with him, insisting that their views be taken into account. The Chamber of Representatives (one of his liberal reforms, which he was probably already regretting) even elected a president who was known to oppose him.
In the end only 1,532,527 people voted in the plebiscite, about a fifth of those eligible, and far fewer than in plebiscites organised under the Republic, but Napoleon claimed he had the majority he needed and was, once again, the legitimate Emperor of France.
The Field of May
No one was quite sure what the ‘Champ de Mai’ would entail. The feudal ceremony was lost in the mists of history, but Parisians were promised a spectacle.
“What is the Field of May?” exclaimed the Parisians; at once something antique, and something new; when much was to be done for their liberties, and, what was not indifferent, an unknown ceremonial would be performed for their amusement. It may be observed, that one effect of twenty-five years’ of revolution is to have given the French such restless habits, that they require continually something new or strange to occupy their minds… All Paris flocked in multitudes to see what was to be seen at the Field of May.
Williams
The one thing that everybody seemed sure of was that the ceremony would be held in May, but repeated delays meant that it eventually took place on 1 June.
Helen Maria Williams described the scene in a letter home:
A spacious temporary amphitheatre had been erected for this purpose in the Champs de Mars, connected with the facade of the military school, and containing about fifteen thousand persons, seated, and covered by an awning; these were the electors, and the military deputations. The sloping banks which arise round the Champs de Mars, were crowded with people, and its immense plain was filled with cavalry. Here an altar was placed, opposite the throne, which was erected within the amphitheatre.
Napoleon arrived at ceremony dressed in Roman costume. The Mass was celebrated at the altar and then came speeches and a declaration that the new constitution had been accepted by “an almost unanimity of votes”. Then came a military parade of nearly 50,000 troops.
The spectacle was magnificent… The inspiring sounds of music, the blaze of military decoration, the glittering of innumerable arms, the countless concourse of spectators, their prolonged vociferations, the occasion, the man, the mighty events that hung in suspense, all concurred to excite feelings and reflections which only such a scene could have produced.
William Mudford
Two weeks later, Napoleon was to lead these troops north into Belgium and the start of the road to Waterloo.
References
Chesney, Charles Cornwallis (1868). Waterloo Lectures: a study of the Campaign of 1815.
Mudford, William (1817) An Historical Account of the Battle of Waterloo
Williams, Helen Maria (1815) A narrative of the events which have taken place in France : from the landing of Napoleon Bonaparte, on the 1st of March, 1815, till the restoration of Louis XVIII : with an account of the present state of society and public opinion
Picture of ‘Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France’ is a British satirical picture published in London in 1815 and held in the Bodleian library, Oxford.
Cartoon of Louis and Napoleon is an anonymous print from 1797 held in the Bodleian library, Oxford.
The Congress of Vienna was an important political gathering, but there was more to it than politics. As we saw last week, diplomatic progress was slow and most of the negotiating took place in small meetings of representatives of the most important countries. However, almost all the small states whose rulers had been restored to their thrones with Napoleon’s overthrow chose to send people to the Congress. Hundreds of representatives turned up with their entourages, swelling the population of Vienna by more than a third. (August Louis Charles, compte de La Garde-Chambonas writes that “the number of strangers attracted to Vienna by the Congress was estimated at close upon 100,000.”) With Napoleon apparently defeated, all of these people felt they had something to celebrate and it became a matter of pride for the Emperor of Austria to lay on the grandest of entertainments.
Perhaps inevitably, the Congress became as much a grand social occasion as a political summit. Many people believe that Austria owes its reputation as the ballroom dance capital of the world (think Viennese waltzes) to the Congress of Vienna. Talleyrand wrote in November:
The Court of Vienna continues to entertain its noble guests with hospitality, which, considering the state of its finances, must be very onerous to it. Everywhere are to be seen emperors, kings, empresses, queens, hereditary princes, reigning princes, etc, etc; the Court pays everybody’s expenses and the expenditure of each day is estimated at 220,000 paper florins.
The compte de La Garde-Chambonas suggested that the delights offered by Vienna which included “banquets, concerts, shooting parties, masked balls and musical rides” rather took precedence over any actual diplomatic work.
In reality, little or no attention was paid to diplomatic discussions. With the exception of some idlers or journalists … society was engrossed with the pleasures of the fete of the hour, or with preparations for that next day… The sovereigns … foregathered every day for an hour before dinner, and were supposed to discuss the subjects that had occupied the attention of their plenipotentiaries. The carping outside world maintained, however, that politics were the thing least talked of in that august Olympian assembly, and that the announcement of a forthcoming pleasure party more often than not monopolised the conversation.
The festivities were designed to include ordinary people, as well as the monarchs and other dignitaries. In this respect, the most splendid event was the “People’s Fete”. It started with a parade of Austrian veterans of the war. Four thousand had been invited who “afterwards took possession of a number of spacious tents, set apart for their special use.” (Compte de La Garde-Chambonas.) The soldiers had the opportunity to compete in foot races, horse races and archery, professional performers showed off trick riding acrobatics and a display of gymnastics. “Finally an enormous balloon rose in the air…[soaring] majestically above the crowd, waving a number of flags of the various nations whose representatives had foregathered in Vienna.” After the balloon ascent, the 4000 veterans were served a feast at sixteen (presumably very large) tables, while dancers in national dress performed folk dances from their various countries.
The famous portraitist, Isabey (whose picture of delegates to the Congress illustrated last week’s post) had travelled specially to Vienna and was set up in a magnificent studio where many of the delegates and other guests had their portraits painted.
New Year provided an opportunity for the Comtesse Zichy (who had won the heart of the King of Prussia) to give a grand ball for all of the sovereigns, but the most lavish entertainment was probably the grand sleighing party thrown in January 1815. The parade of over thirty sleighs was led by “an immense sleigh drawn by six horses and containing an orchestra of kettle drums and trumpets” with another huge sleigh carrying a band dressed in Turkish uniforms and playing “warlike tunes” to bring up the rear. Around a frozen lake the guests paused to watch a display by skaters in “the most elegant costumes of the various countries of Northern Europe”. After yet another ball, the sleighs returned to Vienna by torchlight.
What one participant referred to as “these sovereigns on their holidays” had to be, as the compte de La Garde-Chambonas perceptively wrote, “constantly amused, or at any rate prevented at all cost from being bored.” As 1815 wore on, though, there were signs that the Emperor of Austria was running out of ideas (or the money to pay for them). Delegates began to arrange their own entertainment. The British admiral, Sir Sidney Smith, organised a subscription picnic, with even kings expected to pay for their food – much to the embarrassment of the king of Bavaria, who, like today’s Queen, did not (on this occasion at least) have any money on his person. A waiter stood shaking a large silver bowl in which everybody else’s payments rattled noisily until the king was rescued by the Emperor Alexander who, it turned out, was carrying a full purse.
All too soon the festivities were to end. As word of Napoleon’s return spread, an amateur company was playing Le Calife de Bagdad and Les Rivaux d’eux-memes in Vienna. The compte de La Garde-Chambonas noted that “there was a larger audience than might have been expected.”
It was, however, the final flicker of the expiring lamp; the last feeble sound of the broken instrument. Pleasure took flight. “The Congress is dissolved.”
References
August Louis Charles, compte de La Garde-Chambonas Anecdotal Recollections of the Congress of Vienna
The Correspondence of Prince Talleyrand and King Louis XVIII during the Congress of Vienna published by Harper & Brothers of New York in 1881
Illustration is Redoubt at the Congress of Vienna (1815) by Johann Nepomuk Hoechle
You may remember, some time back in March, we looked at Napoleon’s successful return to France after his escape from Elba. But what had the victorious Allies been doing all this time? How could they have so catastrophically taken their eyes off the ball?
The Allies had ended (as they thought) the wars with France with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on 30 May 1814. That treaty, though, was concerned simply with restoring the Bourbon monarchy and confirming the new borders of France (essentially putting them back to the position they were in in 1792).
Two decades of war in Europe had left the great powers with more to decide than just how to restore Louis to the throne. The last substantive clause of the Treaty of Paris said:
All the powers engaged on either side in the present war shall, within the space of two months, send plenipotentiaries to Vienna, for the purpose of regulating, in general congress, the arrangements which are to complete the provisions of the present treaty.
The Congress of Vienna is often seen as an effort to “carve up” Europe among the great powers. France was included as, now that it was back under the control of the King, the other powers wanted it to be seen as taking its proper place amongst European nations.
While there is no doubt that each of the Powers sought whatever advantage it could gain, the objective of the Congress was to arrange a net of alliances between powers that meant that any future conflict would inevitably draw in the whole of the continent. They believed that, rather than face war on the scale that Europe had just witnessed, states would negotiate peace. It was, if you like, an early form of Mutually Assured Destruction. It worked, maintaining peace in Europe for almost 100 years. When a major conflict did break out, one by one all of the major European powers were drawn in and the result was World War I. That, I can’t help feeling, is the problem with Mutually Assured Destruction. One day, somebody just can’t resist pressing the big red button.
As has been the case with some more recent negotiations between the European powers, this timetable proved rather optimistic and by the end of summer it had been agreed that the Congress should start at the beginning of October.
The French Minister, Talleyrand (who had somehow survived the shift of power from Napoleon to the Bourbons), arrived in Vienna at the end of September to discover that Prussia, Britain, Austria and Russia had agreed amongst themselves how the Congress was to run.
As Talleyrand reported to Louis:
“The visible aim of this plan was to make the four Powers … absolute masters of all the operations of the Congress.”
Letter dated 4 October 1814
This was a somewhat cheeky move by the Powers, as it not only sidelined the French but also several other countries which considered but they were significant enough to be taken account of – notably Spain and Portugal. The many smaller countries (like Poland and some princely states) may not have expected their views to be given much weight, but now discovered that they would have no real influence at all.
Talleyrand knew that France will be negotiating from a position of weakness and that he needed to be able to make all the alliances he caught, so he objected to this arrangement, refusing to accept the outcome of any discussion that had taken place ahead of the official date for the starting of the Congress in October.
“I said… that the idea of arranging everything before convening the Congress was a novel one to me; that they proposed to finish where I had thought it would be necessary to begin.”
Letter dated 4 October 1814
Faced with the prospect of losing control of the Congress, the Powers simply delayed its start date. As Metternich said, “How can the Congress be assembled when nothing is ready to lay before it?”
By 18 November the eight signatories of the Peace of Paris, after repeated delays, finally accepted that the start of the Congress should be postponed indefinitely. After all, there didn’t seem to be any great urgency about matters.
In the end, the Congress never met in plenary session, but the representatives of the great powers continued to cabal amongst themselves, agreeing how to carve up smaller countries like Saxony and Poland.
Negotiations moved on at a snail’s pace for months. Britain was represented by Lord Castlereagh until the beginning of February 1815, when he was replaced by Wellington. Wellington’s life had been threatened in Paris (the assassination attempt in Burke at Waterloo is based on a real event) and the British government was anxious that he should quit, but he refused to do anything that looked like running away, so he was appointed to the Congress of Vienna largely as a face saver. The French, though, were happy to see him there, believing that Wellington would be easier to negotiate with. After his arrival, though, things still moved forward excruciatingly slowly.
By March the monarchs and Emperors were tiring of the interminable negotiations and began to talk of leaving, but they were still there when, on 7 March, Wellington received a dispatch from Lord Burghersh telling him that Napoleon had escaped from Elba.
Although the representatives of all the great powers were still all assembled in one place, they were unable to respond immediately, as no one knew what Napoleon’s plans were. Talleyrand struggled to find out what Napoleon was up to and to prepare a declaration for the nations to agree to as soon as Napoleon’s plans were clear. By 13 March, though there was still uncertainty about where Napoleon was leading his army, there was no doubt that he was back in France at the head of a military force. Encouraged by Talleyrand, the five Great Powers produced a declaration that united the nations of Europe against Napoleon.
The powers consequently declare, that Napoleon Bonaparte has placed himself without the pale of civil and social relations; and that, as an enemy and disturber of the tranquillity of the world, he has rendered himself liable to public vengeance.
By 19 March Talleyrand was able to write to Louis with details of the military preparations against Napoleon.
It is proposed to have two armies in the field and two in reserve.
The line of operations of the one will stem from the sea to the Main; it will be composed of English, Dutch and Hanoverians, with the North German contingents and Prussians. All to be under the command of the Duke of Wellington.
The second will have its line of operations between the Main and the Mediterranean … This army will consist of Austrians, Piedmontese, Swiss, and South German contingents.
On the 25 March the plans became the basis of a formal treaty, the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance between Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia and on the 29th Talleyrand wrote:
[T]he Duke of Wellington would no longer put off joining his army; he left Vienna this morning at six o’clock.
After years of fighting Napoleon’s generals, Sir Arthur Wellesley was finally on his way to fight the man himself.
Reference
Pallain The Correspondence of Talleyrand and Louis XVIII
Further reading
Mark Jarrett (2013) The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy After Napoleon
Black Watch at Quatre Bras by William Barnes Wollen
Napoleon (right) was often compared favourably with the obese King Louis (left)
