Hofschroer is the author of the recently published - 1815 - The Waterloo Campaign: Wellington, his German Allies and the Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras." (Greenhill Books).

Q - There may be some of our readers who know you only through your books and articles, and might be under the impression that you are German. In fact, you are a Londoner, born close to the Old Kent Road. Can you give us some idea of your background?

A - One of my early memories as a child is being taken to nursery school upstairs on a No 42 bus going past the Thomas a' Beckett pub where I could see Our 'Enery training. I probably saw him practise how he knocked down Muhammad Ali. No, I am not offering any prizes for the first right guess as to my age.

Q - With your father having served in the Luftwaffe, how much of a military tradition is there in your family? Have you carried out any research to see if an ancestor fought in the Napoleonic Period?

A - As conscription has existed in Germany for many years, I suppose most fit males of my family have done their military service. I know my great-grandfather worked for the Royal Prussian railways, if that counts. My grandfather fought on the Western Front in the First World War. I have yet to find the name 'Hofschroer' in the annals of great military achievement of the period.

Daddy got his Iron Cross on the Eastern Front - but I know that if any ancestors had fought in the Waterloo Campaign, then it would have been with Friccius' East Friesians. I have his account of the campaign, but the name 'Hofschroer' does not appear to feature prominently. I plan one day to locate and examine the relevant archives of the period. Who knows what I might find?

Q - In the introduction to your recent book, you told us that you became interested in the Waterloo campaign through your work on the game 'Fields of Glory'. I know that you have a good knowledge of 'Alte Fritz' and the mid-nineteenth century Wars of German Unification, but why have you concentrated on the German states of the Napoleonic Period?

A - Because in my wargaming days, I couldn't find opponents for the periods that interested me, so I had to do Napoleonics. One thing then led to another.

Q - If we can pass on to your new book. I think most of our readers will be aware that, perhaps unusually for a book of this type, "1815 The Waterloo Campaign" has attracted an enormous amount of attention from the press, with news items and reviews, some hostile, in the national press, as well as elsewhere. Why do you think this was?

A - Most of the attention has concentrated on one aspect of my book: my conclusion that the Duke of Wellington knowingly misled Blucher into fighting at Ligny on 16 June and was subsequently circumspect in the way he recorded the event. This could be taken as being negative comment on one of Britain's great national heroes. Understandably, some people have taken umbrage to this. There is much more to the book - it is probably the most detailed account in English of the German forces involved in the campaign and the fullest account yet of the Battle of Ligny.

Q - Has the reaction surprised you?

A - Yes and no. At the various presentations I have made in recent months, most people have approached the issue with an open mind and found the evidence presented stimulating, while a few people have scowled, but did not have much in the way of informed comment to make. However, I did say before publication that I expected the reaction from certain quarters to be hysterical rather than historical. Unfortunately, concerning these parties, this assessment was correct.

Some people that are unable or unwilling to deal with the documentary evidence presented have instead tried to discredit it by misrepresenting it, or have been personally abusive.

Q - What is your reaction to that?

A - My publisher's statements on the content of the book have been consistent and accurate. The issue of Wellington's treatment of Blucher is just one of the several strands in the book, and it is neither the first nor the most important. In fact, it amounts to no more than 10% of the content of the book. My detractors have focused their attention on this issue and made a fuss about it so really they have done me a favour by drawing so much attention to the book. However, I find it a shame that the level of their criticism has been so low.

Q - Why do you say that?

A - Well, before making comments about a certain author, they should at least endeavour to get their facts about that person right. If they are unable to get those facts right, that casts doubt on the validity and accuracy of all their arguments, does it not?

Q - Well, yes, but what facts are you talking about?

A - Take for instance one commentator who described "1815 - The Waterloo Campaign- as 'nationalistic'. Another claimed that I accept only German participants as reliable witnesses. Neither statement is correct. As I said earlier, as I have dual nationality, I am British by birth and German by bloodline. So is the book 'too British' or 'too German'?

If the first critic means the latter, as I suspect he does, then he has failed to consider what the term 'German' in a Napoleonic context means. After all ' the German states often had interests that conflicted with one another. So am I being too pro-Prussian, too pro-Saxon, too pro-Hanoverian, etc.? Do we have a case here of an ill-considered criticism made just for the sake of being critical? In the book, I am critical of the way that Blacher handled the Saxon problem, I draw attention to Muffling's selective memory, I point out how Reiche, Dornberg and other Germans made errors in their accounts.

The only British participants I criticise for errors in their accounts are Wellington and Hardinge. So am I being too 'pro-German', 'proPrussian', 'proHanoverian' or 'pro-British' and am I placing reliance only on German witnesses? The complaints do not hold water.

Q - Some of your detractors have commented negatively on the "conspiracy theory". What do you say to that?

A - What "conspiracy theory"?

Q - That the British deliberately set up the Prussians at Ligny in pursuit of the aims of their foreign policy.

A - I have never made that claim. The sequence of events my research established was as follows: by 9.00 a.m. on 15 June, news of the outbreak of hostilities had arrived in Wellington's headquarters. He did not react until 6.00 p.m. despite the arrival of several other reports. By that time, he had lost a day. To make up for that lost time, Wellington needed to ensure the Prussians would hold their ground so, at 7.00 p.m., he had Muffling write a letter (see illustration) saying Wellington would be marching that night to Nivelles. The orders Wellington had just issued did not have anybody other than a division of Netherlanders march to Nivelles - away from Quatre Bras and away from the Prussians.

Thus, Wellington deliberately misled the Prussians, but at the time he did so, Blucher had informed the Duke that all four of his army corps would be concentrated in the Sombreffe position, i.e. Ligny, the coming day. Wellington therefore acted in the belief that over 100,000 Prussians would be facing, say, 80,000 men under Napoleon.

In view of the inferior quality of the Prussian army, Blucher was not likely to win, but there would have been no reason that he could have not held his own. The deception continued over the coming hours, the Frasnes Letter (see illustration) being a good example of this. Only when Wellington rode to meet BlUcher in his headquarters at the Mill of Bussy at Brye, near Ligny on the afternoon of 16 June did he first hear that Bblow's Corps, a quarter of Blacher's men, was not going to arrive at Ligny that day. By then it was too late to admit he could not achieve what he had promised the Prussians over the previous hours and days without losing face and without risking that the Prussians would withdraw, leaving Wellington to stew in his own soup. What Wellington did constituted expediency and not a conspiracy. I would have thought that obvious from my book.

Q - If we can, I would like to explore this area a bit further. What Wellington and Blucher were proposing to do was something quite revolutionary, that is, to concentrate on the field of battle rather than beforehand. There were few occasions that this had been done successfully and perhaps Leipzig in 1813 was the best contemporary example. Do you know if the two staffs had ever carried out a map exercise to test march times, responses to messages, etc.? My suspicion is that they did not even do this at army level, otherwise Bulow would have known that he had to respond to Gneisenau's instruction earlier.

A - The strategy for the campaign that Blucher and Wellington agreed at the Tirlemont Conference on 3 May 1815 and onwards was, as you rightly point out, to concentrate their forces to the fore. This highly risky exercise could easily go wrong and, to a certain extent, it did. Such a strategy was certainly not the right military decision; it was however a necessary political decision. The newly founded Kingdom of the Netherlands was an unstable cocktail. Had Napoleon marched into Brussels without serious opposition from the Allies, it may well have exploded.

Thus, Wellington and Blucher had little choice but to undertake so risky a venture. I have not come across any records that indicate that any part of the manoeuvres were in any way practised beforehand, but both Wellington and Blucher were highly capable and experienced soldiers. Both had highly competent staff officers. Both knew that in such circumstances they had no time to waste.

Q - To return to the book. Earlier you mentioned 'documentary evidence'. Is your case not based on memoirs written decades after the event?

A - In my book, I list all the contemporaneous documents central to my case, including Muffling's letter of 7.00 p.m. of 15 June 1815, entries in Constant Rebeque's journal dated 15 and 16 June, Brunneck's letter of 7.00 a.m. on 16 June (the original having gone missing in 1945, but was quoted in full in LettowVorbeck), and the so called "Frasnes Letter" written by Wellington at 10.30 a.m. on 16 June. Those documents still available are reproduced here.

Q - Having read your book, I see that the "Frasnes Letter" first became known when discovered in the Prussian War Archives in 1876. Could it not be a forgery made to discredit Wellington?

A - A good point. At the recent Wellington Congress, I gave a paper on this issue, displaying the "Frasnes Letter" on the overhead. Somebody did dispute that it was in Wellington's hand. On one of the display boards at the Congress was a letter from the Wellington Papers in the Southampton Archives. I superimposed the foil with the Frasnes Letter" over the document indisputably in Wellington's hand on the board. The handwriting matched perfectly, and the dispute ended very quickly. Compare the two letters reproduced here, one from the Wellington Papers, the other the "Frasnes Letter". Are they not in the same hand?

Q - You mention certain contemporaneous documents. Where did you obtain these?

A - From archives, libraries and in private collections throughout Europe.

For instance, Wellington's Papers are in Southampton, and I believe I am correct to say that mine is the first book written on Waterloo since they became available to the public. Due to the two world wars this century, Gneisenau's Papers have moved from place to place, but are currently in Berlin. I also believe mine is the first book on Waterloo to refer to them since the First World War, and the first ever in English. I also believe that mine is the first book in English on Waterloo to have referred to Constant Rebeque's Papers. These were obtained from the Hague Archives.

Q - What has the reaction been to the publication of your book in Germany?

A - Wellington's deception of Blucher was well documented by German historians a century ago, so the accusation in itself is not new to them. What is new to them is the corroborating evidence from various archives and collections of private papers in Britain and elsewhere. Also, German historians were unaware of the series of omissions in Wellington's records access to his private papers has only recently become easy.

That was new here, and it will be interesting to see if anybody can locate the whereabouts of those missing documents. I understand that not the entire collection was passed on to the University of Southampton.

Q - You have acknowledged the first Duke of Wellington was one of this country's finest public servants, but perhaps purposefully you have not tried to fully explore or explain his reasons for misleading his Allies. Some Spanish historians are also now saying that he was less than truthful in the Peninsula. Do you think that Wellington, as a political animal, needed to appear infallible if he was to make the transition from a military career to one in politics?

A - Nobody boasts about their own errors, particularly a leading public figure, so I think personal pride was one of Wellington's motives here. Also, one must not forget that "all's fair in love and war" - what leading figures of any period did not engage in deception and subterfuges? In the book, I endeavoured to steer away from personal comment and just present the facts. Thus, I don't think I offered an opinion on why Wellington engaged in this particular deception.

Q - Now that you are a rich author, what will you be doing with all the money?

A - Certain people are claiming that I have made accusations against the first Duke of Wellington simply for financial gain. Sadly, they would appear to know little about the economics of specialist book publishing. I doubt if the royalties earned from such a book will actually cover the costs of the research involved, let alone pay for my time.

It is a shame that such personal accusations have been made. Like the Marquess of Anglesey in his review in the 'Daily Telegraph', I was looking forward to a scholarly debate, but to date all we have had is misrepresentation.

Q - You are still writing Part Two of "1815", covering the Battle of Waterloo and beyond. Do you expect that to be as controversial as Part One?

A - Wait and see!

More Interview with Peter Hofschroer

Introduction
The Frasnes Letter (slow: 154K)
Wellington to Prince of Orange Letter (slow: 114K)
Muffling to Blucher Letter (slow: 181K)