Waterloogate

The British Reaction
to Peter Hofschroer's 1815 book

The following excerpts appeared in an article titled "Variable Depth by Line" by Maurice Chittenden in the London Sunday Times:

The famous congratulatory handshake between Blucher and Wellington after the battle of Waterloo.

"Up Guards and at 'em! The Iron Duke is under attack from his own left flank. Our Prussian allies have finally turned on the victor of Waterloo, accusing him of sending 20,000 of their men to their deaths.

"In what is already being dubbed 'Waterloogate' by sabre-rattling publishers, the Duke of Wellington is charged by a German historian with duplicitous behaviour in tricking Blucher, the Prussian marshal, to take to the field against Napoleon's French army for 48 hours before the British joined the fray...

"Peter Hofschroer... claims Wellington promised to provide rapid and substantial aid at a crucial point in the battle, although he knew he could not do so. The Duke allegedly risked sacrificing Blucher in order to gain time for his own troops to fall into formation. Instead, it was Blucher, who came to his rescue in the final hour of the 1815 campaign.

"Hofschroer, who spent eight years researching evidence in the Prussian archives and in accounts by British, German and Dutch officers present in the allied headquarters, said: "In his own lifetime, the Duke of Wellington very carefully nurtured his reputation. The whole truth was, at times, a casualty in this process. From June 18, 1815, onwards, if not earlier, there has been a deliberate effort by certain participants to deny their own mistakes and for reasons of national pride and political interests to falsify the record.'

"He quotes a letter from Wellington to the Earl of Mulgrave in which the Duke said he resisted writing his own account of the battle: 'If a true history is written, what will become of the reputation of half of those who have acquired reputation, and who deserve it for their gallantry, but who, if their mistakes and casual misconduct were made public, would not be so well thought of?"'

"Lionel Leventhal, who is publishing Hofschroer's work ... said: 'This an icon of British history being shot down.'

"However, Britain's own Napoleonic historians have ridden to Wellington's defence. Lord Blake said: 'There have always been arguments about the exact role of Blucher and Wellington but they never quarreled about it as far I know.' Lady Longford, author of a biography of the Duke, said: 'It is absolute rubbish. Wellington begged Blucher to be more cautious. It would have been idiocy to throw the Prussians in to save his own men. Wellington was a good commander. He was popular with his men because he always looked after them, he never lost a man unnecessarily, It was always his aim to avoid great set battles.'

"Correlli Barnett, author of a biography of Bonaparte, said: 'Wellington admitted that Napoleon had stolen a march on both him and Blacher by getting his army between them before they had got their proper concentrations. They were wrong- footed which is why they fought two separate battles. There is no question of Wellington leaving Blucher in the lurch. They had simply been outwitted by Bonaparte.'

"John Keegan, who wrote about Waterloo in The Face of Battle, said: 'It was almost like a nuclear crisis. It happened so quickly I don't think you could accuse one of leaving the other. It is more remarkable that they got their act together and got on to the same battlefield on June 18."'

The Mail had a review by Andrew Roberts, which said: "German historian Peter Hofschroer believes that during the Waterloo campaign of 1815, Wellington deceived his Prussian allies, forced them into bruising engagements with Napoleon they could not win, and belittled their efforts afterwards. Then he grabbed all the glory for himself supported by dozens of sycophantic British historians. After reading this deeply revisionist tract, you will never again think of the Waterloo campaign as essentially a Franco-British engagement, but you will appreciate Wellington as a ruthless general concerned for his own men first, and his allies very much second."

Professor Jeremy Black of the University of Exeter wrote in War in History: "...Hofschroer is correct to draw attention to command flaws and faults on 15-16 June, 1815, but it is less clear that he demonstrates his case about Wellington's perfidy ... This is a book of considerable scholarship but a questionable thesis."

The Guards Magazine featured a review by Sir Julian Paget which included the observation that Hofschroer's new book "is a detailed and well researched analysis of the campaign with many extracts from previously unpublished sources, which makes it of considerable interest to the serious historian, and it will doubtless provoke much debate."

The Marquess of Anglesey reviewed Hofschroer's book in the Daily Telegraph (London) under the headline "Ducal deceptions in the field: The Marquess of Anglesey welcomes a controversial study of the 19th century conflict."

"...In 1815 Hofschroer aim's to counter the notion that the Prussians played only a minor part in the campaign. This, although not new, is salutary. What is more or less new is the contention that the Duke conspired to deceive Blucher into fighting under adverse conditions at Ligny, so as to give him time to concentrate his own army. This must remain controversial. After Ligny, the Prussian generals blamed Wellington for not coming to their aid. Yet he had promised to do so only 'so long as I was not attacked myself'. Since he was attacked - at Quatre Bras - this argument loses credence.

"Further, the Duke did not know that, thanks to the insubordinate behaviour of one corps commander, the Prussians had only two-thirds of their troops on the field. With the missing corps Blucher could well have held his own at Ligny,

"Again, late at night on June 15, and long after Hofschroer maintains that Wellington ought to have moved, BRicher himself was writing: 'Tomorrow will decide if Napoleon will turn against me or Wellington'.

"It is arguable that the Duke's caution was extreme. He was surely right, though, to delay the movement of his Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army until' assured that the main attack was the one at Ligny, and that Napoleon was not maneuvering to cut him off from the Channel ports. He may well have failed to make this clear to Blucher....

"In spite of these opposing interests, in accusing the Duke of intentional deception, Hofschroer protests rather too much. Nevertheless, by deploying numerous, mostly German, new sources, he performs an important historical service.

"Incidentally (and unwittingly) what he says of Wellington actually magnifies his reputation. I look forward with glee to the scholarly battles which must follow this book's publication."

A review in The Express (London) included comments by Hofschroer and Lady Longford:

"The Duke of Wellington will be spinning in his grave....

"The heirs of the Iron Duke ... are distressed at the astonishing claims of a German historian that Wellington wildly exaggerated his part in the famous skirmish.

"The eighth Duke of Wellington, the victor's descendant, is said to be outraged by the claims....

"[Hofschroer says] 'The statistics of the battle are quite clear: 75 per cent of the soldiers at Waterloo were German, as were 76 per cent of the casualties .... It was not really quite the glorious British victory that everyone assumes.'

"Lady Longford, Wellington's celebrated biographer, rushes to his defence. 'Wellington was always very careful to say that without the Prussians he never would have won,' insists Longford, 92. 'But with the Prussians alone there would have been no Waterloo. Wellington never exaggerated the records and wisely paid tribute to his allies. His verdict was that there was enough glory for all.'"

Hofschroer's harshest critic must be Colonel Alan Mallinson, former commander of the 13th/18th Hussars, a regiment with Waterloo honors, who disagreed strongly with the author in the review Mallinson wrote for The Spectator (London):

"In the preface to his offensive and deeply flawed book he states, 'Every historian has an ax to grind.' His admission that he himself is no exception is one of the book's few indisputable claims. ... the brash certainty and extent of Hofschroer's claims are singular ... Modern British accounts he writes off as 'shallow, superficial works that repeat and embellish selected myths without bothering to refer to the better accounts [presumably German] of the campaign'.

"These strictures are at best disingenuous. Of modern books he omits to mention, for instance, David Hamilton-Williams's fine Waterloo, New Perspectives (1993).

"...Whether on discovering, in the Duke's own words, that Bonaparte had 'humbugged' him, Wellington sought to conceal his 'tardy' deployment is - at most - conjectural: all the documents that Hofschroer cites are open to interpretation.

"...One of Hofschroer's problems seems to be that he does not have any understanding - or feel - for the dynamics of a large-scale military operation and for what Clausewitz called friction.

"...Herr Hofschroer has spoiled what could have been a useful account of the part played by the Prussians in the Waterloo campaign by indulging in hindsight while grinding an ax."

Hofschroer wrote a reply to Mallinson's review:

"As Col. Mallinson considers my book 'offensive and deeply flawed', perhaps it would help to examine the reasons he gives for this. Firstly, he points out that I 'omit to mention' a work written by the person who uses the pen name 'David Hamilton-Williams'. The reason for my omission is quite simple - that person's work is questionable to say the least. Doubt has been thrown both on its content and its author's integrity in periodicals such as the Journal for Army Historical Research, Napoleon, First Empire and Age of Napoleon, to name but a few. Hamilton-Williams' case against the Sibornes was answered and refuted, and indeed, Colonel John Elting went so far as to describe Hamilton-Williams' work as 'outright fraud'. His publisher, Arms & Armour Press, ceased publishing his books once this became public knowledge. Thus, I do not attach any credence to Hamilton-Williams' work.

"Secondly, Col. Mallinson also seems surprised that I attach no weight to the works of Maurice and Robinson. Those writers based their defence of the Duke of Wellington on one document, the so-called 'de Lancey Disposition'. In this document, supposedly written at 7 a.m. on 16 June 1815, a substantial part of Wellington's army is shown as 'marching to Quatre Bras. However, the record shows that Wellington did not start to order any troops to Quatre Bras until after 11 a.m., and that the bulk of his army was not ordered on that point until after the start of the battle at 2.30 p,m. Clearly, de Lancey could not have written any 'disposition' showing troop movements to Quatre Bras at 7 a.m. as Wellington had yet to decide to move there. A disposition cannot be written before the commander decides where to move his army. Thus, I do not attach any weight to works that give credence to this questionable 'Disposition'.

"Col. Mallinson continues by challenging the accuracy of my historical research.... my work is based on solid historical fact.

More Waterloo

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