Wellington replaced by different commander at Waterloo.

[lucaswillen05]

Is that referance to the fact that Gneisenau wanted to abandon Wellington and fall back into Prussia after being beaten at Ligny and when overruled by Blucher organized the march to Waterloo at a slow pace so the Prussians would be able to fall back easilly should Wellington be beaten before they arrived.

Yes it is a reference to that incident. One reason for the Prussian delay was a serious fire (in Wavre I think) on the morning of the 18th. The poor tate of the roads would have beeen another reason. Gneisenau's attitude was certainly another factor.

 

[lucaswillen05]

Many of the French troops would have been ex POWs returning to the colours and a large number of the ex Bourbon troops had a year to retrain. Though the Armee du Nord cannot meet the standard of the 1805 - 1807 Grande Armee it was probably about as good as the 1809 army or the 1812 French contingents. Wellington's army was also not the same standard of the Peninsular War and even Blucher's Prussians had deficiencies.

Some Dutch Belgians did perform poorly but many, despite inexperience, performed rather well.

Wellington was not forced to give battle at Waterloo. He could have fought a reargaurd action there to cover a withdrawl to Antwerp. He chose to stand at Waterloo and made contingency plans such as keeping 17000 man at Hal in case of a French attempt to outflank his left.

For Napoleon things went badly wrong at Waterloo starting with Jerome's overcommitment at Hougemont and, more importantly the disaster met by D'Erlon's corps which resulted in the French being short of infantry for several hours while D'Erlon's corps sorted themselves out. Lobau had to be used to hold off the Prussians. Which left only the cavalry corps to keep Wellington in check. Ney of course managed to botch the cavalry charges. Despite his Napoleon did come very close to winning. Without Grouchy I suspect a victory against Wellington would not have been decisive unless his army broke under the pressure.

So? Isn't that what he, like any typical defensive general, was supposed to do: hold on for dear life? Nothing special there. It is a lot easier to defend than to attack. Depending on how entreched a defensive position is, an attacking force often needs to outnumber a defensive force to succeed. Napoleon's forces was equal in number to Wellington's forces and Napoleon still almost won.



Big deal. The French did not have the Grande Armée with them at Waterloo. The best French troops already perished in the Russian winter, to Spanish guerillas, and to Austrian troops. Furthermore, the Pennisular War veterans were never that good as British fanboys like to pretend; they did not have to face the best French troops, after all.

Furthermore, the "reluctant" Dutch troops is nothing more than a myth disgustingly perpetrated by British fanboys. It was Chassé's Dutch forces that attacked and prevented one wing of the Imperial Guard from breaking through while the British forces on the spot fled. There were also reports of British cavalry cowardly refusing orders to engage French cavalry.



This either proves that Wellington is not even a good defensive general or, more likely, it proves that Wellington was forced to give battle even if the Prussians did not promise to come to his aid. He had no choice but to give battle because he knew that the faster French forces would have caught up to his army and destroyed it if it tried to escape to Britain.