Chapter 2 - Napoleon’s Picnic
Stern tide of Time! through what mysterious change
Of hope and fear have our frail barks been driven!
Walter Scott, The Field of Waterloo
The Hundred Days
The Emperor soon palled of his new empire at Elba. Though his entourage was provided for and he had kept the prerogative to call himself Emperor, his defeat rankled. As more and more accounts of the situation in France under Louis XVIII reached him, he started to make plans to place another bid for power in France. Napoleons army, used to the Emperors nearly constant attention, was disillusioned by the way they were treated by his successor. Even if there was no doubt that France could not now support an army of the size of Napoleons Grand Army, the off-hand way in which the new regime disposed of soldiers who had campaigned for the empire in recent years was a source of unrest. This gave him confidence.
After ten months of banishment in Elba reports reached Napoleon that the Bourbons were planning to remove him to a more isolated place and to cut or stop his liberal pension. While the Allies were still dividing the spoils of his Empire at a Congress in Vienna, Napoleon took ship to France. He boarded the aptly named Inconstant to break the treaty of Fontainebleau of April 1814 and landed in the Golfe Juan, near Cannes on the first of March 1815. Then started the incredible journey to Paris. As Napoleon proclaimed ´The eagle will fly from steeple to steeple until it reaches the towers of Notre Dame´.[1]
With the thousand men he had been allowed to take to Elba, he now travelled through the Alps, avoiding fervently royalist Marseille. As when he was General, he read the minds of the people flawlessly. Whilst the allied powers, convened at Vienna, were convinced the French would stand up against their former oppressor, they instead cheered the man that made them feel proud of themselves. In the same way, many people still revere Stalin as a great leader in the former Soviet-Union.
A week after Napoleon landed the famous incident of Grenoble took place. Encountering the first opposition of royal troops, Napoleon stepped forward within the line of fire. Opening his grey greatcoat he exclaimed: ‘Soldiers, if there is one among you who wishes to kill his Emperor he can do so. Here I am!’ A deafening shout of ‘Vive l’Empereur’ went up; Napoleon was back in business. A few days later, the famous Marshal Ney ‘the bravest of the brave’ defected to Napoleon. His promise to his new Bourbon master to bring Napoleon to him ‘in an iron cage’ was quickly forgotten. Regiment after regiment was sent to bar Napoleon’s way to Paris, but all fell under his spell and changed sides. A Parisian wit posted a large notice addressed to King Louis: ‘My good brother – there is no need to send any more troops – I have enough.’[2] King Louis left for Ghent in a panic. Within three weeks Napoleon was carried into his Imperial Palace at the Tuileries on the shoulders of his Old Guard, without having had to fire a shot to regain his throne.
Napoleon immediately started to rebuild his chain of control. His old soldiers flocked to his banner. His household soon functioned as if he had never been away. Johannes Horn took on his old job. ´But when the Emperor appeared in public afterwards, it was more frequently on horseback than in a carriage´. For convenience in inspecting public works and buildings, as Horn surmises, but probably even more to encourage his troops and people by allowing them to look upon their Emperor.
When Napoleon arrived in Paris, his dormeuse was not available. The invaluable research of Max Terrier[3] shows that there were no less than three dormeuses in Napoleons stables at one time or another. The first one was ordered for the Russian Campaign[4] and was driven by Horn to Moscow and back. During the campaign a second dormeuse was ordered to the specifications of the first[5]. It was delivered on 18 March 1813. Both coaches were unavailable when Napoleon came back from Elba, one because it had taken him there, the other because it had carried Marie-Louise and the King of Rome to safety in Vienna. He did send for ‘the big carriage’, which he deemed ‘worth the trouble of returning as well as my underwear.’[6] However, he did not wait for this to arrive, thinking he might be needing it sooner. So at the beginning of April 1815, he ordered a new dormeuse to be built for him. The dormeuse that went to Waterloo was delivered in little less than a month, on April 30th 1815. [7] This was incredibly fast, but then Getting was paid well for his tour de force; the coach with its accessories cost over 12000 francs.
The congress of the allied nations in Vienna was stunned when they heard Napoleon had got away while they talked. They immediately responded by forming a formidable alliance against him. Napoleon responded characteristically. Though a defensive tactic seems to have been the safer choice, Napoleon wanted to try a coup again. He knew that the allies would be able to mount a million men against him by the end of the year, all four mayor powers having promised to supply 250,000 troops. The Russians and the Austrians would need a lot of time to assemble their armies and bring them to France. He had an army of around 100,000 men in the field in the north. If he could defeat the English army under Wellington and the Prussian army under Blücher (both roughly as large as the Armée du Nord) before they met up, it would mean an enormous boost to French morale, and might undercut the allied front.
Ligny & Quatre Bras
At the beginning of June 1815 Horn was sent on with the horses towards the northern frontier. On the 13th Napoleon arrived at Avesnes, where Horn was waiting for him with the Armée du Nord. It was the last time Napoleon would ride in the dormeuse; as usual he used saddle-horses when travelling turned into campaigning. During the advance however the carriage followed him ‘whithersoever he went, and never was more distant, and often less, than a cannon’s shot from him.´[8]
Napoleon crossed the border on 15 June, surprising the allied commanders, who did not expect this fast advance. He aimed at pushing a wedge between Wellington and Blucher as quickly as possible. He sent the left wing, commanded by Marshal Ney to march north-west in the direction of Quatre Bras, a strategically situated village on the crossroads of the two main roads (Brussels-Charleroi and Nivelles-Namur). The right wing, commanded by Marshal Grouchy proceeded north-east in the direction of Blücher’s Prussian Army. Napoleon himself commanded the reserves, leaving him free to manoeuvre.
He wanted Ney to keep the English at bay, while he defeated the Prussians with Grouchy. He waited until he could hear from the shooting that Ney had engaged the allied troops, thus covering his left flank, before he attacked. At 14.30 the first shot was fired, leaving him only limited time to win the battle before dark. Even though the campaign was fought in summer, the sun set around nine o’clock and an hour later it was dark. There was heavy fighting all afternoon; around eight o’clock Napoleon sent the Old Guard to decide the battle. The Prussians, though not completely routed, were defeated, making Ligny Napoleon´s last victory.
At Ligny Blucher lost 16,000 men and was himself badly wounded when his horse was shot under him. Napoleon lost 11,500. Blücher was humiliated, being beaten by Napoleon for the second time. Napoleon, taking no account of the ferocious temper of the old Prussian, assumed he would now retire eastwards to his bases to lick his wounds. This would leave him free to deal with Wellington first. Instead, Alte Vorwarts as Bluchers nickname was, turned north towards Wavre, ready to play his decisive role two days later at Waterloo. The Prussians had only become more determined to have their revenge for this ignoble defeat and would acquire a name for cruelty by their giving no quarter at Waterloo. Napoleon had misjudged the hatred of the Prussians. Influenced by his generals, he did sent a third of his army under Grouchy to follow them, but they were only sent a day after the battle. They lost contact with the Prussians and could play no role at Waterloo.
In the meantime Ney had been fighting the Dutch under the Prince of Orange from the beginning of the afternoon near Quatre Bras. Wellington arrived not long after the first attack and took over the command himself. The engagement at Quatre Bras was smaller than that at Ligny and less bloody, with English losses amounting to 4,700 and French to 4,300 men.[9] It was technically a draw, but Wellington could not keep his advanced position at Quatre Bras after the Prussians had been defeated at Ligny. He therefore retired towards Brussels, where he took up a position at Mont St Jean near Waterloo, which he had reconnoitred the year before.
Waterloo
Napoleon visited the battlefield of Ligny on the morning after the engagement, as was his wont. Then he went on to Quatre Bras, where he received intelligence that Wellington had taken position near Brussels. The night of Saturday 17 June was spent at a farmstead called ‘Le Caillou’, situated on the road from Charleroi to Brussels, only eight kilometers from Wellingtons headquarters at Waterloo. The 18th at around one in the morning Napoleon went out for a reconnaissance, accompanied only by his Grand Marshal. In his Mémoires he later described the scene; the forest of Soignes and the English outposts at the farmhouses of la Belle Alliance and La Haie Sainte blazed with the light of many camp fires, there was a profound silence and the rain came down in torrents.[10] As the French historian Robert Margerit pointed out, this story has more romance than truth in it, as camp fires do not usually blaze when it is raining hard.[11] Napoleon was however, content to see the English still in place. He looked forward to the battle, that would perhaps bring a return to his former power.
By morning the rain had stopped, but the fields and tracks were still drenched. There was no question of manoeuvring or moving cannon on such wet fields. A bleak sun rose and started to dry out the soil and Napoleon decided to wait. He conferred with his marshals and tried to rally their defeatist spirits by telling them ‘it would be a picnic’ (ce sera l’affaire d’un déjeuner’). Before leaving his headquarters he ordered ‘a well done shoulder of mutton’ for his dinner in Brussels. Wellington, in the meantime, had received heartening news. Blücher told him that one army corps under General Bülow would be leaving immediately to support him, followed closely by three other corps.
Wellington had chosen a strong position; a ridge, about three kilometres long, behind which he could shelter his troops from French artillery fire. Along the ridge were three defendable farmhouses, with stone buildings centred around a court-yard: Papelotte and la Haye Sainte to the left and Hougoumont to the right. This meant that any manoeuvring from Napoleon would have to be done under heavy fire from these fortified farmhouses, costing him valuable time. Napoleon decided on a frontal attack on the English lines. Half an hour before noon the battle finally commenced. Napoleon’s 77,500 men opposed Wellingtons 73,150.[12]
One of the most lively and interesting eye-witness accounts of the battle comes from Rees Howell Gronow, a fascinating character, who would later become one of London’s most popular society figures. He described the start of the battle: ‘About half-past eleven the bands of several French regiments were distinctly heard, and soon after the French artillery opened fire. The rapid beating of the pas de charge, which I had often heard in Spain – and which few men, however brave they may be, can listen to without a somewhat unpleasant sensation – announced that the enemy’s columns were fast approaching. On our side the most profound silence prevailed, whilst the French, on the contrary raised loud shouts, and we heard the cry of “Vive l’Empereur” from one end of their line to the other.’[13]
Napoleon tried to weaken the centre of Wellington’s position by attacking the chateau d’Hougomont on his right flank. As this would threaten Wellington’s route of retreat to the coast, he hoped to draw off reserves from the centre, where he would place his main attack. He also ordered a massive artillery bombardment. The wall of sound emitted by the thousands of muskets and the massed artillery was deafening. Veterans recalled that they had never heard anything like it; the sound could be heard at Brussels, 15 kilometres away. The bombardment was effective, but Hougomont was defended valiantly and Napoleon’s efforts to take it cost him more soldiers than Wellington.
Then the real battle began. The French infantry was ordered forwards and though initially they gained ground, they were ultimately repulsed by the British. The French and British cavalry were ordered into action, to support the infantry. Their attacks were impressive and at times heroic, but did not have major effect on the battle.
After some hours of heavy fighting, Ney ordered the French cavalry into action. Three thousand five hundred mounted men charged[14] and the effect was terrifying. ‘About four P.M. the enemy's artillery in front of us ceased firing all of a sudden, and we saw large masses of cavalry advance: not a man present who survived could have forgotten in after life the awful grandeur of that charge. You discovered at a distance what appeared to be an overwhelming, long moving line, which, ever advancing, glittered like a stormy wave of the sea when it catches the sunlight. On they came until they got near enough, whilst the very earth seemed to vibrate beneath the thundering tramp of the mounted host. One might suppose that nothing could have resisted the shock of this terrible moving mass. They were the famous cuirassiers, almost all old soldiers, who had distinguished themselves on most of the battlefields of Europe. In an almost incredibly short period they were within twenty yards of us, shouting "Vive l'Empereur!" The word of command, "Prepare to receive cavalry," had been given, every man in the front ranks knelt, and a wall bristling with steel, held together by steady hands, presented itself to the infuriated cuirassiers.’[15] The attack in the end floundered, but it had brought heavy losses to both sides.
Until about 4.30 in the afternoon, Napoleon had every reason to believe he would have his shoulder of mutton in Brussels that night. Ney had finally taken La Haye Sainte, giving Napoleon the opportunity to move his guns to a position very close to the centre of Wellingtons lines. Wellington was aware of his position and was heard praying: ‘Give me night or give me Blücher’.[16] His prayer was quickly answered, new troops were reported to be arriving. Napoleon was convinced these would be Grouchys troops, or, if they were Prussians, that Grouchy would be close behind. It soon became clear that Grouchy was not to be seen and that Blüchers Prussian Army was coming to join the fray in force.
Around seven p.m. in a make-or-break attack, Napoleon then committed his finest troops (and his last reserves), the Imperial Guards, hoping to break Wellingtons line before Blücher could reinforce him. They attacked in close formation. ‘I have seen nothing like that moment’, an eye-witness wrote home, ‘the sky literally darkened with smoke, the sun just going down, and which till then had not for some hours broken through the gloom of a dull day, the indescribable shouts of thousands, where it was impossible to distinguish between friend and foe. Every man’s arm seemed to be raised against that of every other. Suddenly, after the mingled mass had ebbed and flowed, the enemy began to yield.’[17] For the first time the incredible happened; a shout went up: ‘ La garde récule´ (the guard retreats). This was the signal for a general counter-attack by Wellingtons troops. Napoleons picnic was over, as were his hundred days of glory.
The experience of the battle of Waterloo for the participants was an attack on all senses. All the participants had been marching and fighting for the last three days. They had spent a wet and cold night and most men were sent to fight on an empty stomach. The supplies train for all three armies couldn’t keep up with the quick manoeuvring and fighting over the last days, so many soldiers had had their last decent meal on the 15th. When the battle finally commenced, the roar of the cannons and the noise of the muskets was overwhelming. The continuous shooting enveloped the battlefield in a thick grey smoke, which was so dense that men later declared they could not see five paces ahead. Besides providing a suffocating atmosphere, it also distorted the vision of the combatants. The enemy ‘loomed through smoke and fog’, looking ‘like a corps of giants’, adding to the horrors of the battlefield. [18]
The wet, the smoke, the noise, the hunger and the fatigue were not the only matters the men had to deal with. Besides physical unpleasantness, there were many psychological factors which made the battle a terrifying experience. Probably one of the worst was to have to stand impassively whilst being fired upon. Wellington´s infantry was in a defensive position and had to hold its ground. The constant bombarding of the lines by the French was demoralizing: ‘standing to be cannonaded, and having nothing else to do, is about the most unpleasant thing that can happen to soldiers.’[19] The casualty rates were very high. During the battle an English officer noticed an infantry square lying down in the front of the line, he presumed them to be taking cover. On asking which square it was, he was told it was the former position of two regiments; they had left three hundred dead and wounded where they had stood.[20]
Capture of the coach
All this time Horn was posted with the carriage close to a cluster of farms, called La Belle Alliance, situated on the high road between Brussels and Genappe. At around seven o’clock in the evening, the sounds of musket shots grew perceptibly louder and the train of retreating guns and men grew. Horn started to worry. The Emperor’s personal baggage train, including the dormeuse, could only move on Napoleon’s express orders. Hoping against hope Horn and the other members of Napoleon’s household waited for another hour. Around eight o’clock General Fouler, the Master of Stables, finally ordered a retreat,[21] fearing the loss of the Imperial possessions more than Napoleons wrath.
Staying with the carriage with Horn was a piqueur called Archambault. The duties of the piqueur included playing the role of carriage outrider, but also that of huntsman, overseer of stables and escort for remounts.[22] He also had charge of the keys of the dormeuse. Archambault locked the carriage, after taking the most important papers. The keys are still in the Malmaison Museum today, with a label: ‘These six keys belonged to the Emperor Napoleon’s carriage, which I was forced to abandon on the road to Quatre Bras on the 18th June 1815, the day of the battle of Waterloo, at eight o’ clock in the evening.’[23]
Between nine and ten in the evening, the two allied commanders met at a farmhouse called La Belle Alliance, where Horn had been posted all day. Blucher suggested to name the battle after this appropriately named farm, but Wellington followed his usual procedure and called the battle after his own headquarters at Waterloo. Blucher offered to take over the pursuit of the French. His troops were tired of marching all day, but had not seen much fighting yet. Wellington agreed and later retired to write his famous Waterloo Despatch. After that Wellington went to sleep on a mattress on the floor because a staff officer was dying in his bed.
The Prussians then went on to pursue the remnants of Napoleon’s army. Most of the Prussians had marched all morning before engaging the French in the afternoon and were tired out. The Prussians resorted to Gideon’s trick, and placed the tambours, announcing the presence of an infantry regiment, on horses taken from the French. They continued their battle-rolls from this elevated position, striking fear into the French.[24]
Horn in the meantime tried to bring the dormeuse to safety. After Archambault had left, he turned south towards Genappe, but the road had by now turned into a confused mass of overturned waggons, dying or dead horses, wounded men and fleeing soldiers. It took him nearly three hours to get close to Genappe. All the retreating French vehicles and guns had to pass through Genappe, as the only bridge across the river Dyle was situated here. Even before the Prussians had arrived it was ‘impossible to walk upright in the streets and the infantry were obliged to crawl under the waggons in order to get through.’[25] This was partly caused by the natural chaos of a retreating army, but also partly by a desire of some of the French to make a last stand at Genappe. ´But no sooner did the Prussian advance appear in the moonlight, descending from the heights overlooking Genappe, with drums beating and bugles sounding´ than the French fled.[26]
Seeing the Prussians advancing, Horn tried desperately to escape. He tried to circumvent the town, by turning the carriage of the road and driving through the field. But this only took him from the frying pan into the fire. In the still soggy field, the carriage soon got stuck. At that moment, the Prussians arrived. As Horn was unarmed, he thought they would be content with taking him prisoner: ‘but they drove there lances into his back, shot him in the legs, and in the right arm; cut off two of his fingers, and having inflicted ten wounds upon him, he fell senseless and was left for dead.’[27]
Differing accounts
The capture of the carriage was an symbolic event, which was mentioned in the reports of all three commanders, Napoleon, Wellington and Blucher.
Napoleon heard of the fact that his coach was taken from his valet, Louis Marchand. Marchand was a sympathetic and devoted servant, who usually slept in front of Napoleon’s door. Having lost sight of Napoleon during the retreat, he had been extremely worried. When he heard that the Emperor was en route to Paris he was relieved: ‘France could still be saved, the Emperor lived’. He joined his master as quickly as he could. The first person of Napoleon’s entourage he met was Louis Etienne Saint-Denis, the Emperors personal servant. Though born a Frenchman, Saint Denis, at the request of Napoleon, was known as ‘Ali’ and was always dressed as an Egyptian mameluk. Ali told Marchand that the dormeuse had been taken with all that was in it. Marchand was the bearer of the bad news to Napoleon, who called it a misfortune.[28]
In the Prussian bulletin, the maxim that truth is the first casualty of war was soon proven. When Von Keller briefed his superior officer, General Gneisenau (Blücher’s Chief of Staff) about the capture of the carriage, he stated that he had met the travelling carriage of Bonaparte with six horses. Because he did not obey when he ordered them to halt, the fusiliers had killed the postillon and the lead horses. Brave Von Keller himself then cut down the coachman and forced the door of the carriage. At that moment Bonaparte was mounting a horse on the other side. Napoleon had left the vehicle in a hurry and had dropped his hat, sword and mantle. These Von Keller dutifully sent to Blücher in the morning. Gneisenau repeated the story in a campaign-report that he published on Blücher’s orders. Blücher himself never contradicted that Napoleon had been in the carriage when it was captured.
It is of course a highly unlikely story that Napoleon had found his equipage in the chaos on the road to Genappe and had even more incredibly got in the vehicle, which was blocked on all sides. In fact the coat and sword were a spare, which the dormeuse always carried and, indeed, none of the witnesses comment on Napoleon riding without hat and coat on his retreat from Waterloo. Besides, the carriage lock was forced, which seems hardly necessary if Napoleon had indeed been inside; it tallies much better with the story of Archambault locking the dormeuse before leaving it.
Sometimes the pursuit of money or justice is a blessing for historians. The true Prussian version of the capture of the coach is well-known because a number of Prussian soldiers tried to get a share of the profits Von Keller made on it. In 1824 some of the members of Von Keller’s battalion lodged a complaint in the Breslau High Court on the grounds that they had not received their fair share of the booty. For over nine years the case dragged on, finally ending in a defeat for the soldiers.
From the evidence taken in this case, the story emerges. At the head of the Prussian advance was a battalion of fusiliers of the 15th Regiment of Infantry, commanded by Major Eugen von Keller. They had been taking cover from friendly fire, aimed at the fleeing French, in a ditch close to Napoleons former headquarters of Le Caillou, not far from Genappe. They were happy to lie down anyway, after their long march on bad roads and through soggy fields. General Gneisenau, the chief of Blücher's staff, found them thus and stirred them into action. Asking the commanding officer, Von Keller, why they were lying down, he received the answer ‘because Genappe is in French hands’. Gneisenau answered that in that case ‘they needed to be attacked and thrown out’. Von Keller objected that his men were tired. Gneisenau finally took the matter in his own hands and encouraged the men by speaking of the extraordinary day and the fact that they hadn’t seen any fighting yet. He then ordered the battalion, then about 400 men strong, to follow him and clear the way to Genappe.
At first they met a single cannon, then more, until the road near Genappe was completely blocked by cannon and munitions wagons. To the right of the road, about twenty steps away, the battalion had ‘become aware of a vehicle in difficulties on the saturated ground on the right hand side of the road.’ As they came up ‘the coachman had unhitched the horses and made off towards Genappe’. As some of the battalion pressed on towards Genappe, a number of fusiliers crowded around the carriage, Major Von Keller threw the seat-cover of waxed taffeta from the box to the ground and shouted ‘It’s the Emperor’s carriage – It’s mine!’. This caused some consternation and to make sure the advance continued, Von Keller had to promise to divide the spoils in a safe place. He then ordered some men to remain close to the vehicle and bring it up to the road.
The rest of the battalion was sent on to pursue the fleeing French, which they did till long after midnight. Several accounts mention the glorious moonlight that aided their task. In the course of this pursuit they plundered the wagons the French had left behind. ‘Jeder nahm nun was er glaubte gebrauchen zu können, und warf es wieder fort, wenn er etwas Besseres fand’ (Everyone took only what he thought he could use, and threw it away again when he found something better). The soldiers concentrated on gold, which was portable and had a known value. Silver, which was much heavier, was sold for a tenth of its value in return for gold as were precious stones, as none of the fusiliers had a good idea of their value. There was enough for everyone, even for those arriving only the following morning.
Among the spoils taken, there was another vehicle belonging to Napoleon. A few miles on towards Charleroi, near Quatre Bras, the Prussian advance came upon the rest of the baggage train. All vehicles in the train were pillaged by the troops, who by now had little enthusiasm for the pursuit of the French, when there were riches to be won. Among the vehicles in this train was the landau, used by Napoleon for light service during campaigns. It was taken by a lieutenant Lindenhof from Von Keller´s regiment.[29] In this way Von Keller came to be in the lucky possession of two Imperial Carriages. As a Prussian officer, Von Keller´s right to booty was dependant on the permission of his superior officers. He made use of the fact that he had two Imperial vehicles in his possession and offered the pillaged landau to Blücher; the untouched dormeuse he kept to himself.
The morning after
The Battle of Waterloo, involving nearly two hundred thousand people, was fought in an area not exceeding 5 square kilometres. In this area ‘scarcely a clod of earth but was wet with the best blood of Britain and Prussia, and with the fiercest blood of France.’[30] On the open, undulating plain, where crops had been ripening, there were now more than 40,000 soldiers and 10,000 horses lying dead or dying on the battlefield. Many of those that had died during the battle were horribly disfigured, ‘trampled by the cavalry, crushed by the artillery, and torn to pieces by the continued showers of bullets, which the latter vomited forth.´ [31]
Many cried for mercy, water, a bullet, the wounded horses presented a pitiful sight. Looting was universal and had already started during the battle. Now the local peasants and looting soldiers took possession of the battlefield. In the moonlight they presented an eerie spectacle, hovering over the dead and the wounded. They stripped the corpses – and in many cases, the wounded – of everything that might be of value, from weapons and uniforms to horseshoes and even golden teeth. For many years dentures were known as ‘Waterloo teath’ in Britain. [32]
To one of the eye-witnesses, the many dead and wounded looked like a vast army asleep.[33] As a hundred years later, the ‘flaring red poppy, unconscious of the ruin near it in a few days began to spread its beauties round the warrior’s grave.’ [34] For many days several thousand carriages and many peasants from the surrounding countries were forcefully employed in burning or burying the dead.
Among this naked mass of men, a young man, who had just recovered consciousness, slowly raised himself on his left arm. A bullet had torn away his right arm and he had several other wounds. It was Johannes Horn, who had survived the Prussian attack. In his memoirs, the mameluk Ali recounts that Horn met Blucher when he came to: ‘Horn, that unfortunate being, had an arm taken away by a bullet. The next day, Blucher, who was visiting the battlefield, stopped in front of Horn, who was sitting on a stone and asked him who he was. The postillon had answered in German that he was of the Emperor’s Household en that he drove the carriage of His Majesty. Blucher was a violent, hot-tempered man who had his heart full of vengeance against any who had to do with the business of the 16th [the battle of Ligny], added insult to injury and had the wickedness, the barbarity, one might say, to give Horn a blow … If the marshal had been another man, had he not made sure the wounds of the poor devil of a servant had been dressed and gave him a bit of money, instead of treating him in such an undignified manner as he did?’[35] The story is only mentioned in this account by Ali and its veracity therefore cannot be checked. There is however some logic in the fact that Horn in later days would not have mentioned a story so detrimental to the reputation of one of the victors of Waterloo.
Horn, in his memoirs, only mentions that he crawled to Genappe after he had regained consciousness and got into one of the houses that were filled with the wounded. As he lay there, the gangrene spread in his wounded arm and he got weak by the loss of blood and lack of attention to his wounds. With a shelter over his head, he was still more fortunate than those unable to move from the battlefield. It was a Waterloo legend that many wounded kept themselves alive by using the breastplates of dead French cavalry as frying pans. Among all the stories of suffering and loss, there was unexpected happiness: ‘a day or two after the battle, a beautiful young woman, wife of an officer who was missing, believing that he had been killed, was, in the midst of drenching showers, wandering about the field in frantic grief, and no entreaties could prevent her from turning over every mangled corpse to see if it was her husband’s: she found him afterwards, and he was alive. [36]
Four days after the battle, there were still many wounded left on the battlefield. On private initiative ‘several waggon-loads’ were collected: ‘we found on every side poor fellows dying in every variety of wretchedness, and had repeatedly to enjoin the strictest silence that we might hear their scarcely audible groans.’[37]
As for Horn, he remained in Genappe for six days without any surgical attendance. ‘On the sixth day a British officer came to the house, and having asked him several questions, conveyed him to the hospital at Brussels. This humane benefactor obtained almost immediate attention to Hornn’s wounds, which had become so bad, that his right arm was obliged to be amputated.’[38] Horn would never know who this officer who saved his life was.
The day after the battle the Prussian General Count Bülow arrived at the bivouac of Von Keller’s regiment, whom Gneisenau had granted a day of rest for their brave pursuit of the French. Major von Keller offered him a hand full of brilliants. Bülow declined, thinking they were false, which prompted one of his staff to remark: ‘Count Bülow is a great General, but a poor jeweller’. The day of rest also meant time to investigate the contents of the dormeuse. Von Keller decided to open the necessaire (travelling case) that was found in the vehicle. He forced it open with an axe behind a barn, but in stead of the gold and diamonds he had hoped to find, it contained only personal practicalities for the Emperors use, like plates and toilet articles. The major then ordered five men to escort it to Düsseldorf, where his wife was staying during the campaign. It arrived there a week after the battle on 25 June.
Blücher wrote to his wife two days after the battle, telling her that he will send her the carriage of Napoleon, taken at Waterloo. Blücher writes: ‘I am only sorry that it has been damaged. Its contents and valuables were looted by the troops. Nothing remains of its horses and harness. Many soldiers carried away booty to the value of five of six thousand thalers. He [Napoleon] was being conveyed in the carriage when he was discovered by our troops. He jumped out without his sword and, on mounting his horse, dropped his hat.’ He evidently believed what Von Keller had told him and though he may later have found out the truth, he wouldn’t have wanted to admit that one of his officers had fooled him. On it’s way to Berlin, it attracted a great number of spectators.[39] The landau was offered as a coronation gift for Edward VII in 1902, but eventually was kept in Blücher´s family until 1975, when it was presented to the National Museum at Malmaison.[40]
In the light of future events an examination of Horn’s claims to be at Waterloo with the carriage is appropriate. It is unfortunate that there is no record of Horn’s name in the Imperial Archives for the years 1814 and 1815.[41] It is not clear whether this is the result of the unquiet times or whether there are other reasons. It is of course not unthinkable that an adventurer would like to bank on the notoriety of having been close to Napoleon at this crucial stage. However, several dependable witnesses (including the Prussians under oath) place him at the scene or corroborate his story.
Horn had been five years old when the French declared war on Austria in 1792. Now, 24 years and six million dead later, Napoleons reign was definitively over. Horn was 28 years old, had lost an arm, a job and a lifestyle and would now have to find his way in a changed world.
[1] Alistair Horne, How far from Austerlitz? Napoleon 1805-1815, London 1996, 363.
[2] Ibidem, 364. Quoted from J. Naylor, Waterloo, London 1960, p. 19.
[3] Max Terrier, Le landau de Napoléon et son histoire, in : Revue de louvre 1975 (AANVULLEN)
[4] This coach had the number 428 in the first Imperial archives and was renamed to number 300 after the hundred days. It was delivered on March 5th 1812.
[5] This carriage was known by the numbers 466/336
[6] Hamilton, Marengo, 171
[7] The dormeuse was delivered on April 30th, 1815 and had only a new number: 389. It cost 10832 francs and the accessories added up to 1832 francs.
[8] Hornn, Narrative, 55
[9] Andrew Roberts, Napoleon and Wellington, London 2001, 154
[10] Napoleon [Barry Edward O'Meara], Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de France en 1815, avec le plan de la bataille de Mont-Saint-Jean, Paris 1820, 120.
[11] Robert Margerit, Waterloo, 18 juin 1815, Paris 1964, 330.
[12] Andrew Roberts, Waterloo. Napoleon’s Last Gamble, London 2005, 40.
[13] Captain Gronow, The Reminiscences and Recollections of Captain Gronow, London 1892, 198.
[14] Hamilton, Marengo, 188.
[15] Gronow, Reminiscences, 69-70.
[16] David G. Chandler, William E. Cairnes, The Military Maxims of Napoleon, London 1995, 143.
[17] Sir Augustus Simon Frazer, Letters, London 1859, 553.
[18] John Keegan, The Face of Battle. A study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme, London 1995 (1976), 131.
[19] Keegan, Face of Battle, 161.
[20] Ibidem, 184.
[21] Marchand, Mémoires de Marchand, Paris 1952, 164
[22] Anthony de la Poer, ‘Phaeton’s Chariot(s): The Mystery of Napoleon’s Waterloo Carriage (1), in: Miltary Illustrated. Past and Present, number 33, February 1991, 17.
[23] Terrier, ‘Le Landau de Napoleon’, 113.
[24] E.M. Doerk, ‘Bericht einies Augenzeugen (vom Jahre 1828) über die Verfolgung des französischen Heeres in der Nacht vom 18. zum 19. Juni 1915’, in: Minerva, March 1829, 437.
[25] De La Poer, ‘Phaeton’s Chariot(s) (1)’, 16
[26] Captain W. Siborne, History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815, London 1844, 248
[27] Hornn, Narrative, 57
[28] Marchand, Mémoires, 167
[29] Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, no. 80, 6 juli 1815.
[30] C.H. Gifford, The life of the most noble Arthur, Duke of Wellington, London 1817, 344
[31] Ibidem, 312.
[32] Hamilton, Marengo, 191.
[33] James MacQueen, A Narrative of the Political and Military Events of 1815, Glasgow 1816, Google Books, Original from the University of California, 344.
[34] Gifford, Life of Wellington, 345
[35] Ali [Louis-Étienne Saint-Denis], Souvenirs sur l’Empereur Napoléon, Paris , 116.
[36] Robert Hills, Tour in Flanders, 96.
[37] Sir Augustus Simon Frazer, Letters of Colonel Sir Augustus Simon Frazer, K.C.B, London 1859, 564.
[38] Horn, Narrative, 58
[39] Berlinische Nachrichten von Staats- und gelehrten Sachen, no. 80, 6 juli 1815.
[40] Anthony de la Poer, ‘Phaeton’s Chariot(s): The Mystery of Napoleon’s Waterloo Carriage (2), in: Miltary Illustrated. Past and Present, number 34, March 1991, 13
[41] De La Poer, ‘Phaeton’s Chariot(s)’ (1), 16