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Praetorium Honoris

Thursday, February 16, 2023

At the End ...

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo
Ernest Crofts (Source)
Soldat Louis Vaugeois struggled up the muddy, torn slope as he marched with his comrades into battle. Though they had been spectators for most of the day, they had been engaged two days ago and it seemed that they had been marching every day without cease for at least a month.

For the Imperial Guard was always the last to move. Enemy spies were everywhere and where the Guard was, there too was the Emperor of France. Where Napoléon was marked the main thrust of a campaign. The Emperor led the main body, first, last, and always.

Louis grunted as he thought of that. Back in '06 he had been in the Iron Marshal's¹ corps standing alone against the bulk of the Prussian Army at Auerstädt whilst the Emperor fought a small portion of the Prussian Army with the bulk of the Grande Armée.

Nothing seemed to change, Louis thought, they had watched the Emperor turn his horse off the road and salute the Guard with his famous cocked hat. There was grumbling in the ranks, this was the last cast of the dice, "Why is the Emperor not leading us to glory?" many of the men muttered.

Louis didn't care. He had been unemployed when the Bourbons had returned to France in 1814. He had been exiled to his native village, far from Paris and the intrigues of the Bonapartists.

When word had come of the Emperor's return, Louis had set out for Paris immediately, along with many other veterans who had shared the bitterness of exile.

The whirlwind rebuilding of an army to convince the crowned heads of Europe that only Frenchmen could decide the fate of France and who sat on the throne. Not some bunch of diplomats drawing up new maps in far off Vienna!

Now that was all in the past, finally they were advancing to put paid to Wellington and his hirelings, the dregs of England's prisons.

The smoke was thicker up here, there were dead men and horses everywhere. The ranks began to waiver and turn as men picked their way through this field of the dead. Louis' heart beat faster as the drums beat the pas de charge and the cry "Vive l'Empereur!" issued from a thousand throats.

As rifts in the drifting powder smoke slowly revealed the ridge ahead, Louis was puzzled, where were the English? All he could see were more dead men and horses, though here and there a corpse clad in a red uniform could be glimpsed, he saw no living man in the red jacket of the English army.

Trampled crops, there, an abandoned cannon, more smoke and in the right rear of his unit, he heard the distinctive thump of artillery. Louis thought that odd, who could that be, in that direction?

But immediately his attention was focused again to his front, for there, there were the English, seemingly springing from the torn soil, muskets at the present ...

The first volley seemed to rip away the men who were ahead of him in the column. Screams and groans filled the air as his comrades fell all around him.

There was Lieutenant Portier, the cross of the Legion of Honor shining on his chest, his sword held aloft, screaming incoherently as blood gushed from his mouth. Louis watched in shock as this veteran of a hundred battles collapsed to his knees and died.

The sergeants were now trying to get the men to deploy into line so they could return the English fire. What madness is this, Louis' mind screamed, to attempt to deploy in the face of the enemy?

Another volley crashed out, more men fell. Louis found himself taking a step backwards, still facing front but unable to will himself to take one more step into the maelstrom of English musketry. Other men began to drift to their rear, slowly and inexorably the Imperial Guard demonstrated that regardless of their prowess and reputation, they were still but mortal men.

As the Guard tried to keep it's order as it slid back down the ridge, another English unit had advanced onto their left flank. Again these men seemed to appear from the smoke of battle like phantoms of some military nightmare.

When the volleys began to pour into the Guard from the flank, the men could take no more. Many turned and ran, throwing their muskets down, discarding anything which might slow their retreat from the slaughterhouse of the ridge of Mont St. Jean.

As night fell, Louis passed a square of grenadiers, he recognized them as one of the senior units of the Guard, they stood like a rock against a gathering tide of ruin.

He was mixed in with a group of regular infantrymen and even a few unhorsed cavalrymen who found great difficulty in treading through the mud in their big boots. He tried to veer towards the square but it was impossible, the tide of defeat was carrying him south, away from the field.

He thought he caught a glimpse of the Emperor in the square of grenadiers, but then the blare of an English trumpet sounded behind him, and the mob surged again, screaming in panic. His face burned with shame as he was swept along.

The battle was over, they had lost.

Could France be saved?

Louis had his doubts.

Napoleon at Waterloo, 1815
Mezzotint by Jazet after Steuben (Source)




¹ Louis-Nicolas Davout, commander of the III Corps during the Prussian campaign of 1806.

38 comments:

  1. Wasn't expecting this post Sarge. The Royal power structure finally knocked off the upstart self-anointed emperor.

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    1. Neither was I, it sprang out of nowhere. In your last sentence I see you understood where I was coming from. Parallels to modern times.

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  2. This is one of the great questions, Sarge: What happens to warriors that are defeated but not demoralized? They often have nowhere to turn in the society the came from, either from legislations and public opinion preventing them or the world and themselves diverging along different paths. Surely the call to arms, that the defeat was an unexpected error that can be rectified, would indeed be hypnotic and a sense of the world "being right", as it were.

    But then the reality: everyone loses at some point, generals rise and fall in the their prowess, and all the greatness of heart in the world cannot overcome bad strategy or a very good one on the part of one's enemy. What then? Then the crushing demoralizing defeat, the long retreat, the inevitable thoughts about "what if this had never occurred?"

    This story haunts me, and it haunts me because it shows that hubris built on past performance can still end in true disaster.

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    1. The story haunts me as well, and I'm seeing modern parallels in these dark days.

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    2. In Germany after WWI, there were the Freikorps. After WWII, many SS joined the Foreign Legion. You can see it here in the US with the rise of various militia after Vietnam. Men who have been through that often wish to have the ability to control their downfall, or prepare for the coming downfall.

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    3. The end of the Napoleonic Wars lead to the passing of the Vagrancy Act 1824 in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy_Act_1824
      This act was deigned to deal with the large numbers of discharged soldiers/sailors from the Napoleonic Wars who who had no way of supporting themselves. There were offences such as 'exhibiting wounds and deformities for reward' or begging. Some sections of the act are still in force today and offences such as begging were everyday offences when I joined the police in 1977. I'm still not sure how the UK escaped violent revolution in the late C19 early C20 given the conditions of the average working man.
      Post WW1 in the UK a large programme of building public housing commenced as a way of dealing with a large number of men with military experience turning to violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Becontree
      Retired

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    4. Something that many nations have struggled with, what to do with all those veterans once the war is over?

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  3. "Could France be saved?". 208 years later "France" still exists but there was a LOT of history in that 208 years. I could say that the France today is not that France but you can say that about most anything 200+ years later.
    It's a good question... has it been answered?

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    1. Being part French (about 25%, the family name was originally Gaudry) the story of France has always fascinated me. Much to the chagrin of the other 75% of my ancestry, though the wild geese would understand.

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    2. The France of the Pre-Revolution was destroyed by the Revolution, the Revolutionary France was destroyed by Revolutionary France and the Bonaparte Imperialism. Then the Return of the Bourbons was a wet duck fart that was smashed by Bonaparte again. And again, and again, over and over, one regime totally smashed by another regime. Really only in the last 50 years have they had what we would call a stable government, and a lot of that time it's because France is being hag-ridden by the EU.

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    3. The French seem to be their own worst enemy.

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  4. It appears your muse reported to work! Btw, I'm currently sitting in a lounge at O'Hare waiting for my brother to land. We're heading up to Great Lakes to see my nephew graduate from Boot Camp on Friday. Unfortunately we only get him until 9pm tomorrow as he departs at noon Saturday for A-School and Nuke Power School. Smart kid- got a nom to the boat school, but didn't get in. Chose to pay his own way through school through his service. Although, the Seaman to Admiral program really likes Nukes so we'll see.

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    1. Congrats to your nephew Tuna and best wishes on his new career.

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    2. Tuna - She popped in to do laundry, so to speak. (I have lots of things on my mind at the moment, my reading on the battle of Waterloo continues and it's at this stage in the story I embellished above.)

      Bravo Zulu to your nephew, may he go far in his chosen endeavor.

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    3. Nylon12 - I'll second that motion!

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    4. Tuna,
      Best wishes Or "Fair Winds and Following Seas".

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    5. Thank you Sarge, Juvat, and Nylon.

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  5. It's one thing to be able to have Esprit-de-Corps when you're winning. It's another to have the same EdC when you're obviously losing. That breaking point between winning and losing is a critical one.

    Being able to keep troops together during a loss, to be able to withdraw them in an orderly fashion, to save as many as one can, or to know when to drop the flag and surrender, that's a very difficult thing for leaders to handle. And it's moments like this when you see who the real leaders of a troop are, and often they are not the officers you'd expect, sometimes it's the NCOs or even a particular enlisted who has the charisma and fortitude to take over.

    You see a lot of those leaders in the rolls of the Medal of Honor or the various high service decorations, usually post-humously.

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  6. Like the new Corsair header.
    Should have some serendipitous drivel headed your way today.
    John Blackshoe

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    1. Interesting squadron mark on the Corsair; a Composite ?
      Boat Guy

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    2. OK, little web search. VC-3 was a night fighter outfit flying F4U-5N's off USS Boxer during Korea.
      BG

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    3. Good to know. I made up a lot of these headers a couple of years ago. Close to a hundred I recall. I don't remember the details of each. Hadn't used the Corsair yet, I like that photo a lot.

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    4. I half-expected to see the carrier's name back on the empennage, I guess that's a modern practice.

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    5. The Night Fighter Squadron clears that up. I know there were a few of them operating off of CVEs, but the USN prefered FM2s for the CVEs.

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    6. FM2's are great little airplanes ! That GM could actually improve a Grumman aircraft is really something. They did the same with the TBM. Ironic that 3/4 of the Wildcats and Avengers were built by Eastern Aircraft.
      The F8F Bearcat was intended to replace the Wildcats on CVE's for Fleet air defense. Another winning Grumman aircraft
      Boat Guy

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  7. Crusty Old TV Tech here. Give Musie more of what you last fed her, this is sehr gut stuff.

    And, love the hose-nose Vought, nice rotation starting up on your header page...maybe some SAC/TAC love soon? Say a Six-Shooter?

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    1. I haven't been rotating the headers as often as I should. I will rectify that.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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