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Updated: May 13, 2025
Louis XI. was thirty-eight years old, and had been living for five years in voluntary exile at the castle of Genappe, in Hainault, beyond the dominions of the king his father, and within those of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, when, on the 23d of July, 1461, the day after Charles VII.'s death, he learned that he was King of France.
Spying and counterspying there were between the courts to a great extent and rumours in number. A certain Italian writes to the Duke of Milan as follows, on March 23, 1461, after he had been at Genappe and at Brussels: "M. de Croy has given me clearly to understand that the reconciliation of the dauphin with the King of France would not be with the approval of the Duke of Burgundy.
Close on a quarter of an hour went by until at last he jumped to his feet, with the sudden cry of "To Genappe!" Berthier heaved a sigh of relief and Bertrand hurried out to unfasten the horses.
The elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other, the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France.
Roguet had set the lugubrious example of threatening with death any French grenadier who should bring him a Prussian prisoner. Blucher outdid Roguet. Duhesme, the general of the Young Guard, hemmed in at the doorway of an inn at Genappe, surrendered his sword to a huzzar of death, who took the sword and slew the prisoner. The victory was completed by the assassination of the vanquished.
The arrival of M. le Comte de Cambray, accompanied by a doctor and two men carrying an improvised stretcher, broke the spell of silence that had fallen on this strange scene of pathetic failure which seemed but an humble counterpart of that great and irretrievable one which was being enacted at this same hour far away on the road to Genappe.
By the light of the rising moon Gneisenau led on his horsemen in a pursuit compared with which that of Jena was tame. At Genappe Napoleon hoped to make a stand: but the place was packed with wagons and thronged with men struggling to get at the narrow bridge. At the blare of the Prussian trumpets, the panic became frightful; the Emperor left his carriage and took to horse as the hurrahs drew near.
Part of the French left wing endeavoured to escape from the field without blending with the main body of the fugitives who thronged the Genappe causeway. A French officer, who was among those who thus retreated across the country westward of the high-road, has vividly described what he witnessed and what he suffered.
Napoleon on the 17th had pressed on by Genappe as far as Rossomme. On the two other roads no enemy had yet shown himself. On the 18th the offensive was taken by Napoleon on its greatest scale, but still the Nivelles road was not overstepped by his left wing.
By the light of the rising moon Gneisenau led on his horsemen in a pursuit compared with which that of Jena was tame. At Genappe Napoleon hoped to make a stand: but the place was packed with wagons and thronged with men struggling to get at the narrow bridge. At the blare of the Prussian trumpets, the panic became frightful; the Emperor left his carriage and took to horse as the hurrahs drew near.
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