Battle of Ligny
On 16 June 1815, two days before Waterloo, Napoleon attacked Field Marshal Blucher's Prussian army around the village of Ligny in present-day Belgium, while Marshal Ney simultaneously engaged Wellington's arriving forces a few miles away at Quatre Bras. After hard fighting across the village's stone farmhouses, Napoleon committed the Imperial Guard in the evening and broke the Prussian center, forcing Blucher's army into retreat. Blucher, in his late seventies, was personally unhorsed and nearly captured during the final French cavalry charge. The battle was a clear tactical French victory, but its strategic consequences proved fatal to Napoleon's campaign: rather than retreating away from Wellington as Napoleon assumed, the Prussians fell back in good order to Wavre, close enough to march to Wellington's support two days later at Waterloo. Napoleon detached Marshal Grouchy with roughly a third of his army to pursue the Prussians, but Grouchy failed to prevent Blucher's march to Waterloo, arguably the single most consequential command failure of the campaign.
- Year: 1815 CE
- Category: Military
