Brendan Simms - The longest afternoon: the 400 men who decided the Battle of Waterloo

The Longest Afternoon

Copyright 2015 by Brendon Simms

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A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-465-03994-4

Published in the UK by Allen Lane

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Hugh

When thou hast reached La Haye, survey it well,

Here was the heat and centre of the strife;

This point must Britain hold whateer befell,

And here both armies were profuse of life:

Once it was lost, .. and then a stander by

Belike had trembled for the victory.

Robert Southey,

The Poets Pilgrimage to Waterloo (1816)

Contents

My greatest debt is to my wife, Anita Bunyan, for organizing several visits to the battlefield, for commenting extensively on the text and for everything else.

This book began about forty years ago when my father, David Simms, first introduced me to the battle of Waterloo as a young boy; I remain extremely grateful to him, and to my mother, Anngret, for their encouragement. I was prompted to write it five years ago when I learned that my friend Nathalie Hamilton, ne de Lannoy, knew well the farm of La Haye Sainte, whose owner had been a childhood friend. I thank her for bringing me together with him, Count Franois Cornet dElzius and his German wife, Suzanne. Both were extremely hospitable and helpful. They are mindful of the enormous historic importance of La Haye Sainte, but please bear in mind that it is their home and still a working farm. I ask readers to respect their privacy.

I have also been very fortunate to draw on the expertise of students, colleagues, friends and others, many of whom read and commented on earlier drafts of this book. Torsten Riottes work on the origins of the Kings German Legion provided me with very helpful background. Ilya Berkovich first made me aware of the importance of ideology in the combat motivation of old regime armies. Jasper Heinzens work proved invaluable in understanding the complex Anglo-German legacy of the battle of Waterloo, and especially its Hanoverian dimension. My old friend James Carleton Paget read and greatly improved the text. Wiebke Meier, the translator of the German edition, spotted a number of mistakes and inconsistencies. So did my copy-editor, Bela Cunha.

I also thank Stella Child of the Bexhill Hanoverian Study Group, which has done so much to preserve the legacy of the Kings German Legion in Britain. Barbara Hoffmann helped me with documents at the Hanoverian State Archives. Jamie Hood of the National Army Museum showed me how to use a Baker Rifle. Jens Mastnak and Michael-Andreas Tnzer of the Arbeitskreis Hannoversche Militrgeschichte corrected many mistakes and made many helpful suggestions, too many to be acknowledged individually. Jens Mastnaks forthcoming book on the Legion will be an indispensable resource on the subject and it is to be hoped that it quickly finds an English translator.

I am very grateful to them all. Needless to say, any remaining errors are my own.

My parents-in-law, Richard and Aileen Bunyan, not only hosted me during part of the writing of this book, but also put their capacious historical library at my disposal. My two daughters, Constance and Katherine, bore with my interest in the battle of Waterloo.

This book would not have been written without the support of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung, Munich, which awarded me a one-year Fellowship during which this book was for the most part researched and written. I thank them through their director, Professor Heinrich Meier.

The Master and Fellows of Peterhouse provided, as ever, a stimulating and congenial environment for an historian. So did the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge. Hazel Dunn heroically printed out documents for me. Marcus von Salisch of the Military Historical Research Institute in Potsdam kindly arranged for a preliminary bibliography to be compiled and my association with that august institution has sharpened my understanding of military history no end.

Further thanks are due to Ronald Asch, Alessandro Barbero, Georg Baumann, Jacques Beauroy, Gemma Betros, John Bew, Tim Blanning, Martin Boycott Brown, Arndt Brendecke, Mike Broers, Jonathan Bronitsky, Etienne de Durand, Charles Esdaile, Liam Fitzgerald, Dominik Geppert, Daniela Hacke, Mary Catherine Hart, Rona Hemingway, Leighton James, Linda von Keyserlinck, Shivan Mahendrajah, Rebecca Newell, Jochen Rudersdorf, Frederick Schofield, Adam Storring, Geoffrey Wawro, Hanna Weibye and Mark Wishon.

Finally, I thank my son Hugh, whose interest in the battle of Waterloo rekindled my own, and whose knowledge of the Napoleonic Wars already greatly exceeds that of his father. This book is for him.

Despite the passage of 200 years and the twentieth-century effusions of bloodshed on a scale previously unimaginable, the Battle of Waterloo has lost none of its resonance. Countless towns, railway stations and monuments across the world are testament to its enduring importance. The concept of meeting ones Waterloo has entered the English language, and was immortalized in the pop group Abbas Eurovision winner Waterloo, thanks to which a generation of teenagers knew even if it was all they knew that at Waterloo Napoleon did surrender. Although the war did not end immediately, the battle was so conclusive that its name has become a byword for decisive victory.

Waterloo, Victor Hugo wrote, was not a battle but a change in the direction of the world. Waterloo solved, as the historian Jeremy Black has argued, the Western Question, of whether Europe would be dominated by France or by a loose society of independent states, whose balance was guaranteed by Great Britain and her continental

Contemporaries, too, were in no doubt about the significance of the struggle. Napoleons flight from exile in Elba in February 1815 plunged Europe back into war. Of course, it is likely that, whatever the outcome at Waterloo, the Russians and Austrians would ultimately have brought Napoleon to heel again. But nobody could be sure of that, which was why all eyes were on the allied army in Belgium. It is up to you to save the world, Tsar Alexander of Russia told its commander, the Duke of Wellington, before he set out.triumphing over tyranny proved so powerful to Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt that they borrowed it for a new structure of world governance which has remained with us to this day.