The Shadow of Ligny:
Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview:
Tuesday 13 June 1815
Pfuel's Mission: The Classic Accounts
by John Hussey, UK
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So far as the evidence goes, there were only three men present at this meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, 13 June 1815: Wellington, Blücher's emissary Pfuel, and Major-General von Müffling who was Blücher’s chief liaison officer at Wellington's headquarters. No English writer has drawn up an account of the meeting, probably because the Duke himself never referred to it in his letters, despatches or memoranda, though (as I hope to show) Wellington's thoughts on this Tuesday can be established with reasonable certainty. However, two Prussian historians provided the classic accounts of the meeting. An early version had appeared in Major August Wagner's history, Plane der Schlachten und Treffen, 1813, 1814, 1815, volume iv (1825). He commented on p.11 that, following the sighting of French camp-fires overnight Tuesday/Wednesday 13/14 June 1815 Blücher began to concentrate his army by orders sent out 'in der nacht vom 14, zum 15' [overnight Wednesday/Thursday]. As we know, the French final approach-march began at 2.30 a.m. on Thursday the 15th. Meanwhile (p. 11):
This Wellingtonian ‘message’ is what became the Pfuel message. Immediately after Grolman and Müffling's rejoinders to Wellington's remarks to the Royal Commission on Prussian discipline, Major Karl von Damitz published his account of the 1815 campaign, Geschichte des Feldzugs von 1815 (two volumes 1837-38), based upon the papers of Grolman - who as Blücher’s QMG was Colonel von Pfuel’s immediate superior in 1815. On page 70 of the first volume, Damitz provided the definitive version of Pfuel’s mission:
Colonel Pfuel of Prince Blücher’s General Staff was sent to the Duke of Wellington in Brussels in order to agree with him once again the final measures to be taken [um mit demselben nochmals die leszten Maaszregeln zu verabreden]. The Duke seemed unconvinced that Napoleon would first attack the Prussians with his main force. Colonel Pfuel returned from Brussels on the 14th and brought the repeated assurance [wiederholte Versicherung] that the Duke would have concentrated his army according to circumstances at Quatre Bras or Nivelles, 22 hours after the first cannon-shot. The English general intended to have made his preparations in such a way that he could receive reports from the outposts in 6 hours; 8 hours were needed for the issue and transmission of orders; and 8 hours would be sufficient to bring together his troops on the battlefield. We can see by a comparison of the two authors that Wagner's account is fairly simple. There is no mention of any Prussian emissary or any meeting; there is nothing to say that Pfuel went to Brussels. Instead he suggests that the Duke initiated matters by ‘sending a message’; that this message had not been solicited by the Prussians; and that the message formed part of the events of Wednesday, 14 June because this part of Wagner's text is taken up with Prussian orders of the night of 14th/15th, immediately prior to Napoleon's attack. Two other points stand out: first, in writing of the distances between Ghent and Courtrai (the most westerly garrisons and cantonments of Wellington’s army) and a concentration point at Quatre Bras, Wagner can only mean that there could be no possible French threat in the west or against the supply route from the coast. This we know was not Wellington's view: Courtrai and Ostend were much in his mind. 7
To suggest that these westernmost units could cover 45 to 55 miles of cross-country roads in well under 22 hours (given that the receipt of news and transmission of orders would take several hours of the total 22) is militarily naive and, whatever Major Wagner may have been, Wellington was not militarily naive. Secondly, and more importantly, I suggest that the implication that the whole army’s attention was directed towards the east, towards Nivelles and especially Quatre Bras, is hindsight concerning events which at the material moment were in reality still in the future - of the events of Thursday 15 June and the decision to fight at Ligny on the 16th.
Damitz, basing himself on Grolman’s papers and perhaps also his advice, gives a slightly different interpretation of events. He identifies Pfuel (Grolman's immediate subordinate), places his visit in the context of the 13th, and definitely states his ‘return’ as being on the 14th. He gives the mission one single objective, to obtain the Duke's promise of support from his army ‘at Quatre Bras or Nivelles’: so that the hypothetical promise was not, as Wagner had stated, unsolicited. But it now becomes a ‘repeated assurance’ [wiederholte Versicherung], an emphasis which thus increases the ‘betrayal’ the Prussians felt entitled to mutter about after Ligny.
However, Damitz was not content with what up to that point seemed an account which, if not provable, was plausible. For he ‘improved’ it. If indeed it was true that news of Bonaparte’s departure from Paris reached Namur as early as Tuesday, 13 June, it was not true that orders were issued to Blücher's main army on that day and furthermore Grolman must have known that. The only movement order issued by the Prussians on the 13th was to Kleist’s non-battleworthy Federal Reserve Corps nearly 80 miles away in Aix-la-Chapelle, and it was instructed to move in the direction of Arlon near Luxembourg and not towards Liège or Namur.
Although Ziethen's I Corps was strung out along 30 miles of frontier, weak everywhere (like customs officers, in Napoleon's biting phrase for such cordons), no orders were issued to Blücher's central formations (II and III Corps) until mid-day on the 14th and Bülow’s IV Corps on the flank at Liège (and over 50 miles from the likely battlefront) was not sent orders until 11.30 p.m. on the 14th. Bülow did not receive those orders until 5 a.m. on Thursday the 15th, by which time Napoleon had already struck Ziethen. That is what history has to say of Damitz’s little manipulation: fears of attack surfaced in Namur only on the day of Pfuel’s return from his mission to Brussels, on the 14th.
At this stage, and before looking at other witnesses, let us simply note the following reservations about Damitz’s account. As no orders for the concentration of Blücher's army were drafted before noon on Wednesday, 14 June, there must be a doubt whether Pfuel's mission early on Tuesday had as sole objective the securing of a promise from Wellington on future concentration. And the additional problem is that there is no account from Pfuel himself; Damitz relied upon words from Grolman, a third party not present at the meeting - that is, upon hearsay. Hearsay and ‘improvement’, the
curses of historical writing, are given full rein by Damitz. 8
Yet von Pfuel was alive at this time, and indeed was soon to rise to the height of Minister-President of the Prussian government. He does not appear ever to have referred to his mission to Wellington. It is very curious. Damitz’s English contemporary Siborne makes a passing reference to plans for concentration in his History of the campaign (the text in the revised third edition, 1848, reprinted 1990, pp.20-21, 23, is identical to the first two editions), but he does not refer directly to any 13 June meeting. 9
Julius von Pflugk-Harttung touches very briefly on the Pfuel visit in his Vorgeschichte, 10 summarising the account in Damitz with its phrase about the Duke undertaking to reach Nivelles or Quatre Bras in 22 hours. He is not happy at having to rely upon a single Prussian source, Grolman as recorded by Damitz - and ‘one generally does not know where Grolman ends and Damitz begins’ - adding that Damitz was writing 20 years after the event. Moreover he is suspicious of the inclusion of the name ‘Quatre Bras’ in the message, pointing out that in no document written between 30 April and 15 June 1815 did Wellington ever mention that name in his instructions: ‘Quatre Bras first appeared early on 16 June’ [erst am 16. früh tritt Quatre-Bras in die Erscheinung]. Pflugk-Harttung suggests that hindsight could have been at work.
The Shadow of Ligny: Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview Tuesday 13 June 1815
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