THE PRUSSIANS AT WATERLOO

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1676, 13 April 1904, Page 37 (Supplement)

THE PRUSSIANS AT WATERLOO

This is what Sir John Kincaid says in his “Adventures in the Rifle Brigade'' <9sth Regiment), wfEIT which corps he •served as captain at Waterloo, on the -subject of the share of the Prussians in the great victory:— “It will be a matter of dispute what the result of that day would have been without the arrival of the Prussians : but it is clear to me that Lord Wellington would not have fought at Waterloo unless Blucher had promised to aid him on a numerical footing with his adversary. it is certain that that promised aid did not come in time to take any share whatever in the battle. It is •equally certain that the enemy had long before been beaten into a mass of ruin, in condition for nothing but running, and wanted but an apology to do it: and I will ever maintain that Lord Wellington's last advance would have made it the same victory had a Prussian never been there.

“If Lord Wellington had been at the head of his old Peninsula Armv I am •confident that he would nave swept his •opponents off the face of the earth after their first attack, but with such a 'heterogenerous mixture under his command he was ooiiged to submit to a longer day.”