Quatre Bras
16th June 1815
Introduction
by Leon Parte
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The editor has asked me to dig something out to for the June
issue of First Empire, in my archive I found this pleasingly stirring anecdote of the action at Quatre Bras. Whilst the Prussians fought Napoleon at Ligny, Wellington’s army was being hotly engaged by Marshal Ney at Quatre Bras.
The position taken up by Wellington was not tactically strong, but strategically important, being the junction of the main road from Charleroi to Brussels, with the road running from Nivelles to Namur, by which latter Wellington and Blücher hoped to concentrate their armies. Between Frasnes and Quatre Bras there are no hedges or ditches worthy of mention except in the valley which divided the French and British positions. In this valley stand the manor house and farm buildings of Gemioncourt.
On the west side of the Charleroi-Brussels road was the Bois de Bossu, now cut down. Here rises a small stream which, flowing from west to east, passes north of Gemioncourt and forms a pond half a mile to the east of the road. Just south of this pond stands the hamlet of Piermont ; whilst at the southern edge of the Bossu wood is the farm of Pierrepont.
On either side of the stream, which was (and still is) bordered by thick hedges impassable for mounted troops, and through which infantry could move only in single file the ground rises sharply, thence undulating in the direction of Frasnes to the south, and to Quatre Bras on the north side. The scene of the battle, measuring from the southern edge of the Gemioncourt enclosure to the farm buildings at Quatre Bras, covered three-quarters of a mile, and on this small space, and in the wood of Bossu, the fight raged for five hours with alternating success.
The Bois de Bossu, though in some parts close and intricate, was found to be generally passable by cavalry in “ extended order “; whilst the standing crops of wheat and rye grass in the neighbouring fields provided sufficient cover to conceal the movements even of mounted troops.
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Netherlands Victory Quatre Bras 1815 [FE60]
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