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On the all-important question of the numbers present at the battle, I propose to take those quoted in Mark Adkin’s excellent book The Waterloo Companion, which as well as their innate scholarly worth are close to those of most of the other experts. After their losses of 17,500 men at Ligny and Quatre Bras, and Grouchy’s detaching with 30,000 men, the French army under Napoleon comprised 53,400 infantry, 15,600 cavalry and 6,500 artillerymen servicing 246 guns, along with 2,000 support staff from medics to engineers, making a total of 77,500. After losing 4,500 at Quatre Bras, and stationing 17,000 at Hal, the Anglo-Allied army under Wellington comprised 53,800 infantry, 13,350 cavalry, 5,000 artillerymen servicing 157 guns and one rocket section, and 1,000 support staff, totalling 73,150 men. The Prussian troops available to assist Wellington if Blücher’s plan was properly implemented consisted of 38,000 infantry, 7,000 cavalry, 2,500 artillerymen servicing 134 guns, and 1,500 support staff, totalling 49,000 men. Of the Prussian forces, IV Corps would arrive on the battlefield at about 4.30 p.m. with 31,000 men and eighty-six guns, II Corps would get there at about 6.30 p.m. with 12,800 men, and I Corps at around 7.30 p.m. with 5,000 men.

By the time the sun rose on the undulating plateau of Mont St Jean on Sunday, 18 June it was clear to everyone that there was going to be a major engagement that day — a battle on the scale of any of the great clashes of the Napoleonic Wars, such as Marengo, Friedland, Austerlitz, Borodino or Leipzig. ‘Ah! Now I’ve got them, those English!’ Napoleon is said to have exclaimed when he was certain that the Anglo-Allied army had not filed away down the road through the Forest of Soignes during the night. He later expressed incredulity that Wellington had fought with an impassable forest to his rear, but in fact Wellington did this on purpose. ‘It is not true that I could not have retreated,’he told his friend Harriet Arbuthnot eight years later. ‘I could have got into the wood and I would have defied the Devil to drive me out.’16

Napoleon underlined his extreme optimism at a breakfast meeting with his senior commanders held in the farmhouse of Le Caillou, on the Charleroi—Brussels road, where he had spent the previous night. ‘We have ninety chances in our favour,’he crowed, ‘and not ten against.’ General Maximilien Foy tried to warn the Emperor of the likely steadfastness of the British line, saying: ‘The time has come when an old soldier feels it is his duty to remind Your Majesty that while the Duke of Wellington’s position is one that he cannot contemplate for permanent occupation, you are now in front of an infantry which, during the whole of the Spanish war, I never saw give way.’ Marshal Soult, who had also spent years in the Peninsula, supported Foy, but Napoleon was quick to pooh-pooh them. ‘Just because you have been beaten by Wellington,’he told them, ‘you think he’s a good general. But I tell you that Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops.’ The whole business would be, he assured them, ‘l’affaire d’un déjeuner’ (a picnic).17 Instead it turned out to be perhaps the most famous battle of world history.

THE BATTLE

1

The First Phase

WELLINGTON HAD CHOSEN his ground well. As he looked southwards from his vantage point under an elm tree at the crossroads of the Ohain road towards the French army on the morning of the battle he would have seen two buildings, each of which was to play a key role in the coming events. To his centre-right in an advanced position were the château and outbuildings of Hougoumont, well protected with walls, ditches, hedges and surrounded by a wood, which the Duke had invested with his best troops of all, the British Foot Guards (along with some Nassauers, Hanoverians and Lüneburgers), with orders to hold the place come what might. That they succeeded in this, despite heavy and repeated attacks by the French infantry, was one of the keys to Wellington’s victory at Waterloo.

Over to his centre-left