If there is fruitless controversy about whether Wellington or Blucher were most responsible for victory, there is even more argument about the generalship of the Emperor. French accounts of the battle describe Waterloo as a glorious French victory that somehow went awry at the last minute. The worst General at the battle, one French historian confidently avers, was Wellington, and he then adduces an impressive list of the Englishman’s mistakes; all in aid of proving Napoleon’s supremacy. To which we might reply, like General Cambronne of the Imperial Guard when his surrender was demanded at the end of the battle, `merde’. Polite French history insists that Cambronne actually said, “The Old Guard dies, it never surrenders”, but that fine defiance was the invention of a newspaperman, and both versions ignore the fact that Cambronne surrendered anyway. The same historians who denigrate Wellington are also the first to plead that the Emperor had piles, or whatever other medical excuse is supposed to have put him off his stroke that day, which makes one wonder why he chose to fight at all. Napoleon did so choose, and he lost, and he spent the next, and last, six years of his life constructing a legend of his glory that is still believed in France.
Nowhere outside France is that glory more visible than at Waterloo itself. The battlefield is a veritable monument to Napoleon and to his army, so much so that an ignorant visitor could be forgiven for thinking they visited the scene of a great French triumph. It is, nevertheless, a battlefield well worth a visit. The greatest change to the scene is, sadly, on the British right, on the ridge where the French cavalry was destroyed and where the Imperial Guard was defeated. The Dutch scraped four or five feet of soil from the top of that ridge to make their vast lion monument which now dominates the field. More merde. Nevertheless, the ridge remains, even though somewhat lower than it was in 1815, and it is now graced with a car park, cafes, museums and shops which sell a variety of the most vulgar, meretricious and shabby souvenirs. The one item worth purchasing is David Howarth’s excellent English-language guide to the battlefield. La Belle Alliance is a disco. La Haye Sainte is not open to the public, but if you brave the traffic which now speeds across the battlefield in a matter of seconds, it is possible to stand in the gateway and see into the farmyard. Hougoumont, still with its scars, is more welcoming and well worth visiting; it is signposted `Goumont’, and you can approach it through the gates which Colonel MacDonnell closed on the French intruders, which act, Wellington said, was the bravest done at the battle. In the town of Waterloo the house where the Duke spent the nights before and after the battle is a museum, while the church opposite has some fine memorials. Quatre Bras is worth a visit, and though the wood that was garrisoned by Saxe-Weimar has long disappeared, the field is relatively unchanged and is easily found by driving south from Waterloo.
The campaign produced many heroes. Among the famous are Colonel MacDonnell who closed the gate at Hougoumont, and his immediate enemy, the giant Lieutenant Legros who wielded the axe in his assault on the chateau. Ensign Christie’s defence of his colour at Quatre Bras is memorable, as is Sergeant Ewart’s chilling account of how he took the Eagle during the British cavalry charge.
Marshal Ney, whose last horse was shot during the attack of the Imperial Guard, raged with a broken sword to rally the defeated French. Ney, truly a brave man, survived only to be executed by a restored Louis XVIII, despite the Duke of Wellington’s appeal for clemency. A happy legend has it that the red-headed Marshal escaped that punishment and lived out his days anonymously in South Carolina. I wish that was true.
The war was not ended by the victory at Waterloo, though almost so. Gneisenau, for all his bloody-mindedness during the day of battle, conducted a superb pursuit throughout the short summer night that ended any French hopes of rallying the army’s survivors. The allied armies then crossed the frontier and, on 4 July, Paris surrendered. Napoleon left France eleven days later, only to return as a sacred corpse in 1840.