CHAPTER IX.

1815

The battle of Waterloo.

One of the most important struggles of modern times was now about to commence—­a struggle which for many years was to decide the fate of Europe.  Napoleon and Wellington at length stood opposite one another.  They had never met; the military reputation of each was of the highest kind,

—­[For full details of the Waterloo campaign see Siborne’s History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815, giving the English contemporary account; Chesney’s Waterloo Lectures, the best English modern account, which has been accepted by the Prussians as pretty nearly representing their view; and Waterloo by Lieutenant-Colonel Prince Edouard de la Tour d’Auvergne (Paris, Plon, 1870), which may be taken as the French modern account.

In judging this campaign the reader must guard himself from looking on it as fought by two different armies-the English and the Prussian-whose achievements are to be weighed against one another.  Wellington and Blucher were acting in a complete unison rare even when two different corps of the same nation are concerned, but practically unexampled in the case of two armies of different nations.  Thus the two forces became one army, divided into two wings, one, the left (or Prussian wing) having been defeated by the main body of the French at Ligny on the 16th of June, the right (or English wing) retreated to hold the position at Waterloo, where the left (or Prussian wing) was to join it, and the united force was to crash the enemy.  Thus there is no question as to whether the Prussian army saved the English by their arrival, or whether the English saved the Prussians by their resistance at Waterloo.  Each army executed well and gallantly its part in a concerted operation.  The English would never have fought at Waterloo if they had not relied on the arrival of the Prussians.  Had the Prussians not come up on the afternoon of the 18th of June the English would have been exposed to the same great peril of having alone to deal with the mass of the French army, as the Prussians would have had to face if they had found the English in full retreat.  To investigate the relative performances of the two armies is lunch the same as to decide the respective merits of the two Prussian armies at Sadowa, where one held the Austrians until the other arrived.  Also in reading the many interesting personal accounts of the campaign it most be remembered that opinions about the chance of success in a defensive struggle are apt to warp with the observer’s position, as indeed General Grant has remarked in answer to criticisms on his army’s state at the end of the first day of the battle of Shiloh or ’Pittsburg Landing.  The man placed in the front rank or fighting line sees attack after attack beaten off.  He sees only part of his own losses, am most of the wounded