Free How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) by Stephen Clarke Page B

de Villepin, Grouchy ‘lacked instinct, initiative and experience’. And yet here he was, sent off to face Blücher, a bloodthirsty warrior with fifty years of battle experience.
    However, as all Bonapartist historians will tell you, this choice of unreliable commanders was less a case of bad judgement on Napoleon’s part than a need to bow to circumstances. His most faithful officers were all dead. His young aide-de-camp Jean-Baptiste Muiron had died in Italy, taking a bullet that was meant for Napoleon. Louis Charles Desaix had fallen at the Battle of Marengo in 1800, shot through the heart while leading the victory charge. Louis-Alexandre Berthier, Napoleon’s chief of staff, had died on 1 June, falling (or throwing himself) out of the window of his chateau, perhaps mortified for having become a royalist like all the others in 1814, and for refusing Napoleon’s invitation to join him again.
    The list of the faithful Napoleonic dead goes on: Marshal Jean Lannes, hit by a cannonball in 1809; Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessières, also killed by a cannonball in Germany in 1813, of whom Napoleon later said, ‘If I’d had Bessières at Waterloo, my Guard would have won the victory’; Marshal Michel Duroc, who also died in battle in Germany in 1813, such a valued aide-de-camp that he was known as ‘Napoleon’s shadow’. fn7
    Meanwhile, his greatest cavalry officer, also incidentally his brother-in-law, Joachim Murat, had deserted him. Despite being allowed to marry Napoleon’s sister Caroline and given the title of King of Naples, Murat had decided not to support Napoleon when the allies were closing in in 1814. On Napoleon’s return in 1815 Murat had offered his support, but Napoleon refused, probably because he didn’t like the man – he called him a ‘vain cockerel’. The refusal was a mistake, because on the battlefield Murat was no chicken at all.
    In short, Napoleon had no choice but to surround himself with untrustworthy men. Certainly the rank and file didn’t trust their leaders – except their beloved Napoleon of course. In his memoirs, Sergeant Hippolyte de Mauduit accused the turncoat generals of being ‘unworthy to command such troops. Some were traitors, making vows to prevent us from winning; others were soft, indecisive and lethargic, unwilling to attack.’
    The ordinary soldiers were itching to fight and avenge the defeats of 1814, Mauduit stressed: ‘The army itself was fully committed, everything about it suggested the greatest fighting spirit – at least among the soldiers and subalterns, because most of our generals and too many of our officers were tired of glory and no longer had the energy, the liveliness of mind and body, and the clear conscience that had earned them their brilliant military reputation.’
    Napoleon was fully aware of this, but he somehow managed to convince himself that everything would be OK anyway. On the morning of 18 June he held a breakfast party in his lodgings at Le Caillou farm, using his own crockery, which had finally turned up on one of his personal luggage wagons – a favourable omen. He announced to his general staff that with Marshal Grouchy holding the Prussians at bay in the east, they would have plenty of time to beat the English.
    Soult knew that Napoleon and Wellington had never met on the battlefield before, and that it might be dangerous to underestimate the Englishman who had chased the French army out of Spain. Soult himself had lost to Wellington in Toulouse in 1814, and expressed some scepticism about an easy victory at Waterloo – but this clearly wasn’t the right time for doubts.
    ‘Just because you have been defeated by Wellington, you think he is a great general,’ Napoleon snapped, ‘but I’m telling you he’s a bad general, that the British are bad soldiers, and that it will be a picnic.’
    General Antoine Drouot, in charge of the artillery, chipped in with his own negative thoughts: ‘We can’t fight this morning. The