Originally Posted by
Didz
@Juvenal and Redalvilgeshki
For what its worth my view on the success and failure of the 1815 campaign in Belgium is slightly different to yours.
As far as I can see Napoleon did everything right, and if the campaign had taken place in 1808, 1812 or perhaps even 1813 he would probably have won. But this was 1815 and the world had changed, his enemies knew more about his techniques and were more capable of matching them.
I also place a lot of weight on the arguement that Soult was not as effective as a Chief of Staff as Berthier had been in the earlier campaigns. Anyone who has actually read some of Napoleon's dispatches from the campaign will be able to vouch for the fact that many of them are unecessarily verbose, ambiguous and just downright vague. However, apparently this was not some new development in Napoleon's style of command, his orders and dispatches were always like this, he tended to dictate them verbally, sometimes several at a time using multiple clerks and consequently he tended to repeat himself, lose the thread of his intentions and even miss bits out. In effect they were more of a brain-dump than a structured set of instructions.
The difference in 1815, was that Soult just dispatched them directly to the Corps commanders in their raw state, whereas Berthier used to sit a rewrite them, or add his over summary of Napoleon's intentions as a guidance note before they were dispatched. Napoleon's Corps commanders simply were not used to recieving such ambiguous instructions and being expected to interpret them themselves, and inevitably errors occured.
The other big difference was undoubtely that the Prussian Army command was no longer the passive, bungling organisation that it had been in 1806, and its soldiers were no longer the inexperienced hoch-poch of new levies and men from newly acquired former French puppet states that it had fielded in 1813. The Prussian command staff were more than equal to Napoleon's by 1815, and understood his strategies and tactic's, and the German soldier was as resolute and committed as his French counter-part.
Finally, I also believe that Napoleon expected his former Dutch troops, now forming part of the United Netherlands Army to defect en-masse to his colours, and indeed, its actually quite surprising that they didn't. Several of the Dutch regiments and many of the Dutch brigade and Corps commanders were former French Army officers and some Dutch Regiments were formed by men formerly serving in the Imperial Guard. Logic would have suggested that these men would have defected to the French as soon as opportunties arose, and I believe that much of the the dithering on the road to Quatre Bras, and in the early part of that battle, before the British began to arrive en-masse was deliberately intended to give the Dutch a chance to change sides before the fighting alienated them. Why else were the lancers of the Guard used as the spearhead of this advance, other than because Napoleon knew they would be recongised as the sister regiment of the former Dutch Lancers of the Guard and that the officers would be known personally by their Dutch counter-parts.
In practice, of course there were no defections even amongst the former Imperial Guardsmen, and the delays simply gave the British time to get troops to Quatre Bras, but it was a worthwhile gamble which might have paid off.
Neys Cavalry attacks did not fail due to lack of artillery support, they had artillery support, and infantry support. The myth that they were unsupported is part of the English myth and completely false. Both British and German eyewitness accounts repeatedly refer to their squares coming under close range cannister and musketry fire between each cavalry attack. Even Mercer states that he was forced to parade back and forth in front of his guns between each cavalry attack to re-assure his men that the French skirmishers were incapable of hitting a barn door even at close range, and he gives a detailed account of one skirmisher with a large moustache grinning at him as he repeatedly reloaded and tried to shoot him off his horse.
Indeed, Halketts brigade were so badly mauled by close range artillery and musketry fire that their squares began to fall apart and were only rallied and brought back under control by their officers after the timely arrive of Detmers Netherlanders who by then were mostly drunk on the gin they had been plied with all day by the locals villagers and rushed forward in column formation to fill the gaps in Halkets line and drive the French artillery and infantry back over the crest of the ridge.
If there was a failure it was in the fact that Napoleon did not expliot the success of the French cavalry attacks in sufficient strength, with La Haye Sainte taken and the French infantry and artillery in command of the ridge line he should have thrown in the last of his reserves and smashed the British centre completely, instead he held them back, and eventually depleted them by detaching many to counter the Prussian advance on Plancenoit.
The cavalry actually did their job, and did it rather well, effectively pinning the allied right and centre in position and preventing Wellington actively commanding his own army for several hours, but with only the dreg's of D'Erlons Corps to expliot the advantage there simple were not enough French troops on hand to punch through the allied line, and the Germans and Dutch simply refused to break even under close range cannister fire.