Conversations with the
Duke of Wellington
A Commentary
by John Hussey, UK
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There is so much of interest in this account that one could discuss each paragraph in considerable detail, but for the present I shall limit comment to a few passages. 1. IntelligenceI showed in my previous article how Wellington Supplementary Despatches confirm Dörnberg's account and demonstrate that he was active and efficient in his Intelligence role: they thus support this manuscript's general credibility. Certainly the information from about 11 June onwards is very good indeed. If we accept the recollection of the meeting with
Clinton on 14 June as accurate (para 2), as in light of WSD I think we should, then it is a further disproof of the old Napier story of Dörnberg picking and choosing and rejecting information. [10]
We have seen that Dörnberg was baffled in 1837 when he read the Prussian historian Damitz's claim that the first contact message reached the Duke at midnight (para 3, first additional note). Many others have likewise been baffled, and indeed misled, by this claim. For if we study closely what Dörnberg wrote in his account and place authentic June 1815 evidence alongside, we may conclude that the
Duke received this and other Dutch Intelligence by about 5 p.m. and that the Prussian account is here in error.
We should initially note that Dörnberg does not say in his account (para. 3) that he sent 'messages in the plural (which would be 'Meldungen), or a first (erste) message; he says he sent the message and sent it early, before he rode from Mons to check what was happening at Binche. This can only be Dörnbergs letter from Mons at 9.30 a.m. on 15 June 1815 to Lord Fitzroy Somerset, the
Duke's Military Secretary, which concludes with a postscript I just hear the Prussians were attacked. Just as with the Prussian front-line commander, Ziethen's, first message to Blücher in Namur, written at 4.45 a.m. that morning, the vital point was to convey the news with the utmost speed rather than to wait for further information to trickle in before informing headquarters.
Ziethen's message to Namur was exiguous, but it was sufficiently clear to alert the Prussian C-in-C that the campaign was starting; similarly, Dörnberg's postscript would have been sufficient to induce a call to concentrate by his own C-in-C. From Charleroi to Namur is 24 miles and it was at 9 a.m. that Blücher replied to Ziethen 'I have just received your message'. Dörnberg was some 34 miles from Brussels and his message had to pass via I Corps HQ at Braine-le-Comte, 13 miles from Mons, which means that it should have reached Braine well before noon, and might be expected therefore to reach Brussels in the early afternoon.
Dörnberg rode from Mons to find out what was happening at Binche so that he was absent from the town for several hours on a 22-mile round journey: he says he finally left Mons 'towards evening'. But there was a resident Dutch governor of Mons, Baron Behr, whose duty was to hold the town, and during Dörnberg's absence Behr had sent additional news to Braine. When Dörnberg returned to Mons later in the day the two men must have exchanged further information, and I suggest that Dörnberg found that Behr's letter had already forwarded such additional news as he himself had gleaned during his expedition.
Meanwhile the GOC 3rd Netherlands Division, General Chassé, quartered near Binche, wrote to Braine-le-Comte (about 11 miles away) at '11 a.m.' with news of the French attack, and at some unstated time during the morning the Netherlands officer Paravicini, at St Symphorien (and about 12 miles from Braine), sent a report to Braine with similar information. The Braine 'in-register' shows that Paravicini's message was received immediately after that sent at 11 a.m. by Chassé, and the two messages had roughly the same distance to travel. Thus by the early afternoon there had arrived in Braine a written message from Dörnberg (timed 9.30 a.m.), a letter from Behr (written slightly later), a message from Chassé (timed 11 a.m.) followed by a message received from Paravicini.
[11]
As Dörnberg correctly states (para 2), all Intelligence was required by standing orders to go first to the Prince of Orange at Braine before going on to the Duke; when Behr had begun sending information directly to Brussels the Duke had issued a rebuke, 8 May, and laid down very clearly the process to be followed in order that his corps commander on the Mons-Brussels road should be kept fully informed. [12]
But this presupposed that the corps commander would be at his post and not, in later parlance, 'swanning off'. Yet the Prince had, in effect, disappeared. At around 5 a.m. on the 15th he had ridden out from Braine to the outposts, heard no firing of any kind, gave his outposts normal patrolling orders, and at 8.30 a.m. rode directly for Brussels without any idea that battle was raging towards Charleroi. According to de Constant Rebecque's journal (Chief of Staff to the Prince) many of the staff were unaware that the Prince was not at his HQ, and when messages began to come in Constant says that he
decided to keep the Prince's absence secret (a significant comment about the Prince's conduct), and it should therefore not surprise us that officers in Mons shared that ignorance.
The Prince had still not appeared in Braine by the afternoon. At 2 o'clock p.m. and at Constant's request Berkeley, a British staff of-ficer at Braine, wrote a letter to Fitzroy Somerset, which reads in full:
My dear Lord, HRH the Prince of Orange having set out at 5 o'clock this morning for the advanced posts and not being returned, I forward the enclosed letter from General Dörnberg. General Constans desires I would inform you that the reports just arrived from different quarters state that the Prussians have been attacked upon their line in front of Charleroi; that they have evacuated Binche, and meant to collect first at Gosselies. Everything is quiet upon our front; and the 3rd division of the Netherlands [Chassé] is collected at Fay[t]. He sends you also the copy of a letter from the commandant at Mons [Behr]. I remain etc [13]
Dörnberg had not mentioned any place-names or troop movements in his postscript. Behr (in a letter that we can see had been delivered to Braine and not Brussels) had written of an attack on 'Charleroi' and of everything being 'tranquil' in front of the Dutch; Chassé had written that the Prussians 'had' abandoned 'Binche' and that he had assembled his 3rd division at 'Fayt'; Paravicini had written of an attack on 'Charleroi' of the Prussian 'intention' to evacuate 'Binche' and fall back on 'Gosselies' behind the Piéton river. Thus at 2 p.m. all this information, plus Dörnberg's letter and a copy of Behr's, was sent to the Duke, carried at top speed by Captain Lord March, heir to the Duke of Richmond. The well-mounted March should have been able to cover the 21 miles in three hours, arriving at about 5 p.m.. That time of arrival is established by the Duke's precautionary 'First Orders', which are timed '5 p.m.' and from the confirmatory information in the Württemberger General von Hügel's letter to his
king, timed 'Brussels, 6 p.m.' on that day. [14]
As Dörnberg's letter was received in Brussels by 5 p.m., how did this 'midnight' story become current? The Prussian Major von Damitz's book of 1837 drew upon the papers of Blücher's QMG Grolman, but Grolman was not in Brussels on 15 June but 40 miles away in Namur and so could only have recorded hear-say. The Prussian who was there was the chief liaison officer Major-General von Müffling.
Writing in the 1840s Müffling produced reminiscences which, though detailed, sometimes betray a confusion of memory and so require checking against evidence about which there is no doubt. For 15 June he produced an unsustainable timetable for the first receipt of news of the French attack on Charleroi, since his recollected times are totally at variance with those recorded in Hügel's 6 p.m. letter and
Müffling's own letter to Blücher, written at 7 p.m. that evening.
Müffling's recollections continue: 'towards midnight' the Duke told him that 'I have got news from Mons, from General Dörnberg, who reports that Napoleon has turned towards Charleroi with all his forces, and that there is no longer any enemy in front of him . . .'. [15]
We have already seen that all the information which Müffling recollected here was contained in Berkeley's 2 p.m. letter and enclosures and we should note that his wording is almost identical to Behr's letter which Berkeley had forwarded.
Moreover, although Wellington's 5 p.m. First Orders were for most of the army to concentrate 'in readiness to march', with the Prince of Orange's corps instructed to reinforce the Nivelles sector, Wellington's 10 p.m. 'After Orders' required all formations (save the remote west flank guard) to march towards the threatened sector adjacent to the Prussian zone. And 10 p.m. is not 'towards midnight' in military parlance, so that Müffling is demonstrably wrong to claim that Dörnberg's report came two hours after Wellington's second set of orders, or to imply that there was a delay of seven hours in the receipt of the Intelligence. 'Midnight' is an old man's unintentional slur upon the highly efficient Dörnberg. It is time it was wiped away.
Dörnberg's account (para 3) invalidates any claim that there is 'no evidence' for a decision to march to Quatre Bras until after midday on 16 June. Moreover he is absolutely insistent that the order was given very early in the day, and cites Picton's time of arrival at Quatre Bras as proof of it, i.e. the time needed to march there from the end of the forest of Soignies. When Clausewitz's study appeared in 1835 Dörnberg deliberately added his second note to para 3 to correct the Prussian claim. In any case Clausewitz was generalising from the Brye meeting of the afternoon of 16 June and did not know know what was said in Brussels that morning, as he was then marching from Namur with Prussian III Corps in a dash to reach Sombreffe.
In section 2 of this commentary we saw that by 5 p.m. on 15 June Wellington in Brussels had heard of a morning attack on Charleroi; of calm in the Mons area; of the abandonment of the Prussian post at Binche on the Maubeuge-Brussels road, thus uncovering Nivelles; of the 3rd Netherlands Division moving to Fayt to restore cover to Nivelles; and of the Prussian intention to hold the river Piéton covering the next radial road from Brussels, that going via Quatre Bras and Gosselies to Charleroi. Wellington's First or 5 p.m. Orders on 15 June required Picton's 5th Division and the Hanoverian Brigade of the 6th Division to be in readiness to march from Brussels at a moment's notice; at 10 p.m. these troops -- and the Brunswick and Nassau troops -- were ordered as soon as assembled to march on the Namur road, not to the village of Waterloo, but beyond it 'to the point where the road to Nivelles separates' [i.e. the fork at Mont St Jean (a) going to Nivelles, (b) going to Quatre Bras and Charleroi or Namur]. [16]
We know that Ziethen informed Blücher at 8.15 a.m. that morning that he had asked for Wellington 'to concentrate around Nivelles', i.e. on the Binche-Brussels road and we know that Wellington did, in fact, order the Prince of Orange's forces to concentrate there. [17]
And let us note that Quatre Bras, 5 miles to the east of Nivelles, is on the main Charleroi-Gosselies-Brussels road and thus supposedly covered by Prussian forces.
Until the evening of 15 June no commander or staff officer in Wellington's army knew that the Prussians had abandoned their positions on the river Piéton or at Gosselies. The Netherlanders at Quatre Bras under the youthful German Saxe-Weimar only discovered their ally's disappearance when the French attacked them. Saxe-Weimar called for help and his Dutch superior at Nivelles promptly responded. It was only at about midnight, during the Richmond Ball, that Constant Rebecque's 10 to 10.30 pm message arrived with young Webster, telling Orange that the French 'had pushed as far as Quatre Bras' and that Constant was shoring up the position. Orange recorded that at first Wellington could not believe the news, for the entire situation had undergone an appalling change due to his
Prussian ally's failure to keep him informed of plans and movements. Wellington kept remarkably silent on that point (one knows how Gneisnau would have lashed out in such a situation). Thus belatedly did Brussels hear of any danger at Quatre Bras. [18]
And so the Duke's 10 p.m. orders required amendment, but it was already midnight and therefore merely verbal orders had to be given.
There was no way that Wellington could interpret Constant's message other than 'that there would most probably be a battle that day [16 June] at Quatre Bras', just as Dörnberg records in his manuscript. Indeed, Wellington told the Prince of Orange before the latter left Brussels just after midnight that he would support the Prince's forces in the area with a re-inforcement of '17 battalions' from his Brussels Reserve, directed 'to Quatre Bras', and this information the Prince repeated to a Prussian Major von Brünneck a few hours later. [19]
Thus the Prince was clear as to the Duke's intentions. Picton had begun to march at first light, some time around 2.30 to 3 a.m.. The arrival of Dörnberg soon after 4 a.m. allowed the Duke to make doubly sure that Picton did not end his march at the Mont St Jean fork (10 p.m. orders) and unless we entirely dismiss Brünneck's and Dörnberg's testimony on what must have been for each of them a key event in the campaign, first just after midnight and again before 5 a.m. Wellington stated his intention to hold and reinforce Quatre Bras.
But if we accept Brünneck's second-hand and Dörnberg's first-hand accounts of what the Duke 'said' he was going to do, the question remains: 'did he do it?' And we see that Dörnberg is quite definite that he did deliver his message, for he says that the head of Picton's column was beginning to march onward to Quatre Bras by the time Wellington came up (para 3). He does not mention a time, and this
is certainly a problem, though it cannot have been later than mid-morning, because the Duke had reached Frasnes (a dozen miles beyond the forest) at about 10.30 a.m. and because, as the head of Picton's force was on the battlefield of Quatre Bras by 2.45 p.m., over ten miles beyond the edge of the forest, it must have been some four or more hours on the road from Waterloo.
[20]
Space limitations preclude a detailed examination of the march to Quatre Bras and the various inconsistencies thrown up by various recollections of different participants: I intend to direct full attention to that in further articles. [21]
But what I think we must say is that - unless we want to accuse Dörnberg of wilful lying, and for a motive which one cannot begin to imagine -- Dörnberg did see Wellington, did receive an instruction so momentous that it would be impossible to forget i.e. to order Picton to Quatre Bras, and did deliver it to Picton before the Duke caught up with the column. We may add that Dörnberg stated it first in his
account, and subsequently repeated it in denial of the Prussian hypothesis that the order was given only later in the day. Given the accuracy of his record I think we should accept his repeated word here. [22]
No two accounts of the Brye meeting agree in every detail, but the discussions seem to have been about three main points:
(a) the whereabouts of the French army and any detachments, and the likely direction of a French attack;
(b) the strength and intentions of Blücher;
(c) the strength and whereabouts of Wellington's forces and the way they might assist the Prussians. [23]
Not every person present left an account and it is uncertain if all who wrote accounts were present as eye-witnesses. Of the Sombreffe group, Blücher left no account, nor it would seem did Gneisnau, while the QMG Grolman's remarks are merely as reported by the historian Damitz and - for reasons which I shall give later - may be Damitz's and not Grolman's. The Chief of Staff I Corps, Reiche,
left an account, and 50 years after the event so did the ADC Nostitz. [24]
It seems that Clausewitz (COS III Corps) was not present, and his account is merely a synthesis of other Prussians' recollections. [25] All the foregoing were
Prussians, but the Bavarian attaché to Blücher, Thurn und Taxis, likewise left an account. Of the other group, Wellington never wrote any account, [26] and his ADC Alexander Gordon died at Waterloo. But three men did. Fitzroy Somerset wrote some brief private comments in the winter of 1815/16. Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer to Wellington, left three accounts, the earliest in 1815 (his History - see my Appendix), his Memoirs of 1844 (published in 1851), and a short letter of 1849 to General Hofmann, which the latter printed in
his own History of 1851. Of these I shall use the Memoirs as being the fullest.
Thirdly there is the Hessian Dörnberg, whose first-hand account has value precisely because it was written by someone who could speak German, French and English and who was on friendly terms
with Blücher and Gneisnau and Wellington.
To place in context what was said it is important to fix the time of this conference. Fitzroy Somerset says Wellington left Quatre Bras by noon and had returned there from Brye by 2.30pm, and the majority of Prussian sources say that the Brye meeting began at 1 pm and lasted about 30, or at most 40, minutes, and that by the time Wellington left the French massed advance on St Amand was becoming plain. As we know, the battle of Ligny commenced at 2.30 p.m.. Given that by noon the Brussels group had already ridden their horses for some 25 miles and knew the animals faced a strenuous afternoon and evening, a speed of 5 mph to and from Brye would fit these estimates of the time when the meeting was held.
(a) Where were the French were and what might they do?
Not all the accounts address this question - Clausewitz, Nostitz and Thurn und Taxis do not - but Reiche says that during the conference Wellington became convinced that 'the bulk' of the French threatened the Ligny position ('us') and not that of Quatre Bras, [27] and so there 'could thus not be any [sic] further doubts as to the enemy's intentions' -- an assessment which not only indicates the Duke's continuing uncertainty about French forces not in the Ligny sector but also shows how little the Prussians had grasped Napoleon's intentions for Ney. Grolman (or Damitz) says virtually the same thing, that on seeing the French advance the Duke 'at last seem[ed] to accept that Napoleon was moving with the bulk of his forces against the Prussians'. Müffling, who in Passages (p.235, ad 2) indicates his own concern over the Quatre Bras situation, simply says that Wellington (and presumably Blücher) watched the French attacking columns moving on St Amand. Somerset says 'the Duke and Blücher saw the French in great force advancing towards the Prussians and the Duke observed to Blücher he would soon be attacked'. Dörnberg's para 7 supports the first part of Somerset's statement but does not mention the Duke's observation.
Thus the predominant impression given by the Prussian accounts is that there was thought to be hardly any danger at Quatre Bras - when in reality 21,000 French troops under Ney were about to attack there.
(b) The strength and intentions of Blücher.
Nobody mentions any discussion about the strength of the Prussian force at Ligny, or its condition. Reiche, Clausewitz, Grolman (or Damitz), Nostitz, Thurn und Taxis say precisely -- nothing. One name of great significance is not even whispered: Bülow. Blücher knew by early morning on the 16th that due to badly-drafted orders and a series of mishaps Bülow's IV Corps was at that time still almost 50 miles away.
Did the Prussian high command inform Müffling? Müffling states in his memoirs that while still at Frasnes, i.e. around 10.30 a.m., 'a report had come to me [sic] that the Prussian army was assembling at Ligny' but again he seems unaware of the mishap over IV Corps, and so we must assume that nobody told Wellington that one quarter of the Prussian army, was still lacking to the order of battle.
[28]
Somerset's and Dörnberg's silence on Prussian strength and intentions tends to support the impression that nothing was disclosed to them.
As to Prussian intentions, Müffling writes that by the time the Duke's party reached Brye, Blücher's army corps 'had just been allocated their positions', which were so close to the enemy that sudden disengagement would have been difficult. Such proximity may mean that, despite later claims to the contrary, even before the Duke came to Brye all plans and instructions were based upon the intention to do battle and that the absence of IV Corps had not altered this. And if Nostitz is to be believed Gneisnau and Grolman had carefully selected the site, and the staff officer who had 'carefully reconnoitred
and surveyed the chosen battlefield [erwählte Schlachtfeld], and had described in such vivid colours its many advantages as to have given rise to an almost fanatical liking [eine fast schwärmerische Liebhaberei] for it, which the objections of the other members of the Headquarters, among them myself, could in no way modify'. [29]
This almost fanatical liking, coupled with Blücher's inherent lust for battle, the prestige that would accrue primarily to Prussia if it was her army which won the decisive victory of the campaign - to say nothing of the probability that by noon, had the Prussians then decided to retreat so as to avoid battle, it would almost certainly have involved the final destruction of Ziethen's Corps as rearguard -- all this underlay Prussian thinking during the conference, even though it was unspoken. In effect the die had already been cast.
(c) The strength and whereabouts of Wellington's forces and the way they might assist the Prussians.
What was it that Gneisnau wanted? Such German accounts as go into detail indicate that two proposals were considered: a move eastward from Quatre Bras by Wellington to join the right flank of the Prussians at Ligny; alternatively a thrust due south, brushing aside the French at Frasnes and seizing the cross-roads where the Roman Road crosses the main Charleroi road (between Frasnes and Gosselies), taking the French from behind their left wing. Müffling tells in considerable detail how he himself (and the Duke) proposed such a southward thrust. Damitz (ostensibly speaking for Grolman) even states that the southern thrust was agreed: 'they agreed on the way in which they would support each other, this being a movement by the Duke's available forces, if not his whole army, via Frasnes towards Gosselies to take the enemy in the flank and rear, and that this movement would have to be accomplished by 4 p.m. that afternoon', and that 'after 5 p.m.' any 'direct assistance to the Prussian right flank
would be left to the Duke to determine according to circumstances and the Duke's judgement'.
This is a puzzling statement, for on the one hand Damitz claims that Gneisnau wanted Wellington to move south and that both men agreed to this, when all other sources say Gneisnau successfully insisted on an eastward move; on the other hand he claims that any direct assistance to the Prussian right flank was an option entirely conditional on the Duke's judgement. Is this confusion due to Grolman or Damitz, and what does it say about their grasp of events?
Of course had there really been only weak French forces at Frasnes, such a thrust southwards could well have been a truly decisive stroke against the rear of a French army by now fully engaged by the Prussians to its front, but it would take some time to arrange and implement. Knowing that Bülow could not reach the field, Gneisnau must have considered the Franco-Prussian balance of forces less favourable than he had hoped. Hence he was averse to a southern thrust although he admitted it would give 'the greatest result' (Dörnberg, para 5) [30] and
instead, as Dörnberg and Müffling both state quite independently, Gneisnau insisted an eastward move towards Brye.
Interestingly, Müffling says that 'I did not know what he had against my proposal': surely it must have been the time factor which would compound the existing problem of Bülow's delay. Reiche says
that the Duke promised 'substantial support and assistance', and Clausewitz writes that Wellington 'galloped' away saying that his forces would be 'here' (which can only mean Brye) by 4 p.m.. Thurn und Taxis says that the Duke promised to 'send [sic] 20,000 men . . . by 3 o'clock', and the figure of '20,000' is a correct statement of what was actually on the road from Mont St Jean, although the word 'send' must mean 'leaving Quatre Bras by 3 p.m.', not arriving at Brye at 3 p.m., for the recollected words were supposedly spoken at Brye at about 1.30 p.m.. [31]
So it would appear that when Wellington spoke of 'assistance' it was in terms of the Brussels reserve he had ordered forward to Quatre Bras between 4 and 5 a.m.. Again, Müffling says that as the meeting started he spoke briefly with Gneisnau to give him an outline of the Duke's intentions, so there should have been no confusion. But in his Passages, p.235, Müffling says that he knew the British reserve could only just reach Quatre Bras by 4 p.m., and therefore not reach Brye by 6 p.m. (in fact Picton's force began to arrive at Quatre Bras at 2.45 p.m.!); he also seemed to think that Hill's II
Corps ('the right wing') covering the Scheldt sector was to be included in the day's battle. But most curious of all, he maintains that he knew that morning that the Duke's assumptions as to the whereabouts of all his scattered units and their expected times of arrival were erroneous [32], and diplomatically sorted it out between Gneisnau and the Duke at the Brye meeting
(Passages, pp.234-6).
Finally, there is the question of conditions affecting circumstances. Müffling says that Wellington on the way to Brye remarked 'If, as it seems, what the enemy has standing at Frasnes opposite Quatre Bras, is so insignificant, and should only mask the English army,then I can use my entire strength to support the Field-Marshal [Blücher]' (my emphasis). He notes that the Duke ended the meeting by saying 'I will come so long as I am not attacked myself' -- which seems entirely understandable. [33]
After all, there had been fighting around Frasnes in the morning and it was conceivable that it might flare up again. We have seen that Prussian accounts have shown the Duke as initially very doubtful as to the true disposition of Napoleon's forces; Dörnberg seems to have thought that this doubt remained even at the end of the meeting (without saying anything to indicate either one way or the other what his decision was and without giving any promise), and he adds a most significant statement: that Wellington said, The reasoning is sound. I will see what is against me and how much of my Army has come
up, and shall act accordingly. [34]
Those who claim that at Brye Wellington gave the Prussians a detailed statement of where his troops were, a statement that he secretly knew to be false, ignore this simple and straightforward phrase 'how much of my Army has come up'. It does make a difference. The remainder of Dörnberg's account calls for little comment, though it provides an insight into the Duke's mind as they rode away and the
sound of gunfire grew louder (paras 6 and 8). It is confirmed by Somerset's brief record of their return to Quatre Bras. [35] Dörnberg is clear, balanced, and fairly
detailed in his account. He shows no discernible bias. Judged against documents which he could not have known about, or which were unpublished in his lifetime, he stands the test very well. I should like to think that I have demonstrated to any English readers previously unaware of his record, that Major-General Sir Wilhelm von Dörnberg was an accurate, intelligent and truthful man, who fully deserved the
confidence Blücher and Gneisnau and the Duke placed in him. [36]
Conversations with the Duke of Wellington Dörnbergs Account of the Start of the Waterloo Campaign
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