Waterloo: with Bernard Cornwell

On the 207th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo Dominic is joined by the inimitable Bernard Cornwell OBE.

Author of the hugely successful Sharpe series which takes the reader through the Napoleonic Wars. Bernard's latest novel Sharpe's Assassin  is now available in paperback and follows the events of the occupation of Paris immediately after Napoleon's defeat. Bernard has also written a straight history of Waterloo which is an indispensable guide to the campaign that changed history.

Dickens was only 3 years old on that day, which defined Britain's global position for a century ...

In this episode ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’ is sung by Georgina White 

Both Sharpe's Assassin & Waterloo are published Harper Collins

Original cover headshot of Dominic Gerrard © Jane Lloyd / Original cover headshot of Bernard Cornwell © Felix Clay / Background painting of Closing the Gates at Hougoumont, 1815  by Robert Gibb, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons ...

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Charles Dickens, A Brain on the Fire, a series that digs deep into the life and works of one of the greatest novelists of all time. On the 18th of June 1815, an almighty clash of arms takes place in the fields and farmhouses south of Brussels that will set the course of world history for the next hundred years. In one day of desperate fighting, over 20 years of war come to a bloody end in the shattering defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French. On the victorious side is a British, Dutch, and Hanoverian army led by the Duke of Wellington, and, crucially, towards the end of the day, a Prussian army led by General Blücher. Dickens is only three years old, so probably too young to be frightened by tales of Bonaparte, and the horrific bedtime stories that his nursemaid Mary Weller would traumatise him with are all still to come. But children growing up in Britain in these times are warned that if they do not behave, Napoleon will come and get them. March 1815. Napoleon escapes from his exile on the island of Elbe and lands on the shores of France. In his absence, the Bourbon monarchy has been restored with a hugely unpopular Louis XVIII on the throne. With Napoleon back on French soil and marching towards Paris, Marshal Ney, a name to remember, promises the king that he will capture Napoleon and bring him back to Paris in a cage. He gathers 6,000 royalist troops to confront his former leader at Lafray. What follows passes into legend. Faced with ranks of soldiers ready to fire upon him at Ney's command, Napoleon steps forward and says to them, If any of you will shoot your emperor, do so now. Not a shot is fired. Instead, with shouts of Vive l'Empereur, Marshal Ney and his troops join forces with the Emperor, and King Louis flees the capital. Napoleon is back. But to keep his throne, he must go to war again. Today's guest is the inimitable author Bernard Cornwell, who has dedicated over 40 years of his career immersing himself in the Napoleonic Wars. He wrote the internationally famous series of novels that follow the career of a low-born English soldier, Richard Shu, as he fights in Wellington's army through India, the Iberian Peninsula, and at Waterloo. His latest novel, Shaft's Assassin, opens on the morning after that bloody battle. Burnett has also written a history of Waterloo and is therefore uniquely placed to help us understand what on earth happened on that grueling and chaotic day. But before I invite him in, there is something useful to bear in mind for this episode. Burnett describes Napoleonic warfare as a high-stakes game of rock, paper, scissors, where infantry are deployed into line, column, or square formations. This is worth remembering. Rock, paper, scissors, line, column, square.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Burnett, hello. Welcome. Well, thank you, Dominic. It's very nice to be with you.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

I'm absolutely thrilled to be here with you. One of the reasons I'm looking at Waterloo is purely because of the Sharp series that you wrote, I believe from 1979 up until now. Up until now, yes. And I think you are uniquely placed because obviously you've written the most extraordinary historical fiction around the Napoleonic Wars. But at the same time, you've written a very hefty history of the Waterloo campaign as well. And I think it's very interesting for me reading Sharp's Assassin this week and reading that book as well, to realize how both those approaches really support one's understanding of that time and that place as near as possible. I'll give you an example. I felt that the mention at the beginning, right at the start of Sharpe's Assassin, where you talk about powder burns from the musketry.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Yes. You could tell an old swathe, an old soldier, because his cheek would be flecked with little powder burns. When you snap the dog head forward and the flint hit the frism, there would be a shower of sparks. And then of course the powder explodes, and some of that goes in too.

SPEAKER_02 4:48

The weaponry of that time is absolutely fascinating, isn't it? Because Waterloo seems to sit at a point where you still have there's a lot of swords at play.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Lances, certainly some axes were used, and of course muskets and uh horrible artillery.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

You also talk about the deployment of the troops in these wars. I think you describe it as a rock, paper, scissors situation.

SPEAKER_00 5:11

Well, it really is. I mean, your your normal fighting arrangement was to have a line of men. Uh the British always lined up too deep, the French preferred three deep. Uh and that enables you to pour musketry at the enemy. But of course, it also makes you very, very vulnerable to an attack from the side. And if the cavalry can come at you from the flank, you're dead. So then if you've got cavalry, you form a square. Well, that makes you very vulnerable to a lines fire. And so you go on. I mean, it is it is a game of paper, scissors, stone, and you had to know exactly when to be in column, when to be in line, and when to be in square. Uh, luckily for us, Wellington was terribly good at it.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

You describe also the Battle of Waterloo. You say that some battles change nothing, but the Battle of Waterloo changed everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

It did, yes. It's one of the great turning points of history. I mean, it comes at the culmination of almost a century of Anglo-French rivalry. And this goes all the way back to the middle of the 18th century, um, the Seven Years' War. And of course, the great victory of that war was the capture of Canada, Upper Canada, which basically throws the French out of North America. Uh, and this is a big defeat. You then have the American Revolution, where the French come in heavily on the side of the Americans. It's always forgotten that the largest army at Yorktown was the French army. And in a sense, this is the French Revenge. Uh, although they don't get any territory in Canada, they were promised it by the Americans, but they've still to keep that promise. They have succeeded in taking away the 13 colonies. And then it all fires up again in the Revolutionary War. You describe the Napoleonic Wars also as a world war. Moscow was burned, so was Washington. Uh, there was fighting in India, fighting in the Far East. It really was a world war. But it ends up with the total defeat of France and establishes the 19th century as the, if you like, the British century. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:11

If you were French, would you be proud of Napoleon?

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yes, I think I would. Uh, I very much liked Andrew Roberts' book, Napoleon the Great. Uh, Napoleon wanted to call himself that, Napoleon Legrand, but it never caught on. He was a genuinely great man. His weakness is that he's in love with war and he can't resist war. I think he got very bored a lot of the time, and war was the one thing which didn't bore him. It was the risk, and he loved the risks, and he was also terribly good at it, although towards the end he became less good.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

Yes. Adam Zamoyski, I think I heard him talk about his saying that Napoleon, in the early stages of his fighting, was very revolutionary and clever with his tactics with circling manoeuvres and all of that. But then he got stuck. And that towards the end, at Waterloo, it seems it's actually the British that do encircling and the Prussians rather than the French.

SPEAKER_00 8:08

Well, yes, Waterloo is is an outlier. In fact, I mean he was still brilliant in 1814. The campaign he led against the Austrians and the Prussians in 1814 is a masterpiece. Wellington admired it more than any other campaign he he'd read about. And there was a huge fear that in 1815 he'd show the same brilliance, but he didn't. He still succeeded at the beginning of his campaign in splitting the Prussians and the British. I mean, one of his old tricks is to launch an attack at the hinge between two allies. And that worked quite brilliantly. But then it all fell apart on it.

SPEAKER_02 8:44

I wondered, Bernard, I've got a map of the of the battle here. I wondered if you'd be uh happy for the for our listeners that don't necessarily know the battle in huge detail, whether you would lay out the topography for us a little bit and the armies, and how much can you compress down?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Well, you can compress it quite easily. Okay. Like anything which is compressed, it's slightly misleading. But the battle is fought in a wide valley. So there are two ridges. Uh the French are on the southern ridge and the British are on the northern ridge. So don't think of these as steep ridges, they're fairly gentle slopes, but they are slopes. And those slopes are covered in crops, mostly rye. And rye grows enormously tall. Uh doesn't today, I suppose we've GMO'd it, but it would literally be as tall as a man. So already you can't see that well across the valley. And the valley is also damp. It's rained torrentially the night before, absolute torrential rain, uh, which has softened the ground. Napoleon wakes to begin the battle, and that's the first mistake. Both armies have been there all night. They wake up cold and wet and frightened. And Napoleon wakes, and the reason he waits is that the soft ground will make his artillery less effective. If he just gives the ground a chance to dry out a bit, the artillery won't dig itself in and be almost impossible to re-aim. And he once said, I can get anything back except time. And on the morning of Waterloo, he gives Wellington these two or three hours which were precious beyond belief. The British aligned along the northern ridge, the French along the southern ridge. But Wellington, as usual, takes his men back behind the ridge where they're hidden from the French. And the important thing here is there's a road that runs along the backside of the ridge. So Wellington's troops can move left or right, but the French can't see those movements. Napoleon knows this, but he says it's no big deal. I'll fire at them and I'll attack them with cavalry, and that'll reveal where they are. But his first attack is going to be on Wellington's left. Now remember that Wellington is terrified of a big strategic movement round his right wing. He's slightly outnumbered by Napoleon. Uh so he reckons Napoleon can spare troops to go round the right wing. And if he does that, that attack by Napoleon's left wing could roll him up from the right. So he's keeping an eye out open there over there. When suddenly this enormous attack comes straight across the valley. Um, it's an infantry attack by Dolon's corps. Uh, I can't remember the exact numbers, they're probably at least 8,000 men. They're preceded by an artillery bombardment, and Napoleon has more guns than Wellington, and he concentrates the fire on Wellington's left wing, but they're mostly hidden behind the crest of the ridge. So although some shots fall among them, they don't, it doesn't do the destruction that Napoleon hopes. And the attack comes in column, and that's sort of the crucial thing to remember about the Napoleonic infantry tactics, is the French always advanced in column, and a column is simply a block, like a brick. The advantage of that is that they can keep their order. If you advance in a thin line, it straggles. You can imagine that. I can't remember now, but there was a British officer from Sandhurst who helped with one of the films, who found it was quite impossible to advance in line simply because the line just got totally straggled and spread out and order was lost. So you advanced in column. The problem with the column is although you might have 2,000 men in this column, only about 200 of them can actually fire. And you're faced with a British line, say 600, where every man can fire. So columns in the end are going to come up against far greater musket fire. Well, the trick of it was to deploy the column into a line at the last minute. And they do that, um, but they leave it a little late. And the front of these columns, as they try to spread out, is being absolutely hammered by British musketry. The British have stood up as the French get to the top of the ridge, and the columns have already been shot through by British cannon. Artillerymen have now run back to join the infantry, so the cannon basically are in French hands for a moment. But then the French are stopped by this immense volley fire, and the British were terribly good at musketry. They trained hard and they could fire faster than almost any other army. And at that point, when the French are reeling back and they're still in disorder, the heavy cavalry are released, and the heavy cavalry charge into this huge, huge French formation.

SPEAKER_02 13:36

These are the Scots Greys, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

The Scots Greys, the Luzon Royals, the Niskillings, all three. And these are big men on big horses, and they charge in with these heavy, heavy swords and capture two eagles in that thing and just drive the French back across the valley. They and themselves are then driven back by French light cavalry. But what they've done is they've completely destroyed this first great attack. After that, the battle tends to move its centre of gravity, so to speak, across to Wellington's right, which is defended by two buildings which lie in front of the ridge. One is La Haye Saint, which is a farmhouse right in the centre of the battlefield, which is garrisoned by the Germans, the King's German Legion. And the other is the Chateau Hugemont, which is not really a castle, it's in an enormous farmhouse, which has got lots of surrounding buildings which are walled off, so there's a big courtyard. Um and Hugemon is under siege almost all day, but it's defended by the Coal Stream guards and by some troops from Nassau in Germany, and they are holding out pretty well. Although at one point the French do get behind the chateau or behind the farm yard and try to force open the gate of the farmhouse, and they get the gate open, and the coal stream guards lead a charge against that, and they manage to shut the gates. Wellington always said that that was the moment that won the Battle of Waterloo, because if the French had captured Hugomon, they would have had a huge advantage. And then with the Battle for Hugomon struggling on, they seize is on the southern ridge on horseback, and he sees what looks like British troops retreating from the ridge. He can't see very much, but he can just see over the top of the British ridge. And there seem to be a lot of troops going back towards the forest of Swanyas. And he reckons that the British are actually giving up and are withdrawing from the battlefield. And he orders a cavalry charge. He collects all the French cavalry and off they go across this wet, soggy valley. And the British aren't retreating, they're still there. And they're behind the ridge where they form squares. And it's a total slaughter of this French cavalry, which charge again and again and again. I mean, incredible bravery. And they can't break the squares, so they go between them. It's like threading a chessboard and all the while getting hit by musketry.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

I mean, it must have been so unnerving being in one of those squares as well. Can you can you describe those squares a bit to us, how they're how they're formed for an oblong or a square.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

It's made up of four ranks. The front rank is kneeling, and they have their musket jammed into the turf with a bayonet fixed, 17-inch bayonet on the end. So it's a like a hedge of blades. Behind them is a second row of men with fixed bayonets, holding the muskets and bayonets just over the front rank's shoulder. And behind them are two other ranks who have got muskets who are firing. Um, so you're driving your horse towards this barrier of men, which is made up of steel blades and firing muskets. The square was almost impossible to break. It did happen occasionally. It happened at a place called Garcia Hernandez in Spain. And there it happened because a horse was killed just short of the square and fell and skidded into the French square's face. And the weight of the horse just blew a hole in it. And the German cavalry streamed in after it. They're now inside the square and attacking the men from behind. Must have been quite horrific.

SPEAKER_02 17:21

Yes, and you're right, the bravery of the French cavalry then attacking those squares.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

It was extraordinary, though. And they came back again. No one remembers how many times the cavalry charged, they lost count. And all the time they're being slaughtered. And every time they withdrew back down the slope, the gunners would run out to the guns, the British gunners, and reload the cannon that a moment before had been in French hands and open fire on the French cavalry again. And as the French cavalry got near, they'd fire a last blast of canister. And canister is a particularly nasty thing, which is like turns a cannon into a shotgun. And I mean the French were dying in their scores, but kept coming back with no chance whatsoever of breaking these squares. And eventually that dies down. Meanwhile, as we're getting on towards evening now, the French do capture Le Hay Sand, and that gives them a huge advantage. Now they can move quite close to the British ridge and bring artillery up there. And the artillery fire is beginning to now take a real toll of Wellington's troops, and he's running out of reserves, and he's still holding the ridge. By now, he's probably aware it's the evening time now, and it's about six o'clock. He's probably aware that the Prussians are coming. They're far off to his left. And Napoleon is aware of that too. And Napoleon, all his troops can see, far, far off to their right, are these dark uniforms. And Napoleon deliberately lies to his army. He says, Gruchy is coming. Grushi is the man he sent to pursue the Prussians with 33,000 French. And he says, Gruchy is here, we're about to win. And a couple of hours later, he sends the Imperial Guard up the slope towards Wellington's right. And the Imperial Guard is terrifying. I mean, you have to think of them as probably the most elite troops in Europe. They're hand-picked men, they have special uniforms, special privileges, and their boast is that they've never been defeated. They are the impregnable. And we have accounts from British soldiers who watch them coming and saying this was absolutely terrifying. These enormous men wearing their bearskin hats coming in their columns, three columns up the slope. And it's Napoleon's last chance. If he can break through Wellington's right wing and then roll up his line from that end, he's won the battle. And he can probably then deal with the Prussians because he outnumbers the Prussians too, despite the men he's lost in the battle. And you have this incredibly famous passage of arms, which is the assault of the Imperial Guard. And it's this that makes the battle so dramatic. Because up until this point, either side could win. It's been incredibly hard fought, but either side could win. And Napoleon is throwing in his strongest units, and they're met in column by a British line again. And exactly the same thing happened as always happened between lines and columns. The lines win, and British musketry defeats the Imperial Guard that begins to retreat down the slope. And the rest of the French army that is being urged forward sees the guard going backwards, and the shout goes up Le Garde Recoup, and panic sets in, and the whole army begin to retreat. At which point Wellington waves his hat three times and waves them forward, and the whole British line goes forward, leaving behind them, a German observer said, like a high tide line, a row of dead bodies. But the survivors all march forward. And it's an incredibly dramatic moment. It's very late at night, about half past eight, but it's almost the longest night of the year. But into this dust, this twilight dust, which is lit by fires set into the props, and the dead and the powder smoke, it must have been quite horrific. But it was also victory.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Yes, it's so interesting you talk about the guard advancing in column. Now they're an elite, so maybe they felt that it wasn't a repeat of essentially the mistake that Durlon, I think you mentioned, made by advancing in column up to the ridge as well. It seems that they faced the same problem.

SPEAKER_00 21:26

They faced the same problem. Indeed, there had been another infantry attack on that same ridge, on the same right of Women's Line earlier in the battle, which was totally defeated. I think the Imperial Guard again thought they would deploy into line when they got to the top. They were given no chance to do it. And the 52nd, the Oxfordshire Regiment, actually advanced and wheeled round their flank, still in line, and assaulted them from the flank, which was a quite brilliant maneuver by a man called Sir John Colburn.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

And the Imperial Guard had never ever felt the weight of British musketry. You've got maybe 2,000 British guards and I think two or three other regiments up on that ridge. So you've probably got 2,000 men and they can fire three shots a minute. It's a very low rate of fire compared to the archers at Agincourt, but it was more than enough. It just hammers into the French who can't deploy because the fire is coming from their flanks as well as straight in front of them.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

All of this, I mean, it brings you back to that point I made at the beginning again about the visceral quality of your analysis of all of this is unrivaled really through the through all the research that you've done with the Sharpe series as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

I mean, Napoleonic warfare, I mean, all warfare is nasty. Let's not about that. I mean, the shield wall that Utrecht fought with a sword like that was a horror. But so was the horror of meeting the enemy on a Napoleonic battlefield.

SPEAKER_02 22:54

Yes, it seems utterly extraordinary at first. Armies would face each other in bright uniform, totally visible until obviously the powder smoke gathers, and they would get right up close before firing. But then, of course, is it something like at a distance of a hundred meters the target rate is one in three?

SPEAKER_00 23:12

That was probably optimistic. Right. Yes. Uh, you know, the old saying from Marlborough's wars, wait till you see the white of their eyes. Yeah. I mean, as you advanced, you came under cannon fire, and the British cannon certainly wreaked havoc in Derlin's core. Well, you can imagine a nine-pound cannonball travelling at God knows what speed, going straight through a column. There are tales from Waterloo of one French cannonball killing 23 men. Uh, and then as you got closer, up to about 150 yards, the gunners were switched to canister. And suddenly, what had been a one cannonball coming at you or a shell is now this spray of musket balls coming like buckshot out of a cannon's mouth. The British would tend to hold their musketry as long as possible and then give two or three volleys and then charge with a bayonet. Seeing soldiers come at you with a bayonet was particularly terrifying. And it rarely got to it actually hand to hand. It did happen. A Cornish regiment at Waterloo had to defend its colour, and they were using bayonets and axes. The sergeants who made up the colour party were armed with holberts, you know, those normally torn pole axes. And it's really rather horrible thinking of a sort of 14th-century weapon being wielded at Waterloo, but they were.

SPEAKER_02 24:35

Yes, it's almost you can sort of imagine all eras of warfare in that battle, I think, because you know the guns are slow but horribly effective, aren't they?

SPEAKER_00 24:44

They are. And I mean, Napoleon loved his artillery. He always said artillery wins battles, you can't have enough of it. But strangely, the British, I won't say they were better, but they had their secret weapon, which the French had never learned to imitate, which was the invention of a man called Colonel Shrapnel. And it simply was that, what we now call shrapnel. And it was a shell, if you like, that exploded above the heads of the enemy army. And the French learned to fear that a lot. So as they're on the their far ridge, they're being hit by shrapnel as well as by round shot and by shell. So the artillery is pretty effective.

SPEAKER_02 25:23

Yes. I was wondering if you've ever thought of ways to fix the Battle of Waterloo so that Napoleon wins.

SPEAKER_00 25:29

It's almost impossible to let him lose. I mean, if you start with Napoleon's advantages, uh, I'm told I've never ever war games, so I have no idea that it's very, very difficult to let Wellington win.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

In your telling of the story of the battle just then, it occurred to me, though, that perhaps if Marshal Ney had waited until Le Hesan had been captured, then launched the cavalry. Because did Napoleon shout at him for launching unsupported cavalry attacks? They have no artillery.

SPEAKER_00 25:59

Well, there was artillery backing it up, but not enough. Remember, the British are on the reverse slope. But this is where paper scissors comes in, paper, scissors, stone, because the attack of the cavalry forced the British to make squares. Now, if they'd also sent the infantry up at the same time, the squares are peculiarly vulnerable to infantry fire because the French could have formed lines and the squares would have looked to them like columns. So they could have overlapped the British squares and just let loose with their volleys. But that didn't happen. And after the fall of Le Hayes Saint, Ney sent for reinforcements because Ney realized that he suddenly the battle had turned and he he was so close to the British centre. And if only he could have more troops, he could push a huge attack through up the road, up the main road, past Le Haye Saint. And Napoleon just refused. Where does he think I'm going to get reinforcements? He said. Well, because he had them, he had the whole Imperial Guard, but he didn't send them. And then when he sent the Imperial Guard, he sent them without cavalry so the British could stay in line. I mean, there were many French mistakes. There were very, very few Allied mistakes.

SPEAKER_02 27:09

Just hearing you talk through the battle as well, I was just thinking that it's an advantage, actually, in the end, ironically to Wellington, that the line, the British red line at the top, appears weak, weaker than it is.

SPEAKER_00 27:19

Yes. It invites attack. Yep. And people often ask why didn't he dig earthworks on the ridge the night before? Well, he didn't want to make the ridge look more menacing than it was. He wanted to invite attack straight at his line. He feared an attack round his flank. If he'd put up big earthworks, made bastions like the bastions at Borodino that the Russians had put up, it might persuade Napoleon to be clever and try a flank march. And that's the last thing he wanted. I mean, he was so scared of that, he'd left 18,000 infantry way out on his right at a village where they could take no part in the battle. And those were very precious men. He needed them, but in the end he couldn't use them because they were out there guarding against that attack that never happened. So he wanted Napoleon to attack straight on head on, because he knew that if he did, he had just enough infantry to hold him.

SPEAKER_02 28:12

And do you think that Wellington could have won without the Prussians, without Blucher arriving? No.

SPEAKER_00 28:19

No. Well, it's a very interesting question. But remember, by this stage of the evening, Napoleon's been forced to move a lot of his troops back to his right to face the Prussians who were fighting around the village Goldplansawa, including part of his Imperial Guard, the Young Guard. If the Prussians hadn't been there, then those troops would have been available for an attack earlier in the evening, which might well have broken through. But remember, Wellington only fought because he believed the Prussians were coming. And the Prussians only made that march because they'd been assured that Wellington would stand until they came. Which is why I always think it's sad that there's so much argument as about who won the battle. Was it Blucher or Wellington? It was very much an Allied victory. And credit must go to both of them. Yes, certainly the attack on Wellington's line at the end of the day could have been at least twice as big if Blucher hadn't been there. But Blucher was there. And so Napoleon was out by this time fighting two separate battles, one at Plansonrois and the other at Mont-Sejon.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

You write it very well in your Waterloo history about the idea of holding down terror, holding down your terror and being able to face the enemy. I'm very, I'm still sort of, and I'm sure the French are as well. I'm still surprised that the Imperial Guard were spooked at the top of the ridge. Why they faltered, why they didn't just keep pressing on. Was it just they were just overwhelmed by fire?

SPEAKER_00 29:45

I think they were overwhelmed by musketry. Remember, too, that they had been climbing a ridge which was horribly littered with dead and dying horses, dead and dying men, and indeed the results of a previous infantry attack, which I didn't mention, which was blown away by the line quite quickly. I mean, they're marching up a slope of horror. The rye had been trampled flat, and in it are nothing but bodies and dying men and horses. And they see nothing waiting for them except British guns. And those British guns are firing straight into them. They can't see the infantry waiting for them because Wellington has them lying down at the back of the ridge, so they can't be seen. And as they just get to the top of the ridge and about to cross the road, the British infantry gets the order to stand up. So suddenly, boom, there are these guys in front of them, and a whole long line of them, too, not a column, a line. And this dreadful musketry starts. Now to give the French their due on the right of that Imperial Guard attack, they did drive the British battalion backwards. And that battalion did rally and come forward again. But the French are really being hit by an overwhelming weight of musketry. And it's coming from three sides, if you like. The 52nd march out of line and actually march onto the flank. So the British line bends round the side of the French attack, and the musketry starts coming from the side. It's a murderous fire. And I think these men, the French, brave as they were, are already dubious about the day. They've seen every other attack defeated, and now suddenly they're totally halted by this weight of musket fire.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

This is a kind of warfare that takes the bravest person to the point of breaking.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

I think it does, yes. Yeah. And the miracle is that the British didn't break. There were places on that battlefield where the battalions were just lying dead in their ranks. It was extraordinary. But they stayed and they fought. I mean, a lot of that is discipline, enormous discipline, and a lot of it is morale. But Wellington was right. Give me enough of those pointing to a red coat and I'll win. And he had just enough.

SPEAKER_02 31:57

Yes, morale is a very, very key thing that I'm starting to understand. That's why Napoleon doesn't seem to rally. I mean, no, he goes back to Paris after the battle and he's not supported by the government.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

No.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

But even so, you still feel like he has cards to play, potentially.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

Well, potentially, yes. I mean, he probably could have raised an army of 150,000 men to defend Paris. He wants to do that, but the government knows the game is up. I mean, it's not just the British and Prussians who are now very close to Paris, but the Austrians and the Russians are coming too. So you've got something like half a million men marching on Paris. So if he could raise 150, it ain't going to help him that much. Although, remember, the year before he certainly held up a similar situation brilliantly with very few men. But the French are doubtless tired of war. Remember, you have conscription. They've seen their young men go to war and too many come back wounded or not come back at all. And although there's this immense enthusiasm when Napoleon rescues them from the ill government of Louis XVIII, it fades very quickly when he doesn't bring them victory as well.

SPEAKER_02 33:08

Yeah. I think it reminds me of the character of Lucille Sharpe's wife in Sharp's Assassin, where she feels a regret over Napoleon's abdication, but equally says, too many deaths, too many deaths.

SPEAKER_00 33:19

There's too many deaths, yes. There have just been far too many deaths. I think they were right. I mean, the only way Napoleon could have survived was to bring on more war. He would have somehow had to have seen off Wellington and Blucher from Paris and then marched east to take on the Austrians and the Russians. It was a very tall order.

SPEAKER_02 33:39

This question I asked you at the start about being proud of Napoleon or being proud of Wellington or being even proud of Bluecha as well. Where do you feel that we should be in the 21st century with regard to all of that? I mean, I certainly think I'd be fascinated to sort of go in a time machine and sort of look around a bit. But to live back in those times would be pretty awful, I would have thought.

SPEAKER_00 33:59

Absolutely. Take your own penicillin. Yeah, I mean, to live in those times, I mean, I'm always asked what moment of history would you most like to go back to? And it's this toss-up between going to actually see the Battle of Waterloo, notice see, not take part in, um, or to see, which I'd think is probably the one I'd choose, to go and see one of Shakespeare's plays at the Globe. That would be pretty wonderful. But the whole thing is ghastly, absolutely ghastly. And for Wellington, almost the worst part of it was being the winner because you were left with the dead and the dying, and you had to cope with that somehow. I mean, some of the men, the battle was fought on a Sunday, some of the wounded weren't rescued till the following Thursday. I mean, it was just ghastly.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

Yes. I suppose if you're French, though, you you feel a pride in Napoleon, but how do you explain away the lives that are lost? I mean, it's just extraordinary, isn't it? The and also his abandoning his own troops in the end of the disastrous campaign of 1812 where he saves his own skin.

SPEAKER_00 35:03

As he did at the end of the Egyptian campaign, too. He still brought them victory. Right. Um, La Gloire. I mean, when they heard those cannons firing from Lesambolis, they knew that news of another victory had arrived and Paris would suddenly be on holiday. I think he gave the French a great pride in their achievements. But of course he did achieve an enormous amount.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 35:26

But he also roused enormous numbers of enemies. And by the end, he has Prussian, Russian, Austrian, and British armies to contend with. And it's it's impossible.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

And also, I mean, is this unique in history? War is declared on Napoleon, not France. I mean, that's extraordinary, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 35:44

It is extraordinary, yes. It was war against one man. And in 1815, that's what happened. They declared war on Napoleon and made it clear they were not at war with France, although of course it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:56

Although France itself was perhaps divided. There must have been many citizens of France hedging their bets and just waiting to see which way it panned out. I mean, obviously they brought back the monarchy after Napoleon had abdicated.

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yes, I mean, as they advanced into France, the French would change the cockades on their hat from the tricola to the white cockade of the Bourbons. Um, I mean, these were not idiots. They knew that you had to sort of play both sides. No doubt that when Napoleon returned from Elba, he returned to an enormous welcome and enormous enthusiasm.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Yes, I find that story interesting because it's incredibly courageous of him to sort of face down possibly his executioners, you know, to say if you will shoot your emperor, do so now. But then contrast that to his fleeing the battlefield at Waterloo.

SPEAKER_00 36:41

Well, he didn't have a choice.

SPEAKER_02 36:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:43

By that time, he knew the battle was over, but he also did not want to be captured by his enemies. Because he had to abandon his carriage and jump onto a horse and keep going. He really didn't have much choice by the end of the day. Everybody else was running away. Why shouldn't he?

SPEAKER_02 36:58

That's fair enough. I suppose the guard, there was one column of the guard remaining, is that right? That didn't that didn't budge?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

That's right, yes, which has got so many myths about it. You know, the usual, I can't remember the name of the general who shouted back at the British, the guard does not surrender, it dies. Um, the French prefer that he simply said murdered, which does seem to be made up by journalists. Uh, but it was it was all fairly useless. I mean, that unit of the guard was destroyed in minutes. I mean, the thing that slowed the pursuit, if anything, was the coming of night. And the British army was, frankly, too tired and had lost so much cavalry that it couldn't take part in the pursuit, so the Prussians did it and rather cleverly mounted some infantry buglers on horseback so that the French all night thought that infantry was coming, and Napoleon was caught up in that mess as guns and carriages and wagons tried to cross the narrow bridge, and that's where he had to abandon his carriage and jump onto a horse.

SPEAKER_02 38:00

Yes. Well, we're both Brits, so should we be proud of Wellington, do you think? Very, very.

SPEAKER_00 38:05

Yep. Very. I mean, he's an extraordinary man. Um, we probably wouldn't like him much if we met him. Uh, he could be very cold. He once said he had no small talk, and the one exception to that was with pretty women. Almost all the best stories about Wellington were told to women and who then told other people. But he really did know his business. His soldiers knew that and they appreciated it. He was once asked what the greatest compliment he ever received. And it came after the Battle of Albera in Spain, and he wasn't at that battle. It was Marshal Beresford who led the British and led them rather clumsily. And the British suffered dreadful casualties in winning that battle. It was Marshal Sioux who said they didn't know they were beaten. And Wellington got there a day or two later and goes to a convent where many of the British wounded are lying in a horrible condition. Imagine blood and vomit and God knows what else suffering. And he never quite knew what to say to men. He was so awkward, and he stood at the doorway and just said, Well, I'm so sorry to see so many of you here. And the corporal called out from the other end of the room, My lord, if you had been here, not so many of us would be here. You claim that as the greatest compliment he ever received. And he meant it because he did try and protect his men in battle.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

Yes, the impression I read from Napoleon, and I don't think I'm being biased, is that human life was pretty expendable for him. He was very willing to slaughter thousands for his own.

SPEAKER_00 39:36

He was. I mean, on the morning after Austerlitz, he stood on the Pratson Heights, and another general was nearby, and the man was crying. And Napoleon said, What are you crying about? And he pointed down to the valley and said, Look at all those dead men. Napoleon said, The women of Paris could replace them in one night. And he famously said to Metinick when Metinick said, If you go to war again, sire, you'll just have more and more dead. And he said, What are a million men to me? And he was, I won't say he was careless with his men, but he did not weep over them as Wellington did. Wellington could get very emotional after a battle and said, There's only one thing worth of a battle lost, and that's a battle won. Because you have all the dead and the wounded on your hands. The enemy doesn't.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Yes, and he he famously sobbed after Waterloo, didn't he? He was distraught, having just won the victory of his entire career.

SPEAKER_00 40:34

Yes, he was crying that night when they brought in the what they call the butcher's bill, the list of the dead, which included many of his friends. Napoleon certainly roused immense emotions in his men and huge loyalty. I think it was Wellington who said that his presence on the battlefield was worth 40,000 men, which is a hell of a compliment. And he was also, in many ways, a genius at war. Certainly in his strategy, which, as you said earlier, was a business of surrounding an enemy and then striking head-on into them, as he did at Austerwitz with the attack. And he tried the same at Waterloo, and of course, it didn't work. And what Wellington feared at Waterloo was a movement around his Wellington's right flank, which would have been a disaster for him. Napoleon didn't try it. In the end, he came on in the same old way as Wellington said, and we saw him off in the same old way. Napoleon's legacy is alive and well in France, and so it shouldn't be. I mean, he's brought back, I think, in 1840 or 1842, I can't remember. And ever since he's been, you know, really at the top of the French pantheon of great heroes. You know, the Arc de Triomphe still stands. Well, the Arc de Triomphe is a memorial to Napoleon's victories. It always amused me to see Fuentes Denoro on on there, which was certainly not a victory, but as Sharp says, they've got to fill it up somehow. There's a coldness about Wellington. Um and he was obviously Napoleon's equal on a battlefield, as he proved. And he remained very, very calm. And as the battle went on, and as British casualties mounted, and he was always had the knack of being where the fighting was hardest, men would look at him and they'd take great reassurance from the calmness on his face. But if they had looked closer at Wellington, they would have seen he kept looking at his watch. And what he was doing was wondering when the Prussians were going to get there.

SPEAKER_01 42:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

So he was nervous, all right, and he was certainly worried, but he didn't show it. And you have to imagine the chaos of those battlefields, the noise, the sheer amount of noise, uh unending cannon fire, musketry, screams. I mean, screaming and screaming, dying horses, dying men. Um, and you can't see very far because of the thick powder smoke. But yet Wellington had a feel for a battle, knew where to be, knew what to do, and he proved it again and again. Uh certainly proved it at Waterloo.

SPEAKER_02 43:25

Uh yes, and he's facing, in a lot of sense, he's facing Marshal Ney at Waterloo. Is that correct? Because Napoleon is taking a little bit of a back seat on that day.

SPEAKER_00 43:35

He's taken a slight back seat, and he's put the command of the battle into the hands of Ney, who makes, thank goodness, various mistakes. Ney doesn't command at the beginning of the battle. I mean, when Durlong's corps charges, uh, that is totally up to Napoleon and Durlong. Uh, but after that, Ney takes command, and the the weight of the battle, if you like, moves to the British right wing instead of the left wing. But Wellington wouldn't have known that, of course. And as far as he was concerned, he was facing the best that the Emperor could throw against him.

SPEAKER_02 44:10

Yes. Much has been made of the fact that Napoleon delayed the start of the battle because of the weather. But not much is made of the fact that it was, as you say, it was one of the longest days of the year. So the fact that the sun goes down a much later, does that in some way compensate for the late start from Wennington's point?

SPEAKER_00 44:26

Yes. I mean, he he knows that he's got a lot of daylight left. Um, so perhaps he feels that surrendering those two or three hours is not going to be a huge disadvantage because he'll make it up at the end of the day. But Wellington was incredibly grateful for every hour that passed that morning. I remember that they were all awake between half past five and six o'clock. And the battle doesn't really start till about eleven o'clock. And all that time Wellington is praying, but it doesn't start. Uh and his prayer is basically granted.

SPEAKER_02 45:01

Yes. And in terms of fate and providence, I know that Victor Hugo rejects the idea that Wellington won or Blucher won, but it was God. God decided that Napoleon had to go. And but you describe in the book this extraordinary moment at the before the fighting starts in the morning where a shaft of sunlight rains down on the French position while they're parading.

SPEAKER_00 45:22

Yes, in all their glory. The French had their parade uniforms ready for a parade in Brussels that night. The Imperial Guard had cardboard tubes attached to their crossbows with the plumes in them. The plumes would be attached to their bearskins for a formal occasion. But they marched to battle with the plumes, ready to have them that night.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

Yeah. And I think if I've remembered right, there's a there's a shaft of sunlight that lands on Wellington's position near the end as well.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

I I don't know how true that is. There's a lot of myth around that. But it's possible. It's possible. I think it was Johnny Kincaid, a rifleman, who says he turned and saw the Duke in a shaft of watery sunlight, waving his hat. I hope so.

SPEAKER_01 46:06

I hope so. I hope so too. I hope so too.

SPEAKER_02 46:21

The French dead were burned. They were put on pyres and settled like they weren't buried.

SPEAKER_00 46:26

They weren't buried. I mean, the British were faced with trying to clear up this battlefield on which God knows how many men died, and that was still dying. And they dug graves for their own men and made fires for the French, who were probably stripped of all their clothes, looted. And then years later, there were so many bones in that valley because the graves were so shallow that the Belgian government asked for proposals to get rid of them. And it was won by a British firm that went over there and picked up all the bones and ground them down to fertilizer, which is not really very wonderful. There was the Battle of Salamanca in 1812, and a year later, a British officer was riding across the battlefield and heard this strange hollow knocking sound. It was nighttime. And his horse was hitting the skulls of dead men. The bones had come out of the graves, and there were so many that his horse's hooves were hitting these skulls, making this sound. We had no conception of what that must have been like.

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Do you think the tactics of those Napoleonic battles, I feel like they lead certainly the British to be very complacent in terms of what tactics to employ in 1914 at the outbreak of the First World War, where you're I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

I don't think. I mean, there's certainly a case to make that after the Napoleonic Wars the British Army becomes hidebound and doesn't make the changes it needs to make because it thinks it's conquered everything, learned everything it needs to learn by 1815. That's a bit unfair, but Wellington was not the greatest commander of the army after the wars. He tended not to want newfangled things and methods. I mean, the Crimea is many ways is a repeat of the Napoleonic Wars. And the American Civil War is the interesting one where you see that changeover of tactics and what begins as almost Napoleonic ends as a foretaste of the horrors of 1914 to 18.

SPEAKER_02 48:25

Do you think there's a danger in being too nostalgic about those times?

SPEAKER_00 48:31

I don't think there's any point in being nostalgic because they're gone and they're not coming back. But if I was a soldier today, I would certainly be proud of what my regiment had done back then and know about it and celebrate it. Because it's, I think soldiering is often a question of morale handed down by your forebears and their enormous achievements. And it's difficult to forget, you know, you've got Chauga Square and Waterloo Station. It's in your face.

SPEAKER_02 49:00

Yes. Yes, it's just an interesting puzzle, I think, to note because obviously none of us were there. I did speak to a soldier once, I think, from the Cold Stream Guards, and I believe their regiment, one of their regiments, was in inside Hoogemon.

SPEAKER_00 49:13

They were Hoogam, yes.

SPEAKER_02 49:15

And he talked about Waterloo in a way that was so measured and so honest in saying it was an Allied army, it was really the first perhaps NATO operation. There was no tub thumping. Whereas other people, armchair soldiers, and uh I'm perhaps more inclined to take it a little too far into sort of quite nationalistic sentiment, perhaps.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

Well, there's a certainly a temptation to do that when it comes to Britain and France, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 49:42

The Azure Bourg, Batier, Lenin, Malplaquet, you can go on through it, you see. Um, because the French can do the same thing. Yeah. I mean, this age-old rivalry of France and England, and it goes back forever, certainly a thousand years.

SPEAKER_02 49:56

Yes. This this has been an extraordinary conversation, Bernard. Thank you so much. I've learnt a lot. Kind of you, Dominic. Not at all. And and uh I thoroughly recommend not only people to read your history of Waterloo, but also. I've actually I have to say, I've I picked up Sharp's Assassin. That was the first Sharp novel I've read, so I've now got to go back through what, 21?

SPEAKER_00 50:18

Absolutely. Go back to Sharp's Tiger, where he begins.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

Okay. One thing I was I was made me howl reading Sharpe's Assassin was the the fact that you had obviously in Sharp's Waterloo, it must have been Sharp shoots William of Orange.

SPEAKER_00 50:31

That didn't happen. The prince was shot uh almost certainly by a French skirmisher. Uh he didn't die, but he was so awful and had lost so many men by his idiocy that I thought Sharp realizes we need to get rid of this idiot. And so he takes a pot shot at it.

SPEAKER_02 50:51

Yes. So the French sharpshooters do the British a huge favor in the battle.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

Yes, they did. Oh yes, yes, that was an own goal for the French when they shot the Prince of Orange. Maker insisted that he won the battle.

SPEAKER_02 51:03

And on the battlefield, isn't it? There's this enormous mound.

SPEAKER_00 51:06

Yes, the lion. And when Wellington revisited the battlefield years later, he took one look at it and said, They've ruined my battlefield.

SPEAKER_02 51:14

Yes. How did it change the topography? Had it changed the valley? Had it taken the slope?

SPEAKER_00 51:18

It changes uh the height of the British ridge. Okay. It probably scraped about three or four feet from the top of that ridge to make the mound. So you don't quite see the battlefield as it was seen on the day, although, of course, it's pretty damn close. And it's easy enough to imagine being four feet high, I suppose.

SPEAKER_02 51:38

And how how many times have you have you visited the battlefield yourself?

SPEAKER_00 51:42

I have no idea. I would think probably between 12 and 20, a lot, and will again.

SPEAKER_02 51:49

What does it do to you? Because you you've lived so close to this history.

SPEAKER_00 51:53

It rouses an incredible sympathy for the men who were there. And I have to say, an admiration for Wellington. Because, on the face of it, it's not, it's certainly not a great defensive position, not like others he had in the peninsula. But nevertheless, he used it brilliantly. But above all, I think you just have to feel an immense sympathy for the men who died there.

SPEAKER_02 52:17

Yes. I don't know if you came across the story recently about how an unexploded shell was found on the battlefield. I don't know whereabouts what part of the battlefield it was at, but it was a howitzer.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

I didn't see that, but it doesn't surprise me.

SPEAKER_02 52:31

And they had to the the Belgian authorities had to take it away and have it destroyed because they couldn't find a safe way of making it.

SPEAKER_00 52:38

No, well, it it would have had a fuse going through a hole in the shell. Um, and that day so many shells landed in the mud that the fuse got extinguished by the damp mud. So there are probably several more there.

SPEAKER_02 52:54

Gosh. So if we go and visit the battlefield, your advice would be not to pick one up if you if if one is uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00 53:01

You're not likely to find anything. The the battlefield of Waterloo has been metal detectored like crazy. Uh, I mean, there are places in the Pyrenees where you can pick up musket balls, and I found musket balls on several Spanish battle sites, but never found one anywhere near Waterloo.

SPEAKER_02 53:19

Gosh. Well, Bernard, thank you again. All the very best now. And to you. Six weeks after the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon surrendered to the British. Standing on the deck of the HMS Bellerophon, the Emperor watched in silence as the French coastline receded forever. The ship's crew held their prisoner in awe. They would remove their hats as he passed them and would speak only when spoken to. Inspecting the ranks aboard, Napoleon was impressed, saying, How much might be done with a hundred thousand such soldiers as these? However, he couldn't resist pointing out to the British troops that their method of fixing bayonets was inferior to the French, because they could be twisted off more easily by an enemy during a charge. When HMS Bellerophon landed in Plymouth, on England's southern coast, it waited at anchor for two weeks, while the government decided Napoleon's fate. News of the Emperor's capture and location spread like a mania across Britain, and there was a fevered outpouring of sympathy for him. Extraordinary scenes occurred every day, where thousands of boats, filled with members of the British public dressed in their Sunday best, rowed out to the ship to cheer and catch a sight of the fallen emperor, while Napoleon would stand on deck and wave to them. The British public loved their mortal enemy. In London, the government was not impressed, and decided that the best course of action was to send Napoleon 4,600 miles away to the island of St. Helena, where he would spend the last six years of his life in a sad and lonely isolation. Marshal Ney, the bravest of the brave, who seems to me to have always put the French people first, ahead of his allegiance to king or emperor, was not forgiven by King Louis for switching to Napoleon's side. He was arrested for treason and sentenced to death by firing squad. In a final act of enormous courage, Ney refused to wear a blindfold and ordered the troops to aim at his heart, where they fired on his command. The Duke of Wellington was said to have been appalled by Ney's execution and regretted his failure to intervene on the marshal's behalf. Wellington himself, the conqueror of the unconquered, became one of Britain's most iconic heroes. His reputation took a hit when he became a hugely unpopular Prime Minister. For a man accustomed to simply being obeyed, the parliamentary process was a constant frustration for him. He was also largely opposed to reform, but did manage to pass the Act of Catholic emancipation. It should also be noted that Britain has had far more unpopular prime ministers since. When the Duke died in 1852, the country fell into deep mourning. An epoch had passed, giving way to an era of steam engines, telegraphic instruments, and photography. Wellington was given a state funeral. Dickens was there, but felt that the pomp and pageantry undermined all solemnity, with the Duke's body being carried in what he describes as a tasteless and tawdry car that nodded and shook through the streets of London. In short, he felt the occasion failed to reflect the faintest ray of lustre on so bright a name. Dickens also hated the tat and memorabilia that were sold on the day, such as the Duke of Wellington funeral wine and the celebrated lemon biscuits, which perhaps justify Napoleon's assertion that Britain is a nation of shopkeepers. But Dickens was always suspicious of great national displays, and for much of his career he skewered British attitudes of pomposity and exceptionalism. However, as an Englishman living in the age of the Pax Britannica, which followed after Waterloo, Dickens would unquestionably have absorbed into his person what Graham Greene called the Victorian Confidence. Thank you for listening to Charles Dickens' A Brain on Fire. And thank you to Georgina White for singing the old song of the 95th Rifles. I want to keep adverts off this series, so if you're enjoying these episodes and would like to make a small donation, please follow the link in the description wherever you get this podcast, and you can make a small donation there. Thank you very much, and see you next time.