"Waterloo - Comte Reille" Topic

I have received so many messages through the 1815 Limited website about French material that I have decided to share a selection of reports from those written by Comte Reille, commanding the French 2nd Corps during the campaign.

The material provides an incredible insight into several incidents, including the removal of Colonel Cornebize from the command of the 1er Régiment de Ligne just prior to the campaign. I am sure that there will be interesting thread items as a reult:

PDF link

I will post a fascinating Prussian item in the next few days, which demonstrates the nature of the fighting at Ligny durign the battle on the 16th. John

John,
Great read – thank you for posting.
I wasn't surprised to see Reille refer to Quatre Bras as 'Trois Bras', as that is exactly how the late 18th C map, by Ferraris, indicates the name of the famous crossroads. On the same series of maps, Ferraris names Wagnelee, Wagnee [on the battlefield of Ligny]. The locals obviously referred to the two locations as Quatre Bras and Wagnelee, so we must presume that Reille was using the Ferraris map, or at least a copy of the same, for movement and place identification purposes.

The Ferraris map can be found here:
ngi.be/NL/NL1-4-2-3.shtm

With Wagnelee [Wagneee] bottom left corner of map 97 and
Quatre Bras [Cabaret Les Trois Bras] top right corner of map 80

npm

Have to repeat (again) .. that is one awesome Atlas!

John

Great posting. I hope there's more to come on the French side. We can certainly do with it.

Gentlemen,

Yes, the contents of Reille's journal are most fascinating, and I hope that future French items will be equally revealing. As I mentioned on another TMP thread (see below), I have more than two hundred French items, and these are slowly being added to the archive I am building. I anticipate that there will be two books on the French at some point as well. John

TMP link

Great post, really fascinating stuff.

Thank you

A quick question why is the guy saying he has copyright on a 200 year old document when it runs out after 80 years?

M

I own the copyright of the translation. The original document is retained by SHAT, and they retain the 'ownership' of all that relates to it, such as the image and original French text. The service I have provided in translating the document into English is where my copright is established. This is the case with all of the translated items within my collection. John

P.S. I'll post a Prussian item a little later, which has been sourced from the original manuscript and translated into English from the old Prussian script as part of the service. Naturally, if anyone prefers to travel to Berlin to search the archives, to find the original document and transcribe it, then to take hours translating it into English before having a professional editor check their work and the document typeset, I wish them all the very best.