On 16 June 1815, two days before Waterloo, Napoleon fought two battles at once in present-day Belgium. At Ligny he beat Blücher's Prussians, who fell back toward Wavre, while at Quatre Bras Marshal Ney failed to drive Wellington from the crossroads. Between the two fields, d'Erlon's French corps spent the afternoon marching from one battle toward the other.
Battle of Ligny, 1815: the victory that did not finish the Prussians
16 June 1815 · 211 years ago
Two days before Waterloo, Napoleon attacked Field Marshal Blücher's Prussians near Ligny in present-day Belgium. The French won, the last victory of Napoleon's career, but the Prussians withdrew in good order and fought again at Waterloo.
Read the full story of Battle of Ligny, 1815: the victory that did not finish the Prussians ›Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815: holding the crossroads
16 June 1815 · 211 years ago
At the crossroads of Quatre Bras, Marshal Ney's wing of the French army fought Wellington's allied army on the same day as Ligny. Wellington held the field, but Ney kept him from helping Blücher's Prussians.
Read the full story of Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815: holding the crossroads ›Two battles, one day
Wellington reported that the French attacked the Prussian posts on the Sambre at daylight on 15 June and that evening drove a Netherlands brigade from Frasnes back to the farmhouse of Quatre Bras.1
François Tsas, writing in the Revue du Souvenir Napoléonien in 1973, describes Napoleon's plan as his favorite maneuver of the "central position": concentrate at the junction of the two enemy armies, hold one off with a detachment and beat the other. Ney took the left wing, which Tsas puts at 47,000 men and Ropes at 43,000, toward Quatre Bras, while the Emperor led the right wing and the Guard against the Prussians gathering around Sombreffe.2
Blücher had only three of his four corps on the field, because Bülow's IV Corps could not come up in time. Wellington rode over to see him; Ropes puts their meeting at one in the afternoon. According to Müffling, as Ropes quotes him, the Duke's last words were: "Well! I will come, provided I am not attacked myself". Gareth Glover gives the same condition: support "if not attacked himself".3
Also on this day
1487: a Yorkist rebellion against Henry VII ended in defeat at the battle of Stoke on 16 June. The Battlefields Trust calls Stoke Field the last battle of the Wars of the Roses: near East Stoke in Nottinghamshire the rebels under the Earl of Lincoln and Lord Lovell attacked the royal vanguard of the Earl of Oxford at about nine in the morning, and Oxford's counterattack broke them in a fight of less than three hours.4
