Kitabı oku: «The Political History of England – Vol XI», sayfa 12

THE TREATY OF GHENT.

As early as January, 1814, advances had been made towards negotiations for peace, but they were not actually begun till August 6. In the course of a few days a serious difficulty arose, as the British commissioners demanded the delimitation of an Indian territory which should be exempt from territorial acquisitions on the part of either power, and also claimed the military occupation of the lakes for their own government. The Americans thereupon suspended the negotiations, and Castlereagh expressed grave discontent with the conduct of the British negotiators in pressing these points. Late in the year negotiations were resumed, when the British abandoned these claims. The far more comprehensive questions about the rights of neutrals, which had occasioned the war, had ceased to be of practical importance now that peace was restored in Europe. They were therefore, by tacit consent, suffered to drop, and a treaty signed at Ghent on December 24, 1814, ended a war of which the Canadians alone had reason to be proud.

The most dramatic incident in the domestic annals of England in this year was the visit of the allied sovereigns to this country, after their triumphal entry into Paris, and the signature of a convention, to be described hereafter, for the resettlement of Europe. Louis XVIII. left his retreat at Hartwell on April 20, and reached his capital on May 3 to find it occupied by foreign armies, and to discover that his French escort, composed of Napoleon's old guard, was of doubtful loyalty. On July 8 the Tsar of Russia and the King of Prussia, having accepted an invitation from the prince regent, which the Emperor of Austria declined, landed at Dover, and were afterwards received with the utmost enthusiasm in London. Their appearance betokened the supposed termination of the greatest, and almost the longest, war recorded in European history, but it was also accepted as a tribute of gratitude for the unique services rendered by Great Britain, the only European power which had never bowed the knee to the French Republic or the French Empire. They attended Ascot races, were feasted at the Guildhall, witnessed a naval review at Portsmouth, and were decorated with honorary degrees at Oxford, where Blücher was the hero of the day with the younger members of the university. There were men of calmer minds and maturer age, who must have remembered the time, but seven years before, when Alexander swore eternal friendship with Napoleon, on the basis of enmity to Great Britain, and Frederick William of Prussia shrunk from no depths of dishonour, first to aggrandise his kingdom and then to save the remnants of it from destruction. Others foresaw that a restoration of the Bourbons portended reaction, in its worst sense, throughout all the continent of Europe. But such memories and forebodings were hushed in the sincere and general rejoicing over the return of peace, marred by no suspicion of the new trials and privations which peace itself was destined to bring with it for the working classes of Great Britain.

CHAPTER VII.
VIENNA AND WATERLOO

After the restoration of Louis XVIII. as a constitutional king, the treaty of Paris between France and the allied powers was signed on May 30, 1814. The treaty amounted to a settlement in outline of those territorial questions in Europe in which France was concerned, and aimed mainly at the construction of a strong barrier to resist further encroachments by France on her neighbours. The French boundaries were to coincide generally with the limits of French territory on January 1, 1792, but with certain additions. The principle adopted was that France should retain certain detached pieces of foreign states within her own frontier (such as Mühlhausen, Montbéliard, and the Venaissin), while the line of frontier was extended so as to include certain detached fragments belonging to France before 1792, such as Landau, Mariembourg, and Philippeville, as well as Western Savoy with Chambéry for its capital. She was moreover allowed to regain all her colonies except the Mauritius, St. Lucia, and Tobago. The Spanish portion of San Domingo was restored to the Spanish government. Holland was placed under the sovereignty of the house of Orange, and was to receive an increase of territory; so much of Italy as was not to be ceded to Austria was to consist of independent sovereign states; and Germany was to be formed into a confederation. Finally an European congress was to meet at Vienna in two months' time "to regulate the arrangements necessary for completing the dispositions of the treaty". At the same time secret articles provided that the disposition of territories was to be controlled at Vienna by Austria, Great Britain, Prussia, and Russia; that Austria, was to receive Venice and Lombardy as far as the Ticino; and that the former territories of Genoa were to be annexed to Sardinia, and the late Austrian Netherlands to Holland.

In the midst of the general restoration of legitimate princes difficulties were occasioned by the exceptional cases in which territories were reserved for the new dynasties that had arisen during the Napoleonic wars. France, Spain, and Sicily objected to the retention of the kingdom of Naples by Murat, Spain resented the cession of Parma to the Bonapartes, and Norway was in revolt against the attempt to subjugate it to the king of Sweden and his heir Marshal Bernadotte. The Norwegian government under Prince Christian vainly endeavoured to secure the British recognition of the independence of Norway. The British government, on the contrary, held itself bound to support the claims of Sweden, and on April 29 notified a blockade of the Norwegian ports, which was promptly carried into effect. Meanwhile a new constitution was promulgated in Norway, and Prince Christian was proclaimed king. While the British maintained the blockade Sweden attempted to gain its ends by negotiation. At last, on July 30, the Swedes invaded Norway. After some Swedish successes a convention was signed at Moss on August 14, which recognised the new Norwegian constitution, but provided for a personal union of the crowns of Sweden and Norway. This constitution was accepted by Charles XIII. of Sweden in the following November, and Norway retained almost complete independence, though united to Sweden.

THE SLAVE TRADE.

Among the last acts of Napoleon's government had been the release and restoration of Ferdinand VII. of Spain and of Pope Pius VII. Ferdinand, supported by the vast mass of Spanish opinion, declared against the rather unpractical constitution established in his absence, and entered Madrid as an absolute king on May 14. One of his first acts was the revival of the inquisition. There was some apprehension among British representatives lest the two restored Bourbon monarchies should renew the family compact, and also lest they should attempt to assert the Bourbon claims to Naples and Parma. Sir Henry Wellesley, afterwards Lord Cowley, was, however, successful in negotiating a treaty of alliance between Great Britain and Spain, which made provision against any renewal of the family compact, restored the commercial relations of the two countries to the footing on which they had been before 1796, and promised the future consideration of means to be adopted for the suppression of the slave trade. Spain was in fact too dependent on British credit to be able to adopt a line of her own in politics. But the hold which Great Britain had thus gained over Spain was somewhat weakened by the British attitude towards the slave trade.

It is remarkable how large a space the abolition of the slave trade occupied in the foreign policy of Great Britain, when the liberties of Europe were at stake. During the months preceding the meeting of the congress of Vienna, which had been postponed till September by the tsar, British diplomacy had been engaged in a strenuous effort to obtain the co-operation of such European powers as possessed American colonies in securing this philanthropic object. Sweden had already consented to it, and now Holland also gave her consent. Portugal agreed to relinquish the trade north of the equator, on condition that the other powers consented to impose a similar restriction on themselves. Strong pressure was brought to bear upon France to consent to the immediate abolition of the trade, and Wellington, who had been created a duke in May and who arrived at Paris in August in the capacity of British ambassador, was authorised by Liverpool to offer the cession of Trinidad or the payment of two or three million pounds to obtain this end. By the treaty of Paris only French subjects were allowed to trade in slaves with the French colonies, and French subjects were excluded from trading elsewhere; and the whole trade was to cease within French dominions after five years. Talleyrand, negotiating with Wellington, refused to consent to a general abolition, but, on being pressed to surrender the slave trade north of the equator, consented to abandon it to the north of Cape Formoso. In the following year Napoleon on his return from Elba ordered its immediate suppression, and this was not the least significant act of the Hundred Days. With Spain our diplomatists were less successful. The British government refused to renew its subsidy to Spain for the last half of 1814 except on condition that Spain relinquished the slave trade north of the equator at once, and consented to relinquish that south of the equator in five years' time; while it would not issue a loan except on condition that Spain abolished the whole trade immediately. Even these terms did not prevail with Spain, and the most that she would grant at the congress was to relinquish the trade at the conclusion of eight years.

Meanwhile Talleyrand was endeavouring to induce Great Britain to combine with France in a joint mediation between Austria and Russia at the congress, in the event of Russia demanding the duchy of Warsaw. Wellington, while expressing himself in favour of an understanding, refused to accept anything which might seem equivalent to a declaration in favour of mediation by the two powers in every case. At the congress itself Great Britain was first represented by Castlereagh, who was succeeded in February, 1815, by Wellington. The two principal difficulties were the questions of Poland and Saxony. The tsar desired to erect the duchy of Warsaw, Prussia's share in the two partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795, into a constitutional monarchy attached to the Russian crown, while Prussia, though not unwilling to resign her claims to Polish dominion, wished to increase her territory by the incorporation of Saxony in her monarchy. Austria was naturally averse from any increase of strength in the states on her northern borders, and she was also opposed to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Poland which might serve as a centre for political discontent in her own dominions. Even France urged this objection to a constitutional Poland. Great Britain alone was willing to see an independent Poland, but preferred to join France, Prussia, and Austria in demanding its repartition between the two latter powers rather than its annexation to Russia. All through October Austria, Great Britain, and Prussia endeavoured to induce the tsar to withdraw his demand. Early in November he won over the King of Prussia to whom he promised the kingdom of Saxony, proposing to indemnify the Saxon king with a new state on that lower Rhine which France was not allowed to have, but which no other power desired.

THE RETURN OF NAPOLEON.

It was no longer possible to resist Russia's claims on Poland, but Austria was determined not to allow Prussia to receive the proffered compensation. On December 10 Metternich notified the Prussian minister, Hardenberg, that he would not allow Prussia to annex more than a fifth part of Saxony. Great Britain, France, Bavaria, and the minor German states joined Austria in this action, and thus the attempt to effect a settlement of Europe by a concert of the four allied powers broke down. On January 3, 1815, a secret treaty was concluded between Austria, France, and Great Britain in defence of what their diplomatists called "the principles of the peace of Paris". Each of these powers was to be prepared, if necessary, to place an army of 50,000 men in the field. Bavaria joined them in their preparations for war, and many of the troops which occupied Paris in 1815 would have been disbanded or dispersed, but for the prospect of a rupture between the allies themselves. But a compromise was soon arranged, and on February 8 it was agreed that Cracow, the Polish fortress which threatened Austria most, should be an independent republic, and that Prussia should retain enough of Western Poland to round off her dominions, while the remainder of the duchy of Warsaw became a constitutional kingdom under the tsar. Prussia was to be allowed to annex part of Saxony, and was to receive a further compensation on the left bank of the Rhine and in Westphalia. The most thorny questions were now settled, and Castlereagh had left Vienna when the congress was electrified by the news that Napoleon had reappeared in France.

The episode of "the Hundred Days" interrupted, but did not break up, the councils of the congress at Vienna. It cannot be said that Napoleon's escape from Elba took the negotiators altogether by surprise. They were already aware of his correspondence with the neighbouring shores of Italy, and his removal to St Helena or some other distant island had been proposed by the French government, though never discussed at the congress. Sir Neil Campbell, the British commissioner at Elba, had gone so far as to warn his government of Napoleon's suspected "plan," and to indicate, though erroneously, the place of his probable descent upon the Italian coast. Owing to an almost incredible want of precaution, he embarked on February 26 with the least possible disguise, and accompanied by 400 of his guards, on board his brig the Inconstant, eluded the observation of two French ships, and landed near Cannes on March 1. Thence he hastened across the mountains to Grenoble, passing unmolested, and sometimes welcomed, through districts where his life had been threatened but a few months before. The commandant of Grenoble was prepared to resist his further progress, but a heart-stirring appeal from Napoleon induced a regiment detached to oppose him to join his standard, and the rest of the garrison was brought over by Colonel Labedoyère, one of the officers who had conspired to bring him back. Thence he proceeded to Lyons, issuing decrees, scattering proclamations, and gathering followers at every stage. He was lavish of promises, not perhaps wholly insincere, that he would adopt constitutional government – already established by the charter of Louis XVIII. – and cease to wage aggressive wars. He relied unduly on the discontent provoked by the blind partisans of the Bourbons, who, it was said, had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. This was true, if the spirit of the restoration were to be measured by the parade of expiatory masses for the execution of royalists under the revolution, the ostentatious patronage of priests, the preference of returned émigrés to well-tried servants of the republic and the empire, or the anticipated expulsion of landowners in possession of "national domains" for the purpose of dividing them among their old proprietors. All this naturally exasperated those who had imbibed the principles of the revolution, but it was more than compensated in the eyes of millions of Frenchmen by the cessation of conscription and the infinite blessings of peace.

"THE HUNDRED DAYS."

The king was amongst the least infatuated of the royalists. On hearing of Napoleon's proclamation, he had the sense to appreciate the danger of such a bid for sovereignty and the magic of such a name, while his courtiers regarded Napoleon's enterprise as the last effort of a madman. He addressed the chamber of deputies in confident and dignified language; the Duke of Angoulême was employed to rouse the royalist party at Bordeaux; the Duke of Bourbon was sent into Brittany, the Count of Artois, with the Duke of Orléans and Marshal Macdonald, visited Lyons, upon the attitude of which everything, for the moment, seemed to depend. Most of the marshals remained faithful to the restored monarchy, and Ney was selected to bar the progress of Napoleon in Burgundy, and has been credited with a vow that he would bring him back in an iron cage. But it was all in vain. The Count of Artois was loyally received by the officials and upper classes at Lyons, but he soon found that Napoleon possessed the hearts of the soldiers and the mass of the people. Ney yielded to urgent appeals from his old chief, signed and read to his troops a proclamation drawn up by Napoleon himself, and was followed in his treason by his whole army. As Napoleon approached Paris, all armed opposition to him melted away. On March 19, Louis XVIII., seeing that his cause was hopeless, proclaimed a dissolution of the chambers, and retired once more into exile, fixing his residence at Ghent.

Napoleon re-entered the Tuileries on the 20th, after a journey which he afterwards described as the happiest in his life. But his penetrating mind was not deceived by the manifestations of popular joy. He well knew that he was distrusted by the middle classes, as well as by the aristocracy, and threw himself more and more on the sympathy of the old revolutionists. When he came to fill up the higher offices, he met with a strange reluctance to accept them, and was driven to enlist the services of two regicides, the virtuous republican, Carnot, and the double-dyed traitor Fouché. Feeling the necessity of resting his power on a democratic basis, he promulgated a constitution modelled on the charter of Louis XVIII., and known as the Acte Additionnel, which, however, satisfied no one. The royalists objected to its anti-feudal spirit, the revolutionists and moderates to its express recognition of an hereditary peerage, and its tacit recognition of a dictatorial power. It was by no means with a light heart that Napoleon took leave of Paris on June 7, having appointed a provisional government, to place himself at the head of his army.

Attempts had been made in the southern provinces and La Vendée to organise armed rebellion against the emperor, and met for a time with considerable success. But they were soon quelled by the overwhelming imperialism not only of the regular army, but of vast numbers of disbanded soldiers and half-pay officers, dispersed throughout France, and disgusted with their treatment under the restored monarchy. Even among the bourgeoisie Napoleon had an advantage which he never possessed before. Disguise it as he might, all his former wars had been essentially wars of conquest, and, however patiently they might endure it, the peasantry of France, in thousands upon thousands of humble cottages, groaned under the exaction of crushing taxes – worst of all, the blood-tax of conscription – in order to enable one man, in the name of France, to usurp the empire of the world. Now, however, as in the early days of the revolution, France was put on its defence, and called upon to repel an invasion of its frontiers. For the news of Napoleon's escape, announced by Talleyrand on March 11, instantly stilled the quarrels and rebuked the jealousies which had so nearly proved fatal to any settlement at Vienna. For the moment, the designs of Russia in Poland, the selfish demands of Prussia, and the half-formed coalition between Great Britain, France, and Austria, were thrust into the background. Austria thought it necessary to repudiate decisively the audaciously false assertion of Napoleon that he was returning with the concurrence of his father-in-law, and would shortly be supported by Austrian troops. Metternich, therefore, assumed the lead in drawing up a solemn manifesto, dated March 13, in which Napoleon was virtually declared an outlaw "abandoned to public justice," and the powers which had signed the treaty of Paris in the preceding May bound themselves, in the face of Europe, to carry out all its provisions and defend the king of France, if need be, against his own rebellious subjects.

By a further convention made at the end of March, they engaged to provide forces exceeding 700,000 men in the aggregate, to be concentrated on the Upper Rhine, the Lower Rhine, and the Low Countries, with an immense reserve of Russians to be rapidly moved across Germany from Poland. Wellington having succeeded Castlereagh at Vienna, was appointed to command the British, Hanoverian, and Belgian contingents on the north-east frontier of France; Blücher's headquarters were to be on the Lower Rhine, within easy reach of that frontier; for, whichever side might take the offensive, it was there that the first shock of war might be expected. The recent conclusion of peace with America at Ghent on December 24, 1814, left England free to use her whole military power. Enormous sums were voted by Parliament, with a rare approach to unanimity, for the equipment of a British army, and a sum of £5,000,000 for subsidies to the allied powers. A small section of the opposition led by Whitbread opposed the renewal of war. On April 7 he moved an amendment to the address in reply to the prince regent's message announcing that measures for the security of Europe were being concerted with the allies, but he was only supported by 32 votes against 220. On April 28 his motion for an address to the prince regent, deprecating war with Napoleon, was defeated by 273 votes against 72. This was Whitbread's last prominent appearance in parliament. On July 6, during a fit of insanity, he died by his own hand. The subsidies to the allies were opposed by Bankes, but were carried on May 26 by 160 votes against 17. There can be no doubt that the majorities in the house of commons correctly expressed the national sentiment. Nobody wished to dictate to France the form of government which she was to adopt, but it was generally felt that Napoleon's character rendered peace with him impossible.

THE CAMPAIGN OF 1815.

In the end, about 80,000 men were assembled in Belgium under Wellington's orders, but of these not half were British soldiers, including untrained drafts from the militia, who replaced veteran Peninsular regiments still detained in Canada and the United States. Yet Napoleon admitted the British contingent to be equal, man for man, to his own troops, while he estimated these to be worth twice their own number of Dutchmen, Prussians, or other Germans. The first blow in the war was struck by Murat. Already in February, dissatisfied with his ambiguous position, he had levied troops and summoned Louis XVIII. to declare whether he was at war with him. As soon as he heard of Napoleon's return, he invaded the Papal States, and summoned the Italians to rise in the cause of Italian unity and independence. Though disowned by Napoleon, he persevered in this plan, but he was attacked and twice defeated by an Austrian army. On May 22 the British and Austrians took the city of Naples, and Murat fled to France. In October he made an attempt to recover his kingdom, but was captured and shot. It is noteworthy that, on hearing of his fate at St. Helena, Napoleon showed but little sympathy with his brother-in-law.

On the morning of June 12, Napoleon left Paris, saying as he entered his carriage that he went to match himself with Wellington. All his troops were already marshalled on the Belgian frontier, and numbered 124,588 men, with 344 guns. The Imperial Guard alone was 20,954 strong, and the whole army was largely composed of seasoned veterans. The Prussian army consisted of 116,897 men, with 312 guns under Marshal Blücher, whose headquarters were at Namur. Though the majority of these were veterans, there was a considerable leaven of inferior troops, hastily raised from the Westphalian and Rhine militia. Between this town and Quatre Bras lay the Prussian line of defence, Sombreffe being the centre, with Ligny and St. Amand in front of it, and rather on the south-west. Wellington's headquarters were at Brussels, and, having no certain intelligence of Napoleon's movements, he kept the various divisions of his army within easy distance of that capital until the very eve of the final conflict. Of the 93,717 men under his command, 31,253 were British, two-thirds of whom had never been under fire; 6,387 were of the king's German legion; 15,935 Hanoverians; 29,214 (including 4,300 Nassauers in the service of the Prince of the Netherlands) Dutch and Belgians; 6,808 Brunswickers; 2,880 Nassauers; the engineers, numbering 1,240, were not classified by nationality. He fully expected that Napoleon would move upon Brussels along the route by Mons and Hal, and maintained in later days that such would have been the best strategical course. Napoleon thought otherwise, and resolved to strike in between the Prussian and British armies, crushing the former before the latter could be fully assembled. He very nearly succeeded, and, if all had gone as he hoped, he could scarcely have failed to win one of his greatest victories.

LIGNY AND QUATRE BRAS.

On the evening of the 15th, Wellington was still at Brussels, with the great body of his army, and only a weak force of Dutch and Belgians was at Quatre Bras, some sixteen miles to the south. Blücher, with about three-fourths of his army, was at Sombreffe, a few miles south-east of Quatre Bras. Napoleon himself was at or close by Charleroi, ten or twelve miles south of Quatre Bras; the mass of his army was at Fleurus, south-west of Sombreffe, with Ligny and St. Amand between it and the Prussians; and Marshal Ney, with Reille's corps, was at Frasnes, opposite to and due south of Quatre Bras. On the morning of the 16th, Napoleon arrived from Charleroi at Fleurus, and carefully inspected his enemy's position, but delayed his attack upon Ligny and St Amand until half-past two in the afternoon. The Prussians outnumbered the French, and a murderous conflict ensued among the streets, gardens, and enclosures of these little towns, which lasted until eight or nine o'clock. At last Napoleon ordered his guard to advance, and the plateau behind Ligny was taken, with a loss to the French of 12,000, and to the Prussians of over 20,000. Blücher himself was unhorsed and severely bruised in a furious charge of cavalry, but the Prussians retired in good order towards Wavre, north of the battlefield.

Had Ney been in a condition to obey an urgent message from Napoleon, and to envelop the Prussian right and rear, this defeat would have been overwhelming in its effect. But while the battle of Ligny was raging, another battle was going on at Quatre Bras, six miles distant, in which the French sustained a serious check. Happily for the British, Ney failed to bring up his divisions for an attack on Quatre Bras until two o'clock in the afternoon, when the Dutch and Belgians under the Prince of Orange were still his only opponents. The news for which Wellington had been waiting did not reach him until just before the memorable ball, given by the Duchess of Richmond at Brussels on the night of the 15th, which he nevertheless attended, hurrying off his troops to Quatre Bras. They arrived just in time to reinforce the Prince of Orange and save the position; but Ney, too, was receiving fresh reinforcements every hour, the Duke of Brunswick was killed, and a fearful stress fell on Picton's division and the Hanoverians, who alone were a match for Ney's splendid infantry and Kellermann's cuirassiers.

These made a charge like that which had borne down the Austrians at Marengo, but the British squares were proof against it, and when a division of guards came up from Nivelles, the French in turn were put on the defensive and retreated to Frasnes. The loss on the British side was 4,500 men; that on the French somewhat less. It is not difficult to imagine what the issue of the battle must have been if D'Erlon's corps had been brought into action. This corps was occupied in marching and countermarching, under contradictory orders from Napoleon and Ney, between the British left and the Prussian right during the whole of this eventful day. Its appearance in the distance just when Napoleon was about to launch his guard against the Prussians at Ligny, caused him to hesitate long, and lose the decisive moment for demolishing his enemy. Its failure to appear at Quatre Bras, and to roll up the wavering Dutch-Belgians, before Picton took up the fighting, enabled Wellington to hold his ground at first, to repulse Ney afterwards, and on hearing of Blücher's defeat at Ligny, to fall back in good order on Waterloo. Even then, something was due to good fortune. Had Napoleon joined Ney and marched direct on Quatre Bras early on the 17th, it is difficult to see how his advance to Brussels could have been arrested. But whether he was exhausted by his incessant labours since leaving Paris, or whether his marvellous intuition was deserting him, certain it is that he allowed that critical morning to slip by without an effort – and without a reconnaissance. He assumed that Blücher must retire upon Namur as his base of operations, and that Wellington, retiring towards Brussels, would be cut off from his allies. He therefore despatched Marshal Grouchy, with 33,000 men, to follow up the Prussians eastward by the Namur road. His assumption was unfounded. Blücher, loyal to his engagements, retired upon Wavre; Wellington, relying upon Blücher's loyalty, took his stand on the field of Waterloo; and this error on the part of Napoleon determined the fortunes of the campaign.⁶¹

WATERLOO.

The British army retreated upon Waterloo almost unmolested. Ney was probably awaiting orders, and Napoleon, believing the Prussians to be at Namur, probably thought he might safely rest himself and his army before crushing Wellington at his leisure. When they realised that Wellington was deliberately moving his army to a position nearer Brussels, they both followed in pursuit along different roads converging at Quatre Bras, and a brisk skirmish took place near Genappe between Ney's cavalry and that of the British rear-guard. Heavy rain came on, and the two armies spent a miserable night, half a mile from each other, close to Mont St. Jean, and south of Waterloo. Napoleon rose before daybreak on the 18th, reconnoitred the British position, and convinced himself that Wellington intended to give battle. He expressed to his staff his satisfaction and confidence of victory, when General Foy, who had experience of the Peninsular war, replied in significant words: "Sire, when the British infantry stand at bay, they are the very devil himself". Why Napoleon did not begin the battle at eight o'clock has been the subject of much discussion. It is said that he waited for Grouchy to join him before the close of the action. But neither he nor Grouchy, though aware that at least a large force of Prussians had gone to Wavre and not to Namur, suspected that Blücher had promised Wellington to march with his whole army on the morning of the 18th to support the British at Waterloo. It is more likely that he waited for his men to assemble and for the ground to dry and become more practicable for his powerful artillery.⁶²