What happened at the Battle of Ligny?
On 16 June 1815 Napoleon attacked Blücher's Prussian army along the Ligny brook in present-day Belgium. After an afternoon of fighting in the villages, the Imperial Guard broke the Prussian center at dusk. Blücher was trapped under his dead horse, but the Prussians retreated north in order and two days later helped Wellington win at Waterloo.1
It was the last battle Napoleon ever won. For an afternoon the villages along a muddy little stream in Belgium were fought over house by house, and by nightfall the emperor held the field. Yet the army he beat was not destroyed, and within forty-eight hours it was marching onto his flank at Waterloo.2
Background: the Hundred Days
Napoleon escaped from exile on Elba, landed in the south of France and retook Paris without a fight in the spring of 1815. The powers that had overthrown him the year before at once formed a new coalition against him. Their armies needed months to gather, and only two stood close to the French border, both in Belgium: Wellington's Anglo-Allied army around Brussels and Field Marshal Blücher's Prussians to the east of it.3
Napoleon's plan was to strike before the coalition could combine. He would drive between the two allied armies and beat them one after the other. His Army of the North was organized in two wings and a reserve: Marshal Grouchy led the right wing, Marshal Ney the left, and the Imperial Guard formed the reserve under the emperor himself, ready to support either wing.4 › Napoleon Bonaparte
On 15 June the French crossed the Sambre and took Charleroi. The same morning a French divisional general, Bourmont, deserted to the enemy with some of his officers. Blücher had already ordered his corps, on the evening of the 14th, to concentrate around Sombreffe, on the Namur to Nivelles road that linked him to Wellington.5
Armies and commanders
Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher was seventy-two, a former cavalryman whose fondness for the attack had earned him the nickname Marschall Vorwärts, Marshal Forward. His chief of staff in 1815 was August von Gneisenau; on the battlefield the old man led from the front.6 › The Duke of Wellington
He had three of his four corps on the field: Zieten's I Corps held the villages of Saint-Amand and Ligny on the right and center, Pirch's II Corps stood behind it, and Thielmann's III Corps covered the left from Sombreffe to Balâtre. Bülow's IV Corps had been too slowly summoned and would not arrive that day. Even so, the Prussians outnumbered the French. Libert counts about 84,000 men and 224 guns against about 68,000 French with 210; Ropes gives 87,352 Prussians with 224 guns against 67,787 French with 210; Glover gives 83,000 against 63,000, with 230 French guns. Glover adds that many Prussian units were newly raised militia, so the head count flattered them.7
The position ran along the Ligny brook, a narrow, steep-banked stream in a marshy valley, with a chain of villages of stone houses, walled gardens and farms that the Prussians turned into strongpoints. Blücher watched from the windmill of Bussy, the highest point of the field. But his battalions stood on the forward slope above the stream, in full view of the French guns.8
Napoleon brought Vandamme's III Corps to face Saint-Amand and Gérard's IV Corps to face Ligny, with cavalry watching the Prussian left and the Guard and Milhaud's cuirassiers held back near Fleurus. His plan was to wear down the Prussian right in the villages, break the center at Ligny with the Guard, and have part of Ney's wing fall on the Prussian rear from Quatre Bras.9
The battle, in phases
Noon: two allies at a windmill. Around one o'clock Wellington rode over from Quatre Bras and met Blücher at the Bussy mill, from where they could watch the French forming. He promised to help, but on condition that he was not attacked himself, and by the time he rode back his own battle was beginning.10
Half past two: the villages. The French attack began at about half past two, with Vandamme and Girard's division against Saint-Amand and Gérard against Ligny. Gérard's first assault failed; later attacks took the eastern part of Ligny again and again, only to be thrown out. Saint-Amand changed hands several times. Siborne describes every house, yard and wall fought over, with no quarter asked or given, and Glover writes of the dead and dying piled in the streets.11
Afternoon: two orders to Ney. At two o'clock Napoleon had written to Ney to attack whatever was in front of him and then turn on the Prussians. At a quarter past three, sure now that he faced most of Blücher's army, he sent a second order: march at once onto the Prussian right and rear, because the fate of France was in his hands. Ney, fighting Wellington at the crossroads, could not obey.12
Five o'clock: Blücher spends his reserves. The Prussians held on, but each counterattack cost them battalions under the French artillery. Ropes writes that Blücher exhausted his reserves, bringing nearly all his divisions under fire, while Napoleon held his back: at half past five he had employed ten thousand fewer men than his adversary.13
Turning point: the column on the flank
Napoleon was preparing to send in the Guard when Vandamme reported a large column approaching the French left flank, apparently from the enemy's side. Ropes dates the report to between half past five and six, Libert to six o'clock. The attack was suspended and aides rode off to identify the troops. They were the French I Corps under d'Erlon, part of Ney's wing, which had been turned off the Brussels road toward Ligny but had come out in the wrong place. Meanwhile Blücher counterattacked at Saint-Amand, and the Young Guard had to be sent to restore the line.14
Then the column turned around and marched away west. Ney, furious at losing his reserve in the middle of his own battle, had ordered it back to Quatre Bras. Only Durutte's division and some cavalry stayed near Ligny, and they did little. Who first redirected d'Erlon is still argued: d'Erlon said he was shown a pencilled note carried by an imperial aide, while Napoleon denied ever sending an order to the corps, and no such paper has been found.15
At about seven, as a thunderstorm broke over the field, Napoleon sent in the Guard. The grenadiers and chasseurs went through Ligny in columns, with Milhaud's cuirassiers and the Guard cavalry behind them and Gérard's infantry between them, crossed the brook on the village bridges and climbed toward the Bussy plateau. The Prussian center gave way. Ropes has the Guard marching on Ligny before half past seven and the French deploying on the heights beyond the village at half past eight.16
Blücher rode over from the right, gathered what cavalry he could and charged at its head. The charge broke against the French, and as the horsemen fell back his horse was shot and came down on top of him. French cuirassiers rode past him, at least twice according to Libert, without recognizing the stunned old man in the dusk, and an aide got him away in the dark. Glover concludes that only the darkness saved him.17
The accounts of the retreat differ: Siborne describes the Prussian infantry leaving Ligny in good order, Libert has the army withdrawing in various states of disorder. A rear guard held Brye until about midnight, and Thielmann's corps on the left still held its ground. The rain and the dark made a real pursuit impossible, and the French did not press one.18
Aftermath and consequences
The numbers vary widely. Siborne puts the Prussian loss at about 12,000 killed and wounded and the French at 7,000 to 8,000; Libert at 16,000 Prussians killed and wounded, 600 prisoners and 21 guns against 11,500 French; Glover at 16,000 and 12,000, about 19 percent of each army; Ropes at about 18,000 Prussians and 11,000 to 12,000 French. Thousands more Prussians deserted: Glover counts 8,000 on the night of the battle, Libert and Ropes 9,000 to 12,000 in the following days.19
With Blücher missing, command passed to Gneisenau. He ordered the two beaten corps to retire on Tilly and then on Wavre, to the north, rather than east toward Namur and their own supply line. Blücher himself was carried to the village of Mellery for the night, bruised and shaken but soon back in command.20
On 17 June Napoleon detached Grouchy with about 33,000 men to follow the Prussians, while he turned with the rest against Wellington, who had fallen back from Quatre Bras to the ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean in pouring rain. Grouchy was slow, and the Prussians reached Wavre before him.21
On 18 June, while Grouchy fought their rear guard at Wavre, Blücher's corps marched west and struck the French right flank at Waterloo in the afternoon, sealing Napoleon's defeat. Libert's verdict is that the Prussians who escaped from Ligny were the troops that decided the campaign.22 › The Battle of Waterloo, 1815
Legacy and memory
Historians have argued over Ligny ever since. Ropes calls it a great victory but not a decisive one, and blames the lost two hours of the d'Erlon episode: had the Guard gone in at half past five, there would have been daylight left to finish the Prussians. Libert and Tsas see the wasted corps as the key that could have won either battle that day. Siborne, writing in the 1840s, faults both commanders: Blücher for stripping his center to attack on the right, and Napoleon for not pursuing the beaten army that night or the next morning.23
Siborne, for his part, wrote that perhaps never had a defeated army got itself out of its difficulties with so much skill or so little loss of spirit. For Napoleon, Ligny was the last victory: his next battle, two days later, was Waterloo.24 › Napoleon vs Wellington
Visiting the battlefield today
Ligny and Saint-Amand are still villages on the brook south of Sombreffe. Ligny has a museum of the battle, housed in a seventeenth-century farm in the village, with weapons, cannonballs and other objects found on the field. Paris Match calls the building the Ferme Frennet and L'Avenir the Centre Général Gérard; opening hours have varied, so check them before you go.25
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