Hi Eric, you make salient points, but during the entire battle including Qatre Bras and Ligny, the opposing forces never lost contact with each other.. What links Qatre Bras with Ligny was that on July 16th, in the center, Napoleon sat with his Imperial guards and the reserves, ready to commit his forces to either Ney or Grouchy. He could have committed his troops either way. He planned it that way. It sounds like the same battle to me. As it happened, Blucher was routed and Napoleon committed his troops to his left instead of his right. Wellington fell back and parked his troops with the forrest behind him leaving him no real escape route. Nappy believed he could defeat Wellington before any Prussians could arrive.

I know my viewpoint is considered heresy, but what I see with conventional historical interpretations is a breaking up of a very fluid, ongoing battle into individual "quanta". This has the effect of separating the actions as if they happened independently from each other, which is certainly not the case.

Thinking about the battle of Waterloo the same way historians in 1850 thought about it is not the way you should be looking at it. New insights can be gained into the way Napoleon worked his magic if you look at his actions in a modern way, using modern concepts.


I read Chandler in high school a loooooong time ago (late 60's maybe). I'll give it a reread and see if it changes my mind.