Reader's Reviews
1815: The Waterloo Campaign
reviewed by John Cook
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1815: The Waterloo Campaign Peter Hofschröer has a twofold 'axe to grind', he says so in his preface. First, that there has been "no serious attempt" by British authors to present the German view of the Waterloo campaign. This is true, although I'm not quite sure why there should be. Are German, Dutch, Belgian or French historians now expected to write a British view? Be that as it may, the corollary to the omission of previous British authors is that the role of troops other than British is "played-down", the implication being, it seems, that this is a deliberate policy in order to denigrate the part played by foreign contingents and allied forces. This, on the whole, is not true in my view, except that British authors (and a few American ones who speak a sort of English) are bound to concentrate on the contribution made by the British, because that is the audience for which they are writing. The best English language accounts are balanced, but one is bound to concede that not many have been written lately. So, we can say immediately that this work is not for those who want another account from the British perspective and, frankly, I cannot imagine why anybody would. This is, as the title implies, essentially, though not entirely, the story of German participation; those who served in the Prussian army, and in various uniforms in Wellington's polyglot allied army. Any new book on Waterloo needs a fresh angle, and this, I suspect, is as good as it will get (a balance French view would be of interest, but that is about as likely as alien abduction). Writing from the German view point, however, is not as contentious as the author's claim that Wellington deliberately mislead the Prussians into fighting the battle of Ligny, at a potentially fatal disadvantage, on the understanding that he would actively support them. More importantly, that Wellington, despite this undertaking, had no such intention of doing so, knowing that he could not because his army was not sufficiently concentrated, and that he used the Prussians cynically, to buy himself time, so that he could correct this mistake, and, furthermore, that there was a subsequent cover-up so that none of this became public knowledge. As far as English speaking audiences are concerned, this is a new and potentially provocative area of research. The book starts with pen-pictures of the various allied personalities and is followed, in Chapter 1, with a description of the politico-military situation in Europe prior to Napoleon's escape from the Mediterranean island of Elba. The Congress of Vienna is dealt with briefly, but there is nothing to validate the author's assertion that Britain was guilty, in the context of the tripartite treaty between Britain, Austria and France, of being "the architect of this anti-Prussian coalition." The tripartite treaty post-dated Russian bellicosity and Prussian mobilization. The Russians, pressing their territorial claims in Poland, found a willing partner in a politically subservient Prussia, whose support for Russia was motivated by the hope of Russian support for her own territorial claim to Saxony. The tripartite treaty, in which each signatory promised to support the others in the event of an attack by Russia and her Prussian ally, was a perfectly reasonable counter to the military threat from those two countries. This part of the book is the weakest and cannot hope to deal with the factual intricacies of the Congress of Vienna in hardly more than a page, let alone a perceived British lead anti-Prussian conspiracy, and yet it is fundamental to the apparent enmity between Britain in general, and Wellington in particular, that existed during the Hundred Days', and was, it seems, a contributory factor to the events that followed. The Russo-Prussian sabre-rattling was put aside in March 1815 when news broke that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and from here, Chapter 2, the book starts to take direction, and acquires more detail, with an account of the competition for German manpower. This is followed by a description of the Prussian army and Wellington's German contingents. This is all interesting background material, most of which, as far as I know, has not been dealt with in English before. Similarly the planning and preparations for defence of the Low Countries is fully described, much of which will also be new to the English reader, whilst the roles of the outposts and the intelligence war provide two fascinating chapters on aspects not often explored. Although the intelligence effort is much more comprehensive, technical and timely today, it is evident that the essential principles of collection and processing information, and dissemination of resulting intelligence, have changed little. What is also, clearly, unchanged is that for all sorts of reasons, from absence of essential elements of information to the preconceived ideas of those processing what they do have, and a variety of others in between, the wrong assessment of enemy intentions can easily be made. It was at this stage that Wellington's first errors appear. It is not until chapter nine, 161 pages into the book, that battle is joined and yet Wellington continues to "ponder the meaning of the information he was receiving". From here the emphasis of the book changes, gradually at first, until it culminates at Ligny and Quatre Bras in Chapter 13. Against the background of the military operations, which are described down to the tactical level in fascinating glimpses taken from eyewitness accounts, Hofschröer builds his case against Wellington, brick by brick. Some of the building material is, at first, conflicting, circumstantial, and drawn from accounts made some time after the events. Taken as whole, however, even before all the evidence is placed before the 'jury', it certainly appears that Wellington has a case to answer. One can, of course, take issue with Hofschröer's interpretation, or the weight he gives a particular piece of information over another, but there seems little doubt, if he has played fair with his research, which there is no reason to believe he has not, the only conclusion one can come to is that Wellington is guilty as charged. Professional analysis, in any context, requires three essential factors.
2. A transparent uniform thoroughness of analytical technique - lack of even handedness results in false conclusions. 3. Absence of preconception - preconceptions result in false conclusions. Without these three, any resulting assessment will lack cogency. On the whole, I think Hofschröer succeeds; his sources are impeccable and he does not exempt the Prussians from either criticism or blame. If there is one area where he fails it is probably the last, but this is entirely of his own making. It is unfortunate that in order to generate interest in the book he has, over the approximately four year gestation period, gone out of his way to stir up a reaction by, in my view, an ill-advised campaign that is bound to be interpreted, and indeed has, as anti-British in general and anti-Wellington in particular. The opening remarks in his preface will have the same effect and many will interpret it as a lack of impartiality. This, had he been writing for a German audience would not have mattered, but as Hofschröer's mother tongue is English, he has written it for an English one. The difficulty with historical analysis is that at this distance from the events being examined, it is impossible to know if all the documentary evidence it still available. In order to conclude that Wellington deliberately mislead Blücher, it is necessary to show motivation, means, will, and opportunity. This, in my view, Hofschröer does. What the reader has to hope is that the author has not ignored what does not support his particular point of view. There is, after all, no counsel for the defence in this trial. In spite of his disposition, my own view is that Hofschröer has given Wellington a fair enough run. The final chapter summarises the case against Wellington and is followed by appendices where all the vital pieces of evidence, and omissions, and the time-line, are tabulated in easily assimilated form. There are the obligatory orders of battle, a full and useful bibliography and a comprehensive index. Maps are excellent and other illustrations complementary to the text, largely portraits of the principal characters. principal characters. It was to be expected that the book which criticised a national icon would attract emotive responses, indeed, they were evident even before it was published. In general the book has been received well enough by those qualified and sensible enough to make constructive comment. There have, of course, been exceptions, one of which was a review in the Spectator, whose author recommended Hofschröer read Hamilton-Williams' discredited volume. This individual, therefore, can be discounted as a serious critic (as an aside, it makes you wonder what the qualifications are of most critics who write for national daily broadsheets and weekly literary magazines - apparently none at all, if this one is anything to go by). Hofschröer was always going to need to convince his audience through compelling argument. It is unfortunate that his disposition will, I fear, have gone nowhere in influencing the larger part of his potential readership to turn the first page, even out of curiosity. Persuasion is part-and-parcel of putting across a point of view and is not the same as brow-beating. There is, however, a lot more to this book than merely the case against Wellington. It is a new general history of the events leading up to the Hundred Days', which includes a seam of material that has not been mined before in English, and a detailed examination of military operations, at all levels of command immediately before and during the campaign. Regardless of what one might think of Hofschröer's views about Wellington, this book has far more to offer than that single strand. It is a unique and valuable addition to the Waterloo library. More Reviews
1815 The Waterloo Campaign (reviewed by Neil Carey) Piquet: Wargame Rules 1815 The Waterloo Campaign (reviewed by Phil Lawrence) (FE#40) Back to Table of Contents -- First Empire #41 Back to First Empire List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by First Empire. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com |