by Tim Clayton
The commander of a squadron of Kellermann’s 7th Dragoons described the conundrum from the French point of view:
The squares resolutely awaited the cavalry and held their fire until point blank range. The powerful impact of infantry fire on morale, being greater than its physical effect on cavalry, was never better illustrated. The steadiness of the English infantry was more remarkable still by the absence of the volley that we awaited and to our great surprise we did not receive. This disconcerted our troops. Realising that they would be exposed to a fire that would be much more murderous from being at point blank range, fright seized them, and probably to escape such a fire, the first squadron wheeled to the right and caused a similar movement by all the following squadrons. The charge failed …13
Even the fire-eating Colonel Michel Ordener, in his frustration, paid tribute to the resilience of the enemy infantry: ‘We were almost masters of the plateau. But the English seemed to be rooted to the soil; although they were three quarters annihilated, you had to keep killing them until the last soldier fell.’14 The British infantry were less troubled by the cavalry than by the artillery that played on them when the cavalry withdrew: ‘Though we constantly thrashed our steel-clad opponents,’ wrote Edward Macready of the 30th Foot, ‘we found more troublesome customers in the round shot and grape which all this time played on us with terrible effect, and fully avenged the Cuirassiers. Often as the volleys created openings in our square would the cavalry dash on, but they were uniformly unsuccessful.’15 The infantry refused to present gaps to tempt the cavalry to charge and the cavalry refused to charge the unbroken infantry. On the other hand, the infantry caused very few casualties when the cavalry came close enough to make them fire, ‘to the surprise of those officers present who allowed themselves to see with their own eyes’, as one officer commented. ‘Indeed, the ill-directed charges, of which we have been speaking, could not have continued so long and been so frequently renewed, had not the destroying power of the infantry been exceedingly small.’ An engineer officer could not believe ‘how few fell: only one officer and two men, though no doubt many were wounded. Many squares fired at the distance of thirty yards, with no better effect.’16
Gradually, the charges petered out into stalemate. Kellermann was at a loss, desperate for relief:
It was not possible to force the cavalry, excellent as it was, into new charges: it found itself in the cruellest of positions, without infantry or artillery support.
The enemy squares reserved their fire, but were covered by a cloud of skirmishers whose each shot counted. It was in this awful position that our cavalry remained several hours.17
In some cases the allied skirmishers were thin on the ground or nonexistent and it was French mounted skirmishers who rode close to the allied squares and fired into them, hoping to provoke a reaction. But both sides accepted the casualties and obstinately remained where they were. Having formed square, the men of Picton and Lambert’s divisions to the east of the Charleroi highway were rarely threatened by the cavalry, though Robertson recalled one charge on the Gordons by lancers, but they suffered terribly from uninterrupted artillery fire that mowed them down where they stood.
Old soldiers realised that now ‘the battle was not a trial of skill or soldiership but a trial of who should hold out longest’, while even young Edward Macready understood that ‘it was now to be seen which side had most bottom, and would stand killing longest.’ In the centre of the position, Lieutenant Wheatley stood within the little square of the 5th German infantry, took a pinch of snuff, and ‘thought of the old ballad’ – actually Robert Southey’s anti-war poem ‘The Battle of Blenheim’ – that he had heard when young. Although misquoting the detail, he remembered the spirit of ‘the aged Nurse who describes the glorious battles of Marlborough to the child’ who asked:
‘Ten thousand slain you say and more,
What did they kill each other for?’
‘Indeed I cannot tell’, said she,
‘But ’twas a famous victory’.18
63
The Fall of La Haye Sainte
Brussels road, 5–5.45 p.m.
At La Haye Sainte, Major Georg Bäring’s men were running out of ammunition. He sent first one, then another officer back; they ‘requested ammunition, which was promised’, but instead he was sent the skirmishers of Ompteda’s 5th line battalion. He had wanted ammunition, not more men. After half an hour more of uninterrupted fighting, Bäring sent off a third officer who applied first to the Somerset Regiment and then to the Nassauers. Major von Nauendorf sent down two hundred light infantry from the 1st Nassau, but still without more ammunition.
The source of the problem was the failure to stockpile ammunition in the farm in the morning, but there should nevertheless have been ammunition nearby – both the nearest units, the 1st German light and the neighbouring 95th, were armed, like Bäring’s men, with British Baker rifles – but it is possible that local supplies had been destroyed by French artillery.1
Young Heinrich von Gagern of the inexperienced 1st Nassau Regiment had been standing under fire for the last few hours. The first ball to hit his battalion killed the man in front of him and either the ball or a piece of the man’s smashed musket knocked him sideways several files. Later, when a canister ball smashed the fitting that attached his scabbard to his belt, he stuck his sword in the ground by his side. Then a shell exploded close by, killing three men. It broke his sword, tore apart his trousers and burned his foot, but although the foot hurt so much that he had to hop on one leg, it didn’t seem to be seriously damaged. He picked up a dead man’s musket as a weapon and rejoined the square, which had shifted forward forty paces in an attempt to avoid more shells.
Gagern’s light company was one of the two chosen to go to La Haye Sainte, but Major von Nauendorf refused to let him join his comrades, pointing out to him that he was wounded. Nauendorf was a friend of Gagern’s parents and his real reason, no doubt, was that he did not think the young second lieutenant would come back from La Haye Sainte alive. In the event, the detachment commander was wounded by a cannonball before he reached the farm and killed by a second as his men tried to evacuate him; within half an hour the other company commander was also wounded.2
More than ever, the French needed La Haye Sainte, the key to the centre of the battlefield. Marshal Ney now ordered Maréchal-de-camp Nicolas Schmitz to take the farm with his brigade, and Schmitz marched the 17th Line to the west of the farm to cover a series of assaults by the 13th light. It was the first time specialist light troops had been given the job.
Private Friedrich Lindau stood with others at the loopholes by the gate, from where they shot at the French wherever they were most tightly packed. The Frenchmen pressed against the walls, poking their guns through the loopholes from outside and firing in. Men wounded while they fired over the wall were falling off the piggery above Lindau’s head.
Lindau himself had his eye on a French officer who was positioning troops. Eventually he got him lined up, fired, and saw the French officer’s horse leap, rear up and crash down with its rider. A little later the riflemen made a sortie and Lindau found himself close to the officer he had shot:
I hurried towards him and grabbed his golden watch chain. But I hardly had it in my hand when he reached for his sabre, shouting abuse at me. I then hit his head with the butt of the rifle that made him fall back and stretch out and I then noticed a golden ring on his finger. But I first cut a small portmanteau off his horse, and was about to pull off the officer’s ring when my comrades shouted: ‘Better get going; the cavalry is upon us!’ I saw some thirty horsemen charge towards us, and with my booty I ran as fast as I could to rejoin my comrades who, with a volley, forced the enemy to retire.3
There was a new attack and Lindau was ordered to stay at the gate. He found that he was running out of cartridges, and was searching the pouch of a dead comrade when he was shot through the back of the head. Lieutenant Graeme, who was standing above him on the piggery, told
him to go to the rear but Lindau refused, saying, ‘No, as long as I can stand upright I will stay at my post.’ He took off his neckerchief, wetted it with rum and asked a comrade to pour rum on his wound and tie the neckerchief round his head. Graeme was leaning over the wall hacking at the French with his sword, and Lindau warned him that he too would be shot. ‘Let the dogs shoot!’ came the reply. There was shouting from the barn so Lindau ran across the cobbled yard to help. While he was firing at the open end, choking smoke spread from under the beams: failing to break in, the French had set the barn on fire. Fortunately the young Nassau reinforcements were carrying large kettles for cooking; a fire party filled kettles from the pond and succeeded in putting the fire out, though several were shot in the process. While they were concentrating on the barn, the French gained domination of the loopholes and fired at them from behind. There was a struggle during which a Frenchman grabbed Lindau’s rifle before a comrade shot him. Another grabbed at it and was stabbed in the face by the man on Lindau’s right.
As Lindau tugged his rifle free, shots came through the loophole and rattled against the wall behind. One ball hit his shoulder roll, another smashed his rifle. He went to the pond, where he had seen a sergeant who had a good rifle shot down. The sergeant was dying, but when Lindau reached for his weapon the sergeant made a face at him, so Lindau took a different gun. But he was spending more and more time searching for cartridges and less and less time firing. Bäring told him to go and get his wound treated, but again Lindau refused.
Bäring was feeling the weight of responsibility – ‘never greater than when an officer is thus left to himself, and suddenly obliged to make a decision upon which perhaps, his own as well as the life and honour of those under him – nay even more important results – may depend. In battles, as is well known, trifles, apparently of little importance, have often incalculable influence.’ With two enemy columns approaching again, he knew that this time the defenders’ chances were slim:
On my exhortations to courage and economy of the ammunition, I received one unanimous reply: ‘No man will desert you, we will fight and die with you!’ No pen, not even that of one who has experienced such moments, can describe the feeling which this excited in me; nothing can be compared with it! Never had I felt myself so elevated; but never also placed in so painful a position, where honour contended with a feeling for the safety of the men who had given me such an unbounded proof of their confidence.
The French attacked again and set the barn on fire a second time. Again men carried pond water in kettles and put the fire out. Bäring sent back a message ‘with the positive statement that I must and would leave the place if no ammunition was sent me’. The fire from the defenders gradually diminished, and they became increasingly uneasy as they called for ammunition. The officers began to tell Bäring that it was impossible to defend the post under the circumstances.
Sensing the defence was growing weak, the French began looking for ways to smash their way in. Nicolas Schmitz demanded artillery, but in the meantime another huge engineer officer, who had attached himself to the company of sappers leading the assault on the farm, broke through a door. He had to pass on his axe after he was shot through the wrist, but continued to direct the attack until he was shot through the shoulder.4 Since the few Frenchmen who could come through this breach at a time were instantly bayoneted, others hesitated to follow, but while attention was focused on the doors Frenchmen swarmed onto the roof and walls, from where they could shoot down on the defenders. Cannon fire eventually smashed the main entrance and Frenchmen pressed in through the open barn.
Deciding he must save his men, Bäring gave the order to retreat through the house into the garden. Those who made it down the narrow passage to the garden with their commander gathered outside the farm. Bäring quickly decided that there was no point attempting to defend the enclosures and sent off the men, running singly, to their own lines.
Hearing shouts of ‘Defend yourselves! Defend yourselves! They are coming in everywhere!’ Lindau saw that the riflemen had abandoned the piggery roof and Frenchmen were clambering over the wall. ‘One of them jumped down off the scaffold. I drove my sword bayonet into his chest. He fell down on me and I flung him to the side; but my sword bayonet had been bent and I had to throw it away.’ Lieutenant Graeme and Ensign Frank were fighting hand to hand to hold off the French at the entrance to the passage through the house, trying to help as many riflemen as possible to escape. Lindau glimpsed a Frenchman trying to shoot Graeme, but Frank stabbed him and punched another in the face. Lindau tried to reach them but was surrounded as he laid about him with his rifle butt. The French were shouting ‘Couillons Hanovriens and Couillons anglais!’ Lindau was grabbed and dragged into the barn by several men and forced to surrender, before he and his companions were driven out onto the road and pillaged. Lindau lost two silver watches, a gold one and his bag of gold coins, before bandaged cuirassiers escorted them to the rear.
Elsewhere in the farm, Ensign Frank and Lieutenant Graeme were trying to escape. Frank shouted to Graeme, ‘Take care!’ A Frenchman standing five yards away levelled his musket at Graeme, but before he could pull the trigger Frank stabbed him in the mouth, his sword exiting through the man’s neck. Frank pulled his sword out, flailed wildly and ran into the house. He was hit twice, but ran into a room and hid under a bed. Two men who followed him were caught by the French who, shouting ‘No pardon for you bastard greens!’ shot them dead. Frank was lucky, remaining undiscovered under the bed until the farm was recaptured, but Graeme was trapped. An officer grabbed him, saying ‘C’est ce coquin.’ Two men dashed to bayonet him, but Graeme turned the muskets aside with his sword and, seeing that the three looked jittery, made a dash for it through the lobby and out into the garden. They fired after him but missed, and Graeme ran back up the slope to the hollow way. Major Bäring sent the surviving Nassauers back to their unit, while the remnant of men from his own brigade joined a group of riflemen who were sniping from the shelter of the hollow road above the farm.5
The Duke and his party had ridden east to the elm tree over the crossroads, the furthest east they ever went. They watched from the ridge above until the fall of La Haye Sainte became inevitable and then urged their horses through the gate and down the steep slope to the hollow way and up the other side. George Cathcart, the quartermaster-general of the cavalry, waiting his turn, stayed to watch longer. His horse was shot dead and he followed them on foot,6 the fighting rising in intensity as Frenchmen from Schmitz’s brigade pressed forward.
The loss of La Haye Sainte was the source of a genuine crisis for Wellington’s army. With the farm in their hands, the French could push infantry and artillery forward to support their cavalry. According to a British officer,
The French immediately set about making the most of their conquest. Vast swarms collecting behind, and under the protection of the buildings rushed en tirailleur against the front of the third and fifth divisions. No collected onset was made, but whole clouds of these skirmishers poured a most destructive fire on the constantly diminishing line of the allies. It was in following up success of this kind, and in the manner here described, that the real strength of the French Imperial and Republican armies consisted during the war. In these tirailleur onsets and advances from post to post, the natural gallantry and intelligence of the soldiers, the skill of the inferior commanders, as well as the spirit of enterprize which distinguished the whole, were always eminently conspicuous.7
The riflemen lining the hollow way now found themselves pinned down in a fierce firefight with these French tirailleurs. Two of the surviving captains were wounded and Lieutenant Graeme, swinging his cap in the air to cheer on the men, had his right hand shot. Bäring was riding a dragoon horse he had found, in front of whose saddle were large pistol holsters and a cloak, and four balls lodged in the holsters and another in the saddle. Bäring dismounted to pick up his hat, which had been knocked off by a sixth ball.
Slightly further west, French
skirmishers reached the hedges above the hollow way and from this cover they poured fire into the remaining squares of Hanoverians. Ordered by the Prince of Orange to advance and clear the hedge, Christian von Ompteda found that the 200 or so remaining men of the 5th Line, his own old regiment, were all that remained to undertake the task. Having lost the 8th and almost the 5th in similar attacks earlier in the day, he realised at once that the order was suicidal, and protested that there was cavalry in the valley behind the hedge and he would need support to have any chance of getting back. The Prince had galloped off, but his aide, Lord John Somerset, returned to repeat the order. Knowing he was sending the men that he had commanded for years to their death, Ompteda bravely led the battalion on. ‘Try and save my two nephews,’ he said to Lieutenant-Colonel von Linsingen, and then he gave the order to form line and walk forward.
‘When within sixty yards he cried “Charge”,’ wrote Edmund Wheatley, and ‘we ran forward huzzaing.’ The trumpet sounded and as they reached the hollow way at a jog, the French tirailleurs fled back towards the hedges of La Haye Sainte to reform. Wheatley remembered what happened next: