Destiny is shaped by moments such as this: with his eyes upon the throne of the world, he saw the shadow of St Helena.

If the shepherd boy who acted as guide to Bülow, Blücher’s second-in-command, had advised him to come by the route above Frischemont, instead of by that below Planchenoit, the pattern of the nineteenth century might well have been different. Napoleon would have won Waterloo. Any other road, except the one below Planchenoit, would have brought the Prussian army to a ravine impassable by artillery, and Bülow would not have arrived in time. According to the Prussian General Muffling, a further hour’s delay would have spelt disaster.

There had been much delay already. Bülow had bivouacked at Dion-le-Mont and set out at dawn, but he had been greatly hindered by the state of the road. Moreover, he had had to cross the river Dyle by the narrow bridge at Wavre. The French had set fire to the village street leading to the bridge, and since the ammunition waggons could not pass between the rows of burning houses they had to wait for the fire to be put out. It was not until noon that Bülow’s advance-guard reached Chapelle-Saint-Lambert.

Had the battle begun two hours earlier it would have been over by four o’clock, and Blücher, too, would have fallen victim to Napoleon. Such are the immeasurable hazards of a Fatality beyond our grasp.

The Emperor, with his field-glass, was the first to see something on the horizon that fixed his attention. ‘A sort of cloud,’ he muttered. ‘It looks to me like troops.’ And turning to the Duke of Dalmatia he said: ‘Soult, what can you see around Chapelle-Saint-Lambert?’ Using his own glass the marshal replied: ‘Four or five thousand men, Sire. It must be Grouchy.’ All the glasses of the general staff were turned on this ‘cloud’, which remained motionless. Some officers thought that it was a halted column of men, but the majority believed it to be a grove of trees. The Emperor sent Domon’s contingent of light cavalry to reconnoitre.

The fact is that Bülow had not moved because his advance-guard was weak. His orders were to concentrate his main force before joining battle. But at five o’clock, seeing Wellington’s precarious state, Blücher ordered Bülow into the attack with the notable words: ‘We must give the English a breather.’

Shortly afterwards, the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hacke, and Ryssel deployed ahead of Lobau’s corps; Prince William of Prussia’s cavalry debouched from the Bois de Paris, Planchenoit was in flames, and artillery fire began to reach as far as the ranks of the Imperial Guard drawn up behind Napoleon.

The Imperial Guard

We know the rest, the intervention of a third army and the transformation of the battle: eighty-six pieces of artillery bursting into sudden thunder, Pirch I overtaking Bülow, Zieten’s cavalry led by Blücher in person, the French driven back in disorder under the combined English and Prussian fire as darkness began to fall. Disaster in front and disaster on the flank, and the Guard flung in in an attempt to stay the hideous collapse. Knowing they were about to die, the men shouted, ‘Vive l’empéreur!’ History knows no more poignant moment.

The sky had been overcast all day, but at eight o’clock that evening it cleared to allow the sinister red light of the setting sun to flood through the elms of the Nivelles road – the same sun that had risen at Austerlitz.

In this last crisis every battalion was commanded by a general. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Porlet de Morvan, all were there. When the tall helmets of the grenadiers, adorned with the eagle badge, emerged from the mist of battle, steadfast, impeccably aligned, magnificent, the enemy felt the splendour of France and for an instant the victors hesitated. But Wellington cried, ‘Up Guards and shoot straight!’ and the red-coated Englishmen rose from their shelter behind hedges and poured out a withering volley that rent to shreds the tricolour and the eagles. Both sides charged and the last carnage began. The men of the Garde Impériale felt the army giving way around them in the disorder of total rout, the shouts of ‘Vive l’empéreur!’ turning to ‘sauve qui peut’, and amid disaster on every side they continued to advance forward, dying with every step they took. No man hesitated, no soldier of the line but was the equal of his general in courage, no man flinched from suicide.

Ney, splendid in his acceptance of death, exposed himself to every hazard. He had a fifth horse killed under him. Foaming at the mouth, wild-eyed and running with sweat, his tunic unbuttoned, one epaulette half shorn away by a sabre-stroke and his eagle- badge pierced by a bullet, bleeding and superb with a broken sword in his hand, he cried, ‘This is how a Marshal of France dies on the field of battle!’ But he did not die. Distraught and furious, he called to Drouet d’Erlon, ‘Why haven’t you got yourself killed?’ And he cried amid the hail of bullets, ‘Isn’t there one for me? I’d like the whole lot in my belly!’* He was reserved for French bullets, unhappy man.

Catastrophe

In the rear of the Guard a grievous confusion prevailed.

The army was hastily falling back at every point – from Hougomont, La-Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Planchenoit. The cry of treason was mingled with the cry of sauve qui peut. A disintegrating army is like the thawing of a glacier, a mindless, jostling commotion, total disruption. Ney found himself another horse and hatless and weaponless sought to make a stand on the Brussels road, striving to hold up both the English and the flying French, who swept past him crying ‘Vive le maréchal Ney’ as they fled.