Battle of Ligny
Napoleon beat the Prussians at Ligny on 16 June 1815, the last victory of his career, and failed to destroy them. The campaign depended on separating two allied armies that were converging on France — Wellington's Anglo-Dutch force to the west and Blücher's Prussians to the east — and beating each alone. Blücher concentrated three corps around the villages of Ligny and Saint-Amand along a stream, on a forward slope where French artillery could see them, which Wellington told him to his face was a mistake. The fighting was ferocious and close: the villages changed hands repeatedly through the afternoon, fought house by house with the buildings burning. Napoleon intended to pin the Prussian centre and break the line with the Guard once d'Erlon's corps arrived on the flank. D'Erlon never came — he spent the day marching between Ligny and Quatre Bras under contradictory orders and fought in neither battle — and when he appeared as an unidentified column on the French left, the attack was suspended for an hour while the French worked out whose it was. The Guard went in at about half past seven and broke the centre in a thunderstorm. Blücher, then seventy-two, led a cavalry charge personally, had his horse shot, and lay under it in the dark while French cavalry rode over him. The Prussians lost some 16,000 men and withdrew north to Wavre rather than east along their line of communication, which kept them in contact with Wellington. Napoleon assumed otherwise and sent Grouchy east. Two days later the Prussians arrived at Waterloo.
- Year: 1815 CE
- Category: Military
