His father was the acting-governor of the fortress of Breda who in 1793 was held responsible for the less-than-vigorous defense of that city against the French armies then invading the Dutch Republic.

[3] After the fall of the Republic and the proclamation of the Batavian Republic in January 1795 Bylandt resigned his commission and joined the Hereditary Prince (the future William I of the Netherlands) in Bremen with other émigrés, and followed the Prince to England later in the year to join a group of Orangist Dutch military men, who offered their services to the British.

[4] After the Peace of Amiens Bylandt was paid off by the British and returned to the Batavian Republic to manage his estates near Breda.

[4][5] On the evening of 15 June 1815 Bylandt's brigade was ordered by general Jean Victor de Constant Rebecque, chief of staff of the Netherlands Mobile Army, to take up position at the cross roads of Quatre Bras, because a French attack by Marshal Michel Ney was expected.

Bylandt's brigade was concentrated around the Gémioncourt farm and the open fields east of the nearby Bossu woods.

The controversy concerns the question whether this supposed tactical error (the result of sloppy staff work) was remedied in time, before the brigade would have been exposed to the fire of the French Grand Battery.

In many accounts of the battle it is asserted that the brigade (already depleted by the losses at Quatre Bras, numbering 11% of its original strength) in fact remained deployed in this exposed position and therefore suffered terribly during Napoleon's opening artillery barrage.

[7] The famous map of the battlefield by Bylandt's future father-in-law Willem Benjamin Craan and his appended explanatory note, also place the brigade in this safer position.

[4] After the return of the army to the new Kingdom of the United Netherlands Bylandt was appointed military governor of South-Brabant (which contained Brussels).