Ligny: the fight for the villages

Napoleon waits until about 14:30, when he hears the guns at Quatre Bras, and opens with the Guard artillery around Fleurus. Vandamme's III Corps, with Girard's division on its left, takes Saint-Amand-la-Haye from Jagow's brigade, loses it to a counter-attack by Steinmetz and takes it again, and Girard is mortally wounded. At 15:00 Gérard's IV Corps attacks Ligny, where the fighting goes from house to house among burning buildings until Jagow's brigade retakes the village.

Fighting outside the Ferme d’en Haut at Ligny, by Richard KnötelWikimedia Commons, Richard Knötel, Public domain (Fighting outside Ferme d'en-Haut, Ligny by Richard Knötel.jpeg)

At about 17:00 Vandamme reports a column of 20,000 to 30,000 men approaching on his left. It is d'Erlon's I Corps, which Napoleon has ordered against the Prussian right, but Ney calls it back to Quatre Bras and it turns round a few kilometres from Ligny, so that it fights in neither battle. Blücher uses the pause to attack the French left, and the Young Guard throws his troops back.

Lieutenant von Schmeling at the bridge by the farm of En Bas at Ligny, engraving after Adalbert von Roessler, 1899Wikimedia Commons, Adalbert von Roessler, Public domain (Lieutenant von Schmeling at the bridge next to En Bas Farm by Adalbert von Roessler (engraving 1899).jpeg)

Blücher leaves the windmill of Bussy to lead the fighting at Saint-Amand himself, and at 19:00 the Prussians still hold Saint-Amand, Saint-Amand-la-Haye and Wagnelée. On the Prussian left Thielmann's III Corps holds Grouchy's cavalry at Sombreffe all day.

Sources

William Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, 1815 (1848).
Peter Hofschröer, 1815: The Waterloo Campaign. The German Victory (1999).
John Hussey, Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815, Volume 1 (2017).

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