Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach

Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach disobeyed his orders on the morning of 15 June 1815 and probably saved the Waterloo campaign. He was a Saxon prince who had fought for Napoleon at Wagram, changed sides with his father's duchy in 1813, and in 1815 commanded a brigade of Dutch-Belgian and Nassau troops in the army of the Netherlands. Wellington believed Napoleon would come round his right through Mons and had ordered his forces to concentrate accordingly, which meant abandoning the crossroads at Quatre Bras - the only point at which his army and Blucher's could support each other. Bernhard's brigade was there, saw French troops coming up the Charleroi road, and stayed. His divisional commander Perponcher backed him and confirmed the disobedience. Between them they held the crossroads through the afternoon of the 16th against Ney with a force that should not have been able to, until reinforcements arrived in sequence, and the ground was still in Allied hands that night. Had Ney taken it in the morning, he would have been across Wellington's lateral communications with the Prussians before Wellington knew where the French were. Bernhard fought at Waterloo two days later holding Papelotte on the left. He afterwards served in the Dutch colonial army, commanded in the East Indies, visited the United States and published an account of it, and died a general of infantry in 1862. He is not to be confused with the Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar who commanded for the Protestant cause in the Thirty Years' War and died in 1639; the earlier man is the reason this one was refused a place here twice. His Nassau troops at Quatre Bras were largely raw and had been in French service two years before. He later governed in the Dutch East Indies and his American travel journal was translated into English in 1828.

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