Could the anti-Napoleonic forces have done better by uniting earlier before Waterloo?
score:14
Yes. However, I don't think you are giving Napoleon enough credit here as the driver of events. It appears that the entire point of Ligny was to prevent exactly that. Here's what wikipedia (currently) has to say:
The battle of Ligny is a prime example of a tactical win and a strategic loss. However, had the left wing of Napoleon´s army succeeded in keeping the Prussian army from joining the British Army under Wellington at Waterloo, as the Emperor had planned, Napoleon might have won the Waterloo Campaign.
In particular, it appears that Wellington thought that Napoleon's main aim was going to be to march around him and cut his communications, rather than to separate the allies and defeat them in detail. Napoleon made sure to feed Wellington false intelligence to reinforce this belief.
Upvote:1
The Allies knew neither when nor where Napoleon would strike. Quartering troops is an immense strain on both countryside and people, and the Allied armies were disbursed to the greatest extent thought to be compatible with a reasonable concentration time. Concentrating early would have left Napoleon in the advantageous position of just waiting for them to exhaust the capability and tolerance of the nearby populace - at which time not only would they be forced to disburse, but over a much wider area and relatively much further from the direct route Paris to Brussels.
Recall that prior to June 11th, Napoleon's forces were also well disbursed, for the same reason. it was Napoleon's ability to seal the border tight as a drum for three days, while his forces concentrated, that gave him the advantage of surprise.
Second you ignore the considerable effort Napoleon expended both to conceal his concentration prior to crossing the border early on June 15th, but to deliberately mislead Wellington as to the direction of his march. Recall Wellington's comment late on June 15th: "Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours march on me." That was no accident.
Upvote:6
It was unknown amongst the Allied armies in which direction Napoleon would march. He might have chosen to march into Belgium, which in addition to cutting Wellington off from supply could have led the Belgians to rise in revolt against the Kingdom of the Netherlands, of which they had only lately been forced to become a part. He might have marched on Prussia instead - and I may be wrong, but I believe the Prussian Army had not yet fully concentrated, and so Blucher covered the route between Napoleon and Prussia. In any case, the Allies expected to have to concentrate to fight Napoleon, and their plan was to do so once they knew the axis of his advance. In order to do so, they would have had to have better scouting - and Wellington would have needed greater confidence that Napoleon was not hooking past him at Mons, or at least earlier scouting reports. This is where the battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras come in - the French attacked the Prussians at Ligny, sending them reeling back in retreat, and at Quatre-Bras prevented Wellington's troops from advancing in time to assist the Prussians at Ligny. Having thus cleared the Prussians from his right (as he thought) Napoleon turned on Wellington at Waterloo. Wellington and Blucher (or possibly Blucher's staff, given the injuries he took at Ligny) were in communication throughout the 17th, and so Wellington stood at Waterloo well aware of the fact that Blucher was coming. He had no guarantee that Blucher would arrive in time, but if the Prussians had been forced into a general retreat rather than re-grouping at Wavre, Wellington would have continued retreating. In other words, the course of events clearly shows that Wellington and Blucher intended to force Napoleon to fight them together, and that Napoleon attempted, with incomplete success, to drive them apart so that he could defeat them in detail. So yes, an earlier link-up between the Allied armies would have meant Napoleon's efforts failed earlier.
More post
- 📝 Did any Chinese warlord claim the mantle of the Beiyang government after 1928?
- 📝 To what extent was the Cold War caused by post World War 2 economics?
- 📝 What did the Crusaders really wear?
- 📝 Researching a Spanish document from the ~XV century
- 📝 Did any of the Flying Tigers lead a US Navy squadron?
- 📝 Were the 19th century decades referred to as 40s, 50s back then?
- 📝 In the United States government, has there been cases that electoral colleges don't vote for the candidate the majority of their state voted for?
- 📝 During WW2, what B-29 crew role did the abbreviation EMG mean?
- 📝 When and why did the given name Dariusz get popular in Poland?
- 📝 Why did Germany request compensation after the Agadir (2nd Moroccan) crisis?
- 📝 What are some good books about middle ages plague?
- 📝 Korean Traditional Clothes for each Dynasty
- 📝 What was the largest land area that Germany has ever controlled?
- 📝 What types of jobs did upper class Romans do?
- 📝 Book about the story of a WWII photo analyst looking for V1 launching ramps
- 📝 How do totalitarian states/empires usually fall?
- 📝 Why didn't Japan adopt western utensils?
- 📝 The Triple Alliance vs The Allied powers vs The Allies
- 📝 Why did the population of Descartes, France increase by so much in the 1960's?
- 📝 Why did Athenian philosophers praise Spartan culture and laws, which would preclude philosophers like themselves?
- 📝 How many wars have there been in Europe since WW2?
- 📝 What differences led to Technicolor becoming the dominant color filming technology in Hollywood?
- 📝 Wreck of the Juno
- 📝 Does the Great Revival and the Great Awakening refer to the same thing?
- 📝 What did the Edo samurai bureaucracy actually look like?
- 📝 If the nazi is a far-right party, why is it socialist?
- 📝 Which countries banned Ferdinand the bull?
- 📝 Is there anywhere that has not been at war with Britain?
- 📝 WWII: Did the entire war depend on breaking the ENIGMA cipher?
- 📝 U-Boat Mutiny in WW2?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Could the anti-Napoleonic forces have done better by uniting earlier before Waterloo?
- 📝 Could the Russians Have Done Better at the Battle of Tsushima Straits Than They Actually Did?
- 📝 Could the Confederates have done better at Gettysburg if they had put cavalry in front of, rather than behind, Pickett's charge?
- 📝 On 1941 Dec 7, could Japan have targeted the Panama Canal instead of Pearl Harbor in a surprise attack?
- 📝 Did any British working class men have the vote before 1918?
- 📝 Did Louis XIV actually say "The State? I am the State."? Could he have said it?
- 📝 How did people have access to ice in warm areas before the industrial revolution?
- 📝 Could the Soviet Union have continued fighting World War II without Caucasus oil?
- 📝 Was there a pre-determined arrangement for the division of Germany in case it surrendered before any Soviet forces entered its territory?
- 📝 Could the Soviet Union have supported Czechoslovakia primarily by air in 1938?
- 📝 What kind of evidence (if any) could be used to identify a large conquest in the time before writing?
- 📝 How did people say “I have to go to the bathroom” before the bathroom and pipes were common?
- 📝 Did airports have security checks before the 1970s?
- 📝 Have the current polar ice caps receded further than those that existed before the beginning of the last Ice Age?
- 📝 Did the Russian Empire have a claim to Sweden? Was there ever a time where they could have pursued it?
- 📝 How much gunpowder could the average Napoleonic ship of the line carry?
- 📝 Did people have better nutrition before agriculture?
- 📝 Could Great Britain have built the British Empire if it was not the pioneer of the Industrial Revolution?
- 📝 Where could I find a map of the communes for Bavaria region before 1930?
- 📝 MLK used "negro" several times in his "I have a dream"-address. Could white "liberals" at the time also use "negro" as a neutral word for blacks?
- 📝 How could nonconformist Protestants be buried in graveyards controlled by the established Church before 1880?
- 📝 Could the leader of the Soviet Union have been removed legally?
- 📝 Could the Germans have "sealed off" the Sea of Azov in World War II?
- 📝 Did any native US-Canadian tribes have written language before the advent of the Europeans?
- 📝 What populations have been denied the ability to leave a territory, so that its goverment could kill them?
- 📝 Could the 1864 US presidential election have been postponed?
- 📝 Could the nukes involved in the 1966 Palomares B-52 crash have detonated?
- 📝 Could British India have realistically allied with both Afghanistan and the Punjab?
- 📝 Could the U.S. have used "Lend Lease" to force Germany onto the horns of a dilemma?
- 📝 Why was America much better prepared earlier in World War II in the air than in other respects?