The Shadow of Ligny:
Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview:
Tuesday 13 June 1815
The Third Man
by John Hussey, UK
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Of the three men who met in Wellington’s office on Tuesday, 13 June 1815, the Duke spoke fluent French but no German; it is nowhere stated whether Blücher's emissary Pfuel could speak English or French, but that he relied upon Müffling for communication with the Duke is plain from Lettow-Vorbeck’s account, so we may think that at the very least his French and English were limited. This means that the third man, Müffling, played a crucial part at the meeting. Müffling tells us that his studies of written English were not extensive and that he spoke to the Duke in French, and we know that Wellington habitually wrote to him in French, so that French was almost certainly the language in which this interview was conducted. 21
This Prussian Major-General and future Chief of the General Staff was an expert in topography, march times and administration, and thought the British staff at Brussels in 1815 lamentably deficient in these matters. Served by a large staff in his liaison office, he studied the quality and disposition of the Duke’s heterogeneous army, analysed the intelligence reports and speculated on the possibilities for the
forthcoming campaign. His letter written in Brussels on 11 June, which Gneisnau would have received on the 12th (i.e. the day before Pfuel came to Brussels from Namur) tells us much about British and Prussian thinking: In response to the message from General Ziethen which I gave to the Duke of Wellington, the latter told me he had definite indications that Napoleon had been in Paris on 7 June. This is confirmed by the ‘Moniteur’ of 7 June [see Wellington's assessment of 11 June above]. The accompanying messages were handed over to me by the Duke so that they might be communicated to HH Prince Blücher: they are important so far as the source is concerned and as confirmation that Napoleon’s forces are not so superior.
According to everything which has reached us so far as to Napoleon's guidelines [? to his subordinates] I am forced to assume that he will not attack first, but that perhaps as soon as he receives news of the opening of hostilities on the Upper Rhine he will try his luck against us. He would still have time (if his attack on us were successful) to take on the main forces. If however this turns out not to be his plan, then he has probably prepared a march from Laon against the Upper Rhine and will attack Prince Schwarzenberg with all the force he can spare. I therefore consider it important that someone [i.e. a Prussian agent] is sent to Rheims or, if possible, to Laon who will remain there until hostilities have begun and Bonaparte has joined the fray.
Midday: The Duke told me an hour ago when I was discussing the actions with him that he was not in the least concerned about an attack by Napoleon since he had finished his preparations, just as we had. I replied that there could be no more favourable turn of events for the Coalition than an attack on us by Napoleon. The Duke agreed completely and shared my view that we should have no ‘affair’ of any consequence this side of the Aisne - unless we surprised the French. 22
Müffling was no ill-informed cipher or dupe, and the fact that he was handed the incoming Intelligence and requested to send it to Blücher hardly supports the strange new idea that the Duke saw Blücher as a ‘rival’. 23
It is unlikely that the Duke himself said that the Prussians ‘had finished their preparations’: it must be Müffling's own opinion; but even if Wellington did say so it is certain that Müffling did not
disagree and it all conforms with the extremely complacent views expressed by Gneisnau which I have already quoted. The invasion of France dominated everyone's thinking. Müffling's letter written early on the 14th [see above] and carried back to Namur by Pfuel provided the Prussian high command with the Duke's answers to the questions about the timing and routes for the invasion, and added that all
French forces were reportedly assembling at Maubeuge, just south of the Duke's outposts. But that Müffling still remained confident in his own opinions is plain from the letter he wrote to Prussian headquarters on 15 June:
From General von Dörnberg's reports, a copy of one of which I enclose [that of 14 June, 3 p.m., reporting that ‘all the troops are concentrating on Maubeuge and Beaumont’, WSD, x, 477], the
information from Lieutenant-General von Ziethen is confirmed. The French newspapers of 12 June make it clear that Napoleon left Paris on the night 11/12 June, though where he has gone to is unknown.
As we were not attacked yesterday it seems that the enemy seeks to deceive us and masks his front the better to conceal his intended movements.
The King of France said yesterday to General Fagel who has arrived here that he had received reports of the resounding success of the royalists in the Vendée, who had taken Angers. However,
Napoleon has sent his entire Young Guard thither so it is to be feared that the Vendée will be put down before we can begin.
It could possibly be that Napoleon wishes to heighten our level of attention here in order to gain time, perhaps to take up a better adapted position than his present one, namely in the Centre, with his main army in the region of St[e] Menehould [in the Argonne, about 60 miles west of Metz], in order to attack us [i.e. the Prussians], the Austrians or the Russians. The Anglo-Batavian Army is, according to the enclosed Order of Battle [not found], deployed in such a way that the flanking Corps of Lord Hill [to the west along the Scheldt] and the Prince of Orange [southwards around two main
roads into France], in positions from Enghien, Braine-le-Comte to Nivelles, can be concentrated in a very short time. The Centre Corps - which more accurately should be called the Reserve - lies in and around Brussels and has 15,000 infantry and can move in any direction.
Should the enemy press forward between the sea and the Scheldt the army could go onto the offensive across the Scheldt [i.e. westward] at two points where bridgeheads have been made . If the
enemy should press forward on the right bank of the Meuse [against the eastern or Prussian sector], the Duke is ready either to cross the Meuse with us against the enemy, or (as I have proposed to him in certain circumstances) to go straight through the French [frontier] fortifications into the enemy’s rear. 24
This letter has been too harshly criticised for failing to guess what was then occurring 35 miles away. That criticism obscures what it does actually say:
(b) The Allies still hold the initiative; they are approaching the Rhine and ‘we’ will soon be ‘ready’ to invade.
(c) Preparations have been made for Wellington’s army to meet an attack upon western Belgium. The Duke's forces can also concentrate astride the Maubeuge-Mons-Brussels road (at Enghien, Braine-le-Comte) and the Maubeuge-Nivelles-Brussels road. All these zones are within the Duke’s sphere of responsibility.
(d) Although the Duke's sector is larger and his forces smaller than the Prussians', the Duke is not asking through Müffling (or his own liaison officer Hardinge) for any support.
(e) Müffling himself has made operational suggestions to Wellington against the possibility of an attack on the Prussians (and these have been sadly neglected by historians):
(ii) Despite Wagner and Damitz’s claims, there is no mention of any concentration point beyond Nivelles, nor a ‘22 hour concentration from the first cannon-shot’.. There is a further piece of Prussian evidence, written on Saturday, 17 June 1815 between noon and 2 p.m.. It is Gneisnau's report on the defeat at Ligny, which plainly implies that Wellington let the Prussians down, complaining
that: On the morning of the 16th, the Duke of Wellington promised that he would be at Quatre Bras (the junction between the Namur-Nivelles and Brussels-Charleroi roads) around 10 a.m. [um 10
Uhr] with 20,000 men, the cavalry at Nivelles. Everyone admits (the Duke himself did so in his Despatch of 19 June 1815) that Welling-ton's main force did not begin reaching his Netherlands units at Quatre Bras until about 2.30 to 3 p.m.. But in the light of Gneisnau’s complaint the question must be asked, at what locality had the Prussians asked Wellington to concentrate?
And the answer is in Ziethen's authentic letter of 8.15 a.m. on the 15th and in Müffling's authentic letter of 7 p.m. that same day: they asked him to concentrate ‘in the region of Nivelles’. Quatre Bras was not mentioned in any Prussian message on the 15th. Had the Prussians not abandoned Gosselies without warning, the little Anglo-Allied force at Quatre Bras, 7 miles further north, would never have come under unexpected attack that evening and the famous cross-roads might have remained unknown to history. Gneisnau is being disingenuous here. But this is a digression from the ‘Pfuel question’.
What is so interesting is that on 17 June Gneisnau - to whom Müffling had written on the morning of Wednesday the 14th concerning the discussions at the Pfuel meeting, and to whom Pfuel had probably spoken after his return - did not state or suggest that Wellington had made a recent promise to concentrate at Quatre Bras ‘within 22 hours of the first cannon-shot’.
25
It is a telling commentary on Damitz.
Müffling’s memoirs are scarcely a contemporary source, being written nearly 30 years after the event, completed in old age in 1844, and published posthumously in Germany in 1851 - too late for examination by Siborne, who had died in 1849. They cannot equal in value his authentic letters of June 1815 but they do offer a degree of corroboration both in terms of what they describe, what they emphasise - and what they find too unimportant to mention. For instance, the memoirs make no mention of Pfuel or any meeting on 13 June; on the other hand they do touch on time-calculations made
for concentration, though in an interpretation very different from Wagner and Damitz. Lest confusion of thought should creep back here it is important to recall the Duke's responsibilities.
While the Duke may have thought that because of his more extensive network, his sources would identify any impending attack on the Prussians as successfully as Prussian sources could, he would surely expect the Prussians to handle Intelligence of movements along their own front with a degree of competence.
26
He was not responsible - it cannot be said too often - for the Prussian 50-mile sector, because Prussian sensitivities forbade it. His executive responsibility related exclusively to his own hundred miles of front. His primary defensive responsibility was to guard against an attack from Lille, Valenciennes and Maubeuge against Ostend, Courtrai, Tournai and Mons. His conversations with Müffling must be read in those terms. On page 220 of his memoirs Müffling refers to this matter:
The Duke learned through me that the espionage of Prince Blücher was badly organized, while he believed himself to be very secure on this point, and expected to hear immediately from Paris everything indicating a march against the Netherlands.
Having given the context and the overall assumptions Müffling immediately describes the practical considerations and the time-calculations which an army staff must always undertake - and here we do at last notice something reminding us of Wagner’s and Damitz’s accounts: Relying on this assurance the movements of the combined Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army were arranged, and the hours calculated [und die Stunde berechnet], from the moment the cavalry orderlies were dispatched from Brussels [vom Augenblick der Absendung der Cavallerie-Ordonnanzen aus Brüssel], to the time which the army would take to assemble at one or other of the three [different] places of rendezvous [drei verschiedenen Rendezvous]. The calculations themselves were not known to me; but, as was ultimately seen, they
were made on the assumption that the orders for assembling the troops could be transmitted at the rate at which they could be delivered by day, but not by night [am Tage, und nicht in der Nacht]. This mistake occurs too often in calculations. In dark nights orderlies cannot ride fast on cross [-country] roads; in the various cantonments they find everyone sunk in deep slumber; and delay in arriving at the rendezvous is the inevitable consequence of a calculation grounded on the time it will take to execute an order by day and not by night. 27
In terms of the correct interpretation of the Pfuel meeting this recollection by a participant:
(2) Confirms that various time-calculations existed, even though Müffling did not know the bases of them except that they were for daylight conditions and were drawn up on the assumption that the
intelligence would come through Wellington’s own command chain through British-controlled or Bourbon sources.
(3) Makes no reference to a special ‘22 hours’ formula.
(4) Makes plain that the staff calculations were not based on the time of a distant cannon-shot, nor upon the moment of news reaching Brussels, nor on the time when the Duke drafted his orders, but
upon the time when the orders - hand-copied for each subordinate command HQ - ‘were dispatched from Brussels’. 28
(5) Makes it self-evident that the belated actual time of arrival of the news in Brussels upset the calculations from the very outset by entailing the copying of orders in the early evening and their transmission after dark. Müffling's memoirs differ from Wagner and Damitz in one further and most significant point. He states that on Ziethen's report of the French attack arriving in Brussels in the afternoon of Thursday, 15 June - that is, only 48 hours after the Pfuel interview on Tuesday: I put the question to him [the Duke], Whether and where he would concentrate his army [Ob und wo er seine Armee zusammenziehen werde] , as in consequence of this news, Field-Marshal Blücher would concentrate his forces at Ligny, if he had not already taken up this position. 29
Müffling remembered (p.228 original, 229 English) the Duke's reply as being: If all is as General von Ziethen supposes, I will concentrate on my left wing, i.e. the corps of the Prince of Orange; I shall
then be à portée [within reach] to fight in conjunction with the Prussian army. Should, however, a portion of the enemy's forces come by Mons, I must concentrate more towards my centre.
For this reason I must positively wait for news from Mons before I fix the rendezvous. Since, however, the departure of the troops is certain and only the place of rendezvous remains uncertain, I will order all to be in readiness, including the Brunswick corps in reserve, and will direct a brigade of light cavalry to march at once to Quatre Bras.
(b) To the question ‘where’, the Duke wanted more news from Mons before committing himself (perhaps wisely, perhaps fatally) to one specific rendezvous point.
(c) Since the Prussian liaison officer knew that three different rendezvous points had been studied he can hardly have been surprised (and certainly did not appear so in his memoirs of 1844) at Wellington's response to ‘where?’.
(d) On 15 June 1815 Müffling had written to Namur that the Duke's forces in the west, in reserve around Brussels, and in the south ‘in positions from Enghien, Braine-le-Comte to Nivelles, can be
concentrated in a very short time’. He did not mention Quatre Bras, for of course that name only became famous due to later events. 30
Again hindsight is traceable in the mention of 'Quatre Bras' in these memoirs.
(e) Neither Müffling’s clear question, nor Wellington's clear answer, is posited on the ‘22 hour’ undertaking, or any ‘hours’ at all. Neither at the time nor later did General Müffling, the high-ranking representative of Prince Blücher, remind Wellington of anything said to Pfuel, or express outrage, concern or even surprise at the Duke's apparent total disregard of the Wagner ‘promise’ and the Damitz ‘repeated assurance’ made on the 13th. It is like the dog that Sherlock Holmes noted ‘did not bark in the night’: neither the dog nor Müffling heard anything wrong or strange. In summary the documents written by Müffling in June 1815 and his later recollections do not support the Wagner and Damitz accounts with their 22 hours to Nivelles or Quatre Bras. Their versions increasingly look as though they depend on a recollection, or the recollection of a recollection, which crystallised after Quatre Bras had become 'notorious' in Prussian minds as the British ‘false excuse' whereby ‘Wellington failed to support - or in their minds maybe never tried to support - Prince Blücher at Ligny on 16 June 1815’.
The Pfuel mission to Brussels on 13 June 1815 has usually been seen as a Prussian request for help which received an extremely precise positive reply from Wellington: within 22 hours of the first cannon-shot he and his men would be at Quatre Bras. I have shown that this interpretation comes from two Prussian historians in particular and that their presentation of the object of the mission and what was said is deeply flawed. It is flawed by a misstatement in Damitz where he anticipates the date when Prussian concern led to orders for concentration being issued, a misstatement all the worse since he had use of the Prussian QMG’s papers. It is flawed by failure to recognise that the mission was to discuss the invasion of France by the Allies. It is flawed by the clear endeavour to depict discussion as turning upon an eastward concentration on Quatre Bras when authentic contemporary evidence shows that many options for concentration were under consideration. It is flawed by promoting what
at best was a minor obiter dictum on concentration times - and hearsay at that - into the sole topic of the meeting.
It is flawed by Prussian obsession with the ‘wrongs’ of Ligny on 16 June and their rage that Wellington - who, be it noted, occupied a large wing of the French army and stopped it joining Napoleon - did not reach Ligny and save 83,000 Prussians from defeat by 63,000 Frenchmen. It is flawed by hindsight, by the shadow of Ligny.
It is right to praise the Prussian Staff historian of 1904, General von Lettow-Vorbeck, for his honesty in placing the Pfuel mission in its true context. It is right to recognise the contribution of Pflugk-Harttung. It is right to recognise that what Müffling wrote in June 1815 was not complacent foolishness but, when examined by the light of the actual day and not of
hindsight, provides a full and valuable commentary on the ideas and events of the day. It is right to study the Pfuel mission in the light of those writings.
And so this study of an ostensibly minor affair, of the brief mission by Colonel von Pfuel, sheds new light on the immediate antecedents to the Waterloo campaign and removes a 19th Century Prussian slur on the reputation of the Duke of Wellington.
1 Blücher's ADC Nostitz claimed that Gneisnau and Grolman, the COS and QMG, had studied and liked the Ligny position and were encouraged by their staff to an almost 'fanatical fondness' for it (see the passage from his 'Tagebuch' quoted in Uffindell, The Eagle's Last Triumph, 1994, p.194). However, in qualitative terms Napoleon considered a Frenchman worth two Prussians or Confederate Germans or Dutchmen as against one Englishman (Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de France en 1815 (1820), p.59).
The Shadow of Ligny: Hindsight and the Wellington-Pfuel Interview Tuesday 13 June 1815
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