WATERLOO who was to blame

[AJ]

And Flea, I believe, is a Frenchman!!!!!

[Wellesley]

Yes, I think our French colleagues are certainly biased. If Napoleon's defeat has nothing to do with Wellington and
the British, then why was Bluecher's Prussian so soundly defeated in Ligny? With Wellington's brilliant track record in
Spain, he is with little doubt the best defensive general of the time. Even if Prussian did not arrive, it is quite likely
the battle will end in a stalemate. Why? Because even Napoleon's ultimate weapon, the Old Guard, could not break
the Brits.

I guess with my pseudonym, you are justified to think I am biased too 

Welly

[Wellesley]

My last post was a bit muddled. What I am saying is that it is the same French Army and generals that defeated the Prussians
at Ligny and lost to Wellington and the Anglo-Dutch Army. You must ask yourselves is if Blucher was in Wellington's
shoes, would he have held? Anglo-Dutch Army is very uneven and was of lower quality than the French on average. It was
really Wellington's choice of ground, deployment, coolness, judgment that made the difference. For example, how he did
not lose his head over Hougomont and La Haye Sainte but judiciously and calmly reinforced and redeployed that broke
all the French attacks.

Like I said, even if the Prussian did not arrived. The French has already shot the bolt and have no chance of winning.

Welly

[Uxbridge]

Of course we are all experts with hindsight. If the Prussians had not advanced toward Plancenoit, and if Napoleon had realised that they were staying put, he could have threatened Wellington's right flank. Wellington would have been seriously tempted to step right to preserve his lines to the coast. The resulting gap between the Allies might have been enough for the French advance up the hill toward Brussels to succeed, the Belgians drop out of the alliance and some sort of uneasy peace to be made, depending in turn on whether the Russians and Austrians could bring themselves to fight again.

So you have to give plenty of credit to both Wellington and Blucher for each having the courage to believe in the other, especially given Napoleon's track record against divided forces.

[Marbot]

Hello,

I have with all due respect to disagree wth Wellington. Wellington did indeed fight a good defensive battle as usual especially the use of farms as forward positions to break the french impetus worked very well. However there is so much you can do with what you have and I don't think his army would have hold should the prussians had decided not to help. I see two main reasons: By having to take care of the prussian threat, Napoleon diverted the whole VI Corps and during the fight most of the young guard got sucked in plancenoit, which means the only reserve left was the rest of the guard. We all know that good management of reserves is a key element in victory or defeat, by having half of its reserves committed, Napoleon had already exposed himself. We do not know what he would have done with VI Corps, but we can imagine Lobau would have supported the cavalry attacks, giving it  a more combined arms outlook and therefore improving its chances of success. The second reason, is that he lost a great part of the initiative as soon as the prussians were spotted. If he wants to win he needs to avoid the 2 armies joining up, therefore he needs now to beat the allies quickly while delaying the prussians at the same time and then swing his whole army to beat the prussians, not an easy task compared to the original one of just crushing the allies, especially when the guy in front of you is good at defense... One can also imagine that with no prussian threat, the afternoon attacks would have been much better prepared, since the time constraints were gone.

Yes a lot of things have been said about this campaign, but there still seem to be many different opinions from Sibourne seeing the british being instrumental in the victory to Andrew Uffindell who sees Blücher as the one responsible to the strategic victory over Napoleon. I think as well, Napoleon in general and the Waterloo campaign in particular, have always been topics biased by the feelings you have torwards the man... But it is always nice to talk about it!

[thilio]

Despite a lot of smoothness and cautiousness,  I'm afraid this topic could become like the french one...
More seriously, Marbot has made a very interesting contribution 

[Moliere]

For me Napoleon is the one to blame.

2 main reasons :

He has chosen the marshal Soult as "Etat major". Ok Berthier was dead but why Soult ?

He has splitted his army (he has always warned his marshals  on that). For me Grouchy has followed the order and he was too far from the battlefield. He brought his corp of 30 000 men in france threw belgium full of allies.

For his defense, napoleon suffered of hemorroide and didn t check the battlefield properly.

Bad luck...

Moliere

[AJ]

Ah!! I see our French friends are now joining us over here, this is exactly the type of discourse I anticipated when I started the Topic. Thilio, do not worry, our English blood runs colder than yours, we tend not to get as passionate about the subject and if it takes "smoothness and cautioness" as you put it, that is good. Self discipline and coolness under fire, are good traits.

[Count von Csollich]

hahaha  
the English maybe....my people  is quite different  
there is this little story of one of my countrymen back in 1809: He fought in southern Tyrol against the French...he was only armed with a  scythe and killed 23! Frenchmen in close combat before he was finally silenced by 12! enemy bayonetts... - so much for Tyrolians keeping cool in the midst of the battle...  

CvC

PS: maybe this is the reason why I try to stay as objective as possible when I do a presentation on any battle at UNI...I might get into a fight with my professor I am bound to lose  

[AJ]

Count, I knew there was something special about you guys

[Wellesley]

I have to agree the threat posed by the Prussian was crucial. But my point was if it was not Wellington in command of the
Allies and there were no British contingents, I can easily see French would have come up on top on that fateful day.

Welly

[Moliere]

To answer Wellesley :

I m not agree with you because the arrival of the prussians had forced Napoleon to do a frontal attack. It was compulsory to break the English lines. The time was running out.
English infantry was the best in the world at that time specially in defense mode. English soldiers can shoot twice a minute.
However, It doesn't mean that the english soldiers were better that the old guard. It was la crème de la crème No ones even the old guard could break a line full of soldiers and cannons. Napoleon sent the old guard to encourage the rest of his army knowing that the prussians will arrive soon and that it was not grouchy who was arriving...

Wellington knew perfectly that the prussians will arrive in the back of the french army so he has smartly resisted.

A massive arrival of Prussians has changed the course of history.

M

[Moliere]

oh and i forgot : the weather !

Heavy rains have delayed the beginning of the battle and the cannons balls were less efficient !

M

[Smokehammer]

I think Ney needs to take a major part of the blame as well as Napoelon for failing to seize the crossroads at Quatre Bras when he had the chance to do so at relativly little cost, and also for his contradictory orders which caused d'Erlons corps to march between Quatre Bras and Ligny all day without arriving at either. Theres a pretty good article on it at Napoleon Series:

http://www.napoleon-series.org/military/battles/waterloo/c_waterlood'erlon.html

Napoelon's overall campaign plan was perfectly sound, it was on a tactical level that it fell apart due to confusion and errors caused by his choice of subordinates. Ney or Jerome should'nt have been given command of anything, even Grouchy would have done better at Quatre Bras.

Napoelon really should've taken Davout instead of Ney, as he was the best commander he had and was good at gaining victorys over superior forces, which is exactly what Napoleon needed in his campaign. I think There was no point in making long term plans by making him war minster before the Waterloo Campaign was won.

I have to agree the threat posed by the Prussian was crucial. But my point was if it was not Wellington in command of the
Allies and there were no British contingents, I can easily see French would have come up on top on that fateful day

.

Apparently the Prince of Orange was in command of all allied forces in Belgium before Wellington, if Napoleon had been in a postion to attack whilst this was still the case he might have gotten the quick victory he wanted.

[Moliere]

I agree with marbot concerning Davout.

Napoleon's return was not easy. He needed people that he could trust specially in Paris.

A lot of Marshalls received a lot of new titles & money with the new King and they were tired to fight.

Berthier's death (suicide? murder?) was a blow for Napoleon's head quarter.

M