The Battle of Waterloo: Europe in the Balance by Rupert Matthews

himself heard the rumble of distant cannon fire at his headquarters. The noise was coming from the south and, after spending some time trying to pinpoint the source of the noise more accurately, Zieten sent messengers to Blücher and Wellington announcing that his outposts were being attacked and that, should the attack turn out to be serious, he would fall back towards Fleurus.
    Although Zieten could not be certain, the cannons were in fact French guns firing directly south of Charleroi. They marked the French assault on Zieten’s most southerly units as they marched directly north to seize Charleroi.
    When Blücher received Zieten’s report at about 10.30 am he sent out messages ordering his corps commanders to hurry up and get to Sombreffe as fast as possible. One of those orders – to von Bülow, the commander of the Prussian IV Corps – was to cause massive confusion. An earlier order had told Bülow to march his corps to Hannut, a few miles to the north-east of Sombreffe. This was probably to prevent the Prussian army congesting the roads, but Bülow had managed to convince himself that the entire Prussian army was going to gather at Hannut.
    Matters were not helped by the fact that Bülow outranked Blücher’s chief of staff, Gneisenau, and was notoriously prickly about status. Rather then write the sort of blunt order he would address to other officers, therefore, Gneisenau had couched his message to Bülow as a request. Bülow completely failed to gather from this message that there was any urgency at all. Not realizing that Napoleon was attacking, Bülow continued to Hannut and spent the night there.
    Bülow sent a message to Blücher informing him of what he was doing. Blücher fired off an angry response telling Bülow to march to Gembloux to join up with the rest of the Prussian army. This confused Bülow even more. In the event he let his men sleep and did not move until the morning of the 16 June.
    Zieten’s message to Wellington arrived at a little after 9 am. Wellington was frustrated by the rather vague nature of the message. Cannon were firing somewhere south of Zieten’s headquarters. That could mean anything. Still concerned about his communications to the Channel ports, and having received no message from the spy Grant, Wellington sent urgent messages to his own forward units asking for news of any enemy movements to their front. Crucially this message for the first time told his forward commanders to instantly tell him if a message arrived from somebody called Grant. Unfortunately when the message reached Dornberg, who had earlier received a report from Grant, it was merely logged by his staff.
    A regiment of hussars of the King’s German Legion sent back a report of a party of French cavalry probing north near Mons towards the right flank of Wellington’s position. This caused Wellington real concern. Was Napoleon merely feinting toward Charleroi while the real attack would be toward the Channel ports? In fact the French cavalry were a strong force sent by Napoleon to find out if Wellington was still in position or if he had moved to join Blücher.
    Zieten was, meanwhile, organizing a fighting retreat. As he had earlier decided, he fell back toward Fleurus. This town lay between Blücher’s headquarters at Namur and Wellington’s at Brussels. He could, therefore, continue to act as a link between the two main armies. At 11 am Zieten abandoned Charleroi and its important road junction. There then followed a pause while the French main body got over the river Sambre, resuming their advance at 3 pm.
    It was at about this time that a wounded Prussian cavalryman arrived at Quatre Bras, a crossroads where the Namur-Nivelles road crosses that from Charleroi to Brussels. There he found the 2nd Nassau Regiment peacefully encamped and entirely unaware that any fighting was taking place at all. The Nassau Regiment was part of the Netherlands Army, which was under Wellington’s command. Major Philip von