Frederick Trevor Hill - "On the Trail of Grant and Lee"

Charlotte Mary Yonge - "Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II"

G. Whitfield Ray - "Through Five Republics on Horseback"

James de Mille - "Cord and Creese"

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Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places by Archibald Forbes

A >> Archibald Forbes >> Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places




The British force about Quatre Bras on the morning of the 17th amounted to
about 45,000 men. Early on that morning Wellington was in conversation
with the Captain Bowles previously mentioned, when an officer galloped up
and, to quote Captain Bowles,

whispered to the Duke, who then turned to me and said,
"Old Blücher has had a d----d good licking and has gone
back to Wavre. As he has gone back, we must go too. I
suppose in England they will say we have been licked--I
can't help that."

He quietly withdrew his troops from their positions, an operation which
Ney, with 40,000 men at his disposal, did not attempt to molest,
notwithstanding repeated orders from Napoleon to move on Quatre Bras.
Early in the afternoon Napoleon reached that vicinity with the Guard, 6th
Corps, and Milhaud's Cuirassiers, picked up Ney's command, and mounting
his horse led the French army, following up Wellington's retreat. His
energy and activity throughout the march is described as intense. Those
characteristics he continued to evince during the following night and in
the morning of the eventful 18th. In the dead of night he spent two hours
on the picquet line, and about seven he was out again on the foreposts in
the mud and rain. His anxiety was not as to the issue of a battle with
Wellington, but lest Wellington should not stand and fight. That
apprehension was dispelled when, as he rode along his front about 8 A.M.,
he saw the Anglo-Dutch army taking up its ground. He was aware that at
least one "pretty strong Prussian column"--which actually consisted of the
two corps beaten at Ligny--had retired on Wavre. But notwithstanding the
disquieting vagueness and ineptitude of Grouchy's letter of 10 P.M. of the
17th from Gembloux, and that up to the morning of the battle he had sent
no suggestions or instructions to that officer, he yet trusted implicitly
to him to fend off the Prussians; and it did not seem to occur to him that
Wellington's calm expectant attitude indicated his assurance of Blücher's
cooperation.

In one of the cavalry charges toward the close of the battle of Ligny,
Blücher had been overthrown, ridden over, almost taken prisoner, and
severely bruised; but the gallant old hussar was almost himself again next
morning, thanks to copious doses of gin and rhubarb, for the effluvium of
which restorative he apologised to Hardinge as he embraced that wounded
officer, in the extremely plain expression, "_Ich stinke etwas_."
Gneisenau, his Chief of Staff, rather distrusted Wellington's good faith,
and doubted whether it was not the safer policy for the Prussian army to
fall back toward Liège. But Blücher prevailed over his lieutenants; and on
the evening of the 17th all four Prussian corps in a strength of about
90,000 men, were concentrated about Wavre, some nine miles east of the
Waterloo position, full of ardour and confident of success. That same
night Müffling informed Blücher by letter that the Anglo-Dutch army had
occupied the position named, wherein to fight next day; and Blücher's
loyal answer was that Bülow's corps at daybreak should march by way of St.
Lambert to strike the French right; that Pirch's would follow in support;
and that the other two would stand in readiness. This communication, which
reached Wellington at headquarters at 2 A.M. of the 18th, has been held to
have been the first actually definite assurance of Prussian support. The
story to the effect that on the evening of the 17th the Duke rode over to
Wavre to make sure from Blücher's own mouth that he could rely on Prussian
support next day, to the truth of which not a little of vague testimony
has been adduced, may be now definitely disregarded. The evidence against
the legend is conclusive. An authoritative contradiction was given to it
in an article in the _Quarterly Review_ of 1842, from the pen of Lord
Francis Egerton, afterwards Lord Ellesmere, who confessedly wrote under
the inspiration of the Duke, and in this instance directly from a
memorandum drawn up by his Grace. Quite recently there have been found and
are now in the possession of the Rev. Frederick Gurney, the grandson of
the late Sir John Gurney, the notes of a "conversation with the Duke of
Wellington and Baron Gurney and Mr. Justice Williams, Judges on Circuit,
at Strath-fieldsaye House, on 24th February 1837." The annotator was Baron
Gurney, to the following effect:--"The conversation had been commenced by
my inquiring of him (the Duke) whether a story which I had heard was true
of his having ridden over to Blücher on the night before the battle of
Waterloo, and returned on the same horse. He said--'No, that was not so. I
did not see Blücher on the day before Waterloo. I saw him the day before,
on the day of Quatre Bras. I saw him after Waterloo, and he kissed me. He
embraced me on horseback. I had communicated with him the day before
Waterloo.'" The rest of the conversation made no further reference to the
topic of the ride to Wavre.

It is not proposed to give here any account of the memorable battle, the
main incidents of which are familiar to all. It was of course Wellington's
policy to take up a defensive attitude; both because of the incapacity of
his raw soldiers for manoeuvring, and since every minute before Napoleon
should begin the offensive was of value to the English commander, as it
diminished the length of punishment he would have to endure single-handed.
Further, he was numerically weaker than his adversary, while his troops
were at once of divers nationalities and divers character; his main
reliance was on his British troops and those of the King's German Legion.
Napoleon for his part deliberately delayed to attack when celerity of
action was all-important to him, disregarding the obvious probability of
Prussian assistance to Wellington, and sanguinely expecting that Grouchy
would either avert that support or reach him in time to neutralise it. Mr.
Ropes has written an admirable criticism of the errors of the French in
their contest with the Anglo-Dutch army, for which Ney was for the most
part responsible, since from before 3 P.M. Napoleon was engrossed in
preparing his right flank for defence against the Prussians. The issue of
the great battle all men know. The badness of the roads retarded the
Prussians greatly, and, save in Bülow's corps, there was no doubt
considerable delay in starting; but the proverb that "All's well that ends
well" might have been coined with special application to the battle of
Waterloo.

It only remains briefly to refer to Mr. Ropes's elaborate _résumé_ of the
melancholy adventures of Grouchy, on whom he may be regarded as too
severe. Sent out too late on a species of roving commission, more was
expected from him by Napoleon than could have been accomplished by any but
a leader of the highest order, whereas Grouchy had never given evidence of
being more than respectable. He received from his master neither
instructions nor information from the time he left the field of Ligny
until 4 P.M. of the 18th, nor until at Walhain he heard the cannonade of
Waterloo had he any knowledge of the whereabouts of the French main army.
On the morning of the 18th he was late in leaving Gembloux, on not the
most direct route towards Wavre; instead of moving on which, when he heard
the noise of the battle, he should no doubt have marched straight for the
Dyle bridges at Ottignies and Moustier. Had he done so, spite of all
delays he could have been across the Dyle by 4 P.M. But when Mr. Ropes
claims that thus Grouchy would have been able to arrest the march toward
the battlefield of the two leading Prussian corps, one of which was four
miles distant from him and the other still farther away, he is too
exacting. Had Grouchy made the vain attempt, the two nearer Prussian corps
would have taken him in flank and headed him off, while Bülow and Ziethen
pressed on to the battlefield. If he had marched straight and swiftly on
the cannon-thunder of Waterloo, he might perhaps have been in time to
effect something in the nature of a diversion, although it is extremely
improbable that he could have materially changed the fortune of the day;
but instead, acting on the letter of Napoleon's instructions despatched to
him on the morning of the battle, he moved on Wavre and engaged in a
futile action with the Prussian 3rd Corps there. A shrewd and enterprising
man would have at least seen into the spirit of his orders; Grouchy could
not do this, and he is to be pitied rather than blamed.


THE END

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A Stephen King fan has published an 80-page version of the book which novelist Jack Torrance obsessively writes during King's The Shining, where his descent into madness is revealed when his wife discovers that his work consists of just one phrase, endlessly repeated.

Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson in terrifying form in Stanley Kubrick's 1980 film, is a frustrated writer who goes with his wife and son to spend the winter in the isolated Overlook Hotel in an attempt to get the novel he has always wanted to write started. But the hotel's grisly past and unquiet ghosts have their way with him, and his wife Wendy eventually finds that the manuscript he has been working on actually only contains the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", typed over and over again.

Now New York artist Phil Buehler, who describes himself as "a big fan of Stanley Kubrick and Stephen King", has self-published a book credited to Torrance, repeating the phrase throughout but formatting each page differently, using the words to create different shapes from zigzags to spirals.

"The idea has probably been marinating for years, because I loved the movie and the Stephen King book," said Buehler. "I'd just finished my own obsessive art project [and] it was an idea I had over the Christmas holidays."

He said he decided to stick to type and formatting that could have been created on a typewriter, with the first ten pages duplicating shots of Torrance's work from the film. "I thought 'if he continues to get crazier, what would those pages look like?'" he said. "I hit writer's block about 60 pages in, and I had to get to 80 - that went on for about a week." His fiancée, who had neither read the book nor seen the film, became a little concerned about his actions. "I finally showed her the movie, and she realised I wasn't really losing it," said Buehler.

He's included a spoof review from the blog OverThinkingIt.com on the book's back jacket, which compares it to "the best of Beckett" in its "lack of forward momentum", and considers the struggles of the author, "heroically pitting himself against the Sisyphusean sentence". "It's that metatextual struggle of Man vs. Typewriter that gives this book its spellbinding power," the review says. "Some will dismiss it as simplistic; that's like dismissing a Pollack canvas as mere splatters of paint."

So far, Buehler says that around 1,000 people have viewed the book, for sale on Blurb.com for $8.95 in paperback, or $22.95 in hardback, and he's sold "a few" copies, with sales now starting to pick up steam. "A few people have asked me to sign it - they're looking it as a piece of art rather than a funny thing to give to a Kubrick fan," he said. "If you're not a Kubrick or King fan, you might not even get it."

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