by Tim Clayton
Picton’s battalions nevertheless advanced behind their skirmishers onto the higher ground about three hundred yards from the stream – or closer, near the lake where the Camerons were – and deployed into their usual two-deep line. Although they advanced and manoeuvred in columns – having narrower frontage and greater depth, columns could change direction more easily, even if their greater depth made them more vulnerable to artillery – infantry usually chose to fight against infantry in line, two or three deep, making the most of their firepower.
Behind the duelling skirmishers the other battalions of Bachelu’s division emerged from the Bois Delhutte in assault columns. His battalions marched forward to the stream, where their progress was obstructed by two thick hedges either side of the water. As the French approached the lake Major Rogers’s battery of guns made first use of a weapon that was unique to the British. Spherical case shot, invented in 1784 by Henry Shrapnel, was a shell filled with a mixture of gunpowder and about a hundred musket balls. It was an airburst weapon, designed to explode over its target, propelling musket balls 2–300 yards from the point of burst. Shrapnel could be fired by both howitzers and ordinary guns, giving the British the option of firing canister at long range – when the weapon worked, for it required skill and luck to get the shell to explode in the right place (which may explain why the French did not copy it).
Bachelu’s infantry, 3000-strong without Maigrot’s skirmishing light infantry, were organised in seven battalions; ahead, out of sight in the rye, were four strong British battalions, the Camerons, Cornish, Royal Scots and the 28th North Gloucesters, totalling around 2700. But Picton’s soldiers had been up all night and had marched twenty miles, the last ten in scorching heat, so they were not at their freshest, whereas Bachelu’s were well rested after their gruelling march the previous day.
The French passed through their skirmishers, who were lining the first hedge, and then crossed the difficult terrain. But they became disordered in the process: near the lake the hedges had been cut to two to three feet and were low and easy to cross, although there the stream itself was relatively wide; to the west, in front of Philippe Higonet’s 108th Regiment, the whitethorn hedges were six to nine feet high and three feet wide and quite impenetrable. Higonet halted his men and called forward his sappers and grenadiers, who used axes and saws to cut a gap the width of a platoon. By the time the 108th had cut their gap and the first battalion had pushed through, they were trailing behind the leading battalions of other regiments.
While the slopes on either side of the stream were covered in very tall rye or wheat, the bottom of the valley was planted for cattle with grass or clover. The British advanced and formed line, their skirmishers running back at the approach of the French columns.
As these came on up the slope, the British suddenly opened fire. The British ‘Brown Bess’ musket was half a pound heavier and an inch and a half shorter than the French Charleville, and fired a 0.76 inch ball of soft lead weighing 1/14 lb. Its broader bore and shorter length made it fractionally less accurate, but its bigger bullet might do more damage and the British were well drilled in rapid, short-range fire, which they followed with a fierce and confident bayonet charge.
The range here probably varied from fifty yards at the east to a hundred at the west. The French stopped in sheer surprise as men tumbled and screamed. ‘As, at first, we couldn’t see where this fusillade had come from, there was a slight hesitation in the column,’ wrote Bachelu’s chief of staff, Toussaint Jean Trefcon. ‘The English took the opportunity to charge us at top speed. They yelled a fierce hurrah and for a moment we were completely stunned.’12
Infantry attacks such as this usually took the form of a brief duel with muskets followed by a bayonet charge. Charges were rarely followed by hand-to-hand fighting, for one side or the other almost invariably turned and ran before an attack went home. It was rare for two large formations to meet and start stabbing each other: the French surgeon Dominique Larrey studied the wounds inflicted in two mêlées between French and Austrian soldiers and found that whereas there were over a hundred bullet wounds there were only five caused by bayonets. And as a French officer noted:
… in these bayonet fights the business is most often decided before anybody crosses iron. The battalion or square that is going to give way shows it visibly with a sort of wavering in its line at the critical moment, and the catastrophe follows immediately. It is as if they are blown away by the breath of the attackers, and it is true enough, because a unit’s superior intensity acts like a magnetic current on a less resolute enemy.13
On this occasion Picton’s men rose out of the rye, lowered their bayonets and ran down the slope, sweeping the 61st and 72nd Regiments away in flight towards the bottom of the valley. However, the British failed to catch up with their adversaries. The Camerons might have stabbed or captured a few Frenchmen as they sought to cross the hedges and stream, but most of the British were too far behind. As a lieutenant of the 32nd Cornwall described:
we no sooner set up the usual shout and moved on than the cowardly rascals ran in every direction; our poor fellows were so fagged (not having had any sleep the night before, and marching that day 20 miles under a broiling hot sun) that we were not able to get up to them and we were wading up to our middle in corn; however we peppered them pretty well as they were getting through the gaps in the hedges …14
On the left the kilted Camerons chased the French beyond the hedges and up the hill, where Trefcon was almost captured when his horse reared up and refused to move. The Scots were close behind and he was about to jump off and run for it when his horse shot away at a gallop.
When they attacked, infantry bodies would leave behind a strong reserve on which to rally, should they be forced to retreat. This tactic now came to the rescue of the French. The Camerons’ charge carried them into a hail of canister from French cannon behind the lake, and left them isolated and vulnerable to the French reserves, as Private Dixon Vallance explained:
the French seeing our regiment alone and at a considerable distance in front of our main body, advanced against us in great numbers, and made an attempt to surround us, to make us prisoners, shouting to us, ‘Prisoners! Prisoners!’ Our commanding officer, seeing this, called to us to, ‘Run like devils – the French shall not make us prisoners.’ We soon got clear of the French; they were afraid of coming near us, numerous as they were. We had to pass through a fence in our retreat from the French, which hindered us greatly, as we could only get through it at openings and slaps [sic]. The French directed their fire at us as we were crowding to get through the hedge and killed and wounded many of us in our retreat to our station in a field of rye.15
The 32nd stopped and reformed at the first hedge, while their enemies turned about and fired at them from behind the second hedge beyond the stream. The Royal Scots crossed the hedge but ran into fierce fire from the 108th. Higonet had marched his first battalion back through the hedge and it reformed behind the other two battalions who lined the obstacle. After the routed 72nd cleared their front, the 108th engaged the pursuing British and drove them back again. When they recovered the lost ground, Higonet’s men were very favourably impressed to discover a wounded corporal of their grenadiers lying, bandaged by the British with food and drink beside him.16
Trefcon’s men reformed in front of Piraumont. Then it was their turn to produce some sharp musketry, backed up by the cannon which had remained on the ridge above the village, protected by the lake. ‘General Piré’s cavalry arrived in the nick of time and they charged the English in their turn who had to get back to their own lines. They executed this retreat in a good order that filled us with admiration. Their squares were so remarkably well-formed that our lancers and chasseurs couldn’t break into them.’ Picton’s men fell back in square and harassed by French cavalry, to form a line between La Bergerie and the Bois des Censes, protecting the Namur road.
Ney’s first confident attempt to seize the chaussée had recoiled from a thi
n red line of determined British infantry. Prisoners taken by the French during this engagement revealed that they belonged to a force of 15,000 men who had marched from Brussels that morning under the Duke of Wellington. It confirmed to Ney that victory in his battle would be a struggle, since it was likely that the whole British army would soon come to support the Duke.
However, for the present Wellington only had some 20,000 men, and Jérôme’s strong division had now arrived with sixteen more guns, accompanied by General Kellermann and a brigade of cuirassiers. Ney had a force of similar strength; what was more, he had fresh troops with which to launch another powerful attack.
27
Clubbed Muskets and Bayonets
Ligny, 3.15–5.30 p.m.
Seven miles south-east of Quatre-Bras, Napoleon was trying to draw as many Prussians as possible into gradually escalating fighting in the chain of villages that straggled along the marshy Ligne stream north of Fleurus. It was his intention that in late afternoon, either Ney’s entire wing or the corps commanded by d’Erlon would strike them from the flank and rear, and those of Blücher’s men that were not surrounded and killed or captured would be sent reeling back towards the east. Victory had to be achieved economically given his numerical inferiority, so Napoleon would commit as few troops as possible; using his own men sparingly, he would inflict on the enemy as much damage as possible.
Under the supervision of General Antoine Drouot, a French gun line had been established opposite the Prussian one, and Drouot was delighted to see that his was having the greater success. ‘The troops destined to protect our batteries, being at a distance, and masked by the sinuosities of the ground, experienced no injury. Those of the Enemy, on the contrary, being placed in masses, in the form of an amphitheatre, behind these batteries, suffered very great losses.’1 It was Drouot, the son of a baker grown up to be the army’s best gunner, who had transformed the Artillery of the Guard into a battle-winning instrument. One of Napoleon’s marshals spoke of him as ‘the most upright and modest man I have ever known – well educated, brave, devoted, simple in his manner. His character was lofty and of rare probity’.2 He is sometimes said to have served at the naval battle of Trafalgar in 1805 in the Indomptable, but as that vessel went down with all hands in the storm after the battle, it was fortunate for him that he had left the ship a month earlier to rejoin the Grande Armée. Drouot became a trusted general officer aide to the Emperor and, in the absence of Marshal Mortier, had been given command of the Guard.
A second French attack drove back some of the Prussians in the western sector of Ligny, but try as they might, the French could not take the castle or the churchyard or establish themselves on the far bank of the Ligne, where the Prussians held the Ferme d’en Bas. The firefight was fierce: General Henckel, in command of the Prussian defence, recalled that Gröben of the Westphalian Landwehr, who was his second-in-command, had two horses shot under him. Gröben was addicted to snuff and when he first fell he took a huge pinch before mounting a second horse. The death of the second horse required another large pinch of snuff, and afterwards Gröben decided he was less conspicuous on foot.3
Under the fierce sun it was extremely hot by now. Each time a soldier loaded a musket, he had to bite open the cartridge and hold each greasy, powder-encrusted bullet in his teeth. Saltpetre tasted bitter, left grit in the mouth and quickly dried it out. At the same time, soldiers were working in smoke thick enough to sting the eyes, and it was not long before such conditions induced burning thirst. Nor was it easy to find water in Ligny. Henckel called over a man who was drinking and asked him for some. As Henckel lifted the jug to his lips the soldier, who was holding the general’s horse, was shot dead.
Gérard now attacked the eastern side of the village but the French columns broke when their skirmishers fell back on them, pursued by Prussians who briefly captured two guns. For the second time Major von Zastrow led the Westphalian left wing into canister fire from the supporting French guns; this time his arm was shot off and he fell from his horse, to be carried away to the surgeons.
After probing the defences on both sides of the village, Gérard launched a massive assault, but found the Prussians willing to fight for every cottage and every hedge. To advance, the French had to clear each house: there were men in the cellars firing from the holes into which coal was loaded and men in the attics firing from the rooftops. At really close quarters – when bursting into a house, for instance – the walnut stocks of muskets could be wielded as a club, while fixing a seventeen-inch steel bayonet turned the weapon into a spear. But it was slow, bloody work: cornered men stabbed and clubbed each other in their desperation, as a Westphalian described:
In the streets of the village, we fought with clubbed muskets and bayonets. As if overcome by personal hatred, man battled against man. It seemed as if every individual had met his deadliest enemy and rejoiced at the long-awaited opportunity to give expression to this. Quarter was neither asked nor given; the French plunged their bayonets into the chests of those already falling from their wounds; the Prussians swore loudly at their enemies and killed everyone that fell into their hands.4
Finally, after a bout of fierce and bloody fighting, the French took the medieval castle at the western edge of Ligny and the churchyard in the centre of the southern part of the village. They drove the Prussians north across the Ligne, and out of every stronghold except the Ferme d’en Bas, opposite the church on the north bank, in which the Prussians held out obstinately. Frenchmen described the fighting in exactly the same terms as their opponents:
I really know not how to describe the inconceivable fury and exasperation of the soldiers on both sides. It seemed as if every man had to avenge himself of some personal injury, and saw in his adversary only his implacable enemy. The French refused to give or take quarter; the Prussians, it is added, had previously announced the intention of massacring all the French who should fall into their hands…. The French themselves regarded all the Prussians and other Germans as fugitive slaves, and treacherous malefactors. In a word the mutual hatred was inflamed by the memory of past injuries, and the certainty that whoever should be victors, the victory would be abused by cruelty.5
This intensity was vividly illustrated by the rapidity with which the usual codes regarding prisoners broke down. In normal circumstances it was perfectly possible to show a white flag or throw down your arms and expect to survive, but at Ligny ‘no quarter’ – no prisoners – was a motto from the start. Within a short time tales of opposition atrocities spread and throats were cut, men hanged or bayoneted; few prisoners were taken.
By now Henckel’s brigade had lost 2500 men out of 4700 and the remainder were running out of ammunition. Good flints lasted thirty to fifty rounds and then needed changing, while coarse grain powder meant that the barrel required cleaning after every 50–60 rounds. Fifty rounds was what each soldier usually carried in battle, and when they had been fired a new supply had to be fetched from the wagons that travelled with the artillery. These could not reach Henckel’s men in Ligny, so while isolated pockets held out in strongholds like the Ferme d’en Bas, the rest were forced to evacuate the village in order to replenish their ammunition and reorganise.
As Henckel’s men retreated, General von Jagow led in his reserves, the fresh musketeer battalions of the 7th West Prussian infantry and the 3rd Westphalian Landwehr, along the lane from Brye. With the light companies winkling the French out of the cottages, the first West Prussian battalion pushed eastward along the rue d’en bas north of the Ligne, while Jagow himself led the second battalion along the rue d’en haut to the south. Jagow’s fusilier battalions assaulted the castle and succeeded in recapturing it. Under fierce French artillery bombardment the second battalion of West Prussians reached the church and mounted a furious attack on the graveyard, which they succeeded in capturing.
Just as the Prussians broke into the churchyard, though, they were hit from two directions by French battalions, one slicing into their flank. Captain
François took part in this counter-attack, leading about a hundred men from his shattered 30th Regiment. Slipping silently along the sunken lane that led to the Ferme d’en Haut, they almost ran into Prussians in the thick smoke; François shouted ‘Fire!’ and threw himself to the ground as his men shot over him, while in the mêlée he broke his sword and was trampled underfoot. But a charge from east by the 96th Regiment broke the Prussian defence.6 The Prussians were so completely routed that they carried their first battalion away with them as they fled. The French recaptured the churchyard, which was full of dead West Prussians and Westphalians, and crossed the stream into the northern half of Ligny.
Once again, Blücher invited four fresh battalions to storm the village, having summoned reserves from Georg von Pirch’s II Corps. The battle for Ligny was sucking in more and more Prussians, just as Napoleon hoped it would. Having reorganised, Jagow’s men again attacked the west of the village while the new regiments assaulted the east.
For two hours Franz Lieber’s company of the Colberg Regiment had been lying down to avoid cannonballs, longing to advance. The volunteer riflemen, distinguished from the blue-coated musketeers by their green jackets and black belts, were very young lads, and their experienced officer, Carl von Bagensky, tried to explain that waiting under fire was the severest test that a soldier could face. Finally, an aide galloped up and told Colonel von Zastrow, ‘Your column must throw the enemy out of the left wing of the village.’ The colonel rode to Lieber’s company and spoke: ‘Riflemen, you are young – I am afraid too ardent. Calmness makes the soldier; hold yourselves in order.’ Then he turned round. ‘March!’ The drum rolled. After half a mile’s march the two musketeer battalions of the famous Colberg Regiment and two of Elbe Landwehr prepared to attack Ligny, preceded by skirmishers that included the eighty-strong detachment of Colberg volunteer riflemen. A bugle told Franz Lieber’s Colbergs to halt before the village.7