Charismatic, courageous, temperamental, passionate, quick-tempered, brilliant and brave beyond question, Ney was so determined to place himself in the thick of battle at Waterloo that he denied the army the ‘eyes and ears’ of its de facto battlefield commander, thereby allowing events to move beyond his immediate control. Ney doubtless inspired his troops in the assault, but in so doing reduced himself at best to another corps – or probably more accurately, a divisional or even brigade – commander. Possessing brash manners and displaying unpredictable behaviour, he was not entirely trusted by a number of generals during the campaign of 1815 – and perhaps for good reason – for after boasting that he would bring Napoleon home in a cage, Ney famously changed sides, a problem highlighted by the fact that he had only held command for three days before Waterloo and therefore did not know his subordinates, many of whom resented his sudden appointment.
Unlike Napoleon, Ney possessed personal experience of confronting Wellington, having served in the Peninsula for three years, most notably in 1810 at Busaco where he rashly launched his forces against a well-defended and formidable ridge. But he later served brilliantly in Russia and Germany until, after Allied forces occupied Paris in April 1814 and thus rendered all hope of further resistance futile, he led a group of marshals who insisted upon Napoleon’s abdication. When the emperor refused, declaring ‘The Army will obey me!’, Ney disarmed him with a flourish of reality: ‘Sire, the Army will obey its generals’.
During the Hundred Days’ campaign Ney committed a number of mistakes at Quatre Bras, attacking late, launching attacks in piecemeal fashion and failing to use combined arms to break Anglo-Allied resistance.
Gregory Fremont-Barnes holds a doctorate in Modern History from the University of Oxford and serves as a Senior Lecturer in War Studies at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. A prolific author, his books on this period include Waterloo 1815, The French Revolutionary Wars, The Peninsular War, 1807–14, The Fall of the French Empire, 1813–15, Nile 1798 and Trafalgar 1805. He also edited Armies of the Napoleonic Wars and the three-volume Encyclopedia of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As an academic advisor, Dr Fremont-Barnes has accompanied several groups of British Army officers and senior NCOs in their visits to the battlefields of the Peninsula and to Waterloo.