"Grouchy the Invincible." Topic

"By the end of the Waterloo campaign the only French senior commander remaining undefeated was Marshal Grouchy. His action at Wavre and successful retreat to Paris should have been regarded as the peg on which French honour could be hung on. Napoleon made sure that this would not happen, for he and those who desperately needed to believe Napoleon's defeat was not his own doing, but down to either the treachery or incompetence of his Generals, made sure that Grouchy and indeed Ney would never wash the stigma of blame from their records.

At 3am on the 18th of June 1815 Field Marshal Grouchy issued his orders for the day. They outlined an advance upon Wavre via Sart-a-Walhain. The previous afternoon he had sent a letter to Napoleon which outlined his plan to pursue the Prussians and depending on which road they took, follow accordingly. After allowing his men to spend half the morning in bivouac, at 6 Comte Excelmans' II Cavalry Corps left Sauveniere. Vandamme's III Corps left at 7 from Gembloux and Gerard's IV Corps followed after him at 8. It was an unhappy command. Vandamme and Gerard did not want to serve under Grouchy, who though a proven cavalry commander, had not shown any qualities to suggest that he merited his present position.
The going was slow, the appalling state of the roads meant delays and Grouchy had indolently neglected to route III and IV Corps by separate roads meaning over 25,000 infantry and supporting guns were forced to share the same avenue of advance.
While the infantry stopped and started, in front Excelmans Dragoons, had begun to clash with the Prussian rearguard. The time was 10:30 am and the Comte duly formed his men across the road to Wavre, anchoring his left flank on the wood of La Plaquerie, and sending forward his skirmishers. As the squadrons extended and went through the familiar motions of engaging outposts, Excelman's sent chef d'Escuadron d'Estourmel to inform Grouchy…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Ya know, I don't care how the Frenchies pronounce his name. to me he will always have the English pronunciation. By Jove!

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

With a nod to John, he certainly became a grouchy old man after he was lumbered with much of the blame for the French defeat at Waterloo.

He was clearly a competent commander and any blame IMO lies elsewhere: firstly by assigning him the numbers of troops in his command. It was unnecessarily large for the role of pursuing the beaten Prussians & far too small to tie down a resurgent Prussian army.

Which bit? Ochoin's opinion seems perfectly reasonable. Arguable perhaps, but reasonable.

@ Whirlwind.

Please, argue away. I know you'll indulge in polite disagreement rather than the vulgar abuse of Gozzoz.

No argument from me: I've been thinking it over and I reckon you are right.

Incidentally, I think the main charge against Grouchy is his lack of activity on the 17th, particularly in the morning. However, I think there are two basic ripostes to this: firstly, this 'inactivity' on the morning of the 17th seems to have extended to all of the main French commanders, so perhaps this is a hindsight problem; and secondly, the kind of pursuit that was expected of Grouchy was vanishingly rare throughout the Napoleonic Wars and in particular after a hard battle. I checked my copy of Petre and he describes the morning after Jena-Auerstadt in very similar terms to the events after Quatre Bras-Ligny link The key difference was that the Prussian commanders in 1806 had suffered a rather worse defeat on the battlefield compared to the mixed French victory at Ligny, French defeat/draw at Quatre Bras and were unable to restore order in time.

As an aside, Petre, in the context of Jena, also touches on Napoleon's habitual gross understating of French losses link also mirrored at Ligny PDF link (see pages 688-689 in particular). I think that this exaggeration partly explains why Napoleon – and perhaps, some of his later followers – have slightly over-estimated the relative damage done to the Prussian Army during the battle.

I think it a fair guess that Grouchy's "lack of activity on the 17th" is the result of, firstly, his mission.
As indicated above he was neither 'fish nor fowl'.I'm not entirely sure who you can assign the blame for this: Soult?

Secondly, he was a newly "hatted" marshal. Is it likely he'd take risks in his first command? A failure of initiative, perhaps but a forgivable one.

BTW many thanks for your interesting & thoughtful reply. I rather like reading & occasionally responding to Napoleonic discussions but not when the Idiot-Quotient (as seen earlier in this thread) is rampant.

Agree with you Ochoin!…

Don't take into account some people who are visiting TMP to insult only.

They usually have a short live here.

Amicalement
Armand

Well said Armand/Tango01
Ochoin, I agree in general lines with what you wrote about Grouchy,many a French soldier owes his life to the orderly retreat by Grouchy's forces. They could, if the political atmosphere in Paris was different, form the nucleus of a French army with still some hitting power.
This will be the theme of our demo game at Crisis in Antwerp (nov 7th), Allies versus French in a fictivious (but not impossible) battle after Waterloo.

@ Marcel.

You know a Grouchy retreat game has never occurred to me: not a bad idea at all. I might steal it.

Could all this perhaps add weight to Stephen Beckett's book Waterloo Betrayed. That, rather than blame Grouchy, perhaps Soult deliberately sent him any orders requested by the Emperor to join him, much later than he should have done? Just a thought and I'm not attempting to throw the blame on anyone or make out Napoleon was blameless either. They are all on the same team, but sometimes people miss penalties etc. (apologies in advance for the football bit, I'm tired and it was the best I could think of at the time. LOL)

Could all this perhaps add weight to Stephen Beckett's book Waterloo Betrayed.

Maybe…I guess you would not only have to look at what was communicated to Grouchy and when, but also whether the timelines were vastly different to those in other, similar situations.

@ Ochoin,

BTW many thanks for your interesting & thoughtful reply. I rather like reading & occasionally responding to Napoleonic discussions but not when the Idiot-Quotient (as seen earlier in this thread) is rampant.

You are very welcome. I won't be posting for a little while (a nasty outbreak of real life), I hope that you get a lot of the good and none of the bad in the meantime.

And happy gaming (and reading and painting!) to one and all.

We are all in withdrawal from the noble game, in the UK……..

This year, it starts even earlier…..and do not call it "soccer" (even if you live in the rebel colonies). The poorest kid in an Indian village, in a Man Utd shirt, a Chinese 10 year old, who speaks not a word of "English" (not many of them mind!), or an Argentinian teenager, who can make a ball defy gravity for 20 minutes (they all can, there) calls it football.

Even after six months in Michigan, at U of M, what I saw there was not football. It was rugby, in helmets…..and the girls played "soccer", at high school.

Poor old Grouchy. The French are a rotten lot frankly. They will blame anyone, or anything, (the weather, the terrain, the treachery, the incompetence of staff) rather than blame Boney, for just being below par in the second 45 minutes. I thought he had the best of the first half, in 1815, mind you. If he had only brought on his substitute, off the bench, (with 30,000 men too) from his right wing……

Kevin Nolan or Andy Carroll, now you are talking about useless……..

deadhead

The problem is that a manager, like Emperors and other Napoleonic commanders, can never have the luxury of hindsight that we have. They pick the players at the time-but they don't know how they will actually play on the day. And if they have a bad day it doesn't matter who they pick.

I think Deadhead is referring to 'own goals'.

The issue here is whether Napoleon (through Soult) directed Grouchy well or Berthier, say, would not have refined Grouchy's mission, tailored his command to suit & delivered concise & clear orders.