WATERLOO GREAT BATTLES WATERLOO ALAN FORREST 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OXDP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. 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LinkstothirdpartywebsitesareprovidedbyOxfordingoodfaithand forinformationonly.Oxforddisclaimsanyresponsibilityforthematerials containedinanythirdpartywebsitereferencedinthiswork. FOREWORD Forthosewhopractisewarinthestcenturytheideaofa‘greatbattle’ can seem no more than the echo of a remote past. The names on regimentalcoloursortheeventscommemoratedatmessdinnersbear little relationship to patrolling in dusty villages or waging ‘wars amongst thepeople’.Contemporarymilitarydoctrinedownplaysthe idea of victory, arguing that wars end by negotiation not by the smashingofanenemyarmyornavy.Indeediterodestheverydivision between war and peace, and with it the aspiration to fight a culmin- ating‘greatbattle’. Andyettotakebattleoutofwaristoredefinewar,possiblytothe point where some would argue that it ceases to be war. Carl von Clausewitz,whoexperiencedtwo‘greatbattles’atfirsthand–Jenain  and Borodino in  – wrote in On War that major battle is ‘concentrated war’, and ‘the centre of gravity of the entire campaign’. Clausewitz’s remarks related to the theory of strategy. He recognised thatinpracticearmiesmightavoidbattles,buteventhentheefficacy oftheiractionsreliedonthelatentthreatoffighting.WinstonChurch- illsawtheimportanceofbattlesindifferentterms,notfortheirplace within war but for their impact on historical and national narratives. Hisforebear,theDukeofMarlborough,foughtfourmajorbattlesand namedhispalaceafterthemostfamousofthem,Blenheim,foughtin . Battles, Churchill wrote in his life of Marlborough, are ‘the principal milestones in secular history’. For him ‘Great battles, won or lost, change the entire course of events, create new standards of values,newmoods,newatmospheres,inarmiesandnations,towhich allmustconform’. v FOREWORD Clausewitz’s experience of war was shaped by Napoleon. Like Marlborough, the French emperor sought to bring his enemies to battle. However, each lived within a century of the other, and they fought their wars in the same continent and even on occasion on adjacent ground. Winston Churchill’s own experience of war, which spanned the late nineteenth-century colonial conflicts of the British empireaswellastwoworldwars,becameincreasinglydistancedfrom thesortsofbattleheandClausewitzdescribed.InChurchillrode inacavalrychargeinabattlewhichcrushedtheMadhistforcesofthe Sudan in a single day. Four years later the British commander at Omdurman, Lord Kitchener, brought the South African War to a conclusion after a two-year guerrilla conflict in which no climactic battleoccurred.BothChurchillandKitchenerservedasBritishcabinet ministers in the First World War, a conflict in which battles lasted weeks,andevenmonths,andwhich,despitetheirscaleandduration, didnotproduceclear-cutoutcomes.The‘battle’ofVerdunranforall but one month of  and that of the Somme for five months. The potentiallydecisivenavalactionatJutlandspannedamoretraditional -hour timetable but was not conclusive and was not replicated duringthewar.IntheSecondWorldWar,themajorstruggleinwaters adjacenttoEurope,the‘battle’oftheAtlantic,wasfoughtfromto early. Clausewitzwouldhavecalledthesetwentieth-century‘battles’cam- paigns, or even seen them as wars in their own right. The determin- ation to seek battle and to venerate its effects may therefore be culturally determined, the product of time and place, rather than an inherentattributeofwar.Theancienthistorian,VictorDavisHanson, has argued that seeking battle is a ‘western way of war’ derived from classical Greece. Seemingly supportive of his argument are the writ- ingsofSunTzu,whoflourishedinwarringstatesChinabetweentwo andfivecenturiesbeforethebirthofChrist,andwhopointedoutthat the most effective way of waging war was to avoid the risks and dangers of actual fighting. Hanson has provoked strong criticism: those who argue that wars can be won without battles are not only vi FOREWORD to be found in Asia. Eighteenth-century European commanders, deploying armies in close-order formations in order to deliver con- centratedfires,realisedthatthedestructiveconsequencesofbattlefor their own troops could be self-defeating. After the First World War, Basil Liddell Hart developed a theory of strategy which he called ‘the indirectapproach’,andsuggestedthatmanoeuvremightsubstitutefor hard fighting, even if its success still relied on the inherent threat of battle. Thewinnersofbattleshavebeencelebratedasheroes,andnations have used their triumphs to establish their founding myths. It is preciselyforthesereasonsthattheirlegacieshaveoutlivedtheirdirect politicalconsequences.Commemoratedinpainting,verseandmusic, marked by monumental memorials, and used as the way points for the periodisation of history, they have enjoyed cultural after-lives. These are evident in many capitals, in place names and statues, not least in Paris and London. The French tourist who finds himself in a London taxi travelling from Trafalgar Square to Waterloo Station should reflect on his or her own domestic peregrinations from the RuedeRivolitotheGared’Austerlitz.Today’sMongoliaveneratesthe memoryofGenghisKhanwhileGreeceandMacedoniascrapoverthe rightstoAlexandertheGreat. Thisseriesofbookson‘greatbattles’tipsitshattobothClausewitz andChurchill.Eachofitsvolumessituatesthebattlewhichitdiscusses inthecontextofthewarinwhichitoccurred,buteachthengoeson to discuss its legacy, its historical interpretation and reinterpretation, its place in national memory and commemoration, and its manifest- ationsinartandculture.Thesearenoteasybookstowrite.Thevictors weremoreoftencelebratedthanthedefeated;theeffectoflossonthe battlefield could be cultural oblivion. However, that point is not universally true: the British have done more over time to mark their defeatsatGallipoliinandDunkirkinthantheirconquerors onbothoccasions.Forthehistoryofwartothriveandbeproductive it needs to embrace the view from ‘the other side of the hill’, to use DukeofWellington’swords.ThebattletheBritishcallOmdurmanis vii FOREWORD fortheSudanesethebattleofKerreri;theGermanscalledWaterloo‘la Belle Alliance’ and Jutland Skagerrak. Indeed the naming of battles coulditselfbeasignnotonlyofgeographicalprecisionorimprecision (Kerreri is more accuratebut as ahill rather than a town is harder to find on a small-scale map), but also of cultural choice. In  the GermangeneralstaffoptedtonametheirdefeatoftheRussiansinEast Prussia not Allenstein (as geography suggested) but Tannenberg, in ordertoclaimrevengethedefeatoftheTeutonicKnightsin. Militaryhistory,morethanmanyother formsofhistory,isbound upwithnationalstories.Alltoofrequentlyitfailstobecomparative, to recognise that war is a ‘clash of wills’ (to quote Clausewitz once more), and so omits to address both parties to the fight. Cultural differenceandevenmorelinguisticignorancecanpreventthehistor- ian considering a battle in the round; so too can the availability of sources. Levels of literacy matter here, but so does cultural survival. Oftenthesepressurescanbecongruentbuttheycanalsobedivergent. BritainenjoysmuchhigherlevelsofliteracythanAfghanistan,butin  the memory of the two countries’ three wars flourished in the latter, thanks to an oral tradition, much more robustly than in the former,forwhomliteracyhadcreateddistance.Andthehistorianwho addressesculturallegacyislikelytofaceamuchmorechallengingtask thefurtherinthepastthebattleoccurred.Theopportunityforinven- tion and reinvention is simply greater the longer the lapse of time sincethekeyevent. Allhistorians ofwar must nonetheless,never forgetthat,however richandsplendidtheculturallegacyofagreatbattle,itwaswonand lostbyfighting,bykillingandbeingkilled.ThebattleofWaterloohas left as abundant a footprint as any, but the general who harvested most of its glory reflected on it in terms which have general applic- ability, and carry across time in their capacity to capture a universal truth. Wellington wrote to Lady Shelley in its immediate aftermath: ‘I hope to God I have fought my last battle. It is a bad thing to be alwaysfighting.WhileinthethickofitIammuchtoooccupiedtofeel anything;butitiswretchedjustafter.Itisquiteimpossibletothinkof viii FOREWORD glory.Bothmindandfeelingsareexhausted.Iamwretchedevenatthe moment of victory, and I always say that, next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.’ Readers of this series should never forgettheimmediatesufferingcausedbybattle,aswellasthecourage required to engage in it: the physical courage of the soldier, sailor or warrior,andthemoralcourageofthecommander,readytohazardall onitsuncertainoutcomes. HEW STRACHAN ix