Battle of Ligny

Battle of Ligny by Theodore Yung

Date	16 June 1815
Location	Ligny, present-day Belgium
Result	French victory

Belligerents

French Empire

Prussia

Commanders and leaders

Napoleon Bonaparte

Gebhard von Blücher

Strength

60,800

84,000

Casualties and losses

8,000-12,000 dead or wounded

12,000 dead or wounded
27 cannons
8,000 deserters

The Battle of Ligny (16 June 1815) was the last victory of the military career of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this battle, French troops of the Armée du Nord under Napoleon's command, defeated part of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Prince Blücher, near Ligny in present-day Belgium. The Battle of Ligny is an example of a tactical win and a strategic loss, in that the bulk of the Prussian army survived and went on to play a pivotal role two days later at the Battle of Waterloo, reinforced by IV Prussian corps that had not participated in the battle at Ligny. However, had the French army succeeded in keeping the Prussian army from joining the Anglo-allied Army under Wellington at Waterloo, Napoleon might have won the Waterloo Campaign.

On 13 March 1815, six days before Napoleon reached Paris, the powers at the Congress of Vienna declared him an outlaw; four days later, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound themselves to put 150,000 men each into the field to end his rule. Napoleon knew that, once his attempts at dissuading one or more of the Seventh Coalition Allies from invading France had failed, his only chance of remaining in power was to attack before the Coalition could put together an overwhelming force. If he could destroy the existing Coalition forces south of Brussels before they were reinforced, he might be able to drive the British back to the sea and knock the Prussians out of the war.

The Duke of Wellington expected Napoleon to try to envelop the Coalition armies, a manoeuvre that he had successfully used many times before, by moving through Mons to the south-west of Brussels. The roads to Mons were paved, which would have enabled a rapid flank march. This would have cut Wellington's communications with his base at Ostend, but would also have pushed his army closer to Blücher's. In fact, Napoleon planned instead to divide the two Coalition armies and defeat them separately, and he encouraged Wellington's misapprehension with false intelligence. Moving up to the frontier without alerting the Coalition, Napoleon divided his army into a left wing, commanded by Marshal Ney, a right wing commanded by Marshal Grouchy, and a reserve, which he commanded personally (although all three elements remained close enough to support one another). Crossing the frontier at Thuin near Charleroi before dawn on 15 June, the French rapidly overran Coalition outposts and secured Napoleon's favoured "central position" – at the junction between the area where Wellington's allied army was dispersed to his north-west, and Blücher's Prussian army to the north-east.

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