by Tim Clayton
After seeing Trefcon’s men take flight, Foy’s also broke up. Foy himself was wounded by a ball that ran the length of his upper right arm without touching the bone, although he thought it was only a bruise and stayed on the field, rallying the debris of his division in the hollow road north of the Hougoumont orchard.4 Foy was not pursued: ‘Our cavalry stayed on the plateau. The enemy’s didn’t dare move.’ His chief of staff Lemonnier-Delafosse meanwhile, going to look for another horse, glimpsed half a loaf of bread in the knapsack of a dead soldier; then, even better, found butter in a pouch. He devoured it, having had nothing but beer all day.
After the French infantry had fallen back from the plateau the Brunswick 1st light and the German Legion 2nd Line made a new attack on the orchard; fighting tree by tree and step by step, they very gradually drove back the French. The Salzgitter Landwehr battalion from Hugh Halkett’s brigade was brought forward into the front line in their place. Halkett himself accompanied the Osnabrück battalion, which joined the squares on the ridge in line with the Brunswickers.
With the French in retreat, the artillery that had stopped their attack counted the cost of their resistance. Samuel Bolton’s battery, five guns strong after the loss of its howitzer, had been deployed to the right of Maitland’s guards, at a slight angle, enabling the guns to fire across the front of the infantry, but Bolton was killed by a ball that ricocheted from the ground into his left breast and his lieutenant was badly wounded when a shrapnel shell burst in the barrel of a gun. Captain Norman Ramsay, an extremely good officer who was one of Sir Alexander Frazer’s oldest and dearest comrades, was also killed, his head ‘carried away by a round shot’. Frazer described how:
In a momentary lull of the fire I buried my friend Ramsay, from whose body I took the portrait of his wife, which he always carried next to his heart. Not a man assisted at the funeral who did not shed tears. Hardly had I cut from his head the hair which I enclose, and laid his yet warm body in the grave, when our convulsive sobs were stifled by the necessity of renewing the struggle.5
Meanwhile, assistant surgeon William Gibney, who had spent the day either with his 15th Hussars or in a makeshift dressing station in Mont Saint-Jean, or riding between the two, had been ordered once again to rejoin the regiment. He had come to hate the ride along the Nivelles chaussée because the cobbles splintered when cannon balls hit them, making progress especially hazardous, but this time as he rode towards their position north of Hougoumont he became resigned to impending defeat:
The contest seemed to me to be nothing diminished, but more general and desperate. The thunder of cannon and the rain of bullets were considerably augmented, men and horses every moment falling. To me, coming fresh on this part of the field, it seemed as if the French were getting the best of it slowly but surely, and I was not singular in this view, for a goodly number of experienced officers thought the same, and that the battle would terminate in the enemy’s favour.6
The pressure from French artillery that was now close enough to fire canister and from French tirailleurs was finally causing a crisis in the area of the battlefield that was controlled by the young Prince of Orange. While the right was still secure, the centre of Wellington’s line was on the point of collapse. Had Napoleon been able to throw in his Old Guard against Wellington’s centre soon after the fall of La Haye Sainte he might well have broken through and won the battle. But Napoleon’s piercing eyes were focused on his own crisis further south, where the Prussians were advancing on Plancenoit, so that he failed to see the opportunity arise.
Not that it was possible to see anything on the plateau of Mont Saint-Jean: ‘by now the smoke lay thick and dark over the field, restricting the visibility to a few yards. The noise was tremendous with the roar of guns and rockets, the rattle of small arms, the ever-recurring beat of drums calling for yet another charge, and the wild cries and shouts of the horsemen.’7 Lord Uxbridge ordered Lord Edward Somerset to lead what was left of the Household Brigade against the columns of Donzelot’s division that, with cuirassiers in support, were pressing forward in the centre. When the heavy cavalry attacked, however, the French infantry stood firm and received them with steady fire, and the Dragoon Guards returned reduced to a mere handful.8
To the remnant of Colin Halkett’s brigade, meanwhile, the French seemed to be advancing in overwhelming numbers and they found themselves under devastating fire. They formed in four-deep line but ‘were forced to retire’. General Halkett had already been bruised in the neck and shot in the thigh but he had remained with his men. Now he was shot through the cheek, the ball smashing teeth in both upper jaws as well as his palette before it lodged in the skin of his other cheek. Sir Colin fell from his horse and, dazed and deaf with tinnitus, was carried to the rear. His men fell back with him.
As they retreated down the slope, Sergeant Tom Morris reported, ‘the fire from the French infantry was so tremendous that our brigade divided, and sought shelter behind some banks.’9 According to Ensign Edward Macready, ‘the fire thickened tremendously, and the cries from men struck down, as well as from the numerous wounded on all sides of us, who thought themselves abandoned, was terrible.’ Men and officers were cut down in rapid succession:
Prendergast of ours was shattered to pieces by a shell; McNab killed by grape shot, and James and Bullen lost all their legs by round shot during this retreat, or in the cannonade preceding it. As I recovered my feet from a tumble, a friend knocked up against me, seized me by the stock, and almost choked me, screaming, (half maddened by his five wounds and the sad scene, going on), ‘Is it deep, Mac, Is it deep?’
The four battalions had disintegrated and become mixed up; ‘all order was lost, and the column (now a mere mob,) passed the hedge at an accelerated pace.’ Officers who tried to turn men around and stop them found themselves physically swept away in the press of bodies. Then, ‘At this infernal crisis someone hurra’d – we all joined, and every creature halted, and retraced his steps to the hedge.’
This hedge was somewhere in the vicinity of the village of Mont Saint-Jean, and there they crouched under cover. The one remaining captain of the 73rd tried to lead an advance but he was shot after a few paces and the survivors fell back behind the hedge again.10
To their left, the remnant of the first Nassau battalion also retreated in disorder, but rallied on the second battalion in the second line of troops before the Prince of Orange and General von Kruse led both battalions in a bayonet charge to halt the French attack. By now all the allied artillery in the area was destroyed or out of ammunition, so there was no supporting fire, while the Prince was shot in the chest and fell wounded from his horse. The French line wavered, but at that moment the Nassauers panicked and ran. Kruse brought some of them back to join the 3rd Nassau battalion which huddled close to the Brussels road, falling back closer and closer to Mont Saint-Jean. They remained extremely uneasy, unable to see anything through the smoke, but ‘sounds of firing from the left flank made it appear as if the extreme left flank of the army had been considerably pushed back’. Before the charge in which the Prince was wounded, Kruse reported three days later, the French had taken ‘possession of the plateau from which our men withdrew but only for 100 paces’; after it the French were only opposed ‘by small bodies of brave men’.
Count Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians also broke, although when case shot turned the square of the Bremen and Verden battalions into a triangle, blowing away the whole front face, Kielmansegge managed to rally them sufficiently to repel a cavalry attack. They finally disintegrated in rout, running back through the village, despite the count’s efforts to stop them. Carl von Alten had tried to rally the other square of the Duke of York and Grubenhagen battalions but the close-range artillery fire was too much for them. After the square’s commander had been killed and Alten had been badly wounded in the thigh by a shell splinter, forcing him to leave the field, these battalions too broke. The little square of Ompteda’s eighth battalion fled with them.11
Two of G
eneral von Vincke’s Landwehr battalions, Gifhorn and Hameln, brought in as reinforcements from the left wing, were still in line with the Nassauers, but equally shaky, in the area of Mont Saint-Jean farm. The other two were marching back towards Waterloo, in the belief that they had been given orders to retire and none as to where to stop. The nearest steady units were the 27th Inniskillings, 32nd Cornwall and 40th Somersets, still obstinately in square south of the farm, though cut to pieces by artillery and sharpshooters.
Meanwhile French tirailleurs from d’Erlon’s divisions spread out on the plateau. The few heavy cavalrymen remaining with the Union Brigade now moved up in line behind the infantry to try to keep the wavering Nassauers and Hanoverians – still ‘suffering severely from grape and musketry’ – from running away. The hundred or so men of the Household Brigade joined them, but their commander was also soon wounded. Colonel von Arentsschildt took over what was left and tried to plug the gap to the right of La Haye Sainte, which was ‘void of British infantry’ and threatened by a strong force of the enemy. The broken British and Hanoverian troops rallied on this line of cavalry, short of the forest to the north of the village of Mont Saint-Jean, as General Alten’s report, written next day, confirmed.12
A Dutch cavalry staff officer spotted the Prince of Orange in the smoke, staggering through the mud alone, on foot and obviously wounded. He rushed over to him and at once several of the Prince’s aides arrived and helped him off the field to have his wound treated. General von Alten himself had left the field wounded, as had the Hereditary Prince of Nassau and General Halkett, while Colonel Ompteda was dead and Baron Kielmansegge had disappeared with his troops. Assistant Quartermaster-General James Shaw no longer knew who was in charge. Sensing that it might be him, he galloped to Wellington for advice.
The Duke was on the right of the Nivelles road behind the left flank of Maitland’s Guards brigade. Shaw told Wellington that the line was open as far as Kempt’s brigade, a space of about half a mile to the Charleroi chaussée. ‘This very startling information he received with a degree of coolness, and replied to in an instant with such precision and energy, as to prove the most complete self-possession.’ Wellington told Shaw that he would order some Brunswickers to the spot and instructed Shaw to muster as many Germans from the division as he could and collect all the guns he could find. Fitzroy Somerset rode over to assess the extent of the problem, but had his arm broken by a musket ball; after reporting to Wellington, he rode back to the Duke’s quarters at Waterloo.13
All observers admired Wellington’s magnificent calm and reassuring confidence. One of Hill’s aides wrote, ‘Lord Wellington was exposed as much as any soldier in the field, & his escape as well as that of my dear general’s is a miracle, I was with them the whole day, I never saw either of them in action before, & it is impossible to say which is the coolest.’ However much, to outward scrutiny, Wellington maintained the prototype stiff upper lip, though, intimates detected anxiety. In 1826 Adjutant-General Barnes’s aide, Major Andrew Hamilton, described to Jean-Baptiste Lemonnier-Delafosse the state of despair Wellington was in at the time Hamilton left the field. With his aides dead or very busy, he was leaning against a tree, almost all alone, with tears forming in his eyes as his army fled around him.14
The troupe dorée had suffered severely. Wellington’s Peninsular aide Colonel Canning had been hit in the stomach by grapeshot and died an hour or two later on the battlefield. Everyone assumed that Quartermaster-General Delancey was dead too. Sir John Elley was stabbed in the stomach in the last charge of the Horse Guards. He recovered, but with a hernia that obliged him to wear a band round his belly for the rest of his life. Adjutant-General Sir Edward Barnes was about to lead a charge on foot when Andrew Hamilton insisted that Barnes should take his horse. ‘Just as Major H touched the ground a French soldier stepped from the ranks, levelled his musket & the ball struck the general with such force as to turn him round.’ Barnes was badly wounded through the shoulder, although he recovered; Hamilton got him on the horse and walked him to Brussels. About 10.30 p.m. Major Hamilton arrived at Creevey’s house, himself slightly wounded in the head and the foot. He said ‘that never had there been such a battle fought before or such things done by both officers and men, that the French might be beat by such determined skill & courage, but that the loss was so immense & their superiority in numbers … He doubted whether Lord W would be able to keep the field, he therefore begged us to consider what we ought to do.’15
Barnes’s assistant Colonel Currie was shot through the head with grape and killed. As he rallied one of the wavering Brunswick squares, Alexander Gordon was shot in the thigh by a bullet that smashed his femur and lodged in the knee; some guardsmen found a door and carried him on it to the headquarters in the inn at Waterloo, where surgeon John Hume cut the leg off.16
Sir George Scovell had just halted the two retreating battalions of Vincke’s brigade, countermanding the order to withdraw that they believed they had been given by a British officer who spoke no German and bad French. He was at the headquarters inn when the Prince of Orange and Fitzroy Somerset were brought in wounded, and he supported Somerset while his arm was cut off. He then persuaded the unwilling driver of the Duke of Wellington’s carriage to take Somerset and the Prince to Brussels, accompanied by General Alava and Dr John Gunning, the senior surgeon with the army, who had performed the operation on Somerset and looked after the Prince.17
At the time that Hamilton left for Brussels with the wounded adjutant-general the sense of imminent doom was widespread. The badly bruised Major Bäring had persuaded an Englishman to catch a stray horse, place a saddle upon him, and help him onto it. His account describes the despair of an officer deserted by his men and facing defeat, as well as giving a strange sense of how sparsely populated his part of the smoke-filled plateau now was:
I then rode again forward, when I learned that General Alten had been severely wounded. I saw that the part of the position, which our division had held, was only weakly and irregularly occupied. Scarce sensible, from the pain which I suffered, I rode straight to the hollow road, where I had left the rest of the men; but they also, had been obliged to retire to the village in con sequence of the total want of ammunition, hoping there to find some cartridges. A French dragoon finally drove me from the spot, and riding back, in the most bitter grief, I met [Ompteda’s aide] … I directed him to bring my men forward, if there were only two of them together, as I had hopes of getting some ammunition.18
Sergeant William Lawrence had been surprised at the endurance of the soldiers of his 40th Regiment, which formed one of the crucial remaining squares in front of Mont Saint-Jean: ‘The men in their tired state were beginning to despair, but the officers cheered them on continually throughout the day with the cry of “Keep your ground, my men!” It is a mystery to me how it was accomplished, for at last so few were left that there were scarcely enough to form square.’19 Then Lawrence was ordered to the colours:
There had been before me that day fourteen sergeants already killed and wounded while in charge of those colours, with officers in proportion, and the staff and colours were almost cut to pieces. This job will never be blotted from my memory: although I am now an old man, I remember it as if it had been yesterday. I had not been there more than a quarter of an hour when a cannon-shot came and took the captain’s head clean off. This was again close to me, for my left side was touching the poor captain’s right, and I was spattered all over with his blood.
There was still room for gallows humour. On the other side of Captain Fisher from Lawrence, talking to him, was Lieutenant Hugh Wray, who found himself splattered all over with Fisher’s brains. Seeing Fisher’s head smashed to smithereens a private remarked wryly, ‘Hullo, there goes my best friend.’ Taking command, Wray answered gallantly, ‘Never mind, I’ll be as good.’ However, as Lawrence was well aware and Wray was not, Fisher had repeatedly flogged the private for slovenliness and as a consequence was loathed by him – hence the private’s rep
ly, ‘I hope not sir.’20 But it was about this time, too, that Major Arthur Heyland, who had survived so many hard battles in the Peninsula, was killed by a ball in the neck. That last tender letter of his, written the night before, had to be delivered to his beloved wife.
Even further east, Sergeant Robertson of the Gordons had been admiring the steadiness of the squares of the 27th and 40th near Mont Saint-Jean farm, south of the village. Increasingly, however, things looked bleak, and the experienced sergeant was weighed down with the responsibility of commanding two companies, everybody senior to him having been killed or wounded. ‘I now began to reflect on what should be done in case of a retreat becoming inevitable, over a long plain, in front of cavalry. I was aware it would be difficult for me to keep the men together, as they had never retreated before under similar circumstances. In fact, any word of command misunderstood in the smallest degree would be sure to produce disorder.’21
The troops were close to the edge of their capacity to take punishment. One private of the 28th Foot, the ‘Old Slashers’, claimed to have overheard Sir James Kempt admit to Wellington, ‘My Lord if I am charged again by the enemy, I am not able to stand for my division is cut up to a skeleton.’ Wellington answered, ‘You must stand while there is a man, and so must I. The Lord send night or Blücher!’22
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Ziethen Attacks
Northern sector of the eastern wing, 6.30–7.30 p.m.