The Congress of Vienna

The Treaty of Chaumont had bound the four principal allied powers—Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain—together in their quest to defeat Napoleon. The subsequent treaties of peace with France stated that all the former belligerent countries should send delegates to a congress in Vienna. Representatives of the four major allies began to arrive in Vienna in September 1814, but two months after the sessions began, the reconstituted monarchy of Bourbon France was admitted, and it was this committee of five that was the real Congress of Vienna.

The leading statesmen in attendance at the congress were Prince Klemens von Metternich of Austria, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, Frederick William III and Prince Karl von Hardenberg of Prussia, Viscount Castlereagh of Great Britain (the Duke of Wellington replaced him, and Lord Clancarty replaced the duke), and Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord of France. Spain, Portugal, and Sweden were also represented, as were many of the rulers of the minor states of Europe.

Over the course of nine months, the Congress of Vienna achieved its purpose of reorganizing Europe and reestablishing conservative political order after Napoleon’s conquests. The work continued through the Hundred Days, and the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna was signed less than two weeks before Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. The Congress reduced France to its 1789 borders and a new kingdom of Poland was established under Russian sovereignty. To check possible future aggression by France, its neighbours were strengthened: the Kingdom of the Netherlands acquired Belgium, Prussia gained territory along the Rhine, and the Italian kingdom acquired Genoa. The German states were joined loosely in a new German Confederation, subject to Austria’s influence. For its part in the defeat of Napoleon, Britain acquired valuable colonies, including Malta, the Cape of Good Hope, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Except for minor conflicts, the decisions made at the Congress would secure a half century of relative peace and stability in Europe, ending only with the unification of Germany in 1871. The settlement was the most comprehensive treaty that Europe had seen since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

The Hundred Days

It could be said that the Revolution had truly ended with the Bourbon restoration, as all that happened in 1815 was an anticlimax. The Napoleon who returned from Elba in March 1815 had lost the magic of victory. The veterans of the Grande Armée came to his call, but many of his generals refused to take up arms against what they had recognized as the legitimate government. The clergy were content under a Bourbon king, and the merchants hated the idea of another war. The constitutionalists, despite Napoleon’s liberal Acte additionnel (June 1), suspected that a victory in the field would be followed by a restoration of the empire. As soon as the allies, who were still debating at the Congress of Vienna, heard of his return and of the flight of Louis XVIII, they acted with unexpected promptness and unanimity, declaring that Napoleon “had placed himself outside the pale” of society and recalling their armies for a fresh invasion of France. Napoleon struck first at Brussels, in front of which a Prussian army under Blücher and a mixed British, German, and Dutch-Belgian army under Wellington were caught almost unprepared. The Prussians retreated from Ligny and the British from Quatre-Bras.

The Battle of Waterloo

The Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815) represented Napoleon’s final defeat, ending more than two decades of recurrent warfare between France and the other powers of Europe. It was fought 3 miles (5 km) south of Waterloo village (which is 9 miles [14.5 km] south of Brussels), between Napoleon’s 72,000 troops and the combined forces of the Duke of Wellington’s Allied army of 68,000 (with British, Dutch, Belgian, and German units) and about 45,000 Prussians, the main force of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher’s command.

After defeating the Prussians at Ligny and holding Wellington at Quatre-Bras in secondary battles south of Waterloo on June 16, Napoleon’s marshals, Ney and Emmanuel de Grouchy, failed to attack and annihilate either enemy while their armies were separated. Grouchy, with 33,000 men, nearly one-third of Napoleon’s total strength of 105,000, led a dilatory pursuit of Blücher. On the 18th he was tied down at Wavre by 17,000 troops of Blücher’s rear guard, while Blücher’s main force escaped him, rejoined Wellington, and turned the tide of battle at Waterloo, 8 miles (13 km) to the southwest. At Waterloo, Napoleon made a major blunder in delaying the opening of his attack on Wellington from morning until midday, to allow the ground to dry; this delay gave Blücher’s troops exactly the time they needed to reach Waterloo and support Wellington.

The four main French attacks against Wellington’s army prior to 6:00 pm on June 18 all failed in their object—to decisively weaken the allied centre to permit a French breakthrough—because they all lacked coordination between infantry and cavalry. Meanwhile, a secondary battle developed, in which the French were on the defensive against the 30,000 Prussian troops of Karl von Bülow’s corps of Blücher’s army. The Prussians arrived at Waterloo gradually and put pressure on Napoleon’s eastern flank. To prevent the Prussians from advancing into his rear, Napoleon was forced to shift a corps under Georges Mouton, count de Lobau, and to move several Imperial Guard battalions from his main battle against Wellington.

Finally, at 6:00 pm, Ney employed his infantry, cavalry, and artillery in a coordinated attack and captured La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse in the centre of the allied line. The French artillery then began blasting holes in the allied centre. The decisive hour had arrived: Wellington’s heavy losses left him vulnerable to any intensification of the French attack. But Ney’s request for infantry reinforcements was refused because Napoleon was preoccupied with the Prussian flank attack. Only after 7:00 pm, with his flank secured, did he release several battalions of the Imperial Guard to Ney; but by then Wellington had reorganized his defenses, aided by the arrival of a Prussian corps under Hans Ernst Karl von Zieten. Ney led part of the guard and other units in the final assault on the allies. The firepower of the allied infantry shattered the tightly packed guard infantry. The repulse of the guard at 8:00 pm, followed in 15 minutes by the beginning of the general allied advance and further Prussian attacks in the east, threw the French army into a panic; a disorganized retreat began. The pursuit of the French was taken up by the Prussians. Napoleon lost 25,000 men killed and wounded and 9,000 captured. Wellington’s casualties were 15,000 and Blücher’s were about 8,000.

Aftermath and exile

Abandoning his broken army, Napoleon arrived in Paris on the morning of the 21st and abdicated on the following day. On July 5 and 6 the French army set out reluctantly to march to south of the Loire River, where it was later disbanded. The allies entered Paris on July 7, Louis XVIII the next day. Napoleon journeyed to the west coast, where he surrendered himself to the commander of the HMS Bellerophon on July 15. Although it has been argued that the superior numbers opposing Napoleon in Belgium virtually condemned him to failure, his strategy and his initial success made it possible to gain a victory. The succession of omissions and mistakes which followed—some his own and some his lieutenants’—combined with unusually poor staff work, and, on the 18th, the failure to coordinate all three arms, may be adduced as the most immediate reasons for the loss of the Waterloo Campaign. Even if Wellington and Blücher had abandoned Belgium, Napoleon would probably have secured only a short postponement to his eventual defeat by the allied powers, either by the Austrians and Russians in 1815 or as a result of a general offensive in 1816. Despite Napoleon’s “appeal to history,” he was exiled to the remote south Atlantic island of Saint Helena, arriving with a handful of loyal followers on October 15, 1815. Within six years, Napoleon was dead, but the legend of his exploits would only grow over time.