If Napoleon had managed somehow to defeat Wellington, we can imagine the following sequence of events. The tougher elements of Wellington's retreating army would have fought fierce rearguard actions from the village of Waterloo on the southern edge of the Forest of Soignes to the northern edge. The French would not have been able to fight their way through the Forest of Soignes after nightfall and thus Wellington's troops would have time to withdraw and rally. On 19 June, they would also have put up a very tough defence of parts of Brussels. The city's garrison included the British 81st Foot but was mainly Hanoverian landwehr, from whom heroics could not be expected. These troops would probably have been unable to prevent the French penetrating into the city although the defence of individual houses or parts of ramparts or of the park would have delayed the French occupation.

The bulk of the populace would have been terrified, many would have tried to flee and undoubtedly some looting and atrocities would have occurred. Civilian casualties would have been inevitable in any fighting within the city. Brussels would already have been crammed with wounded from earlier actions and any fighting in casualty clearing stations such as the Grand'Place would have been horrendous. Fighting in a built up area is costly for the combatants, too, and thus the cost of the occupation of Brussels would have further diminished the margin of Napoleon's victory.

Napoleon would have been welcomed by a magnificent supper prepared by the Bonapartist Tresigny family - if it survived the fighting and looting in the city. Then he would have stayed at the Laeken Palace north of Brussels, from where he would have distributed the propaganda pamphlets he had prepared before the campaign:

The short-lived success of my enemies detached you for a moment from my Empire: in my exile on a rock in the sea I heard your complaints. The God of battles has decided the fate of your beautiful provinces: Napoleon is among you. You are worthy to be Frenchmen. Rise in mass, join my invincible phalanxes to exterminate the remainder of those barbarians who are your enemies and mine: they fly with rage and despair in their hearts.
Napoleon

'Had I beaten the English army and won my last battle,' claimed Napoleon, 'I would have caused a great and happy astonishment; the following day I would have proposed peace.' [14] But almost certainly, the war would have gone on. The remnants of Wellington's army could have retreated to Ostend or Antwerp, as Sir John Moore had retreated to Corunna in 1808-9, in spite of harassment from the French. The Royal Navy could have evacuated the army from either port and brought it back to England. [15]

Napoleon would have raised further manpower in Belgium for his armies and would have marched southwards to defend France against the Austro-Russian invasion. In Britain, the Tory Government may well have fallen as a result of Wellington's defeat. But it is not certain that the Whigs would have made peace. When in opposition they had not insisted on the need to topple Bonaparte as a precondition for peace but this was perhaps opposition for the sake of opposition. It is difficult to see any British Government being allowed to sign peace with France while the Belgian coastline, and the port of Antwerp, lay in French hands, giving Napoleon the whole Channel coast from Antwerp to Brest as a launchpad for a cross-channel invasion. If Britain remained in the war, her subsidies would have enabled Russia and Austria to continue fighting. Prussia would have been left with the remnants of Blücher's army but she also had further corps, including a Guard Corps, still forming in Prussia.

A French victory in Belgium would have prolonged the Napoleonic wars and caused immense casualties but Napoleon could no longer dominate a Europe which had been transformed by the earlier conflicts and by military and other reforms. Napoleon would probably have fallen victim to a massive allied invasion of France in 1816, if not in late 1815. He may have postponed the inevitable by repeating his brilliant 1814 campaign but could not withstand superior numbers for ever. The established monarchs of Europe would never have accepted him as the rightful ruler of France.

The most significant results of a French victory at Waterloo would have been to tarnish Wellington's prestige and to delay England's dawn of glory as the great imperial power of the nineteenth century. England would not have enjoyed the influence within Europe which the victory of Waterloo gave her. As in 1814, Tsar Alexander I of Russia would have been seen as the liberator of Europe.

Further Reading