by Tim Clayton
On the other side of the valley and further west, the Prince of Orange’s chief of staff Constant had ridden his black mare over to the left in order to rally the fleeing Netherlands infantry, leading Baron Charles-Etienne de Ghigny’s Netherlands light cavalry, a thousand sabres strong, to block their path off the field. A sufficient number of well-motivated cavalry could force infantry to rally simply by presenting an imposing, steady and near-impenetrable ‘friendly’ obstacle and shaming the retreating foot soldiers into turning round. After rallying a part of Bijlandt’s brigade, Constant saw Vandeleur’s light cavalry in motion just to the east, charging the retreating French infantry, while in front efforts to break the huge square formed by Donzelot’s division continued. Ghigny’s Dutch light dragoons charged in support of Vandeleur and completed the rout of the French infantry that Ponsonby had charged, while his Belgian hussars turned their attention to Donzelot’s men. The Netherlands heavy cavalry also launched a charge against French cuirassiers in order to cover the retreat of the Household Cavalry.
Meanwhile, Augustus Frazer, commanding the British horse artillery, had played his joker. When the heavy cavalry advanced, Captain Whinyates’s rocket battery also rode forward.
Rockets were transported in a special cart attached to a normal limber; this ‘rocket car’ carried two gunners and sixty rockets in boxes. Looking very like the familiar firework, with a stick to steady them and a paper fuse, they could be fired from a triangular iron frame, adjustable to fire at any angle from parallel with the ground to forty-five degrees, or could be placed on anything that would hold them steady, such as a bush. The projectiles might be round shot, shell, canister or incendiary ‘carcass’, but the few rockets that were fired at Waterloo carried explosive shells. Whinyates placed his guns in the area vacated by the Dutch guns, about 200 yards east of the Charleroi chaussée, and then a colonel from the artillery staff ordered him to fire his rockets at Donzelot’s unbroken division.6
A lieutenant sent by Whinyates with two crews to the barricade built by the riflemen above La Haye Sainte was wounded before they got there, but his men sited rockets in the bushes from which the barricade had been made and fired them off down the cobbled road. The other four crews fired their rockets out of the crops from further to the left. Leaving the two limber gunners behind to guard each gun, his horsemen then rode down the slope for a hundred yards, each carrying four rocket sticks in a bucket by their side, and more rockets in their holsters. Every third rider carried the frames in which the rockets were laid before firing. The group dismounted in tall rye to fire a series of ground rockets, aiming them flat so that they hugged the ground, sometimes ricocheting off it. They couldn’t see their target, but Donzelot’s dense square was massed ahead of them. When General de Ghigny saw this happening he sent his Belgian 8th Hussars forward into the valley opposite Donzelot’s square, in which for a while the rockets created considerable surprise, alarm and disorder. In fact Whinyates fired only fifty-two rockets during the day, probably all at this time, but Ney’s aide Heymès spoke of 300, and they usually feature in pictures of the fighting.
The hussars, though, failed to charge. They were not the most enthusiastic cavalry regiment in the army: indeed, during the day thirty-three of them took the opportunity to change sides and join the French. Maréchal-de-camp Nicolas Schmitz spotted that the rockets were coming from behind a hillock – he assumed there were machines concealed behind it – and sent two companies of voltigeurs from the 13th Light to dislodge them. It was possibly in directing this attack to drive away the rocketeers that the redoubtable old campaigner Captain André Ravard, wounded three times in Russia, was hit by an allied sharpshooter, probably a rifleman. ‘I was wounded by a ball in the right arm. It made three holes in my arm, passed under the scapula and stopped between my shoulder blades against my spine.’ It took him five hours to get back to Le Caillou, where a surgeon of the guard extracted the ball after much difficulty and much pain.7 However, the voltigeurs succeeded in driving off the rocketeers, and the hussars pulled back with them. Then, for a while, there was a lull in the fighting.
56
Where are the Prussians?
Wavre to Saint-Lambert, 18 June, 2–4.15 p.m.
Wellington was becoming anxious. His troops had defeated a massive French attack, but they had done so at great cost: Picton’s division was further weakened, their commander was dead and the best of the heavy cavalry was played out. He had accepted battle at Waterloo in the certainty that the Prussians would reinforce him, and for that reason his left wing – the one that the French had attacked – was weakly manned by fellow Germans to leave space for Prussian troops. But the Prussians were late. He had hoped to see evidence of their presence on the battlefield by two o’clock, but there was still no sign of them. He sent Captain William Staveley of the Royal Staff Corps to try to find Blücher and to persuade him that the British army needed his help now.
Meanwhile the Prussians were stuck in the mud:
The ground was completely saturated with the rain which had fallen without interruption for sixteen hours. The rivulets had become torrents; every hollow was filled with water; some of the forest roads actually resembled watercourses through which the men had to wade for hundreds of yards together; deep pools of water that constantly forced the troops to break their files, had been formed in every direction.1
In these conditions, Prussian columns had become strung out over most of the eight miles between Wavre and Lasne. The going was in any case rough and hilly on the tracks through the woods, but the last stretch from Saint-Lambert to Lasne was really difficult. First there was a steep drop from the hill village to a tributary stream and a climb to a hill over the river. Then the track entered a narrow defile between high banks, dropping steeply into the river valley, crossing a narrow bridge and climbing steeply again into the village of Lasne. It was fine for infantry, but for a gun or a cart it was almost impossible.
James Shaw, assistant quartermaster to Wellington’s 3rd Division, appreciated the Prussians’ difficulties in reaching the battlefield. The previous day his own division had crossed the river Dyle at a small bridge with orders to proceed by minor roads parallel to the chaussée, but after losing part of their baggage to the mud they had returned against orders to the cobbled road as it was the only way to make progress. He found it perfectly easy to understand how General von Bülow took eight hours to march eight miles.2
Having sent out patrols and discovered that there were no Frenchmen in the Lasne valley, Bülow decided to secure the flooded river crossing by occupying the high ground on the other side. Just after midday he sent the Silesian Hussars and two battalions of fusiliers forward as a vanguard, and behind this screen the two brigades and his cavalry picked their way down the steep, muddy slope and waded across the valley.
With the swollen stream two to three feet deep and racing after the heavy rain and the valley deep in mud, it took far longer than anybody had anticipated and it was almost a miracle that they got the guns through at all. These had to be lowered down one side of the steep valley, using horses as a brake behind them on the slippery mud. Then the teams had to be hitched in front of the guns to pull, while the men pushed and strained with their shoulders against the wheels. It was exhausting work. Bülow’s men had been on the march since first light – they had hardly stopped marching for days – and had not eaten since the previous evening. Blücher rode back to encourage the columns and it took all of his cajoling to keep them going: ‘You do not want to make me break my word,’ he appealed to his tired, hungry gunners as they struggled with cannon sunk up to their axles in cloying, sticky wet clay.3
Having eaten and received fresh ammunition, Ziethen’s men left the village of Bierges, just south of Wavre, in the early afternoon. They followed a more northerly track through the woods than the other corps, one which led to Ohain, a mile and a half north-east of the eastern end of Wellington’s front line. Karl von Steinmetz’s brigade with two batteries of guns
and Friedrich von Röder’s cavalry formed Ziethen’s vanguard, followed by the other three brigades and the reserve artillery. A major from the staff acted as guide, with light cavalry scouting ahead and maintaining contact with the corps to the south.
With the first of Vandamme’s French troops appearing near Bierges before the last Prussian brigade set out, General Ziethen sent back the 19th Regiment and some cavalry to act as a rearguard.4 Now, while the vanguard of the Prussian army struggled through the mud, that rearguard skirmished with Grouchy’s vanguard. Meanwhile Friedrich von Jagow harangued the men of his brigade towards the rear of Ziethen’s advancing column: ‘Get going, lads! Be as brave today as you were the day before yesterday! Remember Kulm and Leipzig!’ and as they tramped off the band played the traditional song ‘Long live the old Prussian house’. Whenever they passed patrols they asked with eager anxiety, ‘Comrades, how is it going further forward?’5
Ziethen’s march led along ‘sunken lanes cut through deep ravines’. The forest either side of the road was very thick ‘so there was no question of avoiding the road, and progress was very slow, all the more so because in many places men and horses could get through only one at a time’. Troops at the head of columns were continually required to stop and wait for those further back to catch up.6
Georg von Pirch’s II Corps had camped just east of Wavre, having trudged in after dark in pouring rain. They were ready to march at dawn, but the fire near the market place prevented them from crossing the bridge into the town until midday. Instead, they reorganised. Rifleman Franz Lieber of the Colberg Regiment recalled: ‘Early in the morning of the 18th we found part of our regiment from which we had been separated. It was a touching scene to see the soldiers rushing to each other, to find comrades whom we had believed to be dead or missing.’ Leaving two of his brigades behind around Wavre as a rearguard, Pirch marched off with the 5th and 6th Brigades. Franz Lieber remembered:
As we passed the Marshal, wrapped up in a cloak and leaning against a hill, our soldiers began to hurrah, for it was always a delight to them to see the ‘old one’ as he was called. ‘Be quiet, my lads,’ said he; ‘hold your tongues; time enough after the victory is gained.’ He issued this morning his famous order, which ended by assuring our army that he would prove the possibility of beating, two days after a retreat, and with inferior numbers, and which concluded with the words ‘we shall conquer because we must conquer.’7
Around 2 p.m. Pirch’s rearguard had a first brush with Grouchy’s troops two miles south of Wavre. The detachment that had been left to keep an eye out for the French at Mont Saint-Guibert was very nearly cut off by Exelmans’ dragoons, but managed to join up with Pirch’s rearguard, leaving the various patrols they had sent out to make their escape as best they could. Half an hour later the rearguard crossed the Dyle at Bierges and broke the wooden bridge, pressing on to the main body and leaving only a regiment of hussars and two battalions of infantry to delay any French pursuit.8
Johann von Thielmann’s orders were to defend Wavre if he was attacked and to follow the Prussian army if he was not. By 3.30 the other Prussian corps had moved off and although French patrols had been seen, no large body of troops had been identified. Accordingly Thielmann gave orders to his four brigades to follow the rest of the army. Just before these orders were received by Karl von Borcke’s brigade, which was acting as Thielmann’s rearguard on the French side of the Dyle, the head of Vandamme’s column made contact with his outposts. Borcke hurried back to Wavre to find that both the stone bridges in the town had already been barricaded and blocked against the French by two fusilier battalions from his own brigade. He made a very rapid march downstream to Basse Wavre, crossed the river by the wooden bridge, destroyed it behind him and lined the banks with picked marksmen. Then, having detached another battalion and some cavalry to help the fusiliers defend the bridge at Wavre, he continued his march towards Waterloo. Thielmann, meanwhile, had decided to turn back and defend Wavre.
The Dyle, ordinarily an unimpressive river, was in flood from the heavy rain and presented a serious obstacle to any French advance. In the town were two stone bridges, one carrying the main road to Brussels. Three-quarters of a mile upstream, the mill of Bierges stood by a narrow wooden bridge carrying a country lane; the Prussians had already begun to dismantle this bridge. Two and a quarter miles upstream from Wavre, at Limale and at Limalette a little further away, were further wooden bridges. Thielmann placed one brigade at Bierges, another behind Wavre, and a third in reserve to its right at La Bavette. Borcke’s brigade had taken a short cut from Basse Wavre to the Brussels road and he marched off with six battalions without receiving orders to turn back. The troops that Ziethen had left behind were posted to guard Limale.
When Vandamme reached Wavre at about four, Exelmans with around 3000 dragoons was at Dion-le-Mont. Gérard with his corps was about four miles away, and Pajol’s cavalry were some miles further back, with Teste’s division of infantry desperately trying to catch up. Without waiting for Grouchy, Vandamme immediately ordered General Habert’s division to storm the bridges at Wavre. Habert’s troops were met by intense fire from Prussian marksmen inside loopholed buildings and Prussian artillery placed on the high ground over the river, and their repeated assaults failed.
It was at about this moment that Staff Corps Captain William Staveley, sent by Wellington to find the Prussians, spoke to Blücher.9 Staveley had passed Bülow’s infantry and cavalry, who had been gathering to the east of the Bois de Paris for the last hour while their rearguard was still wading across the valley between Saint-Lambert and Lasne. From what Staveley told him and what Blücher’s own scouts were reporting, the field marshal concluded that Wellington was in urgent need of help. He decided to attack immediately with just the two brigades and cavalry that were to hand, on the grounds that any diversion would be useful. Nevertheless, he stuck to the plan that he had agreed with his generals and with Müffling: he would not march to reinforce Wellington’s vulnerable left flank, but would commence an outflanking drive directed at the village of Plancenoit, about two miles away to the south-west, in order to cut off the French line of retreat.
The battle had now become a race against time in three different locations. Could Napoleon break Wellington’s army before Blücher intervened? Could Blücher get enough troops onto the battlefield to deliver a decisive attack against Napoleon’s flank before Wellington’s line gave way? And could Thielmann hold off Grouchy, or would the French cross the river and roll up the Prussians as they marched?
57
The Grand Battery Rebuilt
Mont Saint-Jean, 3–3.45 p.m.
Captain Staveley had set off in search of Blücher during the lull in the fighting that occurred after the British cavalry charge. The cannonade rumbled on at lower intensity, as did the skirmishing, especially around Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte; nevertheless, as Assistant Quartermaster James Shaw, attached to Alten’s division, wrote, ‘The interval between this attack and the next was very considerable, and no one in the Anglo-allied line could imagine what the next move would be.’1
Soldiers of the division that had been Picton’s took the opportunity to locate and evacuate men who had been hurt, to preserve or loot the possessions of the dead and wounded, and to reorganise. An ensign of the Royal Scots watched ‘a greater number of our soldiers busy in rifling the pockets of the dead, and perhaps the wounded, than I could have wished to have seen’. Then his brigade was ordered back behind the brow of the hill and the ensign lay on the ground to avoid the cannonballs, reading letters taken from prisoners. After the charge downhill in pursuit of the French, Sergeant David Robertson had missed his ‘particular and well-beloved comrade’, the sergeant-major, and went to look for his body. ‘As I knew he had a valuable watch upon him, I went out between the fires of the two lines and took it, and some other things, off him, for the behoof of his widow.’ Robertson also discovered that his captain was ‘wounded, and amissing’ and as all the subalterns had be
en wounded or killed on the 16th, he was now in command of what was left of two companies of Gordon Highlanders.2
Behind the front line, the ground was littered with displaced persons. Twenty-two-year-old Charles O’Neil from Dundalk was a fine example of Wellington’s ‘scum’. He had entered adult life as a bounty-jumper – someone who took the King’s bounty of up to eighteen guineas for joining the army and then immediately deserted, before repeating the trick with a different regiment. This lucrative career was cut short after four bounties when he was suddenly shipped to Portugal before he could desert. He had never been wounded until Waterloo, but soon after Picton was shot a bullet hit his right arm and he started to walk back towards the field hospital. Faint with loss of blood, he was making slow progress when a second ball hit his thigh. He is probably a most unreliable witness, but he told of a woman carrying a child, prowling nearby. She had just bent to take a watch from a dead officer when a shell exploded, knocking her to the ground and cutting her child in half. She looked at it for a moment, and then continued her work of looting. Despite the cold-hearted callousness of this front-line looter, she helped the wounded Irishman to shelter from the hail of shot in the lee of a small hillock.3