Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 19, 2025
Every night we were disturbed by a beggar named Thielmann, who raised the peasantry against us; he followed us like a shadow; watched us from village to village, on the heights, on the roads, in the valleys; his army were all who bore us a grudge, and he had always men enough.
Push on, I say! The whole war will be ended in one blow. Bring Pirsch up, and we can throw sixty thousand men into the scale while Thielmann holds Grouchy beyond Wavre." Gneisenau shrugged his shoulders, but at that instant an orderly appeared at the door. "An aide-de-camp from the Duke of Wellington," said he. "Ha, ha!" cried the old man; "let us hear what he has to say!"
Grouchy was at Wavre, fighting the Prussian corps of Thielmann, which he seems to have mistaken for the entire Prussian army. ABDICATION OF NAPOLEON: ST. HELENA. On the 22nd of June Napoleon again abdicated in favor of his son. Carnot was for a dictatorship. The French Assembly, with La Fayette at its head, insisted on the abdication. On July 7 Bluecher and Wellington entered Paris.
These occurrences caused the Saxon minister, Senfft von Pilsach, and the Saxon general, Thielmann, who had already devoted themselves to the German cause, to resign office.
On the morning of June 18, at the little town of Wavre, fifteen miles southeast of Brussels and about eight or ten miles from Waterloo, a battle had been fought between the French contingent under Marshal Grouchy and the Prussian division under Thielmann, who commanded the left wing of Marshal Blücher's army.
No timely help could it now receive either from Blücher or Thielmann; for the darkness of the storm had shrouded from view the beginnings of the onset, and Thielmann had just suffered from a heedless assault on Grouchy's wing. As the thunder-clouds rolled by, the gleams of the setting sun lit up the field and revealed to Blücher the full extent of his error. His army was cut in twain.
It would seem that the inequalities of the ground hid the strength of Pirch I. and Thielmann; for Napoleon still believed that he had ranged against him at Ligny only a single corps. At 2 p.m. Soult informed Ney that the enemy had united a corps between Sombref and Bry, and that in half an hour Grouchy would attack it.
After having rendered great service by thus occupying the enemy Thielmann took up a position on the heights, and remained facing the French, while the other corps d'armé took post in his rear.
At 11 a.m. only Ziethen's corps, now but 28,000 strong, was in position at Sombref, but the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann came up shortly after midday. Had Napoleon pushed on early on the 16th, he must easily have gained the Ligny-Sombref position. What, then, caused the delay in the French attack?
Blücher's army, comprising 90,000 men, also covered a great stretch of country. The first corps, that of Ziethen, held the bridges of the Sambre at and near Charleroi; but the corps of Pirch I. and Thielmann were at Namur and Ciney; while, owing to a lack of stringency in the orders sent by Gneisenau, chief of the staff, to Bülow, his corps of 32,000 men was still at Liège.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking