Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque
Encyclopedia
Jean Victor baron de Constant Rebecque (Genève, September 22, 1773 — Schönfeld (Silesia
), June 12, 1850) was a Swiss lieutenant-general in Dutch service of French ancestry. As chief-of-staff of the Netherlands Mobile Army he countermanded the order of the Duke of Wellington
to evacuate Dutch troops from Quatre Bras on the eve of the Battle of Quatre Bras
, thereby preventing Marshal Michel Ney
from occupying that strategic crossroads.
. A nephew (not a brother as sometimes erroneously stated) was Benjamin Constant
. He married Isabella Catharina Anna Jacoba baroness van Lynden (1768-1836) in Braunschweig
on April 29, 1798.
by French revolutionaries, but he escaped with his life. He returned to Switzerland where he was in military service until he (like his ancestors before him) entered the service of the Dutch Republic in 1793 in the regiment of Prince Frederick (a younger son of stadtholder
William V, Prince of Orange
). After the fall of the Republic, and the proclamation of the Batavian Republic
he first entered British service (1795–1798) and subsequently Prussian service (1798–1811). During that Prussian service from 1805 he tutored the future William II of the Netherlands
in military science and helped him pass his exams as a Prussian officer. When William started his studies at Oxford University he accompanied the young prince there and obtained a doctorate honoris causa from Oxford himself in 1811.
William was next appointed aide de camp of the Duke of Wellington in his campaign in the Iberian Peninsula
and Rebecque likewise entered British service again on May 12, 1811 as a major, and participated in every battle the Duke (and William) fought there, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Vittoria.
When William, and his father William I of the Netherlands
, returned to the Netherlands in November, 1813, Rebecque was appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the so-called Orange-Nassau Legion. He advanced very rapidly after that: colonel and aide de camp of the Sovereign Prince on December 31, 1813. Quarter-master-general on January 15, 1814. He took part in the siege of Bergen op Zoom
in the Spring of 1814, and was promoted to major-general on November 30, 1814.
Rebecque played a very prominent role in the organization from scratch of the armed forces of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands in 1813-1815. On April 11, 1814 he was appointed chief-of-staff of the new Netherlands Mobile Army that was then formed to besiege the French in Antwerp. In July, 1814 he was appointed in a commission that was charged with the formation of a combined Dutch-Belgian army. He played a leading role in that commission. Next he helped Prince Frederick of the Netherlands
found the headquarters of the Netherlands Mobile Army, that was to play such an important part in the Hundred Days
Campaign, on April 9, 1815.
Probably because many Dutch officers (like generals Chassé
and Trip
) had served in the Grande Armée this new army was organized along the lines of the French army. In any case its general staff took Marshal Berthier
's famous état-major-général as a model, and not the British system. Nevertheless, because Rebecque had long served as a staff officer in Wellington's army, he was well acquainted with British procedures, and knew his opposite numbers personally.
After Napoleon I of France
escaped from Elba
and quickly overthrew the restored Bourbon monarchy in March, 1815, he quickly formed L'Armée du Nord
, with the help of veterans like François Aimé Mellinet (who organized the Jeune Garde), though he had to do without Marshals Berthier and Murat
for various reasons. Threatened by this military build-up the Great Powers declared war on Napoleon personally and started to prepare for the inevitable showdown. The Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands also brought his plans for forming his Kingdom of the United Netherlands forward and proclaimed himself king on March 16, 1815 (see Eight Articles of London
). Incidentally, this allowed him to give up his title of Prince of Orange
and bestow it upon his eldest son as a courtesy title. That eldest son was now also put in charge of the new Netherlands Mobile Army, though at the same time the Duke of Wellington was appointed a field-marshal in the Dutch army. The arrangement was to be that Wellington would command the combined Anglo-Dutch army that was now assembling in the "Belgian" part of the United Netherlands, but that the Prince of Orange would be in charge of the Belgian-Dutch troops (with his younger brother Frederick nominally commanding a corps). Only Wellington and his chief-of-staff Lord Hill
would be able to give direct orders to the Netherlands troops, but in practice Wellington always went "through channels" and conveyed his orders to the Belgian/Dutch units via the Prince of Orange.
Beside the Anglo-Netherlands army there also was still a Prussian army under field-marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher
in the Belgian Netherlands, as this part of the country formally still was an Allied military governorate-general (with king William as its governor-general). The two armies tried to protect the whole area and had therefore spread out, with the Prussians taking the south-eastern part, and the Anglo-Dutch the northwestern part. But of course, the area was much too large to cover it completely, so there was an appreciable gap between the two armies, a gap that Napoleon would be able to exploit strategically. His objective was to move quickly and defeat each army in turn (as his Armée du Nord was larger than each of the allied armies separately). For this to succeed he needed the element of surprise, because if the Allies would have known his exact intentions, and would have been able to react in time, they could of course have combined their armies in time and blocked his purpose.
Beside the element of surprise the geo-strategical shape of the theatre of war was also important. The terrain in south-eastern Belgium, where the hilly Ardennes
are located, makes only a few invasion routes feasible. Besides, the number of highways was limited in 1815, and this further limited the movements of the opposing armies. Belgium has always been an important theatre of war in the course of the centuries, but in 1815 it had been peaceful since the victory of the French revolutionary armies in 1794, and most generals involved had last campaigned in the country when they were young officers, if at all. Strategic information was therefore at a premium.
Wellington himself had traversed the country on his way to Paris in 1814 and he had at that occasion scouted the area around Waterloo and was aware of its advantages as a battlefield in case Brussels was to be defended. He also commissioned one of his staff officers to survey the area and to assess its strategic choke points. One of those points was the crossroads of the Charleroi
-Brussels road and the Nivelles
-Namur
road at Quatre Bras
. It was generally recognized that the first road would be the prime venue for the French to reach Brussels, and the second one was indispensable for maintaining communications between the two allied armies. For that reason occupying the crossroads was essential; whichever army controlled it would have a decisive strategic advantage. For that reason Rebecque, as chief-of-staff of the Netherlands army ordered the commander of the Netherlands 2nd division, De Perponcher
to secure it at all times on May 6, 1815.
However, Napoleon achieved his strategic surprise, because of a certain reticence on the part of the Allies: the Prussians and British had not declared war on France, just on Napoleon personally (a subtle, but important difference) and they therefore refrained from conducting cavalry reconnaissances across the French border. The Netherlands cavalry was not so constrained, and did reconnoitre the border area, but the three Netherlands cavalry brigades were too thin on the ground to cover the area thoroughly. When Napoleon therefore started his lightning (for the times) offensive, this was not discovered before it was almost too late. He was already in Charleroi before the French were discovered and when news of this sudden appearance reached Wellington he still worried that this was just a feint, and that the true advance would come by way of Mons
. Because of this possibility of being outflanked, and being cut-off from the escape route to the coast, Wellington on the evening of June 15 decided to concentrate his army around Nivelles. His orders went out to all British troops directly, and to the Netherlands troops through the intermediary of the Prince of Orange and his staff (as described above).
The consequence of these orders in the concrete instance of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Netherlands Division under major-general Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, which happened to be at Quatre Bras at the time, would have been that they would have evacuated this essential strategic point. As Saxe-Weimar was aware of the oncoming French because he heard firing from the vinity of Frasnes
, and saw the alarm beacons lighted, the order to evacuate surprised him. He alerted the divisional commander, De Perponcher, who immediately put the other brigade of his division (then at Nivelles) on alert, and sent a staff officer, captain De Gargen, to the Netherlands headquarters at Braine-le-Comte.
Here, Rebecque (on the strength of De Gargen's report), in consultation with De Perponcher, decided to countermand Wellington's order, and instead ordered De Perponcher to reinforce Saxe-Weimar immediately with the 1st Brigade, 2nd Netherlands Division, under major-general Willem Frederik van Bylandt
. He immediately reported this decision to the Prince of Orange in Brussels, who informed Wellington of it at the famous ball of the Duchess of Richmond. A lesser man might have just sent a suggestion to Wellington, meanwhile letting the order stand. Wellington was not known for looking kindly upon having his orders disregarded, let alone countermanded, as Rebecque must have been well aware, as one of Wellington's former staff officers. He therefore displayed that rare commodity: moral courage.
The decision was not a minor one. Rebecque probably made it to keep communications with Blücher open, which may not have been the first thing on Wellington's mind. In any case, in the event Wellington did not come to Blücher's aid at the Battle of Ligny
. But the strategic importance of Quatre Bras did not only hinge on the Nivelles-Namur road. Probably even more important was the Charleroi-Brussels road for Napoleon's political objective: the speedy occupation of Brussels. Had Marshal Michel Ney
succeeded in occupying the crossroads and the road to the north, as Napoleon intended, the way would have been wide open for the French to quickly march north after their victory at Ligny; Brussels would probably have fallen, without Wellington being able to do anything about it; and with the fall of Brussels king William's little project of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands would have failed and his budding country might have been pushed out of the war. In any case, there probably would not have been a battle of Waterloo.
As it was, Ney was frustrated by the far-outnumbered Netherlands troops; Wellington won the Battle of Quatre Bras; the Allied army was able to make a strategic withdrawal to Wellington's preferred battleground near the Mont St. Jean; and the rest is history. Rebecque of course was also present at that battle as a staff officer, busily oiling the wheels of command and occasionally playing a decisive command role himself, as when he helped rally the broken Dutch militia battalions of Bijlandt's Brigade when they retreated to the position of the steadfast 5th Militia Battalion, which sustained such heavy casualties at Waterloo, only to be maligned by later historians. For his gallantry Rebecque was made a Knight Commander in the Military William Order on July 8, 1815.
and New Brunswick
border, the Northeastern Boundary Dispute(a matter that was only finally settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty
in 1842), Rebecque headed the fact-finding commission that prepared the arbitrage award.
This award was made in August, 1830 just about when the Belgian Revolution
erupted in which Rebecque was to play a controversial role. From hindsight the experiment of reuniting the Habsburg Netherlands
in the guise of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands probably was never a good idea. Since the separation of the Dutch and Belgian provinces in 1579 (when the Union of Arras and the Union of Utrecht
were concluded) the two countries had grown even further apart than they were already, with Belgium becoming more monolithically Catholic due to the enforced exodus of Protestants to the North. The last time reunification was seriously discussed was during the abortive peace talks between the Brussels and The Hague States-Generals
after the conquest of Maastricht
by stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
in 1632. After that Amsterdam opposition to the opening of the Scheldt for trade on Antwerp made the Dutch very reluctant to even consider reunification. They were satisfied with a quasi-codominion with the Austrians over their southern neighbors after 1715. That is where matters stood until in 1790 the United States of Belgium
briefly explored accession to the Dutch Republic
, but nothing came of that.
The only one who was truly enthusiastic about the 1815 reunion was king William. Both his southern and northern subjects were sceptical, but at first acquiescent. From hindsight much has been made of alleged preferential treatment of Dutchmen by the government as a cause of the rupture in 1830, but close scrutiny of the actual history of the union probably would not uphold that assertion: William was evenhanded in his language policy, trying to give equal weight to both French and Dutch as government languages. This meant that in Belgium Flemish was formally emancipated from the previously dominant French, but in actual practice French continued to dominate. It was the language of the educated elite. As a matter of fact, the aristocratic First Chamber of the States-General conducted its business exclusively in French, because the Belgian members pleaded ignorance of Dutch. Many of the government elite were consequently "frenchified," even the ones that were of Dutch extraction, so the complaint of giving preference to French speakers was voiced at least as loudly as the opposite complaint.
An example is the Prince of Orange: though he may have acquired Dutch in his later life, his first language was undoubtedly French. This also applied to his forebears (though this may come as a shock to many Dutchmen): the language of the court of the House of Orange, and of Orange-Nassau, had always been French (and would remain so until the early 20th century, long after the split with Belgium). Rebecque certainly never became proficient in Dutch, and there is no reason why he should have: his brother officers always spoke French (bar a few Englishmen, possibly) and contacts with Dutch speakers could always be mediated by bilingual subalterns and servants. This applied to many of the Netherlands officers who had served at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and in 1830 still occupied the upper ranks of the Netherlands army.
To this fully assimilated elite the Brussels insurrection of August, 1830, with its anti-Dutch overtones therefore came as a rude shock. At first they reacted with indecision and with reluctance to apply military severity. Especially the Prince of Orange had the illusion that he could rely on his undoubted popularity (he was far more liberal than his paternalistic father, and for that reason hardly on speaking terms with the king) and might be able to reason with the insurrectionists. However, the échec of Orange's brave entry into the hostile city on September 1 with only a few companions (of which Rebecque was one), which almost ended in a lynching, put an end to that. Rebecque (who was the political antipode of his liberal nephew Benjamin Constant, probably because of his traumatic experience in the Tuileries in 1792) now counseled playing the military card. He is credited with (or blamed for) having made the plan for the assault on Brussels on September 21, which ended catastrophically, and caused much bloodshed. Rebecque himself was wounded in the streetfighting. The Dutch army retreated to Antwerp where the next catastrophe, the indefensible bombardment of the city by general Chassé, happened.
Rebecque was back the next year, when he helped organise the ill-fated Ten Days Campaign. This attempt to retrieve terrain lost, was executed brilliantly in a military sense, but politically it was a disaster. One wonders what Rebecque and his political masters hoped to achieve, even if the French had not intervened? They could easily beat the nascent Belgian army, but what would have been next? It seems unlikely that the Dutch would have had the stomach for the kind of repression that Russia used to quell the Polish Insurrection of 1830-1831
. As White makes clear, the real objective may more properly have been to strengthen the Dutch position in the following negotiations, which the Dutch successes arguably did. But a reunification of the two countries, as king William seems to have hoped for, was never in the cards.
One small detail of the Campaign involved Rebecque posthumously. The armistice was signed on August 12, 1832, but shortly afterward a young Belgian artillery officer, Alexis-Michel Eenens
thought he saw a Dutch violation of the ceasefire and opened fire on the Dutch troops. This minor incident got a peculiar follow-up when Eenens (by then a lieutenant-general and military historian), published Documents historiques sur l'origine du royaume de Belgique. Les conspirations militaires de 1831 (Bruxelles, 1875, 2 vols.) in 1875. This work caused a furore, because Eenens accused a number of prominent Belgians of treason in the course of the Revolution. And he also raked up the old alleged ceasefire violation, accusing the Prince of Orange of culpability. All of this caused a heated polemic with a number of Dutch generals and historians. A grandson of Rebecque published an extract of Rebecque's journal as (1875) Le prince d'Orange et son chef d'état-major pendant la journée du 12 août 1831, d'après des documents inédits, in an attempt to contradict Eenens' accusations.
Rebecque retired from the service in 1837. He was made a dutch baron on August 25, 1846 by his old protégé, now king William II. He retired to his estates in Silesia and died there in 1850, almost 77 years old.
Silesia
Silesia is a historical region of Central Europe located mostly in Poland, with smaller parts also in the Czech Republic, and Germany.Silesia is rich in mineral and natural resources, and includes several important industrial areas. Silesia's largest city and historical capital is Wrocław...
), June 12, 1850) was a Swiss lieutenant-general in Dutch service of French ancestry. As chief-of-staff of the Netherlands Mobile Army he countermanded the order of the Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
to evacuate Dutch troops from Quatre Bras on the eve of the Battle of Quatre Bras
Battle of Quatre Bras
The Battle of Quatre Bras, between Wellington's Anglo-Dutch army and the left wing of the Armée du Nord under Marshal Michel Ney, was fought near the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815.- Prelude :...
, thereby preventing Marshal Michel Ney
Michel Ney
Michel Ney , 1st Duc d'Elchingen, 1st Prince de la Moskowa was a French soldier and military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of France created by Napoleon I...
from occupying that strategic crossroads.
Family Life
Rebecque was the son of François Marie Samuël de Constant d'Hermenches, seigneur d'Hermenches (1729-1800) and his second wife Louise Cathérine Gallatin (1736-1814). The father was, like the grandfather Samuel Constant de Rebecque (1676-1782) (who reached the rank of lieutenant-general), a Swiss officer in the service of the Dutch RepublicDutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
. A nephew (not a brother as sometimes erroneously stated) was Benjamin Constant
Benjamin Constant
Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque was a Swiss-born French nobleman, thinker, writer and politician.-Biography:...
. He married Isabella Catharina Anna Jacoba baroness van Lynden (1768-1836) in Braunschweig
Braunschweig
Braunschweig , is a city of 247,400 people, located in the federal-state of Lower Saxony, Germany. It is located north of the Harz mountains at the farthest navigable point of the Oker river, which connects to the North Sea via the rivers Aller and Weser....
on April 29, 1798.
Early career
Rebecque entered the service of France as a sous-lieutenant in a regiment of Swiss Guards in 1788. He started a journal that year that he faithfully kept every day of the rest of his life, thereby providing useful source material to historians. On August 10, 1792 his regiment was massacred at the Tuileries PalaceTuileries Palace
The Tuileries Palace was a royal palace in Paris which stood on the right bank of the River Seine until 1871, when it was destroyed in the upheaval during the suppression of the Paris Commune...
by French revolutionaries, but he escaped with his life. He returned to Switzerland where he was in military service until he (like his ancestors before him) entered the service of the Dutch Republic in 1793 in the regiment of Prince Frederick (a younger son of stadtholder
Stadtholder
A Stadtholder A Stadtholder A Stadtholder (Dutch: stadhouder [], "steward" or "lieutenant", literally place holder, holding someones place, possibly a calque of German Statthalter, French lieutenant, or Middle Latin locum tenens...
William V, Prince of Orange
William V, Prince of Orange
William V , Prince of Orange-Nassau was the last Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, and between 1795 and 1806 he led the Government of the Dutch Republic in Exile in London. He was succeeded by his son William I...
). After the fall of the Republic, and the proclamation of the Batavian Republic
Batavian Republic
The Batavian Republic was the successor of the Republic of the United Netherlands. It was proclaimed on January 19, 1795, and ended on June 5, 1806, with the accession of Louis Bonaparte to the throne of the Kingdom of Holland....
he first entered British service (1795–1798) and subsequently Prussian service (1798–1811). During that Prussian service from 1805 he tutored the future William II of the Netherlands
William II of the Netherlands
William II was King of the Netherlands, Grand Duke of Luxembourg, and Duke of Limburg from 7 October 1840 until his death in 1849.- Early life and education :...
in military science and helped him pass his exams as a Prussian officer. When William started his studies at Oxford University he accompanied the young prince there and obtained a doctorate honoris causa from Oxford himself in 1811.
William was next appointed aide de camp of the Duke of Wellington in his campaign in the Iberian Peninsula
Iberian Peninsula
The Iberian Peninsula , sometimes called Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes the modern-day sovereign states of Spain, Portugal and Andorra, as well as the British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar...
and Rebecque likewise entered British service again on May 12, 1811 as a major, and participated in every battle the Duke (and William) fought there, distinguishing himself at the Battle of Vittoria.
When William, and his father William I of the Netherlands
William I of the Netherlands
William I Frederick, born Willem Frederik Prins van Oranje-Nassau , was a Prince of Orange and the first King of the Netherlands and Grand Duke of Luxembourg....
, returned to the Netherlands in November, 1813, Rebecque was appointed a lieutenant-colonel in the so-called Orange-Nassau Legion. He advanced very rapidly after that: colonel and aide de camp of the Sovereign Prince on December 31, 1813. Quarter-master-general on January 15, 1814. He took part in the siege of Bergen op Zoom
Bergen op Zoom
Bergen op Zoom is a municipality and a city located in the south of the Netherlands.-History:Bergen op Zoom was granted city status probably in 1266. In 1287 the city and its surroundings became a lordship as it was separated from the lordship of Breda. The lordship was elevated to a margraviate...
in the Spring of 1814, and was promoted to major-general on November 30, 1814.
Rebecque played a very prominent role in the organization from scratch of the armed forces of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands in 1813-1815. On April 11, 1814 he was appointed chief-of-staff of the new Netherlands Mobile Army that was then formed to besiege the French in Antwerp. In July, 1814 he was appointed in a commission that was charged with the formation of a combined Dutch-Belgian army. He played a leading role in that commission. Next he helped Prince Frederick of the Netherlands
Prince Frederick of the Netherlands
Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, Prince of Orange-Nassau , was the second son of king William I of the Netherlands and his wife, Wilhelmine of Prussia....
found the headquarters of the Netherlands Mobile Army, that was to play such an important part in the Hundred Days
Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Emperor Napoleon I of France's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
Campaign, on April 9, 1815.
Probably because many Dutch officers (like generals Chassé
David Hendrik Chassé
David Hendrik, Baron Chassé was a Dutch soldier who fought both for and against Napoleon. He commanded the Third Netherlands Division that intervened at a crucial moment in the Battle of Waterloo...
and Trip
Albert Dominicus Trip van Zoudtlandt
Jonkheer Albert Dominicus Trip van Zoudtlandt was a Dutch lieutenant-general of cavalry who headed the Dutch-Belgian heavy cavalry brigade at the Battle of Waterloo.-Family life:...
) had served in the Grande Armée this new army was organized along the lines of the French army. In any case its general staff took Marshal Berthier
Louis Alexandre Berthier
Louis Alexandre Berthier, 1st Prince de Wagram, 1st Duc de Valangin, 1st Sovereign Prince de Neuchâtel , was a Marshal of France, Vice-Constable of France beginning in 1808, and Chief of Staff under Napoleon.-Early life:Alexandre was born at Versailles to Lieutenant-Colonel Jean Baptiste Berthier ,...
's famous état-major-général as a model, and not the British system. Nevertheless, because Rebecque had long served as a staff officer in Wellington's army, he was well acquainted with British procedures, and knew his opposite numbers personally.
Quatre Bras and Waterloo
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
escaped from Elba
Elba
Elba is a Mediterranean island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. The largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, Elba is also part of the National Park of the Tuscan Archipelago and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia...
and quickly overthrew the restored Bourbon monarchy in March, 1815, he quickly formed L'Armée du Nord
L'Armée du Nord
The Army of the North or Armée du Nord is a name given to several historical units of the French Army. The first was one of the French Revolutionary Armies that fought with distinction against the First Coalition from 1792 to 1795...
, with the help of veterans like François Aimé Mellinet (who organized the Jeune Garde), though he had to do without Marshals Berthier and Murat
Joachim Murat
Joachim-Napoléon Murat , Marshal of France and Grand Admiral or Admiral of France, 1st Prince Murat, was Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808 and then King of Naples from 1808 to 1815...
for various reasons. Threatened by this military build-up the Great Powers declared war on Napoleon personally and started to prepare for the inevitable showdown. The Sovereign Prince of the Netherlands also brought his plans for forming his Kingdom of the United Netherlands forward and proclaimed himself king on March 16, 1815 (see Eight Articles of London
Eight Articles of London
The Eight Articles of London, also known as the London Protocol of June 21, 1814, were a secret convention between the Great Powers: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Prussia, Austria, and Russia to award the territory of current Belgium and The Netherlands to William I of the...
). Incidentally, this allowed him to give up his title of Prince of Orange
Prince of Orange
Prince of Orange is a title of nobility, originally associated with the Principality of Orange, in what is now southern France. In French it is la Principauté d'Orange....
and bestow it upon his eldest son as a courtesy title. That eldest son was now also put in charge of the new Netherlands Mobile Army, though at the same time the Duke of Wellington was appointed a field-marshal in the Dutch army. The arrangement was to be that Wellington would command the combined Anglo-Dutch army that was now assembling in the "Belgian" part of the United Netherlands, but that the Prince of Orange would be in charge of the Belgian-Dutch troops (with his younger brother Frederick nominally commanding a corps). Only Wellington and his chief-of-staff Lord Hill
Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill
General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill of Almaraz GCB, GCH served in the Napoleonic Wars as a trusted brigade, division and corps commander under the command of the Duke of Wellington. He became Commander-in-Chief of the British Army in 1829.-Early career:Educated at a school in Chester, Hill was...
would be able to give direct orders to the Netherlands troops, but in practice Wellington always went "through channels" and conveyed his orders to the Belgian/Dutch units via the Prince of Orange.
Beside the Anglo-Netherlands army there also was still a Prussian army under field-marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher
Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher
Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstatt , Graf , later elevated to Fürst von Wahlstatt, was a Prussian Generalfeldmarschall who led his army against Napoleon I at the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig in 1813 and at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 with the Duke of Wellington.He is...
in the Belgian Netherlands, as this part of the country formally still was an Allied military governorate-general (with king William as its governor-general). The two armies tried to protect the whole area and had therefore spread out, with the Prussians taking the south-eastern part, and the Anglo-Dutch the northwestern part. But of course, the area was much too large to cover it completely, so there was an appreciable gap between the two armies, a gap that Napoleon would be able to exploit strategically. His objective was to move quickly and defeat each army in turn (as his Armée du Nord was larger than each of the allied armies separately). For this to succeed he needed the element of surprise, because if the Allies would have known his exact intentions, and would have been able to react in time, they could of course have combined their armies in time and blocked his purpose.
Beside the element of surprise the geo-strategical shape of the theatre of war was also important. The terrain in south-eastern Belgium, where the hilly Ardennes
Ardennes
The Ardennes is a region of extensive forests, rolling hills and ridges formed within the Givetian Ardennes mountain range, primarily in Belgium and Luxembourg, but stretching into France , and geologically into the Eifel...
are located, makes only a few invasion routes feasible. Besides, the number of highways was limited in 1815, and this further limited the movements of the opposing armies. Belgium has always been an important theatre of war in the course of the centuries, but in 1815 it had been peaceful since the victory of the French revolutionary armies in 1794, and most generals involved had last campaigned in the country when they were young officers, if at all. Strategic information was therefore at a premium.
Wellington himself had traversed the country on his way to Paris in 1814 and he had at that occasion scouted the area around Waterloo and was aware of its advantages as a battlefield in case Brussels was to be defended. He also commissioned one of his staff officers to survey the area and to assess its strategic choke points. One of those points was the crossroads of the Charleroi
Charleroi
Charleroi is a city and a municipality of Wallonia, located in the province of Hainaut, Belgium. , the total population of Charleroi was 201,593. The metropolitan area, including the outer commuter zone, covers an area of and had a total population of 522,522 as of 1 January 2008, ranking it as...
-Brussels road and the Nivelles
Nivelles
Nivelles is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant. The Nivelles municipality includes the old communes of Baulers, Bornival, Thines, and Monstreux....
-Namur
Namur (city)
Namur is a city and municipality in Wallonia, in southern Belgium. It is both the capital of the province of Namur and of Wallonia....
road at Quatre Bras
Quatre Bras
Quatre Bras is a common name given to a crossroad in French.More specifically it refers to the crossroad of the Charleroi-Brussels road and the Nivelles-Namur road South of Genappe in Wallonia, Belgium...
. It was generally recognized that the first road would be the prime venue for the French to reach Brussels, and the second one was indispensable for maintaining communications between the two allied armies. For that reason occupying the crossroads was essential; whichever army controlled it would have a decisive strategic advantage. For that reason Rebecque, as chief-of-staff of the Netherlands army ordered the commander of the Netherlands 2nd division, De Perponcher
Hendrik George de Perponcher Sedlnitsky
Hendrik George, Count de Perponcher Sedlnitsky , was a Dutch general and diplomat...
to secure it at all times on May 6, 1815.
However, Napoleon achieved his strategic surprise, because of a certain reticence on the part of the Allies: the Prussians and British had not declared war on France, just on Napoleon personally (a subtle, but important difference) and they therefore refrained from conducting cavalry reconnaissances across the French border. The Netherlands cavalry was not so constrained, and did reconnoitre the border area, but the three Netherlands cavalry brigades were too thin on the ground to cover the area thoroughly. When Napoleon therefore started his lightning (for the times) offensive, this was not discovered before it was almost too late. He was already in Charleroi before the French were discovered and when news of this sudden appearance reached Wellington he still worried that this was just a feint, and that the true advance would come by way of Mons
Mons
Mons is a Walloon city and municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut, of which it is the capital. The Mons municipality includes the old communes of Cuesmes, Flénu, Ghlin, Hyon, Nimy, Obourg, Baudour , Jemappes, Ciply, Harmignies, Harveng, Havré, Maisières, Mesvin, Nouvelles,...
. Because of this possibility of being outflanked, and being cut-off from the escape route to the coast, Wellington on the evening of June 15 decided to concentrate his army around Nivelles. His orders went out to all British troops directly, and to the Netherlands troops through the intermediary of the Prince of Orange and his staff (as described above).
The consequence of these orders in the concrete instance of the 2nd Brigade, 2nd Netherlands Division under major-general Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, which happened to be at Quatre Bras at the time, would have been that they would have evacuated this essential strategic point. As Saxe-Weimar was aware of the oncoming French because he heard firing from the vinity of Frasnes
Frasnes-lez-Anvaing
Frasnes-lez-Anvaing is a Walloon municipality located in the Belgian province of Hainaut. On 1 January 2007 the municipality had 11,077 inhabitants. The total area is 112.44 km², giving a population density of 98.5 inhabitants per km²...
, and saw the alarm beacons lighted, the order to evacuate surprised him. He alerted the divisional commander, De Perponcher, who immediately put the other brigade of his division (then at Nivelles) on alert, and sent a staff officer, captain De Gargen, to the Netherlands headquarters at Braine-le-Comte.
Here, Rebecque (on the strength of De Gargen's report), in consultation with De Perponcher, decided to countermand Wellington's order, and instead ordered De Perponcher to reinforce Saxe-Weimar immediately with the 1st Brigade, 2nd Netherlands Division, under major-general Willem Frederik van Bylandt
Willem Frederik van Bylandt
Willem Frederik count of Bylandt or Bijlandt was a Dutch lieutenant-general who as a major-general commanded a Belgian-Dutch infantry brigade at the Battle of Quatre Bras and the Battle of Waterloo.-Family Life:Bylandt was the son of major-general Alexander count of Bylandt and Anne, baroness Van...
. He immediately reported this decision to the Prince of Orange in Brussels, who informed Wellington of it at the famous ball of the Duchess of Richmond. A lesser man might have just sent a suggestion to Wellington, meanwhile letting the order stand. Wellington was not known for looking kindly upon having his orders disregarded, let alone countermanded, as Rebecque must have been well aware, as one of Wellington's former staff officers. He therefore displayed that rare commodity: moral courage.
The decision was not a minor one. Rebecque probably made it to keep communications with Blücher open, which may not have been the first thing on Wellington's mind. In any case, in the event Wellington did not come to Blücher's aid at the Battle of Ligny
Battle of Ligny
The Battle of Ligny was the last victory of the military career of Napoleon I. In this battle, French troops of the Armée du Nord under Napoleon's command, defeated a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher, near Ligny in present-day Belgium. The bulk of the Prussian army survived, however, and...
. But the strategic importance of Quatre Bras did not only hinge on the Nivelles-Namur road. Probably even more important was the Charleroi-Brussels road for Napoleon's political objective: the speedy occupation of Brussels. Had Marshal Michel Ney
Michel Ney
Michel Ney , 1st Duc d'Elchingen, 1st Prince de la Moskowa was a French soldier and military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of France created by Napoleon I...
succeeded in occupying the crossroads and the road to the north, as Napoleon intended, the way would have been wide open for the French to quickly march north after their victory at Ligny; Brussels would probably have fallen, without Wellington being able to do anything about it; and with the fall of Brussels king William's little project of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands would have failed and his budding country might have been pushed out of the war. In any case, there probably would not have been a battle of Waterloo.
As it was, Ney was frustrated by the far-outnumbered Netherlands troops; Wellington won the Battle of Quatre Bras; the Allied army was able to make a strategic withdrawal to Wellington's preferred battleground near the Mont St. Jean; and the rest is history. Rebecque of course was also present at that battle as a staff officer, busily oiling the wheels of command and occasionally playing a decisive command role himself, as when he helped rally the broken Dutch militia battalions of Bijlandt's Brigade when they retreated to the position of the steadfast 5th Militia Battalion, which sustained such heavy casualties at Waterloo, only to be maligned by later historians. For his gallantry Rebecque was made a Knight Commander in the Military William Order on July 8, 1815.
Belgian Revolution and Ten Days Campaign
After the Netherlands Mobile Army returned from the campaign in France in 1816, Rebecque was confirmed as Chief of the General Staff of the Netherlands army (which he would remain until his retirement). As such he capably organised that army and the system of conscription on which it was based in close co-operation with Prince Frederick. He was promoted to lieutenant-general in 1816. In 1826 he was appointed gouverneur (tutor) of the young sons of the Prince of Orange, like he had been the tutor of their father from 1805. When in 1830 king William was asked to act as arbiter in the matter of the conflict over the delineation of the MaineMaine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
and New Brunswick
New Brunswick
New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...
border, the Northeastern Boundary Dispute(a matter that was only finally settled by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty
Webster-Ashburton Treaty
The Webster–Ashburton Treaty, signed August 9, 1842, was a treaty resolving several border issues between the United States and the British North American colonies...
in 1842), Rebecque headed the fact-finding commission that prepared the arbitrage award.
This award was made in August, 1830 just about when the Belgian Revolution
Belgian Revolution
The Belgian Revolution was the conflict which led to the secession of the Southern provinces from the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and established an independent Kingdom of Belgium....
erupted in which Rebecque was to play a controversial role. From hindsight the experiment of reuniting the Habsburg Netherlands
Habsburg Netherlands
The Habsburg Netherlands was a geo-political entity covering the whole of the Low Countries from 1482 to 1556/1581 and solely the Southern Netherlands from 1581 to 1794...
in the guise of the Kingdom of the United Netherlands probably was never a good idea. Since the separation of the Dutch and Belgian provinces in 1579 (when the Union of Arras and the Union of Utrecht
Union of Utrecht
The Union of Utrecht was a treaty signed on 23 January 1579 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, unifying the northern provinces of the Netherlands, until then under the control of Habsburg Spain....
were concluded) the two countries had grown even further apart than they were already, with Belgium becoming more monolithically Catholic due to the enforced exodus of Protestants to the North. The last time reunification was seriously discussed was during the abortive peace talks between the Brussels and The Hague States-Generals
States-General of the Netherlands
The States-General of the Netherlands is the bicameral legislature of the Netherlands, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The parliament meets in at the Binnenhof in The Hague. The archaic Dutch word "staten" originally related to the feudal classes in which medieval...
after the conquest of Maastricht
Maastricht
Maastricht is situated on both sides of the Meuse river in the south-eastern part of the Netherlands, on the Belgian border and near the German border...
by stadtholder Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
Frederick Henry, or Frederik Hendrik in Dutch , was the sovereign Prince of Orange and stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel from 1625 to 1647.-Early life:...
in 1632. After that Amsterdam opposition to the opening of the Scheldt for trade on Antwerp made the Dutch very reluctant to even consider reunification. They were satisfied with a quasi-codominion with the Austrians over their southern neighbors after 1715. That is where matters stood until in 1790 the United States of Belgium
United States of Belgium
The United States of Belgium, part of Brabant.In October, he invaded Brabant and captured Turnhout, defeating the Austrians in the Battle of Turnhout on October 27. Ghent was taken on November 13, and on November 17 the imperial regents Albert of Saxony and Archduchess Maria Christina fled Brussels...
briefly explored accession to the Dutch Republic
Dutch Republic
The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...
, but nothing came of that.
The only one who was truly enthusiastic about the 1815 reunion was king William. Both his southern and northern subjects were sceptical, but at first acquiescent. From hindsight much has been made of alleged preferential treatment of Dutchmen by the government as a cause of the rupture in 1830, but close scrutiny of the actual history of the union probably would not uphold that assertion: William was evenhanded in his language policy, trying to give equal weight to both French and Dutch as government languages. This meant that in Belgium Flemish was formally emancipated from the previously dominant French, but in actual practice French continued to dominate. It was the language of the educated elite. As a matter of fact, the aristocratic First Chamber of the States-General conducted its business exclusively in French, because the Belgian members pleaded ignorance of Dutch. Many of the government elite were consequently "frenchified," even the ones that were of Dutch extraction, so the complaint of giving preference to French speakers was voiced at least as loudly as the opposite complaint.
An example is the Prince of Orange: though he may have acquired Dutch in his later life, his first language was undoubtedly French. This also applied to his forebears (though this may come as a shock to many Dutchmen): the language of the court of the House of Orange, and of Orange-Nassau, had always been French (and would remain so until the early 20th century, long after the split with Belgium). Rebecque certainly never became proficient in Dutch, and there is no reason why he should have: his brother officers always spoke French (bar a few Englishmen, possibly) and contacts with Dutch speakers could always be mediated by bilingual subalterns and servants. This applied to many of the Netherlands officers who had served at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, and in 1830 still occupied the upper ranks of the Netherlands army.
To this fully assimilated elite the Brussels insurrection of August, 1830, with its anti-Dutch overtones therefore came as a rude shock. At first they reacted with indecision and with reluctance to apply military severity. Especially the Prince of Orange had the illusion that he could rely on his undoubted popularity (he was far more liberal than his paternalistic father, and for that reason hardly on speaking terms with the king) and might be able to reason with the insurrectionists. However, the échec of Orange's brave entry into the hostile city on September 1 with only a few companions (of which Rebecque was one), which almost ended in a lynching, put an end to that. Rebecque (who was the political antipode of his liberal nephew Benjamin Constant, probably because of his traumatic experience in the Tuileries in 1792) now counseled playing the military card. He is credited with (or blamed for) having made the plan for the assault on Brussels on September 21, which ended catastrophically, and caused much bloodshed. Rebecque himself was wounded in the streetfighting. The Dutch army retreated to Antwerp where the next catastrophe, the indefensible bombardment of the city by general Chassé, happened.
Rebecque was back the next year, when he helped organise the ill-fated Ten Days Campaign. This attempt to retrieve terrain lost, was executed brilliantly in a military sense, but politically it was a disaster. One wonders what Rebecque and his political masters hoped to achieve, even if the French had not intervened? They could easily beat the nascent Belgian army, but what would have been next? It seems unlikely that the Dutch would have had the stomach for the kind of repression that Russia used to quell the Polish Insurrection of 1830-1831
November Uprising
The November Uprising , Polish–Russian War 1830–31 also known as the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in Warsaw when the young Polish officers from the local Army of the Congress...
. As White makes clear, the real objective may more properly have been to strengthen the Dutch position in the following negotiations, which the Dutch successes arguably did. But a reunification of the two countries, as king William seems to have hoped for, was never in the cards.
One small detail of the Campaign involved Rebecque posthumously. The armistice was signed on August 12, 1832, but shortly afterward a young Belgian artillery officer, Alexis-Michel Eenens
Alexis-Michel Eenens
Alexis Michel Eenens was a Belgian lieutenant-general, military historian, and politician.-Family life:Eenens was the son of a wealthy merchant in textiles, Louis Eenens, and Anne-Marie Carlier...
thought he saw a Dutch violation of the ceasefire and opened fire on the Dutch troops. This minor incident got a peculiar follow-up when Eenens (by then a lieutenant-general and military historian), published Documents historiques sur l'origine du royaume de Belgique. Les conspirations militaires de 1831 (Bruxelles, 1875, 2 vols.) in 1875. This work caused a furore, because Eenens accused a number of prominent Belgians of treason in the course of the Revolution. And he also raked up the old alleged ceasefire violation, accusing the Prince of Orange of culpability. All of this caused a heated polemic with a number of Dutch generals and historians. A grandson of Rebecque published an extract of Rebecque's journal as (1875) Le prince d'Orange et son chef d'état-major pendant la journée du 12 août 1831, d'après des documents inédits, in an attempt to contradict Eenens' accusations.
Rebecque retired from the service in 1837. He was made a dutch baron on August 25, 1846 by his old protégé, now king William II. He retired to his estates in Silesia and died there in 1850, almost 77 years old.