ExSarge said:
As Christidis points out in his work, it’s unlikely that had the battle gone the other way the French would have allowed Wellington the opportunity to withdraw to the coast unmolested. With the unreliability of the Dutch, Nassauer’s and some of his German troops it’s my contention that Wellington, ever the pragmatic, would have done every thing he could to maintain the core of his army (his British and KGL battalions) intact as a viable force.
I spent the night in a feverous search for supporting documentation for this claim without success. I’m sure I have seen something in Somerset’s letters that would support this!
In a general sense Sir Edward Creasy, in The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo describes Wellington's actions on the night before the battle in that "he[Wellington] wrote several letters to the Governor of Antwerp, to the English Minister at Brussels, and other official personages, in which he expressed his confidence that all would go well,
but "as it was necessary to provide against serious losses; should any accident occur, he gave a series of judicious orders for what should be done in the rear of the army, in the event of the battle going against the Allies.” However, in Lord Ellesmere's Life and Character of the Duke of Wellington the following is found "the Duke of Wellington, when speaking in after years of the possible events that might have followed if he had been beaten back from the open field of Waterloo, pointed to the wood of Soignies as his secure rallying place, saying,"they never could have beaten us so, that we could not have held the
wood against them."He was always confident that he could have made good that post until joined by the Prussians, upon whose co-operation he throughout depended."
Kat
"It is impossible to recognize the Napoleon, of 1800, 1805, and 1807, in the Napoleon of the June days of 1815. The general who wavered on the 15th and 16th, if a corps had to be sent hither or thither, right or left, was not the man with the eagle eye, who, after a long march, started in the evening in order to rush at Friedland like a tiger on his prey. The Emperor who, in the forenoon of the 18th, slowly restored the order of battle and found time to hold a review was not the man of will power and energy who called out to his marshals "activite, activite, vitesse" and in the night of 14 October, 1807, torch in hand made his artillery climb the steep Landgrafen-Hill! The master of warfare, who sent first the infantry, then the cavalry, and lastly the Guard against Wellington's front, was not the God of battles, who, at Austerlitz, swept down with his entire army against the flank of the enemy. Assuredly not. For he himself had said in 1797: "One ages rapidly on battle fields." And at the time he said it, he was in the second year of his career as a fieldmarshal. Since then, in the course of 17 years, many things had happened, bound to shake the solid structure of this colossus. A mass of indebtedness had accumulated, gnawing at the marrow of this Titan. Halting or turning back was impossible. He was driven forward, ever forward, against ever increasing forces. And to oppose them he lacked the strength. His fall was imminent, if not on 18 June, then later. It was inevitable. His mother had foreseen this when she said to her son in bidding him goodbye on the Isle of Elba: "Heaven will not permit that thou shouldst die by poison(12) or in unworthy degree, but with the sword in thy hand." To find such an end ought to have been the aim of the battle of Waterloo.
"(General Fieldmarshal Count Alfred von Schlieffen, http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/Cannae/cannae.asp)
