WATERLOO: ORIGINAL ACCOUNTS

The Captain W. Siborne Collection and Related Materials from the British Library, London

Preface by Professor Jeremy Black

William Siborne (1797-1849) was the great historian of the Waterloo campaign and the appearance of his collection of survivors’ accounts, and other related material, in microform is a welcome development for students of that battle and, more generally, for those interested in military history. Siborne, partly educated at the new Royal Military College, Sandhurst, received a commission as ensign in the 9th foot in 1813. He did not serve at Waterloo. Instead, he joined Wellington’s army in August 1815 and marched to Paris. Thereafter, he served as part of the British army of occupation in northern France. Placed on half pay in 1817, Siborne returned on full pay as Lieutenant in 1824 and from 1826 until 1843 served as assistant military secretary in Ireland.

Siborne became an expert in drawing maps and, indeed, in 1822 published Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan-drawing and, five years later, A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing, containing a simple and easy Mode of Surveying the Detail of any portion of Country, to which are added Instructions in Topographical Modelling.

In 1830, Siborne was instructed by the Commander-in-Chief to undertake the construction of a model of the battlefield of Waterloo. He did so on the basis of thorough and lengthy research. Siborne lived for eight months at the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, a key point in the battle, and produced a detailed survey of battlefield as the basis for his model. He also consulted those who had taken part, thus building up the collection that has now been microfilmed. In 1833, the Whig ministry refused to allot funds for the work, and Siborne, who had only the time that he did not need to be at work in Ireland, did not finish the model until 1838. It was publicly exhibited, but Siborne did not recoup the £3,000 the model had cost.
Siborne did not give up on Waterloo. In 1844, he published the wide-ranging History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815, containing Minute Details of the Battles of Quatre-Bras, Ligny, Wavre, and Waterloo, a two-volume work with an accompanying atlas. The maps in the atlas offered an effective combination of contoured battlefields, and army positions indicated by colour. In addition, battles were clarified by the use of a number of maps for individual battles, for example three for Waterloo.

Siborne’s book was a success. It complemented James Wyld’s Maps and Plans, Showing the Principal Movements, Battles and Sieges, in which the British Army was engaged during the war from 1808 to 1814 in the Spanish Peninsula (1840), based on surveys by Thomas Mitchell. In 1891, Siborne’s second son, Major-General Herbert Siborne, edited a selection from the letters his father had accumulated under the title Waterloo Letters: a Selection from Original and hitherto Unpublished Letters bearing on the Operations of the 16th, 17th, and 18th June 1815, by Officers who served in the Campaign. This was a selection from the fuller collection of material that is now in the British Library and that herewith appears in microform.

Waterloo (18 June 1815) was a classic of defensive generalship. The offensive tactics that had characterised Wellington’s generalship against the Marathas at Assaye and Argaum in 1803 and at Salamanca and Vitoria were absent, although that did not preclude small-scale advances during the battle. British firepower decisively defeated a number of poorly coordinated French assaults.

The defensive nature of Wellington’s tactics was captured by Edmund Wheatley, who wrote of the squares which Wellington’s troops formed to resist the French cavalry: ‘we dashed them back as coolly as the sturdy rock repels the ocean’s foam … we presented out bristly points like the peevish porcupines assailed by clamorous dogs’. Thanks to Wellington’s use of reverse slopes, the British line was not seriously weakened by the French artillery bombardment, while, as in the Peninsula, Wellington deployed light infantry to keep the French skirmishers at bay.

With more men and time, Napoleon might have won. The British centre was in a dreadful state by late afternoon: Napoleon’s costly frontal attacks, greater in scale than any Wellington had hitherto encountered, did have an effect. Wellington regarded it as his hardest battle, and he suffered over 15,000 casualties. La Haye Sainte fell to the French at 6pm when the remnants of the garrison, their ammunition exhausted, withdrew. Wellington’s centre was badly exposed, and the attack by the Imperial Guard was a crisis, not the last fling of a defeated opponent. However, the Guard was stopped by British firepower, and then successfully charged by cavalry. As the Guard fell back, Wellington ordered a general advance. The availability of fresh Prussian forces, especially numerous cavalry, permitted the launching of a pursuit that was more destructive than those after Wellington’s Peninsular victories. Wellington had been encouraged by a promise from the Prussian commander Blucher that four Prussian corps would be sent to his help.

With more men and time, Napoleon could also have threatened Wellington’s flanks but he had no more of either because of Marshal Grouchy’s failure to prevent Prussian intervention. Yet, Napoleon did not fight well with the troops he had. Having moved slowly on the morning of 17 June, he had simply followed Wellington north and had made little attempt to take strategic control of the situation; nor were the heavy rain and mud of 17 June conducive to boldness. Napoleon’s subsequent tactical lack of imagination on 18 June was in keeping with his earlier failure to obtain a decisive success while his opponents were divided. Wellington was correct to describe the battle as a ‘pounding match’; in part, this reflected the tactical control wielded by Ney. Napoleon was less brave and decisive on the battlefield than Wellington; more a distant commander who lost touch with the progress of the battle and failed to manoeuvre.

Neither Wellington nor Napoleon was fighting with armies that were as good as those they had commanded; instead, the forces were in several respects scratch armies: many of the troops had little combat experience and many of the units had no experience of fighting together. This was a particular problem for Wellington; many of his veterans from the Peninsular War were still in North America at the close of the 1812 War. Wellington was justifiably dubious about many of the Dutch and German units in his army. This unevenness helped encourage him to rely on a deployment anchored on British units.
Nevertheless, Napoleon was in a weak position, in part of his own making: he had underestimated his opponents’ generalship and French intelligence and staff-work were inadequate. Napoleon was ill and had no experience of commanding against Wellington; he ignored the warnings of those such as Soult who had done so in Portugal and Spain.

Wellington had constructed a strong defence in depth which, even under better weather and other conditions, would have proved difficult to crack. Napoleon had only a slight numerical advantage on the battlefield, while Wellington had another 18,000 men guarding his immediate right flank, which he saw as his Achilles Heel, and some 70,000 to 80,000 Prussians closing in on his left. Indeed, as the day wore on, Wellington was able to abandon his position on the left entirely to the Prussians, who also got round Napoleon’s right flank and rear.

Yet, for all Napoleon’s failings, and the maladroit conduct of several of his generals, especially Ney, the French were a formidable army and their defeat a major achievement. Of course, it is unclear that Napoleon’s grand strategy was sustainable even if he had won at Waterloo. He had triumphed in battles in the past without winning conflicts, for example in both 1813 and 1814. In 1815, large Allied forces, especially Austrians, were approaching France from the east, and it is likely that had Napoleon won at Waterloo he would have faced the sort of formidable and remorseless pressure he had encountered in 1813 and 1814.

Yet, Waterloo was not a strategic irrelevance. Napoleon was crushed, and the war ended, beyond any hopes that events or Allied divisions would provide him with opportunities.

Professor Jeremy Black,
School of Historical, Political and Sociological Studies,
University of Exeter

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