How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) by Stephen Clarke

artillery will get bogged down.’
    Marshal Honoré Reille, an infantry general, compounded the depressing mood: ‘The English infantry is unbeatable because of its calm tenacity and superior accuracy. Before we can reach them with our bayonets, we must expect to lose half of our attacking soldiers.’
    Napoleon’s own brother Jérôme, who had served in Russia but been demoted because he was such an incompetent commander, proved that it had been a bad idea to invite him along by pronouncing gloomily that ‘Here, we will find either our resurrection or our tomb.’ fn8
    In short, if Napoleon had hoped for a fluffy Belgian pancake type of breakfast with his commanders, he must quickly have realised that he was in a room full of soggy waffles.
    Despite all this negativity, before battle began at 11.30 a.m. (signalled by three blank cannon rounds), the French army was at its most magnificent. Lieutenant Jacques-François Martin described the scene vividly: ‘The bayonets, helmets and breastplates were sparkling; the flags, the standards, the lancers’ pennants all rippled with the three colours in the wind. The drums beat, the trumpets sounded, and the regiment’s musicians gave us a rousing rendition of “Veillons au salut de l’Empire”.’ fn9 In
Les Misérables
, Victor Hugo has Napoleon gazing at his army before Waterloo and exclaiming, ‘Magnifique, magnifique!’ To Hugo’s readers, who knew what was about to happen, it was a moment of perfect pathos, a tableau of tragic heroes marching fearlessly to their death like gladiators hailing
l’Empereur
and proclaiming that ‘we who are about to die salute you’.
    General Etienne Lefol, who was struggling to get his cannons into place, was less poetic. He recalled in his memoirs the horror of moving guns around on the Belgian lanes where two battles had just been fought. The worst thing, he said, was ‘the sound of the wheels crushing the skulls of soldiers whose brains and tattered flesh spread hideously across the road’. Battles, he knew, produced as much gore as they did glory. Lefol was consoled to hear the sound of crushed bone being drowned out by the voices of the surviving troops who were bellowing out a French marching tune, ‘La Victoire est à nous’ – victory is ours.
    On the morning of 18 June 1815, this was somewhat premature, but Bonapartist historians have been trying to make it ring true ever since.
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    fn1 Probably a reference to the bad British habit of selling Europe cheap cotton, cutlery, tea, coffee and sugar. Napoleon presumably hoped that his soldiers were opposed to the idea of low-cost beverages.
    fn2 Since the Revolution, France has officially been an atheist country, but the French still look to God whenever they need someone to blame for something that has no obvious cause. That is, when they can’t blame the English, the Germans, the Americans or other French people.
    fn3 Note that for good measure, Lemonnier-Delafosse demotes Wellington from a Duke to a Lord.
    fn4 Laudy was a local historian and passionate defender of the Waterloo battle site against desecration by farmers and developers. He lived in Le Caillou farmhouse until his death in 1948, after which the farm was bought by La Société Belge des Etudes Napoléoniennes.
    fn5 Generations of French history teachers have taught that François died of syphilis, but more recently it has been suggested that he was suffering from horrendously painful abscesses caused by urogenital tuberculosis.
    fn6 Marcel Proust makes fun of Grouchy’s inactivity in
A la Recherche du Temps Perdu
. In volume three,
Le Côté de Guermantes
, he has one of Grouchy’s descendants arrive late for a society dinner. His furious wife humiliates him by snapping, ‘I see that, even for minor things, being late is a tradition in your family.’ A Proustian putdown – the ultimate condemnation for a famous French name.
    fn7 Duroc was such a close companion that Napoleon later used his name as an