Saturday 15 November 2014

Was Waterloo entirely a British Victory?

Waterloo is a much written about battle. My great, great grandfather's regiment, The Scot's Greys, fought at Waterloo. Author Tom Williams has written a guest blog about how he is researching the battle for his new novel in his historical adventure series His Majesty's Confidential Agent.


Uniforms of the period

Regimental Banner

Tom's novels are set against the meticulously researched background of the Napoleonic Wars. Burke, his hero, will become involved with a Belgian (Flanders) regiment during the Battle of Waterloo.




Was Waterloo Entirely a British Victory? 

by Tom Williams


After his adventures in Argentina (Burke in the Land of Silver) and Egypt (Burke and the Bedouin), the next book in the Burke series will see Burke at Waterloo.
It's inevitable, really. There's more or less a legal requirement for anyone writing a Napoleonic series to get to Waterloo sooner or later. I decided to bite the bullet and do it now.

Waterloo is a tricky thing to write about. It is, for most British military history enthusiasts, the battle of the 19th century. Hundreds of books are written about it. (Bernard Cornwell's effort, Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles was published in September.) The Internet is full of websites, including some very erudite ones, discussing various aspects of it. War-Gamers refight Waterloo all the time. Anything you say is likely to be read by quite a lot of people who know enough about what happened to pick up any mistakes.


Tom Williams on one of his 
adventures in South America,
the land of silver


This should make research easy. Unfortunately, although much has been written about the battle, it was not particularly well documented as it happened. Wellington’s dispatch to the Secretary of State for War, formally describing the battle, runs to just over 2,300 words. This created considerable controversy at the time for its failure to mention many of the acts of valour performed on the field. Wellington started writing it on the evening of the battle and he had, by any standards, had rather a hard day. Even if he had delayed and written a longer account after he had had time to consult with his generals, it would still have had errors and omissions.



Although Waterloo was fought on a very small field (barely three square miles) it was a large and complex battle. Napoleon had around 72,000 troops and Wellington commanded just under 68,000. (Even these figures are much disputed: I’ve used Elizabeth Longford’s.) http://tinyurl.com/nesqwla 


Wellington’s force included troops of the Netherlands Army (Dutch and Belgian) and 5,000 men of the Brunswick contingent. Although all accepted him as the supreme commander on the field, they had different command structures, different languages and different uniforms. On at least one occasion, confusion as to the uniforms led to British troops opening fire on their allies with significant loss of life. Confusion was not only possible, but practically guaranteed.



Waterloo (from Wikipedia)

 We talk nowadays about "the fog of War" but it is difficult to imagine the chaos of a 19th-century battlefield. There was no radio or other means of long-range communication. Wellington's orders were carried to his commanders by riders who would cross the field of battle to take them to the people who would carry them out. It was dangerous work and many of his staff officers did not survive – and thus the orders did not necessarily get through. 

Wellington positioned himself on the ridge overlooking the battlefield because he had to rely for information about where his troops were on what he could personally observe. Unfortunately, once the firing started the smoke from the muskets and cannon fire obscured much of the battlefield, so generals often had no idea where their forces were. The reason that military flags (the colours that are trooped at Trooping the Colour) are so significant is because that gave everybody at least a chance of seeing them through the smoke.


Waterloo, The Chaos of Battle (from Wikipedia)


With the chaos and confusion that threatened the field, it is hardly surprising that both Wellington and Napoleon made really serious mistakes. Both were brilliant generals, but both seem to have been performing badly that day. The battle was not a series of brilliant tactical manoeuvres, rather it ended up simply being a slogging match, in which the Allied forces stood their ground, taking horrific punishment from the French all day, until finally the French – having taken heavy losses themselves and now threatened by the arrival of the Prussians – broke and fled the field. At the end of the day almost fifty thousand men had died.


Waterloo, Charge of The Scot's Greys ( from Wikipedia)


The loss of life is even more appalling when you consider what this battle achieved. It is often described as having shaped the history of Europe. This is nonsense. The whole continent was united against Napoleon and the armies of Austria and Russia were ready to move on Paris. Napoleon faced opposition even within France – many of his troops had to be left behind to protect against monarchist opponents at home. Victory at Waterloo might have bought Napoleon time, which he could have used to consolidate his domestic position and negotiate improved surrender terms with the Allies. It might well have changed the history of France: it can hardly be claimed that it would have changed the history of Europe.

What Waterloo did do was define the character of Britain for the next hundred years. Wellington's famous calmness and "stiff upper lip" (typified by his insisting that the Duchess of Richmond go ahead with her ball, even as the French crossed the Belgian border) may have been nothing more than a propaganda ploy to reassure nervous civilians, yet it came to define how an English gentleman should behave. The steadfastness of the British troops, who held their positions all day under heavy fire, also came to typify the martial virtues of the British Army. It is significant that the British attribute heroism to stoicism under fire, such as that shown by British troops in the trenches during the First World War or Dunkirk in the Second, rather than enthusing about the kind of strategic genius that can lead to victory without heroic losses.


Wellington (from Wikipedia)

Waterloo was also seen as confirming Britain's pre-eminent military position in Europe. Although the battle had been an Allied effort – less than half of Wellington’s troops were British and he admitted that it could not have been won without the Prussians – it was presented as a British victory. Wellington (although Irish – a fact that he did not care to advertise) was the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces. Britain was the only country to have fought against Napoleon consistently throughout his rule and now a British commander had put an end to Boney once and for all. Waterloo has therefore attained a mythic status in British history and inconvenient details that do not fit with this narrative are forgotten or ignored.

Unfortunately, in my plot the British spy, James Burke, is fighting in a Belgian cavalry regiment (the 8th Hussars). As everyone knows since it was a British victory, the role of regiments like the 8th Hussars has been quietly forgotten. In fact, many historians claim that the Dutch and Belgian troops were cowards and made little, if any, contribution to Wellington's success. Far from this being the case, many units of the Netherlands Army behaved with conspicuous bravery. This was particularly true of the First Netherlands Light Cavalry Brigade of which the 8th Hussars were a part. They covered the retreat of the Scots Greys, saving the remnant of that regiment after their famous charge. The brigade was described as fighting with "insane gallantry".


Scot's Greys (from Wikipedia)

In the end, I am sure that much of what I write about Waterloo could be debatable. None the less, I shall pursue research, trying to get it right, knowing, too, that so many others have got it wrong before me – not least all those who reduce the Belgian contribution to what, in this country, we insist on believing a British victory. Two hundred years after Waterloo, perhaps Burke can help to put the record straight.




Tom William's novels are truly fabulous, really fast paced historical adventures. They can be found on Amazon or ordered from bookshops.



















UK paperback:http://tinyurl.com/pndrykd
UK kindle:       http://tinyurl.com/o6ssspf

US paperback/kindle:   http://tinyurl.com/p3vf3gt

To find out more about events relating to these 
historical adventures look for Tom Williams: 
http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.co.uk/









11 comments:

  1. The two things that struck me from my own research was that the battle was very much NOT an entirely British victory. Andrew W. Field's books on the campaign rely entirely on original sources often previously unpublished in Britain. These make it clear that Wellington's position at Quatre Bras was only saved by the tenacity of the Dutch-Belgians, long before the British units arrived there. Indeed, they were only there at all because one of their commanders ignored Wellington's order to abandon the position. Had they done so, Bonaparte's left wing would have reached Brussels while Wellington's army was still scattered across the countryside. At Waterloo itself, the British position was a good one though, in truth, they only averted defeat through the arrival of Blücher's Prussians - who made an astonishing decision to still come to Wellington's help despite having suffered serious defeats at Ligny two days earlier, and then at Gilly and Charleroi before that. I was truly astonished to discover (a) the relatively small percentage of the "Allied" army that was actually British: (b) the extent to which historians and HF fiction writers alike have perpetrated the absurd myths about "cowardice" on the part of Dutch-Belgians and other allied troops; and (c) and the savagery of the fighting between French and Prussians both at Ligny and then at Plancenoit (the latter almost never gets a comment, though in practice it was probably THE turning point of Waterloo). My own Waterloo novel "The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour" hits the streets, by the way, on 5th December.

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    2. I made a typo. Thank you for this Dave and I have alerted Tom. I do find the spin associated with battles interesting. I shall look out for your new book.

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  2. The two things that struck me from my own research was that the battle was very much NOT an entirely British victory. Andrew W. Field's books on the campaign rely entirely on original sources often previously unpublished in Britain. These make it clear that Wellington's position at Quatre Bras was only saved by the tenacity of the Dutch-Belgians, long before the British units arrived there. Indeed, they were only there at all because one of their commanders ignored Wellington's order to abandon the position. Had they done so, Bonaparte's left wing would have reached Brussels while Wellington's army was still scattered across the countryside. At Waterloo itself, the British position was a good one though, in truth, they only averted defeat through the arrival of Blücher's Prussians - who made an astonishing decision to still come to Wellington's help despite having suffered serious defeats at Ligny two days earlier, and then at Gilly and Charleroi before that. I was truly astonished to discover (a) the relatively small percentage of the "Allied" army that was actually British: (b) the extent to which historians and HF fiction writers alike have perpetrated the absurd myths about "cowardice" on the part of Dutch-Belgians and other allied troops; and (c) and the savagery of the fighting between French and Prussians both at Ligny and then at Plancenoit (the latter almost never gets a comment, though in practice it was probably THE turning point of Waterloo). My own Waterloo novel "The Last Campaign of Marianne Tambour" hits the streets, by the way, on 5th December.

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  4. Sorry: I lost my previous comment in hyperspace and wrote a longer one, so when the first reappeared, I deleted it. Fingers crossed I get it right this time.
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    David Ebsworth seems to be making the points about Waterloo that I have tried to make above. I haven't dwelt on the exact proportion of the troops who were British, because it's an uncertain figure and you run into silly arguments about whether you count reserve battalions and suchlike. But, as I have said, a lot of the troops (the majority by some calculations) weren't British.

    I haven't discussed Quatre Bras, but David Ebsworth's comments are quite right. Much is made of the fact that the Netherlanders 'ran away'. Much less is made of the hours that they stood against a vastly superior French force while the British failed to get reinforcements up to them.

    There are similar accounts of the cowardice of Netherlands troops at Waterloo: in particular the fact that Bijlandt's brigade broke. But they had been left in an impossible situation: the wonder is that they did not break earlier. And British troops were driven back as well, but their behaviour is ignoired or discussed in much more measured tones. The extraordinary heroism of some Netherlands units is just ignored.

    In fairness, most accounts do give credit to the Prussians for their decisive intervention.

    The interesting thing to me is not just that history has been rewritten to to see that it has been rewritten to fit a mythos of British military prowess that defined the army, and much of the nation, for the next hundred years.

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  5. I wouldn't bother trying to get Waterloo 'right'. It's been argued about for 200 years and probably will be for the next couple of centuries - you can't win.

    BTW, on the subject of the 2nd Dragoons,did you hear Ewart might not actually have taken that Eagle?

    See what I mean? ;)

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  6. Thank you cavalrytales. Yes, it’s absolutely true that you can’t win – but I think you have to try. There comes a point (and it comes in a different place for everyone, unfortunately) where getting things wrong wrecks the story. There’s a very successful TV drama going at the moment where they seem to have put the age of majority at 18 in 1919. A lot of plot hangs on this and I just can’t enjoy it any more – but obviously this isn’t bothering most of its audience.

    I’ve blogged before on the question of how much we need to stick with the facts (http://thewhiterajah.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/historical-fact-and-historical-fiction.html). It’s a perennial issue for historical novelists and I wish there was a definitive answer.

    Sometimes, though, you have to go with the consensus theory of truth. If Ensign Ewart didn’t take that Eagle in 1815, he surely has by 2014. Please don’t try to take that away from me!

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  7. Hi TCW. Sometimes you need to recognise that what you are writing is a fiction - and the needs of the fiction, of the story, of the narrative - must take precedence over dull factual accuracy. Surely you are free to fill in the knowledge gaps with a good story - especially if you are a fiction writer as opposed to a military historian.

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    1. I shall pass this on. I think he does write great fiction though.

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  8. Interesting point of view! Thanks for sharing!

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