Could Napoleon have won at Waterloo?

@Hans - Karl Weiß I apologise, I do seem to have made myself clear; I meant that one of the squares of the Old Guard was charged by British cavalry (18th Hussars) during the ‘last stand’ and the cavalry were given a bloody repulse; I believe one of their squadron commanders was killed. The lesson was, not everyone had given up the fight.

I have all the references you supply. Not many people know that Mauduit, although a sergeant in the 2nd Battalion 1st Regiment of Grenadiers, was only 21 at Waterloo. He had joined the Gardes d’Honneur (cavalry) in 1813 and only transferred into the Guard after Napoleon’s first abdication. He had had no campaign experience in the infantry, let alone the Guard, before the Waterloo campaign.

I applaud the excellent work that Paul Dawson has done in the French archives, but I don’t agree with all his interpretations of the data he has amassed. I would love to know when the casualty returns that he presents in ‘The Truth at Last’ were taken. This is a fundamental requirement for interpreting them and even without this information it is clear that there are some fundamental issues with what they tell us. Sometimes the officer casualties from Martinien (a list of officer casualties of the French army across the whole of the Napoleonic wars) exceed the unit returns presented by Paul and some of the returns for killed are frankly unbelievable. Now I’m not suggesting that large numbers of the Guard were not captured or did not surrender (a less than subtle difference between the two), just that we should be wary of how we interpret them.

@Andrew Field

I applaud the excellent work that Paul Dawson has done in the French  archives, but I don’t agree with all his interpretations of the data he  has amassed.

I totally agree, I miss with a lot of works by Paul, just a good discussion with open minds, and yes Mauduit is a classical example how much the Guard could be watered down, a sergent in the 1er Régiment Grenadiers à Pied - with that limited experience.

Just a line to say that I completely agree with the criticism of Mauduit. Those passages which reflect the fellow's own experiences are interesting enough, but a great deal of his account of the last hours of the battle is frankly fictionalised. As for Paul Dawson's work, this has as many flaws as anybody else's (even mine!), but the general picture he paints is very plausible: indeed, in so far as the battalion in which Mauduit was serving is concerned, it is pretty much confirmed by what the latter says in his book.

@Andrew Field I think you are right, the pendulum swings left and right on each contingent through the ages. The issue of national bias though is very germain to the question of whether Napoleon could have won. It depends to some extent on your opinion of the ability of the armies to react to an energised Napoleon. Of course, there are differences in unit training, experience and cohesiveness. But so are morale and material. Some of these are attributed to being an ‘elite’ and are seen as being almost permanent. I’m less convinced, but perhaps I have a less romantic soul. In this period training on the march was the norm. Veteran/Elite units could often do lots of things well. They often have more stable orbat. Being a less experienced militia does not mean that you necessarily do everything badly. The Anglo-Allied army was required at Waterloo to fix, and at best limited counter-strike. It therefore needed a limited repertoire, most of which was within the grasp of a landwehr. The French however had the more challenging role, to launch a combined arms attack, and simultaneously block. As to the Nassauers it should be remembered that they had been the ones on point on the 15th. They were required early on the 16th to stand alone. Casualties and fatigue must have had an effect, and they went on to be victims of friendly fire. Yes, the Guard could fight hard, but so could most units. There is some value in the view though that stripping out the cadre of line units did them considerable damage.

@Hans - Karl Weiß There were some rest copies still available directly from the Bomann-Museum Celle when I asked. For more on the book and how to order see our website: http://www.akhmg.de/HannoverscheMilitaergeschichte/publikationen/waterloo/publikation_waterlooD.htm

If you cannot get a copy from the museum, please contact me directly.

@Michael-Andreas Tänzer

Thanks, send them an e - mail - let's see.

@Michael-Andreas Tänzer

Ordered it and the museum will send it directly to my address without much bureaucratic fuss. 😀

@Andrew Field Your last paragraph is probably the clue as to the interleaving of nationality and formations. Having been let down by foreign allied armies, it became his usual practice. To be fair, it’s how we integrate reserve units and augmentees today. Also hard to critique too much, as it worked!

@Andrew Field Re the foreign contingents, there are two issues to consider, the one military and the other political. In brief, it is perfectly true that many of them lacked experience and training and were actually recently mobilised militia, the result being that at least some of them performed very badly on the battlefield, but the question of political reliability is something else entirely: it simply cannot be stressed too strongly how much Napoleon was hated across le grand Empire by the time he fell in 1814, and, Belgian sulks about being handed over to Holland or, for that matter, Saxon ones about being handed over to Prussia, are neither here nor there - there is no way that anybody was going to rally to Napoleon and no evidence of any serious desertion to his forces. This is not to say that there was much enthusiasm about going to war - for most men, conscription into the forces fighting Napoleon was as hateful as conscription into the ranks of his armies - but this just takes us back to the question of military reliability effectively, whether the men concerned would stick with the colours and do their job if it came to fighting). So, was Wellington right so far as he could to split up the non-British units and mix them in with the redcoats? On military grounds certainly, while such were the general fears that were being expressed that the decision can also be defended on political grounds. However, the fact that he did so does not mean that the danger of defection was in any sense a real one.

@Charles Esdaile Charles, I agree with almost all you say, but at the end of the day, or should I say on the field of battle, it was military effectiveness that was of overriding importance. I do not believe any one of the foreign contingents was likely to defect, but I do wonder how some of them would have performed toe-to-toe with the French. Reading their eye-witness accounts I get the impression they were generally brave and enthusiastic soldiers, but of course, this is not the same as well-trained, disciplined, experienced and determined soldiers with the morale and cohesion to stick it out to the bitter end. Wellington skilfully organised and deployed his army and with his confidence in the appearance of the Prussians ensured that not many of them had to prove whether they were up to it or not.

Andrew, I am not denying that there would have been more units for an attack, but Napoleon wouldn't have thrown in all those units at once, he had to run a campaign, he had to keep intact units to preserve his potential for the offensive.

Boney would have tried to win the battles with minimum cost of engaging units. He was under the illusion to have all the time in the world - the Prussians were beaten and why should he haste and waste men for a certain victory, only to achieve it 2 hours earlier?

This was the crucial mistake - which of course he successfully covered up as being a master liar - for ages.

In case he had known the Prussians would appear in his rear and right flank - already at the morning of the 18th - and in case he would have known at the eve of the 17th that Wellington would made a stand, he would have managed the battle differently, but in what way?

So best for him would have been, being ignorant that the Prussians would arrive late on the 18th and Wellington would make a stand.

But Boney had lost his wits - it should have rung loud alarm bells - that Wellington made a stand with his motley army - at the 18th of June.

But let's speculate, Boney is pushing back Wellington's army, but then the Prussians would arrive even more in the rear and flank and could attack to devastating effect and roll up the whole French army, a lot more units would have been already used up against Wellington's army.

In case Boney attacks at 09:00 - Wellinton is concentrating all this army and calls in the not so small detachments - what then?

By the way Clinton was quite fond of the Hanoverians and regarded them as one of the best troops Wellington had at hand, his reports are quite revealing.

Andrew, I don't see Wellington's Army so badly, neither Boney's so heroically - we cannot know how Wellington would have reacted - moreover, Boney had at least 5 to 6 hours to achieve a brake through - which he didn't - before the Prussians interfered in force.

But I agree Lobau attacking Wellington instead of being stopped in his tracks by the Prussians would have caused a dire situation for Wellington.

I agree, in case he would have started at 09:00 - his chances to beat Wellington's army would have been greater, the later he starts the more his chances dwindle, still one would have to take into account Wellington's flexible responds.

I agree also that his army wasn't in position.