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The Battle of Ligny, fought June 16, 1815, was a French victory under Napoleon against the Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher in the Napoleonic Wars. It was Napoleon's last victory.
Ground
Battle Between 1430 hours and 1500 hours, Napoleon started his attack. He ordered the 3rd and part of the 2nd Corps to attack St. Amaund, a farmhouse, and Ligny itself. The first attacks on Ligny were not successful, but the French eventually got through. The St. Amaund attack was more successful. The French broke through after ferocious fighting, but the Prussians continued to resist. They forced the Prussians to abandon their positions at around 1700 hours but failed to push on. When troops were spotted approaching the French left flank. Napoleon paused his attack while he sent an aide-de-camp to see whether they were French or Prussian. They turned out to be French, d'Erlon's 1st Corps. But just as they were about to enter the battle, to the Napoleon's rage, they turned around. Marshal Ney had ordered them to come to his aid at the Battle of Quatre Bras. In the end, the 1st Corps did not fight in either engagement. Due to the confusion, it was about an hour before Napoleon resumed his attack. In the meanwhile, the Prussians regrouped and tried one last unsuccessful counterattack. In the end, the Prussians were routed and the centre fled when Napoleon committed his Imperial Guard against it. However, the stubborn defence put up by the two wings of the Prussian army and a ferocious cavalry charge led by Blücher prevented it from becoming a total rout. By nightfall, at about 2100, almost all of the Prussian formations had left the field. On the Prussian right, Lieutenant-General Ziethen's I Corps retreated slowly with most of its artillery, leaving a rearguard close to Brye to slow the French pursuit. On the left, Lieutenant-General Thielemann's III Corps retreated unharmed, leaving a strong rearguard at Sombreffe. The bulk of the rearguard held their positions until about midnight, before following the rest of the retreating army. In fact, some Prussian rearguard units only left the battlefield in the early morning of 17 June, as the exhausted French failed to press on. General von Gneisenau's staff directed the Prussian forces towards Wavre, a position that would allow them to come to Wellington's aid on 18 June and subsequently swing the outcome of the campaign in their favour. This turned the tactical defeat at Ligny into a strategic victory. Napoleon ordered Grouchy to follow the Prussians on 17 June. Grouchy, misled by contingents of Prussian stragglers, believed that they had followed their "natural" line of retreat towards Namur and Aachen. When he learned that instead the Prussians had been ordered to rally in and around Wavre, it was too late. Conclusion It had been Napoleon's strategy to cross the border in secret and attack the Allied armies before they could combine and outnumber his army. If he could engage them separately, then his army would outnumbered theirs in individual engagements. To that end, he had sent Ney's 2nd Corps and 3rd Cavalry Corps to block the Allied army at the crossroads of Quatre Bras on the same day, so that it could not proceed down the Nivelles-Namur road to bolster the right of the Prussian position. After the battle, Napoleon judged that Grouchy's corps would suffice to drive the Prussians back on their lines of communications and stop them from reforming and going to Wellington's aid. There has been much debate of what would have happened if d'Erlon's 1st Corps had engaged at either Ligny or Quatre Bras, but he did not and Napoleon went on to meet his destiny at Waterloo. See also Further reading | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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