By the time Napoleon girded himself for action, the moment of
advantage was past. After Qu atre Bras, Gneisenau, taking over command
from the injured Blucher, wanted to retreat north but Blucher recovered
sooner than expected and overruled this. Wellington, meanwhile, elected
for a perilous withdrawal from Q!.tatre Bras to the prepared positions he
had earlier identified at Mont St Jean as being the best place to make a
stand. Napoleon's expectations for the morning of 17 June were that
Blucher would have retired to Liege, Ney would be in possession ()f
Qu atre Bras and Wellington would be scurrying along the road to
Brussels. When he learned the truth, he had to rethink his battle plans.
There seemed to be three obvious choices, in descending order of
desirability. He could leave Ney to keep Wellington occupied while he
pursued Blucher; he could send Grouchy with a skeleton fo rce to dog
Blucher's steps while he himself fell on Wellington with superior
numbers; or he could divide his force, sending Grouchy with 33,000 men
after Blucher while he himself attacked Wellington with the balance of
the Army ( 69,000 men). It was typical of this ill-starred campaign that he
went for the third, and least desirable, option. Having wasted five hours
of daylight doing nothing, he sent Grouchy after Blucher and moved
against Wellington at Qu atre Bras.
At noon Wellington ordered a retreat from Q!.tatre Bras to the
positions at Mont St Jean, near the village of Waterloo. If Napoleon had
been on top form, this would have been the moment when he caught
Wellington in a position where none of the Duke's normal tactics would
have worked. But meanwhile another contretemps supervened to buy the
Anglo-Dutch force precious time. At 1 p.m. Napoleon, finally on the
move towards Qu atre Bras, found Ney's force bivouacked and eating
lunch as if they were on a leisurely picnic. Angrily he got them on the
march but it was 2 p.m. before the chase after Wellington commenced in
earnest. Ney tried to retrieve his reputation by an energetic pursuit of the
duke's rearguard but he did not discomfit the enemy to the point where
Wellington was forced.to turn and face him. Even so, the French might
yet have overhauled him but for the outbreak of a violent afternoon
thunderstorm which turned the ground into a quagmire of mud and
ruled out fu rther effective pursuit. By 6.30 p.m. Wellington reached
Mont-St-Jean. Napoleon raged that he did not have two more hours of
daylight so that he could attack at once but, having thrown away nearly
seven hours of daylight at the beginning of the day, his railing against fate
had a hollow ring.
From Mont-St-Jean Wellington sent a message to Blucher that he was
confident of holding his position if he could have just two Prussian corps
marcin
(Marcin)
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