Waterloo

by Tim Clayton

  In the meantime, Tupper Carey and his assistants

  got into the Forest of Soignies; and no wonder that an alarm could at such a moment be easily propagated, for the reverberations or echo of the cannonade of the action (in which from three to four hundred guns were at work) was astounding, and enough to frighten those not under military discipline. The fugitives were not in such considerable numbers as the evening before, but they looked as frightened, and as the enemy were not far off, it was easy to apprehend that some detachments of theirs might have found their way to the rear of our army. The road, too, as well as the forest, swarmed with Belgian deserters, horse and foot, dressed much like Frenchmen, and in espying some of these fellows emerging from different points, it was not difficult to conjure them into the shape of enemies. This kept up the impetus of running away, and as this time the right and left of the road was encumbered by the debris of the former panic, the scene altogether was most disheartening. On each side of the Chaussee there was a ditch, in which lay the country waggons upset, with their loads of sacks of corn and biscuit burst out and soaked with wet. In other places remnants of baggage, among which there lay the carriage of the Duke of Richmond upset and set aside as everything else, to enable the ammunition waggons to come up from the rear.

  Not everybody on the road was panicking, however; Carey paid special tribute to one ‘detachment of artillery with ammunition’ which was ‘deliberately going up to the front against the stream of fugitives pursuing their way in the opposite direction’.

  Returning to Waterloo, he found some fellow commissaries there. ‘These were most anxious moments for us all, especially as the reports brought in from the front by the wounded were most discouraging. In this state of things no one dared to get off their horses, much less leave them for a moment, for in the confusion they might have been unceremoniously laid hold of by those who had none, and who were hurrying to the rear.’

  About 5 p.m. he rode back towards the village of Mont Saint-Jean seeking information. ‘Wounded officers and men continued to come down, and now and then a cannon ball was seen bounding along, but nothing could be heard or seen except clouds of smoke over the hills, and an incessant clatter of great guns and musketry.’

  Ten miles further back at Brussels, the politician Thomas Creevey was ‘most anxious’. About 3 p.m. he walked ‘two miles out of town towards the army, and a most curious, busy scene it was, with every kind of thing upon the road, the Sunday population of Brussels being all out in the suburbs out of the Porte Namur, sitting about tables drinking beer and smoking and making merry, as if races or other sports were going on, instead of the great pitched battle which was then fighting.’3

  Within the city, however, ‘on Sunday the terror and confusion reached its highest point. News arrived of the French having gained a complete victory, and it was universally believed.’4 Creevey’s stepdaughter Elizabeth Ord thought that this was ‘the most miserable day I ever spent in my life’; during the morning there was no news, but about four she ‘came running in’ to Creevey ‘to announce that the French were in the town’. Then reports of the charge of the Heavy Brigade circulated, followed, about an hour later, by prisoners and the captured eagles.5 George Scovell’s groom witnessed the arrival in Brussels of the same British dragoons that Tupper Carey had seen passing earlier near Waterloo with the eagles, ‘so completely plastered in mud that the red of their coats could only be seen in patches’.6 Some carried the bad news of their subsequent defeat by French cavalry.

  Creevey went out and met another politician who had been ‘looking at the battle, or very near it’, and he ‘thought everything looked as bad as possible’. It was not a rare opinion. On the steps of the Hotel Bellevue a Life Guard told him, ‘Why Sir, I don’t like the appearance of things at all. The French are getting on in such a manner that I don’t see what’s to stop them.’7

  59

  Napoleon Prepares a Second Assault

  Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, 3.15–4 p.m.

  At about three o’clock Napoleon had received the message sent by Grouchy from Walhain late that morning, after being misinformed that the Prussians were gathering north-east of Wavre. It told him little, except that at that time Grouchy had not been marching in his direction, but after the three Prussian corps that he thought to be near Wavre. If Grouchy was right in his supposition that this was where these corps had gone, then the Emperor might only have to deal with the one missing, fresh, corps of Bülow, which might not be all that strong and not yet be more than a vanguard. Grouchy should be in contact with any other Prussians. In the meanwhile, Napoleon hoped that a repeat of his earlier attack with cavalry in the centre followed by infantry on the right would succeed before any Prussians interfered.

  He now had General Lobau’s 6000 fresh infantry in d’Erlon’s original starting position east of La Belle Alliance, ready to march round the right flank of the artillery and attack the British left-centre. In his own later narrative, Napoleon claimed that he sent Lobau to delay the Prussians, but sources close to Lobau told a different story: Lobau marched to the French right in order to support d’Erlon’s attack in accordance with Napoleon’s original plan and he was advancing to renew the assault on the British line.1

  The second French assault now began. And, like the first, it commenced with attacks on the farms of Papelotte and La Haye, the hamlet of Smohain and the château farm of Fichermont, the strongpoints at the east of the allied line, defended by Nassauers. Skirmishers of the 3rd Nassau battalion were lining a hedge and occupying small buildings at the edge of the marshy valley south of Papelotte when a strong French skirmish line approached, followed by a support column belonging to Durutte’s division. The Nassauers pulled back to Papelotte, where four more companies helped to hold the farm with its strong buildings surrounded by hollow roads and thick hedges. The Nassauers, supported by the inexperienced skirmishers of the Verden Landwehr, drove back the French, but in pursuing they ran into an enemy battery firing case shot from 500 paces. The Germans fell back in their turn and the two forces continued to skirmish, the Hanoverians wasting bullets at too long a range.2

  Papelotte was the only strongpoint they were able to hold against this more determined attack. Further east, at Fichermont, the first battalion of the Orange-Nassau Regiment had been exchanging musketry for hours with French light troops but they were now forced into rapid retreat by intense fire from much larger formations. Durutte’s men also seized Smohain and La Haye.3

  Meanwhile, three miles to the west at the opposite extremity of the French line, Piré’s light cavalry had deployed in line, looking as if they were about to threaten Wellington’s right flank. The 15th Hussars rode westward to face up to ten squadrons of French cavalry on the other side of the valley and the 13th Light Dragoons lined up behind them in support. General Dörnberg was told to detach his 2nd German Light Dragoons to the extreme right and they formed up in front of Mercer’s guns, before being ordered to ride to Braine l’Alleud along a hollow way in which they were concealed from the enemy in order to take up a position from which to charge Piré’s left flank. While in the town they seized the opportunity to buy some bottles of wine.

  The French front line now ran more or less through Hougoumont and they established artillery batteries to the west of the château-ferme. Seeking to set the buildings on fire, they loaded their howitzers with incendiary ‘carcasses’ – canvas bags reinforced with iron hoops and cord, containing a mixture of turpentine, resin, tallow, sulphur, saltpetre and antimony, which burned for up to twelve minutes and were very difficult to extinguish.4 While the howitzers set the buildings ablaze, the French guns blasted down the side door into the southern courtyard and grenadiers forced their way in, fighting hand to hand with the Nassau grenadiers defending the compound. The French took seven Nassauers prisoner but were eventually forced out again by shots from the windows and a counter-attack by British Guards from the northern courtyard. Private Matthew Clay was alarmed when the château caught
fire, but his officer ‘placed himself at the entrance of the room and would not allow anyone to leave his post until our positions became hopeless and too perilous to remain’. Eventually they ran for it; several were injured in leaving the burning building. Clay claimed to have carried a wounded French drummer boy into one of the outhouses, where ‘the wounded of both armies were arranged side by side’ since they had ‘no means of carrying them to a place of greater safety’.

  Clay took post under the archway of the southern gates, until another hit from a round shot burst them open and ‘wood which was meant for kindling and which was lying inside the farm was quickly scattered in all directions’. This time they stopped the French assault outside the gate, Clay being sent upstairs to defend a breach in the wall of the gardener’s house above the gateway, where ‘the shattered fragments of the wall were mixed up with the bodies of our dead countrymen who were cut down whilst defending their post’. He found himself under his own company captain and opposite his sergeant.5

  Private Johann Peter Leonhard from Nassau, one of those defending the garden, was petrified by the French artillery:

  The hornbeam trees of the garden alley, underneath which we stood, were razed by the immense cannonade as if chopped down, and so were the beautiful tall trees along the outside of the farm. Walls were collapsing … The skies seemed to have been changed into an ocean of fire; all of the farm’s buildings were aflame. The soil beneath my feet began to shake and tremble.6

  From his position on the rising ground above, next to Major-General Maitland’s brigade of Guards, Wellington was micro-managing the defence. He sent Macdonell, still in command of the farm’s British defenders, a pencil note:

  I see that the fire has communicated from the haystack to the roof of the Chateau. You must, however, still keep your men in those parts to which the fire does not reach. Take care that no men are lost by the falling in of the roof or floors. After they will have fallen in occupy the ruined walls inside of the garden, particularly if it should be possible for the enemy to pass through the embers in the inside of the house.7

  Within Hougoumont, meanwhile, the Guards’ stock of ammunition was getting low. Uxbridge’s aide Horace Seymour claimed that some officers shouted to him from the farm ‘to use my best endeavours to send them musket ammunition’. Soon afterwards, Seymour found ‘a private of the Waggon Train in charge of a tumbril on the crest of the position. I merely pointed out to him where he was wanted, when he gallantly started his horses and drove straight down to the farm, to the gate of which I saw him arrive. He must have lost his horses, as there was a severe fire kept on him.’8

  The Scots Guards defending the orchard were under sustained pressure and running short of officers. One lieutenant had been ‘shot through the miniature of the lady he was to have married’, a parting gift from his Belgian sweetheart on 15 June. An ensign was shot through the head above the right temple and, on recovering consciousness, found himself

  in the arms of kind Colonel West (commanding No. 8 Company), who was bandaging my head with a pocket handkerchief. He said that he would order a couple of men to take me off the field, but this I objected to, fancying that I could stand my ground somewhat longer, but this I unfortunately could not, having immediately fainted from loss of blood. Poor Sir David Baird (when I fell) took up my sword to try and save it for me, and sheathed his own; but he had not had it in long when a musket ball struck him immediately above the chin and lodged in his throat.

  Command of the company passed to a sergeant. The defenders were driven back across the orchard to the hollow road, but the crossfire from the Coldstream Guards behind the garden wall to their left was punishing for the French and they were pinned down among the trees.9

  A new assault on La Haye Sainte then began. Pierre Aulard’s brigade formed columns to attack the farm.10 Strong skirmishing lines from d’Erlon’s corps moved up again to the hedge lining the Ohain road, although they were eventually driven from their position by a second charge by Kempt’s men. Soldiers from Quiot’s division skirmished ahead of the troops assaulting the farm and the artillery discouraged reinforcements from reaching the hard-pressed German garrison.

  Bäring had already been reinforced by two companies from the 1st Light battalion. He had placed them in the garden, north of the farm, with the rest of his men in the farm buildings, leaving the orchard to the south unoccupied. Other Hanoverian riflemen joined the British rifles around the sandpit, ‘where for quite some time they forcefully resisted the attacking columns’.11 When two French columns attacked the farm from either side, the dense formations presented an easy target for the riflemen and Bäring brought as much fire to bear on them as he could. Men passed loaded rifles to his best shots, although without firing platforms or loopholes – only the crude holes in the brickwork that the men themselves had bashed – few could fire. They targeted the officers and General Aulard was shot and killed. Of his two colonels, Jean-Aimable Trupel of the 19th received his sixth wound fighting for France when he was shot in the chest, while Baron Rignon of the 51st, the son of an alpine peasant who in 1800 had helped guide Bonaparte’s army over his mountains to Italy, and had fought in the Old Guard in all the campaigns of the Grande Armée, was finally killed leading his regiment against La Haye Sainte.

  Eventually the Frenchmen reached the buildings, whereupon they threw themselves against the walls and tried to pull the rifles out of the hands of the defenders through the holes in the brickwork. Doors and gates were heaped with bodies: at the open barn door ‘seventeen Frenchmen already lay dead, and their bodies served as a protection to those who pressed after them to the same spot.’ Bäring was proud of his men: ‘These are the moments when we learn how to feel what one soldier is to another – what the word “comrade” really means – feelings which must penetrate the coarsest mind, but which he only can fully understand, who has been witness to such moments!’ When finally the French gave up and fell back, they were ‘accompanied by our shouts, and derision’.12

  It was around this time that the Emperor’s topographical expert, General Simon Bernard, returned from the Bois de Paris on the extreme eastern flank, having accomplished his mission to identify the troops that had been seen approaching from the east. Having crept through the trees close enough to the Lasne to identify through his telescope the crosses on the caps of a line of Prussian skirmishers coming towards him, he rode back to the line of Colonel Marbot’s French tirailleurs, who had pointed him towards the Prussians, and warned them of what they had to expect. Then he cantered back to Napoleon, who was on his mound near the farm of Rossomme pacing up and down with his hands behind his back.

  The Emperor asked in a low voice, ‘What tidings, general?’

  ‘Bad ones, Sire.’

  ‘That they are Prussians?’

  ‘Yes, Sire, I recognised them.’

  ‘I thought so. Good, messieurs,’ he said while turning towards his suite, ‘It goes well, there is Grouchy who arrives.’

  Nevertheless, he called another aide-de-camp to whom he told the truth, and who he despatched to Comte de Lobau with the order to change front with his army corps towards the right wing so as to oppose the enemy troops who were about to arrive.13

  This report by General Bernard is the key to Napoleon’s next enforced change of plan. If more Prussians were to appear behind these he would need to break the British line quickly. Obliged to redeploy Lobau’s infantry in order to stall the Prussian advance from the Bois de Paris, he no longer had fresh troops to carry the left centre. Instead he ordered Bernard to go and reconnoitre the cutting through which the cobbled road to Brussels passed above La Haye Sainte and to tell him if the cavalry could pass through it with the front of half a squadron. He hoped now to carry the centre through a massed attack by cuirassiers.

  To take shelter from the hail of shot thrown by the artillery barrage, the British infantry had retreated to the relative protection of the other side of the ridge, while many of the allied guns had recoiled
down the hill and no longer stood on the crest. Ney’s next move therefore was to send one brigade of cuirassiers to repeat the attack above La Haye Sainte that had preceded d’Erlon’s assault, with the goal of capturing the line of guns on the ridge and breaking any troops that might prove to be demoralised The charge, however, was to develop into something on an altogether grander scale.

  60

  Milhaud’s Charge

  Mont Saint-Jean, 4–5 p.m.

  Responsibility for the mass attack of French cavalry at Mont Saint-Jean is a matter of dispute. According to the official Bulletin of the French Army published by the Moniteur on 21 June, the cavalry saw the British infantry retreat to the shelter of the far slope and attacked spontaneously, without orders, one division supporting another. Although ‘To lie like a Bulletin’ had become proverbial in France, some later writers have supported this assertion.1

  It has, however, been more common to attribute the decision to launch mass cavalry attacks to Marshal Ney, mistakenly encouraged by the sight of fugitives, prisoners and wounded men leaving the field. But it seems unlikely that Ney could have seen what was happening on the other side of the hill, although he might have misread the withdrawal of British infantry pulling back to shelter behind the crest of the ridge from the artillery as a retreat. This was what Napoleon’s aide Charles de Flahaut believed: ‘Seeing the enemy’s position apparently denuded, Ney imagined that the Duke of Wellington had commenced a retirement; for he forgot that the English never man the heights, but always use them as a curtain behind which to conceal their troops.’