Where the Hell was Grouchy??

[skimyy]

Just where was he, and how did Prussians get to Napoleon, and not Grouchy?

Even if he made it, do you guys think the French would have won?

I would assume yes, the French would have won, but not the war.

Edit: Talking about the Battle of Waterloo ofcourse.

[IAB1789]

Grouchy spent the afternoon and evening of 18 June fighting with Blucher's rear-guard (Thielmann) beyond Wavre and Limale (NE of Waterloo), while the other three Prussian corps marched to Wellington's aid. It wasn't until the middle of the morning on the 19th that Grouchy heard about the French defeat, whereupon he withdrew to the frontier by way of Namur, inflicting a defeat on the two pursuing Prussian corps (Pirch's II and Thielmann's III) at that town on 20 June.

Had Grouchy been successful in pursuing the Prussians on 18 June, I believe that Napoleon would have defeated Wellington. How successful Napoleon would have been after that depends on the attitude of the members of the coalition. Britain might have withdrawn her armies from the continent, since the best of her army, including most of Wellington's Penninsula veterans, were in transports on their way to N. America for the closing stages of the War of 1812. Britain would almost certainly not have withdrawn from the coalition, however: she did not do so after the serious defeats at Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstadt, Corunna, Wagram, et al.

Prussia might have withdrawn, but Ligny and Wavre and Waterloo were not Jena. They were not fought on Prussia's doorstep, and, unless Grouchy had succeeded in destroying a large part of Blucher's command (something Napoleon had failed to do at Ligny) the Prussians would have been able to retreat to friendly territory, there to reacquip and reinforce. Waterloo would not have dissuaded Russia from intervening, though her armies were a long way off, and Austria, the weakest of the great four, would likely have come in with Russia.

Napoleon's only hope was that, in the euphoria after a victory in Flanders, the Austrian emperor, his father-in-law, would intervene on his behalf, but I believe that the chances of that were slight (not impossible, however). It was a long chance, like so many of Napoleon's victories, and his defeats. "He rose in glory, and his eagle died".

Note: on Grouchy's culpability for Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. Grouchy was slow to move, it's true, which is a strange fault in a man who was a noted cavalry commander, but other than that, he seems to have been under the impression that the Prussians were still retreating in the direction of Liege (per General Pajol's information), and so has some excuse for following his standing orders, instead of improvising and (as he thought) allowing the Prussians to get away. He has been criticised for not "marching to the sound of the guns", but he knew that the Emperor was going to bring Wellington to battle, so the sound of cannon to his left would have been expected, and not (necessarily) indicative of a crisis. The main fault lies with Napoleon, in not making sure that a messenger got through to Grouchy and advised him of the changed situation, so that Grouchy would at least have arrived at the Prussians heels, if not before them. It is something like the situation of Marengo, with Grouchy in the place of Desaix. But Napoleon was no longer (in physical health, at least) the general he had been at Marengo.

[Choki]

Nice info!

[Jihada]

He defeated the Prussians at Wavre but could not join up with Napoleon so it was a strategic defeat
The Battle of Wavre

The Battle of Wavre began on the same day as Waterloo 18th June 1815 between the Right Wing of Napoleon's L’Armée du Nord and Field Marshal Blücher's Prussians. The French Right Wing had been detached from Napoleon's main force two-days earlier following their victory at Ligny and consisted of three French Corps under the command of Marshal Grouchy about 33,000 men. Following their defeat at Ligny the Prussian Army withdrew northeast, but not as Napoleon had hoped towards Liege and away from Wellington's Anglo-Dutch. This was part of Napoleon's strategy whereby he split the much larger Allied force into its separate parts so that he could outnumber them and attack them separately. His theory was based on the assumption that an attack at the juncture between the Anglo-Dutch and Prussian Armies would force them apart to retreat in the direction of their respective supply bases. Instead of withdrawing in opposite directions however, the Prussians moved on a parallel route to the Anglo-Dutch and were still very much in contact with each other and able to come to the others aid.
This was in part due to the Anglo-Dutch preventing Marshal Ney's Frenchmen from attacking the Prussians in the rear at Ligny as well as the ability of Lieutenant General Ziethen and Lieutenant General Thielmann to retire in good order with their Corps intact preventing a complete Prussian rout. Whilst the centre fled the battlefield at Ligny in disarray they held together a large portion of the Prussian Army and enabled it to survive to fight another day.
The general direction of the Prussian Army's withdrawal had taken it to the town of Wavre, which by default became the marshalling point of the army. With Field Marshal Blücher temporarily incapacitated after his fall at Ligny Lieutenant General August von Gneisenau the Prussian chief of staff planned to rally the Prussian Army at Tilly. From there the Prussians could move to support Wellington, but in the confusion control was lost. As the majority of the Prussian Army falling back towards Wavre that was where it rallied.
Lieutenant General Gneisenau decided that the Prussians would move towards Wellington's Anglo-Dutch at Waterloo. He intended to leave Wavre at dawn on 18th June 1815 with the I, II and IV Army Corps and take up positions on Wellington's left flank. General Bülow von Dennewitz's Prussian IV Army Corps had not been present at Ligny, but arrived to reinforce the Prussian Army during the night of the 17th and 18th June 1815. General Thielmann's Prussian III Corps was to form the rearguard and was tasked with holding off the pursuing French.
Marshal Grouchy's French Right Wing had failed to close with the Prussians during the 17th June as they retired northwards from Ligny. On the 18th however the French finally caught up with Lieutenant General Thielmann's Prussian III Army Corps. The Prussian rearguard was pushed back, but not without a fight. They held their ground long enough to allow Field Marshal Blücher who was back in command to take the 72,000 strong Prussian main body away from the French Right Wing and swing west to support Wellington's Anglo-Dutch at Waterloo.
The Battle of Wavre ended in a French victory on 19th June 1815 with the Prussian rearguard in full retreat. To the Prussians the battle was a strategic victory, their rearguard had succeeded in holding off a superior French force long enough to allow Field Marshal Blücher to link up with Wellington's Anglo-Dutch Army. Not only that, they had tied down some 33,000 French troops that could have otherwise taken part at Waterloo. Whilst Marshal Grouchy won at Wavre the victory was a hollow one as Napoleon's main body of the L’Armée du Nord was defeated. If he had been more aggressive and gained his victory quickly Marshal Grouchy may have prevented Blücher from getting to Waterloo or even taken his own men there where they could have made all the difference.

[Choki]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=341219

In this Movie Napoleon Ask for him

[skimyy]

Thank You guys for clearing that up.
If I was Grouchy and the Emperor of the French told me to stay put, damn... I'd stay put. Really wasn't his fault was it?

Nappy should have thought about the Prussians "diverting" Grouchy and linking up with Wellington.

[IAB1789]

Thank You guys for clearing that up.
If I was Grouchy and the Emperor of the French told me to stay put, damn... I'd stay put. Really wasn't his fault was it?

For the most part it wasn't his fault. Grouchy was a cavalryman, maybe the best the Grand Armee had after Murat, but he'd never commanded a large combined arms force, and giving him an entire wing of the Northern Army on such short notice makes little sense. It is, however, in keeping with many of Napoleon's faulty choices for command in his last campaign. Soult, for instance, would have been ideal for active command, instead of chief of staff, and Suchet would have been better employed as chief of staff, rather than being sent to command an important but secondary department. Davout may have been indespensible in Paris, but Napoleon had others to call upon. I believe that in this case, political considerations trumped military, hence the strange choices for command. In spite of all that, the Emperor nearly won his last campaign, which says something for his powers, even when in decline, and for the quality of his army, even after those long years of war.

[Athena,]

Grouchy had succeeded in destroying a large part of Blucher's command (something Napoleon had failed to do at Ligny)

Napoleon failed at nothing, He sent for d'Erlorns Corp to encricle the Prussian position but Ney recalled it right before it could enter the battle.

large combined arms force, and giving him an entire wing of the Northern Army on such short notice makes little sense

Actually he had ALOT of experiance during the 1814 Campaign and commanded a wing of Napoleons army incredibly effectively.

So that arguement just does not hold up.

If anyone is at fault it is:

Grouchy for not takeing the inititive and marching to Waterloo when he heard the cannons.

And Soults for writeing the order that was sent to Grouchy so terribly.

But in reality Grouchy's arrival on the battle field would definantly won the battle for Napoleon, but not the war.

For Napoleon to effectively win the campaign in the style of Austerlitz or Jena, D'Erlorn's encirclement had to have happened.

The Prussians had to be completely destroyed, and then Wellington would have probably retreated to Brussals, either to evacuate or face a battle he would have surely lost.

[Didz]

And Soults for writeing the order that was sent to Grouchy so terribly.

I must admit I've read translations of some of the orders that were sent to French Corps commanders prior to Waterloo and even with the benefit of hindsight its difficult to determine exactly what Napoleon wanted the recipient to do.

I have read that this was partly the result of Soult sending out Napoleon's orders precisely as they were dictated by the great man himself, whereas in the past they had always been 'interpreted' and 'revised' before being dispatched to make sure they made sense.

[Clodius]

Grouchy also commanded a masterly retreat after Waterloo.

And one of the great weaknesses of Napoleon's way of war was that he rarely allowed his subordinates to act on their own initiative - this worked fine in the earlier campaigns but was increasingly problematic as the geographical and numerical scale of war grew beyond even his ability to micromanage.

He also made some truly bizarre personnel choices in his later campaigns - Ney, Oudinot and Macdonald should probably never have been given anything bigger than a division, Bernadotte should have been shot for treason in 1809, Davout, Rapp, St Cyr and other first-class generals were abandoned in various German fortresses in 1813, Soult was a brilliant field commander but a terrible Chief of Staff etc.

His own view after Waterloo was that he should have retired almost all of the marshals and replaced them with younger Generals de Division.

[Clodius]

Even had Grouchy appeared or the Prussians arrived a couple of hours too late the numbers just wouldn't have allowed Napoleon to win the war.

He would basically burned up the rest of the Armee du Nord finishing off the British and Prussians - Blucher would have required another Waterloo-scale battle to drive him out of Belgium and even Wellington had another 20,000-odd troops who'd missed the battle and could well have posed a threat.

And then whatever was left would have faced 360,000 fresh Austrians and Russians assembling along he Rhine.

[Didz]

I think the aim of the campaign was political rather than military, the idea being to undermine the seventh coalition and hopefully secure a temporary peace with Britain and a few other members.

As the Congress of Vienna had already proved the members of the seventh coalition were far from unified in their goals or aims. Russia was demanding much of Poland, Prussia was demanding Saxony, Austria opposed both demands whilst demanding most of northern Itlay for itself. The British were opposed to most of these claims and at one point hostilities almost broke out when the Tsar suggested that if Britain intended to prevent Russia occupying Poland they were welcome to try, as he had 450,000 men poised to cross the border. Stating flatly that whether Britain liked it or not 'I shall be the King of Poland, and the King of Prussia will be the King of Saxony.'

Britain responded by trying to broker a private deal letting Prussia have Saxony if they supported Britain and Austria in opposing the Russian annexation of Poland. Britain obviously saw Russia as the new threat to Europe.

Unfortunately, the Prussians went public with the deal and the Tsar was so enraged he challenged the Austrian diplomatic envoy Metternich to a duel, which only the intervention of the Austrian Imperial Court managed to prevent. In the end the situation was only calmed when Britain denied that the deal was ever an official policy and that basically the Prussians were lying to try and stir up trouble. This left the Prussian's deeply suspicious of anything Britain was involved in from that point on and even coloured the attitude of the Prussian general staff to British declarations during the 1815 campaign.

At the same time Britain became equally concerned at the potential backlash from Prussia refusing to allow any of their troops to cross the Netherlands border and actively blocking every claim they made to soveriegnty over the smaller German states in the region. The decision to place the Duchy of Nassau under the protection of the Netherlands was particularly irritating to the Prussians, as was the independance of the Duchy of Brunswick. These were German speaking principalities and should by Prussian logic have been under their protection.

Continued peace and co-operation was largerly bought with British gold, both in the form of subsisdies to enable these smaller states to maintain armies for their own defence, and through the threat of removing subsidies and trade from larger member states who didn't play the game according to the rules.

Napoleon would have been well aware of all these divisions, in fact he probably had agents at the conference taking an active role in developing these divisions. He therefore, believed that if he could weaken Britains power over the coalition he could expliot the divisions and set the members at each other throats in a classic demonstration of divide and rule. Victory in the 1815 campaign and the defeat of the British sponsored army under their best general would have sent a powerful message to the member states that British gold could not guarantee either victory or protection on the European mainland and that the rulers of both the smaller states and the larger ones would be better advised to look to France for support and protection.

[♔Mandelus♔]

Napoleon made his major mistake just after being back in power from Elba by giving the Marshals he had the wrong jobs at least.
However, Grouchy is guilty as Napoleon himself too, because after the defeat of Bluecher he thought that the Prussians will retreat like beaten dogs into the Rhineland.
On the other hand is always the same question be serious to Grouchy:

Why were the Prussians faster than you on the same streets to Waterloo and why was Bluecher and Wellington always be able to communicate each other and why wasn't you able to so with Napoleon in Waterloo?

This point is until today uncleared

[Clodius]

Yes - his only hope was that a decisive victory in Belgium might have somehow split the alliance.

However the British and Prussians were implacable enemies and Alexander I of Russia was also in the grip of a religious mania that identified Napoleon as a literal tool of Satan.

So his only real hope was that the Austrians would decide that it just wasn't worth another year or more of war to get rid of Napoleon.

But Napoleon's problem was that he never knew when to give up - he was more or less offered peace before and after Leipzig but was unwilling to accept a return to France's 1792 borders.

If he'd reconquered Belgium in July 1815 I can't see him giving it back.

[♔Mandelus♔]

I'm not sure about after a victory at Waterloo and the consequences. Sure is only that a longer war will follow against the rest of Europe and the question is, would he be able to fight this war successfull or not. The possibilities he had at least ....

However, a little bit funny is for me always that there are people seeing until today in Napoleon the evil and the only guilty one etc.
Truth is another, because he never declared the wars he fought by himself. During the Revolution he foughts against enemies who declared war to revolutionary France. Later, when rising the power etc., all wars were declared by his enemies against him and his french empire, directly or indirectly by provocation which left no other option for Napoleon than to fight.
So to name him as agressor and so on is only untrue, because he was in defence always. On the other hand he made after the victory a crusade to reform Europe which earns hate against him. So it will be also untrue to rate him innocent

[Keyser]

No, he launched at least two wars of aggression, two disastrous ones by the way. And for the same reason, enforce the continental blockade in allied countries that didn't follow it strictly. Spain and Russia.

[♔Mandelus♔]

@ Keyser

and this is aggression?

Which of the wars followed not an provocation before? Spain was weak and maybe it was a mistake to take over the control etc., but he did not declare the war on Spain, he took over the goverment after the spanish monarch was only figure of fun ... maybe a failure as I said and I will not denie it at least, also it ended in a guerillia war against the French, but there was never ever a war declaration Fance vs Spain.
Also think about that if an ally makes contracts with your enemy or even says no to the continental blockade, how will you react? Surely not with indifference

Of course he decreased half Europe to Vassals after their defeat and he cares a crap on historical circumstances, but this is the only thing where he can be blamed.

[JaM]

not really - at least Russia refused to continue blockading British, therefore he had no choice.. plus, he was pushed into it by Austrians..

[Keyser]

I don't follow you there.

He had reasons to attack, no doubt about it and probably valid ones from his (or french) perspective, but it was still an aggression against a country with who he was at peace.
Otherwise the wars of the coalitions weren't aggressions either, they had reasons to try to counter the french, isn't it ?

And deposing the king of an allied country, no matter how weak he was to put someone else, a foreigner, in charge is an act of aggression, no surprise it ended in a popular war. There was no strong pro-revolutionnary party in Spain who would welcome it like it was possible in other part of europe (flanders, netherland, italy, part of germany etc) so it was a mistake, but it's not only a mistake, but also an aggression.
And there was a little more to spain than a guerrilla or partisan war, that was what costed the more to the french in the long run (both politically and in term of manpower and drain of ressources) but there was a real war being led against the spanish juntas.

[JaM]

its perfect example of winners writing the history...