On the afternoon of the 18th June 1815, before one o'clock,
Field Marshal Prince Blucher had joined Bulow von Dennwitz's IVth Corps at
Chapelle- Saint-Lambert, to the northeast of the battlefield. Despite the pain
and exhaustion resulting from Ligny, he personally reconnoitered the approaches
to the French right flank. But he could not move quickly, nor were his
decisions fast in coming, and it was not until 4 P.M. that Bulow's first two
brigades were seen debouching from the Bois de Paris. At a point close to the
farm of Frischermont they started heading in the direction of Plancenoit, some
three kilometers away, along the southern end of the hastily extended French
right. Napoleon for his part watched impotently as the Prussians easily
scattered the wounded General Domon's 3rd Cavalry Division of less than a
thousand men at five o'clock. But three brigades of Comte Lobau's VIth Corps,
supported by thirty pieces of artillery, promptly challenged Bulow's equal
ordnance and swelling infantry, successfully pushing them back for the moment.
However tired the Prussians may have been from their forced march from Wavre
today, nonetheless, with the rest of Bulow's corps now arriving, they had a
crushing numerical superiority with their 31,000 against Lobau's 7,000, and by
six o'clock the French had again abandoned Plancenoit.
Coming under Prussian cannon fire himself for the first
time, Napoleon dispatched General Duhesme's Division of eight battalions of
Young Guard infantry, totaling over 4,000 men, along with twenty-four pieces of
ordnance. Duhesme retook Plancenoit, so critical for maintaining the French
right flank, while Durutte attacked Papelotte. This was no time for half
measures. But capturing Plancenoit from the mortally wounded Duhesme, Bulow
once again threatened Napoleon and French control of the Bruxelles Road itself.
Meeting this challenge, the Emperor then deployed eleven of his remaining
Guards battalions in as many separate squares, from La Belle Alliance along the
Bruxelles highway down to Rossommee Farm. Now facing east toward a wall of
massing Prussians, he ordered another attack on Plancenoit, led by two
battalions of Morand's Old Guard chasseurs. By 7 P.M. not only was that village
of 500 souls again back in French hands, but Papelotte and La Haie secured by
Durutte's 4th Infantry Division as well. Experience had won the day. Lobau had
regained all the land he had earlier lost.
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