Read Online The Battle by Alessandro Barbero - Free Book Online

Napoleon from sleeping. The emperor's servants had prepared a camp bed for him in one of the rooms in the farmhouse of Le Caillou, and a fire was burning in the chimney. Shortly after dinner, the emperor lay down to rest, but before one o'clock he was awake again. Unable to fall back asleep, he went out, accompanied by a single aide-de-camp, reached the bivouac area on foot, and walked along his entire line, examining the horizon. In the intervals between one downpour and the next, the soldiers of both armies had managed to light fires, and thousands of glimmering beacons distinctly marked out their positions in the darkness. Sometime later, Napoleon seemed to recall the scene: "The forest of Soignes looked as though it were in flames; the horizon was aglow with the fires of the bivouacs. The most profound silence reigned." About two-thirty in the morning, when he reached the woods around Hougoumont, the emperor heard the sounds of a column on the march and grew worried; should the enemy withdraw, Napoleon had decided, he would awaken his troops immediately and take up the pursuit in the darkness. But the sounds faded away almost immediately, and the rain started up again, harder than ever.
    At least, that was the story the emperor told in his memoirs. Unfortunately, there is no trace of this thrilling nocturnal reconnaissance in the accounts left by his servants, all of whom agree that the emperor did indeed sleep very little, because the traffic along the road was quite noisy and officers were continually arriving at Le Caillou to give reports or request instructions, but nonetheless he remained in the house until morning. Marchand, his valet, saw him walking around undressed, absently trimming his fingernails with a pair of scissors and looking out the window at the rain that continued to thrash the countryside. Around three in the morning, the emperor actually did decide that a reconnaissance was necessary, but he sent one of his orderly officers, General Gourgaud, and he was under the covers again when the general returned to report that the roads were in terrible condition and the ground impracticable because of the rain, so there would be no hurrying to get an early start.
    At three in the morning, in his room in the Waterloo inn, the Duke of Wellington was awake, too. He had gotten out of bed a little while before, ordered candles brought to his table, and begun writing many letters. Their tone proves that the duke was well aware of the risks he was running by accepting battle at Waterloo, and that he hadn't yet received the reassuring note in which Blucher promised to join him in force the next day. Wellington wrote a long letter in French to the Due de Berry, brother of King Louis XVIII, who was still in exile in Ghent. The duke advised his correspondent that the French court would do well to go to Antwerp and take refuge in the citadel; that way, should the Allied army be forced to evacuate Belgium, the royal party would be able to board an English ship. Wellington wrote to the governor of Antwerp, ordering him to prepare his fortress for a state of siege and to deny access to everyone but the Bourbons and civilians fleeing from the enemy. He wrote to Sir Charles Stuart, the British ambassador in Brussels, recommending that he see to the maintenance of calm among the numerous English who were in the city: "Let them all prepare to move, but neither in a hurry nor a fright, as all will yet turn out well." Finally, the duke wrote a note to Lady Frances Webster, a young woman in whose intimate company he had spent time during the preceding weeks in Brussels.
    Exactly how far their intimacy went has remained a matter of debate ever since. Lady Frances was a charming twenty-two-year-old, married to an officer in the Hussars who publicly betrayed her, and she had quickly learned to avenge herself for her husband's infidelities; on the other hand, she was in the eighth month of a pregnancy, a fact that the duke's