Waterloo: a British victory or a Prussian one?

Waterloo: a British victory or a Prussian one?

The question that opens this topic is misleading: would the French have won at Waterloo without the Prussians? The most common answer in historical analysis is that Napoleon had already lost before Blücher appeared on the flank. He needed to split the allied armies and destroy them separately. He half managed the first part —he gave the Prussians a good beating at Ligny— but failed to rout them, and he could not finish off Wellington on the field of Waterloo. Without the Prussians, the outcome would have been a stalemate which, for the emperor, amounted to a defeat: the Austrians and the Russians were coming from behind.

The real distribution of the defeat: Russia, Spain, England and Prussia

The Russian campaign takes the prize in terms of blood. Of the 600,000 men who crossed the Niemen, barely 35,000 came out in order and in French uniform. Even so, only half were French: the rest were Polish, German, Italian and other contingents, and many deserted along the way. By the time Napoleon reached Moscow he had some 100,000 men left. The Spanish resistance, with at least 260,000 French losses in the Peninsula, claims greater merit for its guerrilla warfare, although numerically the Russian campaign caused more deaths.

England played a different card: the doctrine of the continental balance of power. Dominate the seas to blockade enemy trade, finance and arm an ally that would stand up to the enemy on land, and open peripheral fronts where its naval superiority made the difference. They tried it successfully in the Seven Years' War and repeated it against Napoleon. Why so much effort if they were the only ones unconquered? Because a hegemonic France on the continent was a direct threat to their trade and security.

Why did the English have the money to finance half of Europe?

The answer lies in the industrial revolution and in debt. After the War of the Spanish Succession, England was the only country that paid its debts instead of declaring bankruptcy, and financial capital moved from Amsterdam to London. On top of that came an enclosure of common lands more aggressive than the Spanish one, which concentrated ownership, raised productivity per hectare and created a mass of dispossessed people available as cheap labour for the nascent industry.

Ancestral hatred and the awkward alliance

Franco-British rivalry was not born in 1815. Some trace it back to 1066 and the Norman caste that ruled England, with theories about secret societies and bloodlines that go no further than speculation. What is certain is that mutual distrust survived two world wars as allies. And in Spain, the alliance with the English against Napoleon had its complications: after Trafalgar, the Spanish fleet was practically non-existent, which made it difficult to bring troops and supplies from the American viceroyalties. There were isolated cases of Americans who came to fight in the Peninsula, but nothing massive.

The striking fact: of the 600,000 of the Grande Armée, only half were French. Napoleon's defeat was largely a problem of logistics and coalitions, not just of military genius.