Battle of Ligny

• 1. Introduction

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  The Battle of Ligny, fought on the 16th of June 1815 near a small Belgian stream, marked the last time Napoleon Bonaparte would ever win a battle. It was not a small skirmish. More than 140,000 soldiers clashed across fields of grain standing as high as a man, through burning villages, and along swampy creek banks where every bridge became a contested prize. The French drove the Prussians back, wounded their elderly commander, and seized 21 guns. Yet two days later, the same Prussian army that had just been beaten showed up at Waterloo and helped destroy Napoleon for good. How did a French victory become the prelude to French defeat? And what did Blücher's 72-year-old stubbornness have to do with it?

• 2. The Race to Brussels

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  On the 13th of March 1815, six days before Napoleon even reached Paris, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared him an outlaw. Four days after that, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, and Prussia each pledged 150,000 men to end his rule. Napoleon understood the arithmetic clearly: if he waited for all those armies to converge, he was finished. His only chance was to strike before they joined forces.

  Wellington expected Napoleon to march through Mons, a road route that would have cut the British supply line to Ostend. Napoleon let that assumption fester by feeding Wellington false intelligence, then moved through Charleroi instead, crossing before dawn on the 15th of June. The move drove a wedge between the two allied commanders and put Napoleon in what he called his preferred central position, placed squarely between Wellington's forces to the north-west and Blücher's Prussians to the north-east.

  Napoleon's army was split into three parts: Marshal Ney on the left, Marshal Grouchy on the right, and Napoleon himself commanding the centre and the reserve, which included the Imperial Guard. Ney would fix Wellington at the crossroads of Quatre Bras while Napoleon turned on the Prussians. The plan dated back to Napoleon's Italian campaigns. Divide, then destroy in detail.

  Wellington did not fully confirm that Charleroi was the main French thrust until late on the night of the 15th. By early morning on the 16th, at a ball hosted by the Duchess of Richmond, a dispatch from the Prince of Orange revealed just how fast the French had moved. Wellington hastily redirected his army toward Quatre Bras, where a thin allied force was barely holding.

• 3. Two Armies, One Watershed

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  The battlefield at Ligny sat on the watershed between the rivers Scheldt and Meuse. The Ligny stream itself was only a few metres wide, but its swampy banks made the bridges at Saint-Amand and Ligny the only practical crossing points. Three villages clustered along the stream: Ligny, Saint-Amand, and Wagnelée, connected by the hamlets of Saint-Amand-le-Hameau and Saint-Amand-la-Haye. They were sturdily built and surrounded by trees, ideal for defence. Grain fields stretched across the rest of the ground, high enough to conceal troop movements. Blücher commanded from the windmill of Brye on a hill north-west of Ligny; Napoleon placed his headquarters in the windmill of Naveau at Fleurus.

  The French Armée du Nord was a formidable but fragile instrument. Historian Henri Houssaye put it plainly: Napoleon had never held in his hand an instrument so fearsome or fragile. The army's veterans were experienced, and France fielded more cavalry than either opponent across the entire four-day campaign. But many troops had never served under their current officers. Trust was thin.

  The Prussian army presented a different kind of vulnerability. Historian Peter Hofschröer argued it was probably the worst army Prussia had fielded during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, in terms of manpower quality, equipment, and organisational coherence. Its cavalry was mid-reorganisation. Its artillery was still receiving guns from Prussia even as the fighting began. A full third of the Prussian infantry consisted of untrained Landwehr militia. Several Saxon and Rhinelander contingents had only recently left French service and were reluctant fighters. Some Saxons mutinied outright and were sent home before the advance. Many Rhinelanders would desert during the battle itself.

  On the morning of the 16th, Wellington rode to a meeting with Blücher at the windmill of Brye and promised support from at least one Anglo-allied corps. Then he rode back to Quatre Bras, leaving Blücher holding a line with 82,700 troops facing a French force of around 60,800.

• 4. Fire in the Villages

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  Napoleon delayed the assault until about 14:30, waiting until he heard cannon from the direction of Quatre Bras confirming that Ney was engaged on the left. The wait also allowed Gérard's IV Corps, which had arrived late from the south-west, more time to deploy. Both delays shortened the window for a decisive result before dark.

  Vandamme's III Corps struck first, hitting the hamlet of Saint-Amand-la-Haye. Jagow's 3rd Prussian Brigade could not hold against Lefol's 8th Division and pulled back. General Steinmetz then led six battalions of the 1st Brigade in a counter-attack that retook the hamlet. Another French push followed, and after bitter fighting the Prussians lost possession of Saint-Amand-la-Haye along with approximately 2,500 men.

  At Ligny itself, Gérard opened his attack at 15:00. Pécheux's 12th Infantry Division stormed the village church and captured it, only to find the position raked by Prussian artillery from three sides. In a short time the division lost 20 officers and 500 men and had to fall back. Napoleon sent a battery of 12-pounders in support, and the IV Corps artillery set numerous buildings in Ligny alight. House-to-house fighting followed before Jagow's brigade counter-attacked and recaptured the town.

  Prussian second lieutenant Gerhard Andreas von Garrelts later described what the fighting meant for the civilians caught inside: "Ligny stood half on fire, locked in bright flames... on this occasion we found we were in a house, where all windows were destroyed, two old people, a man and a woman, showing no emotion and dazed sat at the hearth, without moving, his elbows on his knees and his head supported by his hands; the vision made us cry!" Garrelts and his men felt compassion for the couple but could not persuade them to leave their home.

  At 17:00, Blücher deployed the still-fresh II Corps under Pirch I into the area south of Brye, preparing a counter-stroke on the French left.

• 5. D'Erlon's Ghost March

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  At 15:30 Napoleon sent Comte de la Bédoyère with written orders to Marshal Ney, directing him to send d'Erlon's I Corps east to strike the rear of the Prussian right flank. The message would trigger one of the most consequential blunders of the campaign.

  D'Erlon had gone ahead of his corps to reconnoitre while his troops were already marching west toward Quatre Bras. Bédoyère, deciding there was no time to follow the chain of command, ordered I Corps on his own initiative to reverse course and head east toward Ligny. The corps began moving. At about 17:00, Vandamme spotted a force of twenty to thirty thousand men advancing on Fleurus from the west. He reported them as enemy troops threatening the French left.

  Napoleon was stunned. He had been on the verge of launching his central assault. Now he hesitated, unsure whether the approaching column was friend or foe. The column turned out to be d'Erlon's corps, not an enemy force. But before that could be sorted out, Marshal Ney, who had received no copy of Napoleon's instruction to Bédoyère, sent his own order to d'Erlon: turn around immediately and march back to Quatre Bras. D'Erlon, who had caught up with his troops only a few kilometres from Ligny, obeyed. The corps marched away.

  D'Erlon's I Corps fought in neither battle that day. At the very moment Napoleon needed a decisive hammer blow on the Prussian flank, that hammer was marching back and forth across the Belgian countryside. Blücher took advantage of the French hesitation to strike at Vandamme's corps. Vandamme received unexpected reinforcement from Duhesme's Young Guard and threw the Prussians back, but the window for a truly crushing French victory had narrowed severely.

• 6. The Old Guard Decides

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  By 19:00 the Prussians launched a counter-attack on the French left. Blücher led the assault personally toward Saint-Amand-le-Hameau, and it succeeded at first. Then chasseurs of the Imperial Guard struck west of Saint-Amand and sent the Prussians into a disorderly retreat.

  Napoleon saw his moment. Lobau's VI Corps was forming up on the heights east of Fleurus. The artillery of the Guard opened fire above Ligny to prepare Blücher's centre. A thunderstorm briefly delayed the assault, but at about 19:45 a salvo of 60 guns gave the signal. The Old Guard, supported by the Grenadiers à Cheval de la Garde Impériale under Guyot and Milhaud's IV Cavalry Corps on the right flank, advanced on Ligny in a combined assault alongside Gérard's corps. The Guard met heavy resistance and was momentarily forced back by Prussian reserves. But Blücher's exhausted soldiers could not hold against Napoleon's elite troops combined with a flanking infantry division moving under cover of darkness. At around 20:30 the Prussian centre at Ligny collapsed.

  As the Old Guard broke through, Blücher himself made his answer. He ordered Lieutenant-General Röder to counter-attack with the reserve cavalry of the I Corps and led one of the charges in person. His horse was shot. The animal fell on top of the 72-year-old field marshal. His staff dragged him out semi-conscious. Gneisenau, his chief of staff, took command.

  The Prussians retreated in squares, under repeated French cavalry attacks. William Siborne, writing from eyewitness accounts, noted that the Prussian infantry, though compelled to evacuate Ligny, effected its retreat in squares, in perfect order, though surrounded by the enemy, bravely repelling all further attacks.

• 7. The Decision That Mattered

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  At around 22:00 Gneisenau gave the order to fall back. What happened next defined the outcome not just of Ligny but of the entire campaign. Historians have argued about Gneisenau's thinking ever since. Chesney credited him with deliberately retreating north to stay within reach of Wellington rather than east toward the Prussian lines of communication. Parkinson, citing Prussian records, contended that Gneisenau initially raged over the lack of British support and considered retreating east toward Liège, which would have left Wellington isolated against Napoleon.

  Blücher, once found alive, refused to consider resignation on account of his injuries. He insisted he would rather be tied to a horse than step down. He later summoned his British liaison officer, Sir Harry Hardinge, to settle the question: "Gneisenau has given in. We are going to join the Duke."

  Zieten's I Corps retreated slowly with most of its artillery, leaving a rear-guard near Brye until daybreak on the 17th. Pirch I's II Corps followed. Thielmann's III Corps, largely unharmed, withdrew toward Gembloux where Bülow waited with the fresh IV Corps, which had not fought at Ligny. The army regrouped south of Wavre, roughly 8 miles east of the village of Waterloo.

  What was actually lost at Ligny? The trophies of French victory amounted to 21 guns and a few thousand prisoners. About 8,000 troops fled east to Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, mainly new draftees from the Rhenish, Westphalian, and Berg regions, many of them former French soldiers with little loyalty to Prussia. The battle had reduced Blücher's force by only about one-sixth. With nearly 100,000 men still available, he was in a position to march to Waterloo two days later and help Wellington turn a losing day into a decisive Allied victory.

• 8. What Came After

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  Before leaving Ligny, Napoleon handed Grouchy 33,000 men and orders to follow the retreating Prussians. A late start, confusion about which direction the Prussians had taken, and orders too vague to compel decisive action meant Grouchy could not reach the Prussians before they arrived at Wavre. He fought an inconclusive battle at Wavre against Thielmann while Blücher marched his main force to Waterloo.

  Wellington spent the 17th retreating to a defensive position at Mont-Saint-Jean, a low ridge he had personally scouted the previous year. Napoleon made a late start from Ligny, joined Ney at Quatre Bras at 13:00, found only Wellington's cavalry rear-guard, pursued northward, and was stopped by torrential rain before dark. The French won a small cavalry action at Genappe but nothing more.

  On the 18th of June 1815 came Waterloo. Napoleon abdicated on the 24th of June. He finally surrendered on the 15th of July. Only Grouchy managed to bring an organised French force home: nearly 30,000 men with their artillery. It was not enough to resist what came next.

  Ligny stands as the hinge. A French army that won the battle failed to shatter the enemy; a Prussian army that lost chose a retreat route that kept an entire coalition in play. Blücher's horse falling on top of him, Gneisenau's debate about which road to take, Grouchy's delay on the morning of the 17th: each of those moments fit inside a 48-hour window between the guns at Ligny and the opening cannonade at Waterloo.