NAPOLEON'S MISTAKES AT WATERLOO.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIII, Issue XVIII, 3 August 1912, Page 9

NAPOLEON'S MISTAKES AT WATERLOO.

Napoleon's choice of lieutenants in the Waterloo campaign is keenly criticised in Dr Holland Rose's latest volume, "Pitt and Napoleon.".The detachment of Grouchy's corps is also condemned, as it has been by most military historians. If the purpose was to guard his right flank, Grouchy could have accomplished that object much better by never leaving the Emperor's side. With Grouchy in line, Wellington, it is argued, would have been crushed at Waterloo long before the Prussians could have intervened. This was the principal cause of Napoleon's defeat, but there were other contributory ones. Napoleon made a poor choice of lieutenants to assist him in Belgium. He left the mighty Davoust in Paris — the marshal who, by temperament and skill, was better fitted to meet Wellington than any other, and to whom he should have given Ney's command. Had Suchet been in Groxichy's place, one can hardly imagine him failing to march on Waterloo, after a careful consideration of the strategical position: and, at any rate, he would never have wasted valuable hours sitting in a farmhouse at Walham, eating strawberries, with the sound of the guns at Waterloo in his ears, trying to decide whether to march on Namur, or on Waterloo. Another factor which told heavily against the Emperor was the absence of Berthier, as chief of his staff, for the first time in almost twenty years of incessant warfare. Dr Rose points out how little Napoleon actually had to do with the direction of the operations against the English after the failure of D'Erlon's onset. He then left the conduct of the attack to Ney, and he himself \rent to Planchenoit ; to protect his right- flank against the attack of Billow's corps.