Waterloo

by Tim Clayton

  While the dragoons pursued, the Scots discovered an unexpected bonus in their accidental choice of position: ‘A French General lay dead in the square; he had a number of ornaments upon his breast. Our men fell to plucking them off, pushing each other as they passed, and snatching at them.’ The 13th Light Dragoons chased the French dragoons down the hill and then returned to their lines.13

  For the moment the British right was secure, but the last, strong British reserve was now in the front line. The centre of the position was under very great strain, with the best regiments destroyed and the line held by young and inexperienced troops from Hanover and Nassau. Further east there was less pressure, but the best units had suffered very heavy casualties. Things were looking grim, as an engineer officer explained:

  Our loss had been severe, perhaps not less than 10,000 killed and wounded. Our ranks were further thinned by the numbers of men who carried off the wounded, part of whom never returned to the field; the number of Belgian and Hanoverian troops, many of whom were young levies, that crowded to the rear, was very considerable, besides the number of our own dismounted dragoons, together with a proportion of our infantry, some of whom, as will always be found in the best armies, were glad to escape from the field. These thronged the road leading to Brussels in a manner that none but an eye-witness could have believed, so that, perhaps, the actual force under the Duke of Wellington at this time (half past six), did not amount to more than 34,000 men.

  Baron Müffling estimated only 30,000 remaining combatants. And still, as far as the beleaguered British infantry could see, there was no sign of Prussian help.14

  65

  The Prussian Advance

  The eastern flank, 5.30–6.30 p.m.

  In fact, Prussian reinforcements were finally arriving. But they were making their presence felt a mile south of the British left wing and most of Wellington’s men could not tell that they were there. Indeed, the first Prussian assault from the Bois de Paris, made by the first two of General von Bülow’s brigades, had stalled against a fierce counter-attack by the two divisions commanded by Georges Mouton, comte de Lobau. For an hour Lobau’s men held off the Prussians with ease, driving them back, although their presence had crucially served to prevent the attack which Lobau was to have made against Wellington’s left centre – an attack that would have been difficult to resist.

  Then, around half past five, the 13th Brigade marched onto the battlefield, taking the ground between the two that Blücher had first led out of the Bois de Paris, Michael von Losthin’s brigade to the north and Johann von Hiller’s to the south. This enabled the cavalry nominally commanded by the eighteen-year-old Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, second son of the King, which had been holding this central area, to ride to the left flank, and thus increase the threat to Lobau’s line of retreat. Blücher now had a clear numerical advantage and could begin to advance. He could contain Lobau’s men with Losthin’s brigade while driving for their objective, Plancenoit, the large village three-quarters of a mile to the east of Napoleon’s tactical headquarters at the farm of Rossomme; Hiller’s brigade, always edging southward to his left, could meanwhile manoeuvre round Lobau’s open right flank. Towards six o’clock Gustav von Ryssel’s 14th Brigade appeared and marched to support Hiller in his thrust towards Plancenoit.1 By six, Blücher had 29,000 men and 64 guns deployed against Lobau’s 9000 on Napoleon’s right wing.

  At this moment he received a message from General Thielmann, the commander of the Prussian rearguard at Wavre, saying that he would not be able to hold the bridges over the Dyle without reinforcements. Having received Napoleon’s letter of 10 a.m., instructing him to attack the Prussians at Wavre, Grouchy had done so energetically. Arriving in person, he had ordered Exelmans downstream to Basse Wavre and General Lefol upstream to attack the mill at Bierges with his division. Meanwhile, Vandamme launched more assaults on the bridges in the town with the 2nd Swiss Regiment repeatedly attacking the stone Pont du Christ, so named after the statue of Christ at its centre, but whenever troops stormed across the bridges the Prussians drove them back.

  Thielmann felt that he could not hold out long against these fierce attacks since more French troops were marching in. But Blücher sent back an uncompromising order to contest every step of his retreat: there could be no reinforcements. Everything had to be committed against Napoleon at Mont Saint-Jean and Plancenoit. It did not matter if Thielmann was crushed at Wavre so long as Blücher was victorious.2

  At about this time, the vanguard of Hans von Ziethen’s corps – comprising the reserve cavalry, two batteries of guns and the dynamic Karl von Steinmetz’s infantry brigade – reached Ohain, the village on the extreme eastern flank, a mile and a half north-east of Smohain. Although the rest of the corps was well behind, strung out and still slithering along the muddy tracks, the first troops were now on their way to reinforce Wellington. Ziethen’s chief of staff, Ludwig von Reiche, had ridden ahead of the column and when he emerged from the woods at about half past five he found the battle in full swing. He rode forward to make contact with the Nassauers and they directed him to General Müffling, who had long been stationed on that flank, waiting anxiously for the Prussians to appear. Müffling told Reiche that the Duke was at his last gasp and that if the Prussians didn’t soon make their presence felt on his left flank, Wellington would be forced to retreat. He had already been forced to take troops from the left wing in order to shore up the centre and it was urgently essential that Ziethen should reinforce that wing.

  Reiche rode back with these instructions. Deciding not to waste time looking for Ziethen, he gave directions to the advance guard and then hurried back to the battlefield. Already, things were looking much worse and the Nassauers on the extreme left were retreating. He implored them to hold on, assuring them that Prussian help would arrive at any minute. Riding back to find Ziethen, he instead met one of Blücher’s staff, who shouted that Ziethen’s corps must turn left and push on immediately south-west to Blücher, because things were beginning to go badly in that sector. Reiche explained Wellington’s need for help, but the staff officer would not listen and told Reiche that he would hold him responsible for the consequences if Blücher’s order was not carried out. ‘Never in my life have I found myself in such a difficult situation. On the one hand Blücher’s order … and the thought that our troops were perhaps in danger there and could not hold out any longer. On the other hand the certainty that Wellington was counting on our arrival.’

  At that moment the advance guard arrived, but without Ziethen, and demanded instructions on where to go next. Despairing, Reiche made up his mind to seek death on the battlefield if his decision caused a mishap, but he was still in torment over what to do. General Steinmetz rode up, furious that his troops had halted, ‘stormed at me in his usual violent manner, and insisted upon an advance’, refusing to listen as Reiche sought to explain the problem. Steinmetz led the vanguard on beyond the junction and Reiche had to stop him and make him go back, pleading that he ought to wait until the column had closed up before advancing.

  Fortunately, at this moment General Ziethen finally appeared. Reiche hurried over and made his report, whereupon Ziethen issued orders for the march to continue immediately in the direction of the English army, whose left wing was nearly a mile away.3

  Napoleon watched the arrival of Bülow’s Prussians with increasing resignation: this was further proof that luck had not been running for him. However, there was still a chance that things could be turned around: Grouchy should be following right behind the Prussians, while Wellington’s line was under severe pressure and beginning to give ground. Napoleon could probably still have disengaged to fight again another day, but either he didn’t think that there was any political future in that course or he, like many of his officers, still believed they were in the ascendant. The question for the Emperor was how to deploy his reserves.

  The infantry of the Old Guard was drawn up in squares either side of the main road north of Napoleon’s tactical h
eadquarters at the farm of Rossomme, a mile south of La Haye Sainte along the chaussée and just over half a mile west of the village of Plancenoit, the largest settlement in the area. The farms and cottages of Plancenoit were loosely spaced around a central church, set in a churchyard surrounded by a stone wall, in an open grassy space on a commanding rise above the little river Lasne. The river ran to the south through a grassy valley between fairly steep and wooded banks. Other houses lined the lanes running to the south and west of the churchyard and along a valley through which a stream ran down to the river. To the north and north-east Plancenoit commanded the open, undulating fields, but the ground was rougher and higher towards the chaussée where the Old Guard waited.

  Only the junior regiments, furthest forward on the crest of the ridge, had a view of the battlefield and those further back were impatient to know what was happening. Hippolyte de Mauduit and some comrades from the 1st Grenadiers got permission to go to see friends in the 2nd Regiment further forward and, once there, climbed trees in an orchard to get a view. From there they watched the cavalry charges and the movements of the tirailleurs. Once a cannonball felled an apple tree and eight grenadiers tumbled to the ground. Trees to their right, however, masked the Prussian advance from view and it was only after they had returned to their square that some batteries they had assumed to be French opened up on them from the far side of Plancenoit. Cuirassiers and chasseurs-à-cheval formed up on the right of the 2nd Chasseurs.

  For an hour the squares of the Old Guard served as a target for Prussian guns, while shots also fell among Napoleon’s staff as the Emperor paced up and down, taking frequent pinches of snuff: ‘many persons were killed around him; one of the staff ventured to expostulate with him on the imprudence of remaining in so perilous a position; he smiled and said, “The balls that will injure me, are not made yet.”’ Jean Pelet, commander of the 2nd Chasseurs, walked around their square, laughing and joking with his soldiers and getting them to sing patriotic songs, while Napoleon walked over and stood by the second battalion.4 Mauduit’s battalion of the 1st Grenadiers took some fifty casualties without reply, for their guns had been loaned to Lobau. Eventually a battery of 12-pounders deployed on the slope above them and the incoming fire slackened noticeably.5

  The French artillery did serious damage to the approaching Prussian columns and Ryssel’s 14th Brigade soon came under fire. Wilhelm von Rahden was a twenty-year-old veteran of the war of liberation. The stepson of a Silesian Prussian officer, he had joined the regiment at fifteen, and had fought at Lutzen, Bautzen, Kulm, Dresden and Leipzig. A shell that burst in the midst of his company of the 11th Silesians wounded twenty-one men and tore off the arm of his captain, leaving Lieutenant von Schätzel in charge of the company. They were walking past the artillery when Rahden’s brother Fritz recognised the regiment by their yellow collars and cuffs and came over to share a bottle of wine with him. They parted with ‘Good luck, and good hunting!’ and ‘God protect you, brother William,’ and Fritz galloped off. Meanwhile the Silesians got into attack formation, sending skirmishers forward.

  Lobau had already decided that he had to fall back. It had become clear that the Prussians were aiming to capture Plancenoit, which threatened to leave him surrounded and unable to retreat. His line had gradually wheeled as his southern, right flank fell back, but so many Prussians were slipping around this flank that the cavalry supporting him could no longer hold them off. So, at about six o’clock, he formed his brigades into four large squares and withdrew, sending one square off in advance to occupy Plancenoit, from where they could cover the retreat of the others. Lobau held the village strongly with five battalions. Two more took position in the orchards on its northern fringe, and his remaining eight battalions were strung out thinly, defending the line of the lane that led north from Plancenoit to Smohain and provided good cover where it had high banks.6

  When Lobau withdrew, the Prussians captured Fichermont and pressed forward, although Durutte’s tirailleurs, with whom they skirmished fiercely, were difficult to shift from strong positions in the cottages of Smohain and the strongly built farm of La Haye, and from the orchards, hedges and ditches to the south of Papelotte.7 The vast majority of Wellington’s troops, however, were still quite unaware that the Prussians were making such progress. This new front line was still well over a mile from Wellington’s own position and quite invisible to him, while any noise made by advancing Prussian guns came from behind the French gun line and so was easily confused with the noise that the French guns were making.

  It must have been not long after six that Napoleon received news of Lobau’s decision to retreat. His equerry recalled that

  an Aide-de-Camp came from the right wing to tell him they were repulsed and that the artillery was insufficient. Napoleon immediately called General Drouot in order to direct him to hasten to reinforce this army corps which was suffering so heavily, but one saw on Napoleon’s face a look of disquietude instead of the joy which it had shown on the great day of Fleurus.8

  Drouot sent the eight battalions of the Young Guard, about 3800 strong, which were furthest east, nearest Plancenoit, to reinforce Lobau’s troops in and around the village. Despite determined French opposition, the Prussian pressure was drawing in more and more of the reserves on whom Napoleon had counted in order to crush Wellington’s army.

  To Wellington’s troops their presence remained imperceptible. Blinded by smoke and suffering constantly from artillery, their resistance depended on grit, determination, discipline and courage. Slowly but surely, however, their will to win and belief in victory were seeping away.

  66

  Slowly but Surely

  Wellington’s centre, 6.45–8 p.m.

  After the fall of La Haye Sainte and the advance of French horse artillery onto the crest of the ridge above the farm, what Ney needed was fresh infantry in order to hold the territory that had been gained and to capture the village of Mont Saint-Jean. New battalions could exploit the gaps that were being punched into the allied centre and breathe new life into d’Erlon’s tired men. He had been expecting Lobau’s divisions – but no infantry support had arrived, so he sent his principal aide Pierre Heymès to the Emperor to request reinforcements. At that moment, however, Napoleon was preoccupied with the threat to Plancenoit; the only fresh troops he had were the Guard and he was unwilling to release them given the extent of the threat to his right. ‘Des troupes!’ he exclaimed. ‘Where do you want me to take them from? Would you like me to make some?’1

  Left to his own resources, Ney recalled that the divisions of Foy and Bachelu, around 8000 strong, were still waiting, unused, behind Hougoumont wood. They were in the wrong area: what Ney needed was an attack launched with fresh men from La Haye Sainte. But he had no better option.

  So General Foy began by clearing the orchard once again. He pinned down the German Legionaries with a frontal attack from tirailleurs and then sent more round their flanks, forcing most to the ditch and a few into the garden. Outflanked and attacked in front, the Light Brigade and the German battalions fell back, taking heavy casualties as they climbed back up the slope. The ensign carrying the colour of the 52nd was shot through the heart by grapeshot and killed along with the colour sergeants, but their flag remained on the ground all night without anybody noticing it.

  Once Foy’s left flank was secure, the infantry moved forward in echelon, with Bachelu’s two divisions leading the way. These four brigades had taken significant casualties at Quatre Bras and were short of officers. Foy advanced with his left flank secured by the Hougoumont hedge and his front covered by a battalion in skirmish order. As they rode up the hill, he clapped his chief of staff Jean-Baptiste Lemonnier-Delafosse on the shoulder, predicting cheerily, ‘Tomorrow you’ll be at Brussels and made colonel by the Emperor!’

  Uxbridge ordered the 15th Hussars to charge the advancing squares of French infantry, and the French sharpshooters as usual aimed at the officers. With the hussars’ colonel having already lost his leg t
o a cannonball that had also killed both his horse and his brigadier’s, their intelligent major, who had commanded a squadron all through the Peninsular War, was experienced enough to recognise the danger of the enterprise before he spurred his horse forward. Nevertheless, he was hit by five musket balls, one of which was instantly fatal. A lieutenant was shot through the stomach and liver and died next day, and a captain had his left arm shattered between the elbow and the shoulder, after which the hussars veered away and reformed behind the infantry.

  In this attack one squadron of the 13th Light Dragoons lost all its officers, and the colonel of the 7th Hussars had a horse shot under him. Meanwhile the British cavalry charges had taken some impetus out of the French attack and bought time for the artillery and infantry to prepare, but no more.2

  Once over the crest of the ridge and close to the allied line, the French columns began receiving canister from the batteries of Ramsay, Bolton and Mercer; the cones of musket balls spreading so thick that Foy called it ‘a hail of death’. General Bachelu was hit and unhorsed and a brigadier was wounded; Bachelu’s other brigade commander had been seriously wounded at Quatre Bras, so chief of staff Toussaint Trefcon took command of the division. And when Bachelu’s regiments reached the allied line, they found it reinforced and resolute. The allied squares had their front rank kneeling, presenting a hedge of bayonets, while their musketry was devastating, and in consequence the French squares broke. Trefcon’s horse was hit by canister shot and he fell, badly bruised on his chest although sheltered from the musketry by his dead horse. Dragoons who followed the retreating infantry rode straight past Trefcon, and he then limped down the hill to where his routed infantry was rallying. Trefcon was hurt badly enough to leave the field and walked back to find the hospital with a wounded squadron commander from the cuirassiers.3