by Tim Clayton
Covered by a skirmish line that had pushed well north of Hougoumont and its park, Cubières launched an assault on the north gate to the château. He sent forward an assault squad led by the enormous Sous-Lieutenant Legros, known to the soldiers as ‘l’enfonceur’ and armed with a huge axe. A former sergeant engineer, Legros had retired in 1814, but on Napoleon’s return he had asked Cubières if he could rejoin his old regiment.16 Now they ran forward under fire from the British Guards defending the farmyard. Cubières’ horse was shot and he found himself trapped under the dead animal in full view of the British. He could not believe that none of the defenders chose to finish him off and concluded that the officers had ordered their men not to fire at him. His own troops rushed onward but Macdonell and his men slammed the north gate shut and barred it with logs. Clay’s captain was shot while carrying a log to the gate and fell with his arm broken, before his men carried him into the farmhouse. Despite the logs, l’enfonceur smashed in the gate and burst into the yard, where he was shot dead during a fierce scuffle. The guards forced the gates shut again and killed every Frenchman trapped inside.17
In the meantime, three companies of Coldstream Guards tried to cut a way through to the château from the north. ‘I was wounded in the act,’ recalled their commander, and ‘also had a beautiful grey horse shot. However, I did the best that lay in my power and succeeded in repulsing them till relieved by the remainder of the battalion. The whole were then obliged to fortify ourselves in the farmyard which we were ordered to defend.’18 It took the intervention of the 1200 men of the Brunswick Avant-Garde, Guard and 1st Light battalions to stabilise the situation to the west of Hougoumont and finally drive back Cubières’ men.19 After the French fell back, four hundred of Byng’s Coldstream Guards reinforced what was left of Macdonell’s light troops in the farmyard; two companies of Coldstreams remained behind the ridge with the battalion’s colours. The Brunswick Guard and Light battalions retired to the space Byng’s brigade had occupied, leaving their Avant-Garde defending the avenue. Cubières himself walked back to the wood, amazed he was still alive.
Matthew Clay and his companion took the opportunity to rush after the reinforcing Coldstreams as they surged into the farmyard. Clay noticed that
the gates, were riddled with shot holes, and it was also very wet and dirty. In its entrance lay many dead bodies of the enemy. One which I particularly noticed appeared to be a French Officer, but they were scarcely distinguishable, being to all appearance as though they had been very much trodden upon and covered with mud. On getting inside the farm I saw Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell carrying a large piece of wood or the trunk of a tree in his arms. One of his cheeks was marked with blood and his charger lay bleeding a short distance away. With this timber he was hurrying to bar the gates against the renewed attack of the enemy.20
The fierce battle within a battle in the park of Hougoumont was sucking in ever more troops. After Waterloo, British legend was to speak of the Guards holding out alone in Hougoumont against the whole of Reille’s corps, while Wellington once announced that ‘the success of the battle of Waterloo depended on the closing of the gates of Hougoumont’. Certainly, the Guards and their German comrades who played an equal part in the defence had ranged against them Jérôme Bonaparte’s division, which after suffering considerable casualties at Quatre Bras was about 5900 strong, while eventually some of Foy’s battalions played a supporting role. Contrary to Reille’s orders – for his troops were only supposed to hold their ground in the wood – a succession of furious attacks were made on Hougoumont.
It is not true however that, while the French threw in more and more troops, Wellington never reinforced the initial garrison, which had been largely German. Nearly all the 1000 British Guards were themselves reinforcements, thrown in to support the 800 Nassauers and 330 Hanoverians, less casualties, defending Hougoumont, while another 2000 Brunswickers and British light troops were protecting the line of the avenue of trees and the sunken lane further west. Had the British lost the château, for Wellington it would have been a major blow, and he defended it strongly, as indeed he should have done.21
48
The Prussians Detected
Rossomme, 12.30–2 p.m.
While the attack on Hougoumont was in progress, Soult wrote a second order for Marshal Grouchy. He had recently received a report written by Grouchy at 6 a.m., in which Grouchy had said that the Prussians were aiming for Brussels to unite with Wellington, and his response was as follows:
Monsieur le maréchal, you wrote to the Emperor this morning at 6 a.m. that you would march on Sart à Walhain. Thus your plan was to move to Corbaix and Wavre. This movement conforms with the wishes of his Majesty which have been communicated to you. However, the Emperor commands me to tell you that you must continue to manoeuvre in our direction and seek to close in on the army, so that you will be able to join us before any force can get between us. I do not indicate your route, since it is up to you to work out where we are and how best to direct troops in order to link our communications and to be constantly in a position to fall on any enemy troops that might seek to trouble our right, and crush them. At present battle is engaged on the line of Waterloo. The 18th at 1 p.m., Maréchal Duc de Dalmatie.
In fact, Grouchy had lied about how far the Prussians were ahead of him and about when he set out to pursue them, so Napoleon was genuinely misled in his future calculations.1 Finally, however, the French staff had become worried about Prussian intervention.
Soult reassured Grouchy that his march on Wavre had conformed to the Emperor’s instructions, but emphasised strongly that Grouchy must now manoeuvre to join Napoleon before any Prussian force came between them. He added an urgent line making their location quite explicit: ‘in front of the Forest of Soignes, the enemy centre is at Mont Saint Jean, so manoeuvre to join our right.’ This dramatic change in tone was explained by a postscript: ‘A letter which has just been intercepted states that General Bülow will attack our right flank. We believe we can make out this corps on the heights of St. Lambert so do not lose a second in getting over here and crushing Bülow who you will catch in flagrante delicto.’2
The light cavalry from the right flank had just brought in a Prussian staff officer taken prisoner while carrying a message from Bülow to Wellington. It must have come as a sickening shock to Napoleon to discover that up to 25,000 Prussians were so close at hand, deploying to attack his right flank. If he had previously thought that fortune was not favouring him as she used to, this was clear confirmation. How could they possibly have moved so swiftly and boldly? And how had they evaded Grouchy? Napoleon’s staff turned their field glasses to scour the eastern horizon. The village of Chapelle-Saint-Lambert was over four miles away and through the mist and drizzle it is doubtful that they could make much out, but they thought they could see troops.
Napoleon sent his aide and chief geographical engineer Simon Bernard to find out what was going on. The army’s expert on the lie of the land, there was nobody better equipped than Bernard to understand the implications of what he observed. He rode two miles or more eastward to the Bois de Paris on the extreme right, where the officers of Marbot’s tirailleurs told him that they could make out approaching columns preceded by skirmishers.3
Not only had Grouchy let the Prussians give him the slip, he had committed a much greater blunder: he had allowed the Prussians to do just what Napoleon’s latest letter indicated that the Emperor had already begun to fear they might be doing – get between Grouchy and Napoleon. It was suddenly essential to locate Grouchy and get him onto the battlefield. If Grouchy attacked the Prussians at Wavre as he had been ordered, it would now have the effect of driving them onto Napoleon’s right, so Grouchy must instead cut across towards Napoleon south of Wavre and head for the village of Plancenoit.
About fourteen miles away, meanwhile, Marshal Grouchy was still working to the leisurely timetable that had been perfectly acceptable twenty-four hours earlier. During the night he had received a repor
t from Exelmans saying that his patrols had detected Prussians who had left the village of Tourinnes on the road to Wavre at 8.30 p.m. The officer sent north-east to Perwez had found no Prussians, but he also reported that the enemy were heading for Wavre. Moreover, a report from Walhain stated that three Prussian columns had passed through and soldiers had said that they were massing to give battle close to Brussels.4 As a result of this belated revelation, at 6 a.m. he had written the letter of which the receipt by Soult was described above, stating his new conviction that the Prussians were heading north-west for Wavre in the direction of Brussels.
It does not appear to have crossed Grouchy’s mind that the Prussians might be marching from Wavre towards Wellington’s present position rather than towards Brussels and that if that were the case he would do better to take a more westerly line of march. He did not even change the deployment of his light cavalry, reiterating their order to ride to the east of his army when it should have become clear that they were better deployed to the west. It might now have been plainly obvious that he needed to move fast, but his infantry had been out marauding and their rations arrived late, so they marched off an hour and a half later even than their planned, leisurely, 6 a.m. start. A brigade of dragoons arrived at Walhain at seven o’clock but Grouchy did not get there until eleven.5 He established that the three Prussian corps that fought at Ligny were marching towards Brussels and had been joined by a fourth, but a retired army officer had given him the incorrect information that the Prussians were concentrating to the north-east of Wavre, reassuring news that removed any immediate pressure. He reported to Soult: ‘It would seem that their intention is to mass there, either to fight the troops pursuing them, or to reunite with Wellington, the project announced by their officers, who, with their usual boasting, pretend they only left the field of battle of the 16th so as to bring about their reunion with the English army near Brussels.’6
Having thus correctly divined Prussian intentions but not their speed of implementation, Grouchy sat down for his déjeuner. He was eating strawberries when Maurice Gérard’s chief of staff came in to say that he could hear cannon fire from the garden. Outside, the staff were all listening intently, some with their ear to the ground to determine the direction from which the noise was coming. Locals estimated that the bombardment was taking place at the edge of the Forest of Soignes. General Gérard demanded that they should march towards the sound of the guns, for their local guides claimed they could be there in four or five hours. Offended that his subordinate should be giving his opinion so publicly and vociferously, Grouchy insisted that he already knew the Emperor intended to attack Wellington and that had Napoleon wanted them there, he would not have sent them away. Nevertheless, Gérard and other officers began to discuss the practicability of the cross-country roads for the artillery, given the appalling rain that had only recently slackened. Grouchy closed the animated debate by announcing that his duty was to obey the Emperor’s instructions, which were to follow the Prussians.
At that moment one of Rémy Exelmans’ aides arrived with the news that there was a strong Prussian rearguard in front of Wavre, and that all reports indicated that the Prussians had crossed the bridge during the night and the morning in order to link up with Wellington. Exelmans proposed crossing the Dyle at Ottignies, the nearest bridge to him, south of Wavre, in order to prevent a junction between the allied armies. Anticipating that Grouchy would fall in with his wishes, Exelmans had in fact already sent a brigade of dragoons to within a mile of Ottignies with that purpose in mind. From Ottignies to the crossing of the Lasne below Saint-Lambert was less than five miles, and had Exelmans crossed the Dyle there he would have been poised to interfere with Prussian progress at a point of great difficulty for them. But Grouchy was offended by the liberties taken by his generals: he said that he would give orders to Exelmans personally and asked for his horses. When Gérard begged to be allowed to take his own infantry and a brigade of cavalry towards the gunfire, Grouchy refused. He had, after all, promised Napoleon to keep his infantry together.7
The army hastened its march towards Wavre and at two o’clock Exelmans and Vandamme contacted a Prussian rearguard, which turned out to be that of Georg von Pirch’s corps. Grouchy felt he had achieved his goal – he had caught up with the Prussians he had been chasing. So he urged on his troops towards the town in order to fight what would be known as the battle of Wavre.
49
The Grand Battery
The ridge east of La Belle Alliance, 12–1.30 p.m.
For Napoleon, getting into action had suddenly become most urgent. Captain Jonathan Leach and Lieutenant John Kincaid, commanding the British riflemen concealed about the sand quarry north of La Haye Sainte, were listening to the fighting at Hougoumont nearly a mile to their right when a random cannonball decapitated a rifleman. They looked at the space opposite them, trying to work out where the ball had come from, but there was no telltale puff of smoke. ‘It had hitherto been looking suspiciously innocent, with scarcely a human being upon it,’ recalled Kincaid; ‘but innumerable black specks were now seen taking post at regular distances in its front, and recognising them as so many pieces of artillery, I knew, from experience, although nothing else was yet visible, that they were unerring symptoms of our not being destined to be idle spectators.’ Captain Leach counted at least fifty guns facing the divisions of Alten and Picton.1
Napoleon loved artillery. He called his 12-pounders his ‘belles filles’ and loved to employ them en masse to concentrate overwhelming fire on the point at which he intended to make his decisive attack. When defeating the Prussians at Jena in 1806 he had massed twenty-five guns, next year against the Russians at Friedland thirty-six, at Wagram in 1809 against the Austrians more than one hundred, at Lützen in 1813 fifty-eight, at Leipzig eighty, at Hanau fifty-six, and at Craonne in 1814 in beating Blücher seventy-two. It was a fearsome trademark. The rapid advance of a mass of horse artillery to fire canister at the Russian line won the battle of Friedland, while at Lützen the artillery of the Imperial Guard was said to have fired fifty shots per gun per hour for two hours – 5800 rounds – to smash a hole in the enemy line. It was not just the casualties caused by such batteries that mattered: the effects were psychological as well. The morale of the men targeted was worn down by the constant barrage and the realisation that their own artillery could not reply in kind. A battery of eighty guns could throw 2000 shots per hour into the enemy opposite them and still increase its rate of fire during the minutes before an attack went in.2 ‘Columns do not break through lines, unless they are supported by a superior artillery fire,’ he had castigated his brother Joseph after a defeat by the British in Spain.3 Artillery was the one arm in which Napoleon had a clear advantage – 254 against 156 – and it was with this arm that he intended to blow the allied army away.
As it became evident that a mass of artillery was forming opposite the allied left centre, General Müffling wrote to Blücher and Gneisenau to tell them that the second of his three contingencies – an attack on Wellington’s centre – was in fact occurring.4
Initially, Dessales formed his fifty-six guns on the ridge to the east of La Belle Alliance, the alehouse on the chaussée, behind or parallel to a lane leading to the farm of Papelotte.5 The ridge was on a diagonal, projecting forwards to the east, making it roughly parallel to Wellington’s front line. The guns were about half a mile from the allied guns and skirmishers and rather further from the infantry behind the ridge, but even the cavalry behind them were within long range, the range being measured by where the balls first bounced. General Ruty, commander in chief of the artillery, ordered Dessales to select a forward position to which the artillery could advance once d’Erlon’s infantry had driven back Wellington’s front line. There was a slightly lower ridge 500 yards further forward, in a much more commanding position some 250 yards behind La Haye Sainte and about 600 yards from the allied ridge – ideal effective range for artillery – and Ruty ordered the batteries to move forward to th
is position as soon as possible.6 The movement would take place after d’Erlon’s infantry closed on the allied line, during the period when the guns would have to cease fire to avoid killing their own troops.
An eight-gun battery would form on a frontage of about 100 yards, so, allowing for gaps between batteries, Dessales’ line was spread across about 800 or 900 yards from a point to the east of La Belle Alliance, pointing over La Haye Sainte at Alten and Picton’s divisions and beyond them at Mont Saint-Jean. If Napoleon had already added guns from the Imperial Guard, as he certainly did later, then the line was so much longer. Some 630 men served Dessales’ guns. About thirty yards back were the limbers, drawn by six horses for the 6-pounders and eight for the 12-pounders with a rider controlling each pair of horses. Further back still were the first caissons containing ammunition, drawn by teams of four horses. Each 6-pounder had two caissons and each 12-pounder three. The ridge was thus covered with at least 1400 men, over 1000 horses and a minimum of 136 ammunition caissons.
When the Grand Battery opened fire, the artillery on the crest in front of Alten’s infantry ‘suffered heavily’ and several ammunition caissons blew up.7 The batteries of Lloyd, Cleeves and Ross took the brunt, being most exposed, and Cavalié Mercer recalled meeting Lloyd, who had ridden back to search for help, begging him, ‘for God’s sake, come and assist me, or I shall be ruined. My brigade is cut to pieces, ammunition expended, and, unless reinforced, we shall be destroyed.’8 Not far to the east, three of Ross’s guns were disabled in the opening barrage. ‘Every man that never seed a bullet would a thought that the world was at an end,’ wrote one of his gunners.9