by Tim Clayton
Carey was carried to Brussels with the mob. There he slept for a while, and was then told by the Commissary General that all supplies were on the road but nobody knew where, and he had better return to his division, albeit empty-handed.6
The outstanding loss in this panic was the Netherlands artillery park. General Carl van Gunckel, commander of the Netherlands artillery, who had been ill at Nivelles during the battle of Quatre Bras, sent one of his staff, Captain Jean-Baptiste Osten, to arrange their accommodation at Waterloo on 17 June. While he was there, a column of reserve ammunition wagons appeared and, not knowing where the artillery park was to be located, Osten sought Gunckel to discover his plans. Osten’s account then became somewhat reticent, but he admitted that on 18 June the entire Netherlands artillery staff was at Brussels. Presumably Gunckel had again fallen ill.
In the evening of 18 June, Gunckel sent Osten to find the artillery park, which Gunckel said was then at Vilvoorde, a few miles north of the city. Osten discovered fifty-six deserted ammunition wagons between Vilvoorde and Mechelen and was told that their personnel had panicked and fled. The rest of the train, including two complete 12-pounder batteries, had fled twenty-five miles north to Antwerp during the night before the battle.7 Another officer found reserve ammunition wagons destined for Adriaan Bijleveld’s battery abandoned on the road to Brussels without horses or officers.8 Apart from the loss of the two 12-pounder batteries, which could have proved invaluable in the battle, this debacle left the entire Netherlands army with no ammunition beyond what they were already carrying.
It seems that at least a part of the Hanoverian reserve ammunition also disappeared, since an officer sent from Captain Rettberg’s battery was unable to find it, and Hanoverian batteries ended up borrowing British ammunition.9 Surgeon James of the Life Guards wrote that:
Some of the guns in the most important part of the position were almost without ammunition and at times entirely without, and it was from the first so scarce that the Duke had given the most positive orders that they should not fire upon the enemy’s cannon, but only on his advancing columns. This arose from a great deal having been sent to Ghent under a mistake, and from the road to Brussels being blocked up by the retreat of an immense number of Belgians and other cavalry, artillery and their waggons.10
Much British baggage certainly also fled and some ammunition was probably lost with it.
An artillery park was eventually established behind Mont Saint-Jean; however, when James suggested there was an initial shortage he was probably correct: several batteries were forced to replenish their stock from the stores of those that had not yet been engaged. It is likely that he was also correct to identify this shortage of ammunition as the cause of Wellington’s order next morning not to indulge in counter-battery fire but only to fire on attacking troops.
Before long, the road and the tracks behind the allied army were completely blocked by abandoned vehicles, which made obtaining food and ammunition during the night very difficult. The spring wagons used to convey the wounded were unable to get from Brussels to Mont Saint-Jean until 19 June. The situation was exacerbated because – with the exception of Lieutenant Wheatley’s detachment, which rejoined the battalion at first light – the entire grenadier company of the 5th German Legion line, which had been sent to police the highway, also fled to Brussels.11 Elizabeth Ord noticed that ‘during the whole of the night between Saturday & Sunday the baggage … was pouring down the Namur street & the whole of this part of the town was almost impassable from the crowd of wagons, horses & men.’ Although she was persuaded that this was normal – and it was true that part of the baggage should have been moving to the rear – such a breakneck panic flight was not standard procedure.12
Nor did the flight stop at Brussels. Thomas Creevey received a letter from a friend saying ‘he was leaving Brussels as things looked very bad, that in the retreat the 7th Hussars had been entirely cut up & that Lord Uxbridge was certainly killed’.13 There were other witnesses to the chaos: an officer of the 32nd was brought into Brussels ‘when my leg was so swelled for want of proper dressing that they could not tell whether the ball was in or not’, having been wounded by a ball on the kneecap at Quatre Bras:
I was just settled in bed after taking 30 drops of laudanum when a report was spread of our army having been beaten, and were retreating fast, and we expected the French would be in Brussels next day.
I was so stupid from laudanum I knew not what I was doing, till next morning I found myself, with my servant and some wounded men, in a boat, proceeding for this place. The great road from Brussels to Antwerp is by the canal, and never did I witness so much confusion as was to be seen among the people on that day – the road covered with carriages, principally English, and the baggage of the army.14
As foreigners and wealthy occupants left, wounded men and fugitives from both Quatre Bras and Ligny crowded into Brussels. No hospitals had been prepared in the city, and the battles had happened so suddenly that the municipality had not even had time to arrange temporary accommodation, so the wounded sat in the street, unless charitable individuals offered them shelter. But there were many warm tributes to the immediate generosity and compassion of the people of Brussels in caring for the strangers discovered on their doorsteps.15 Now, as after the battle, the city’s inhabitants rose to the occasion.
41
The Heavens Open their Sluices
Mont Saint-Jean, 9 p.m.–2 a.m.
‘Of all the terrible days and nights of rain I ever saw, that was worse than any of them,’ wrote a sergeant of the Scots Greys to his wife.1
The break in the storm in the early evening of 17 June did not last, and on the front line Hanoverian Captain Carl Jacobi of the Lüneberg battalion was soon enduring ‘the most terrible night of my life’. Their campsite had already been turned to sludge with trampled corn stalks when, after dark, it began to rain heavily again. They had no wood to light a fire and no food had been delivered to them for three days. Nobody could find any water. ‘Lost in dull stolidity, the exhausted men threw themselves down on the watery ground, wrapped in their woollen blankets. The incessant rains streaming down on them had made them insensitive to the dampness of their place of rest.’ Jacobi had left his horses, coat and provisions with his orderly, but the man was nowhere to be found. It later transpired that his servant, along with many others, had fled into the forest after the first cannonade and then, swept away in a panic behind the army, had ridden to Antwerp.
Wearing only his uniform with its short jacket, Jacobi was saturated. A few men stood over a fire made from wet straw but it gave no heat. His feet had swollen so he couldn’t get his boots off. Another officer gave him the blanket belonging to his servant, and Jacobi collapsed on the ground. ‘I was reduced to a complete indifference to being alive or not; my limbs collapsed from exhaustion and chill; my soul no longer seemed to dwell in my body. My total exhaustion eventually overcame everything and, notwithstanding my stiffness, I fell asleep.’2
Most soldiers were suffering similar misery. A few hundred yards away the Gordon Highlander, Sergeant David Robertson, who had lost nearly half his comrades in the traumatic experience at Quatre Bras, did his best to improvise some comfort:
We could get no fuel here to make fires, as every thing was soaked with the rain. There was a field of green clover in our rear, of which we cut large quantities, and with some branches out of the hedges made a kind of bed on the ground to keep us from the clay. The place on which we lay was like a marsh, and, for the season of the year, the rain was very cold.3
In the same exposed area of the field, a mess of five officers of the 95th Rifles ‘were looking at each other with the most deplorable faces imaginable’, when ‘one of the men brought us a fowl he had plundered, and a handful of biscuits, which, though but little, added to some tea we had boiled in a camp kettle, made us rather more comfortable; and we huddled up together, covered ourselves with straw, and were soon as soundly asleep as though reposing on beds
of down.’ The rifleman ‘awoke long before daylight, and found myself in a very bad state altogether, being completely wet through in addition to all other ills. Fortunately I soon after this found my way to a shed, of which Sir And. Barnard (our commandant) had taken possession, where there was a fire, and in which with three or four other officers I remained until the rain abated.’4
The Hanoverian light infantry of the Legion, who had served with the 95th as rearguard during the day, did rather better. They found themselves at the farm of La Haye Sainte, where there was something of a party. Their commander, Major Georg Bäring, had the livestock slaughtered and pieces of meat shared out, although many of the men were too tired, gloomy and apathetic to try to light a fire in the pouring rain. Rifleman Friedrich Lindau, the former apprentice shoemaker who had run away to join the Legion in 1809, left his post in the kitchen garden to try to find some straw to sit on. Lindau, blond, blue-eyed, five foot nine inches tall and strong, was now a veteran of five years campaigning with the light infantry, something of a rogue but a very tough fighter. He met his younger brother Christian fetching straw for his nearby gun battery just as a barrel of wine was discovered in the cellar. Lindau went to fill his canteen, which was soon emptied by some men from the 1st Light battalion whom he met at the door. A second canteen went to a friend in a patrol from the Bremen battalion, but they went back and filled two more canteens. Lindau then made several more trips to the cellar to bring wine to his mates on picket duty in the garden. At midnight the trusty veteran took his post as sentry at the end of the garden facing the enemy, whose outposts were half a mile away, sat on his pack and fell asleep.5
The two Nassau companies forgotten earlier in the Bois de Bossu at Quatre Bras had reached the ridge above La Haye Sainte in the early evening, relieved to be back with their regiment and not prisoners of the French. It was the first time that the pampered young subaltern Heinrich von Gagern, who normally rode a little black horse, had ever walked a full day’s march. He had eaten nothing but dry bread for two days, had suffered a sudden bout of nausea in the morning, and had then been roasted and subsequently soaked. When his coat became too heavy with water to carry, a soldier had taken it for him, and they had trudged on through the mud. Gagern piled some straw on the ground and fell asleep in the rain, but slept for only three hours. He now stood by the fire, trying to get warm. His portmanteau was with the baggage, but the baggage wagons had disappeared so he could not change his clothes.6
Seventeen-year-old ensign Jack Barnett was in an even worse plight. His Highland Light Infantry only reached their camping ground at 10 p.m., ‘fatigued to death, & too late to build huts or light fires. I was sent out with a party for wood & water, before I could find which, it was 12 o’clock. I came into the Regt. & threw myself down on the ground at the first place I came to, without even a greatcoat & raining very hard, I fell asleep directly.’7
Even the elite of the cavalry were miserable. Surgeon James’s Life Guards camped in the forest just beyond Waterloo. ‘It was quite dark but the soldiers lighted some fires amidst the trees; as I found myself cold, chilly and wet to the skin, and I had given almost my last drop of gin to Kelly which I now regretted, I thought my only chance to avoid being utterly benumbed was to slip off all my clothes and put on a flannel jacket and a pair of worsted stockings that I had in my valise.’8 Surgeon William Gibney of the 15th Hussars recalled:
Officers, men and horses were completely done up with the long march of the day before and the continuous moving on this day, having very little to eat during the whole time. We were up to our knees in mud and stinking water, but not a drop of drinking water or a particle of food was to be found in the villages. We were half famished. We had marched and starved from our quarters in the village to Quatre Bras, and now had added a little fighting to starving and marching.
They found some straw and boughs of trees ‘to make a rough shelter against the torrents of rain which fell all night; wrapping our cloaks round us, and huddling close together, we lay in the mud … notwithstanding the pouring rain, mud, and water, cold, and the proximity of the enemy, most of us managed to sleep.’9
In the villages at the edge of the battlefield there was widespread disorder. In pouring rain in Braine l’Alleud, nearly two miles west of La Haye Sainte, Dutch troops fought their own looters and there were summary executions. One captain obtained food for his men by forcing the bakers to bake and then guarding the building to prevent British soldiers breaking in.10
The British divisions that followed the Netherlanders from Nivelles paused at Braine l’Alleud before setting up encampments near Merbe Braine.11 Thomas Jeremiah’s Welch Fuzileers had
begun to feel the wolf biting, for hard marching and little sleeping is none so pleasant without nourishment. By the evening of the 17th we were greatly fatigued from the extreme inclemency of the day’s weather and from marching nearly 8 French leagues since 6 o’clock in the morning in the greatest rain that ever I saw, the heavens seemed to have opened their sluices and the celestial floodgates bursted open … all we had about us was completely soaked … our blankets which was on the back of our knapsacks were completely drenched.
Moving into the fields ‘up to our knees in mud’, while ‘it continued to rain with the utmost fury’, they ‘pitched our blankets up to shelter us from the rain’ and sent a party to obtain provisions from Braine l’Alleud, but the town was already full of soldiers ‘all busy employed in getting rations not by a regular distribution out but by marauding. It was utterly impossible to get anything for love or money.’
At some point Jeremiah looted the château of Mon Plaisir on the Nivelles road. To his ‘great mortification the house had undergone a complete ransacking and plundered of every portable article’ and what couldn’t be carried off had been smashed. He admired the statues, obelisks, fountains and cascades, like a tourist, and then thought of the wine cellar; having made the descent, he found two Germans there who had apparently drunk themselves to death. Undeterred, Jeremiah and his mates filled their canteens with wine and brandy and then began to look for money. Discovering 130 silver dollars in the guard dog’s cage, they then made off and returned to their unit, where the spirits made some men quite drunk because of their empty stomachs.12
William Wheeler and the West Riding light infantry were luckier. They found that ‘one man in the village was selling brandy and hollands [gin], the money picked up a few hours before procured us plenty of both’. It also enabled them to obtain bread and cheese, which ‘was very acceptable as most of us had in the hurry of packing up neglected to provide ourselves with food. This neglect was natural enough in the young soldier but unpardonable to we old campaigners.’ Wheeler got drunk enough to be ‘wet and comfortable’, and they sat on their knapsacks until daylight ‘without fires, there was no shelter against the weather: the water ran in streams from the cuffs of our Jackets, in short we were as wet as if we had been plunged over head in a river. We had one consolation, we knew the enemy were in the same plight.’13
Indeed, many of the French infantry were still marching after dark. They struggled knee-deep in mud, unable to see each other in the pitch black, while the rain fell once again in torrents. Battalions got mixed up, men made their way as best they could. Lieutenant Jacques Martin’s division turned into a shapeless mob. They set up camp near La Belle Alliance; the houses they had passed were quickly commandeered by generals, their servants, their horses, their aides and their secretaries, not to mention the commissariat, none of whom liked camping when they could avoid it. To get rid of unwanted visitors they shouted, ‘This is the lodging of general or marshal so and so.’ Deprived of shelter, Martin’s regiment manoeuvred in the mud until they found their allotted position and sat down in the ice-cold rain and bitter east wind, on ground churned to sludge by the movement of thousands of men and in which the artillery had made deep ruts that had filled with water.
Believing that Wellington still needed time to gather his army together, they
were not expecting to fight another battle for several days. There was no straw, no wood, no food and no prospect of getting any, and they found themselves on cultivated ground so saturated that the body sank comfortably into it. They still lacked rations because of the rout of the baggage train at Quatre Bras, for reserves of bread, rice and brandy had been pillaged and spoiled in the disorder. They moaned a lot, cursed those who had sent them there, then slept. Corporal Louis Canler, whose 28th Regiment camped close to Martin’s 45th, was not so easily dissuaded from marauding, though this time he found only some wood and a small sheep. They decided to keep the sheep for next day, but made a fire with the wood and slept by it in the rain.14
The Imperial Guard was little better off. They had turned off the road after passing through the town of Genappe in order to leave the cobbled chaussée clear for the artillery, but found the paths almost impassable, and lost all order trying to pick a way through the fields. The shortest standing crops they pushed through were three or four feet high and they were all covered with water. Hippolyte Mauduit’s grenadiers struggled on for two miles or so and camped in an orchard by a farm not far from Imperial headquarters. Many of them had lost their shoes and those of the rest had about 3 lb of clay attached to them. Two or three complete regiments of the Guard reached the village of Glabais, a mile north of Genappe, around midnight. The rest had lost all cohesion and were dispersed around the countryside marauding.15