by Tim Clayton
Soon they were ordered to prepare to march and at 7 a.m. took the Nivelles road, sad and vexed to leave most of their dead unburied and their wounded on the field.
Being on the extreme left, we had to pass along between the two lines to the right. We moved on as silent as the dead that lay so thickly around us. No one could speak, so awestruck were we with the horrid spectacle. Here lay French and British in all the agonies of death, many of them calling on us to shoot them and put an end to their sufferings; while others were calling on us to come back, and not leave them exposed to the inclemency of the weather …12
Robertson wept bitterly, while the officer of the Rifles who had fought close to him marched to Nivelles with him, similarly drained and exhausted, and shocked by the situation. He recalled seeing
some thousands of wounded wretches who remained without assistance through a bitter cold night, succeeded by a day of most scorching heat; English and French were dying by the side of each other; and I have no doubt, hundreds who were not discovered when the dead were buried, and who were unable to crawl to any habitation, must have perished by famine. For my own part, when we halted for the night, I sunk down almost insensible from fatigue; my spirits and strength were completely exhausted. I was so weak, and the wound in my thigh so painful, from want of attention, and in consequence of severe exercise, that after I got to Nivelles, and secured quarters, I did not awake regularly for 36 hours.13
A Guards officer reckoned there were 2000 men lying around Hougoumont when he walked round it in the morning.14 As another officer noted:
close to Hougoumont lay the corpse of an officer of our Guards, and across his breast the dead body of a French Grenadier; the officer had been shot through the head, a loaf of brown bread half out of the Frenchman’s haversack was spattered with his brains; I had not tasted food since daylight of yesterday’s morn, and ravenous with hunger, I scraped off the brains and feasted on the bread; at any other time I should have turned from it with disgust.15
Harry Smith, brigade major of Lambert’s division, had walked over many battlefields, but only the scenes at Badajoz and New Orleans – both assaults on fortifications – bore any resemblance to what he saw here:
the whole field from right to left was a mass of dead bodies. In one spot, to the right of La Haye Sainte the French Cuirassiers were literally piled on each other; many soldiers not wounded lying under their horses; others, fearfully wounded, occasionally with their horses struggling upon their wounded bodies. The sight was sickening, and I had no means or power to assist them … All over the field you saw officers, and as many soldiers as were permitted to leave the ranks, leaning and weeping over some dead or dying brother or comrade.16
As Smith gazed at the many dead, he murmured Sunday’s psalm, ‘A thousand shall fall beside thee and ten thousand at thy right hand, but it shall not come nigh thee.’ Having thus been spared himself, he was anxious to let his wife know he was all right.
75
Wives
For anxious wives – even the most feisty – the hours after the battle were fraught with tortuous anxiety. Having left her husband at Waterloo on the morning of the battle, Juana Smith, Harry’s Spanish bride, found herself in Antwerp.
Her husband had instructed her to ride back to Brussels and look after their baggage, which she found in the Place Royale. In the afternoon the baggage cleared out of the city, by order, and stopped by the canal on the road to Antwerp. Suddenly, at about five o’clock, an alarm had gone up that the enemy was upon them. Amid much noise and panic Juana’s servant got her mounted, but just as he was passing her pug to her, her mare bolted and carried her away to Malines, when she suddenly stopped. Looking back Juana saw a knot of horsemen and, taking them for French dragoons, she decided to surrender. But the first turned out to be one of her servants, the others being a commissary, a Hanoverian rifle officer and a British hussar officer who swore that the French were in hot pursuit. They galloped on to Antwerp, where Mrs Smith was welcomed into the commandant’s household.1
At Antwerp long rows of carriages lined the streets, filled with civilians who could find nowhere to stay. People of rank and fortune found themselves sharing what they considered ‘miserable holes’. Although it poured with rain all day on Sunday, the market square was full of the curious and anxious under umbrellas waiting for news; strangers found themselves conversing like friends. But most of the rumours were gloomy. Between nine and ten that evening some wounded officers rode in and announced that the battle was lost and Brussels was in the hands of the French. This dreadful news was corroborated by fugitives from Brussels who had seen the French in the town – one gentleman claimed to have been pursued halfway to Malines. Hearing this, many set off for Holland, while wounded men, stores and a fresh contingent for the army from one of the Hanse cities of north Germany surged in.
Then, during the afternoon of 19 June, news of victory arrived. A British refugee recalled the ‘tumultuous joy’ of wounded Highlanders who threw their bonnets in the air shouting ‘Boney’s beat! Boney’s beat!’ while old women questioned them in Flemish and were answered in incomprehensible Scots.2
When Magdalene Delancey was told that her husband was not on the list of killed and wounded, she too felt a wild elation – until, a few hours later, another officer’s wife admitted that she had written the list and had left Sir William’s name out, intending to spare Magdalene from the shock of seeing it. She conceded first that William was wounded, then desperately wounded and finally still alive but not expected to live. Magdalene, plunged from joy into grief, insisted on a carriage to Waterloo, but she only got halfway there, along a road jammed with vehicles, before she met William Hay who had ridden ahead for news. He told her that Delancey was dead and accompanied her back to Antwerp.3
Juana Smith meanwhile could get no word at all of Harry. She determined to ride back to Brussels, setting out at three in the morning and arriving at seven on 20 June. ‘Seeing some of our Rifle soldiers, with an eagerness which may be imagined, I asked after my husband, when to my horror they told me that Brigade-Major Smith of the 95th was killed.’ Galloping for the battlefield ‘to seek my husband’s corpse’, she found the road packed with wounded men and horses and corpses being taken to Brussels for burial, so that every moment she expected ‘to see that of my husband, knowing how he was beloved by officers and soldiers’.
She intended to complete her life by dying ‘on the body of the only thing I had on earth to love, and which I loved with a faithfulness which few can or ever did feel, and none ever exceeded’. In an ever-increasing agony of grief, she said, she approached the battlefield, searching for Enrique, Brigade-Major Harry Smith.
I saw signs of newly dug graves, and then I imagined to myself, ‘O God, he has been buried, and I shall never again behold him!’ How can I describe my suspense, the horror of my sensations, my growing despair, the scene of carnage around me? From a distance I saw a figure lying; I shrieked, ‘Oh, there he is!’ I galloped on. ‘No, it is not he!’ … Educated in a convent, I was taught to appeal to God through Jesus Christ. In this my trouble I did so.
In response to her prayers she glimpsed an old friend, Charles Gore, ADC to Sir James Kempt.
In my agony and hope, hope alone of finding the body, I exclaimed, ‘Oh, where is he? Where is my Enrique?’ ‘Why, near Bavay by this time, as well as ever he was in his life; not wounded even, nor either of his brothers.’ ‘Oh, dear Charlie Gore, why thus deceive me? The soldiers tell me Brigade-Major Smith is killed. Oh, my Enrique!’ ‘Dearest Juana, believe me; it is poor Charles Smyth, Pack’s Brigade-Major. I swear to you, on my honour, I left Harry riding Lochinvar in perfect health, but very anxious about you.’ ‘Oh, may I believe you, Charlie! my heart will burst.’ ‘Why should you doubt me?’ ‘Then God has heard my prayer!’4
The same night, Sir George Scovell sent a messenger to Magdalene Delancey with news of her husband. He had been discovered, by chance, lying in the cottage in which he had been plac
ed during the battle. A Staff Corps officer had seen him on Monday morning; eight of his ribs had been detached and one had smashed to pieces in his lung, but he was still alive.
When she set out again on Tuesday, the road was less badly blocked, but it was still a long, slow journey. At Brussels William Hay was waiting for them with horses saddled, and he rode ahead with his sword drawn to clear a path for them. The day was very hot: at first the air smelled of gunpowder, but later it smelled so badly of rotting flesh that the horses began to scream. It took them three and a half hours to ride nine miles; when they approached Waterloo Hay rode forward to ascertain Delancey’s condition.
Magdalene was taken in by Sir George Scovell to see her husband, and he was well enough to talk to her. ‘He asked me if I was a good nurse. I told him that I had not been much tried. He said he was sure he would be a good patient, for he would do whatever I bade him until he was convalescent; and then he would grow very cross. I watched in vain for a cross word.’ But the surgeons’ initial hopes for his recovery were eventually to fade; she spent six days holding his hand before he died.5
76
What Misery War Causes
Nobody had anticipated a battle near Brussels until the campaign began so unexpectedly and so violently; hence, when the first wounded arrived from Quatre Bras, little had been done to receive them. Small army hospitals already existed in the city, as well as at Antwerp and Ostend, to care for those soldiers who had fallen ill in Belgium, but there was nothing like sufficient capacity to cope with the sudden influx of wounded men.
So, on 17 June the Mayor of Brussels issued an urgent appeal, inviting ‘his fellow citizens to deposit at the Hôtel de Ville the largest possible amount of bedding, in particular mattresses or palliasses, bolsters, bed sheets and blankets’; confident that the well-to-do would respond, he warned that if they did not ‘he will feel himself obliged to billet wounded or sick soldiers on them.’ Later in the day he warned the public that ‘the large general hospital of the allied army has today been established in this city’ and requested anyone with old linen or lint to deposit it with the priests of their parish.
The hospital took some time to set up, most surgeons being with the army, but the public responded with generous humanity. By the morning of 19 June:
thousands of wounded French, Belgians, Prussians and English; carts, waggons, and every other attainable vehicle were continually arriving heaped with sufferers. The wounded were laid, friends and foes indiscriminately, on straw, with avenues between them, in every part of the city, and nearly destitute of surgical attendance. The humane and indefatigable exertions of the fair ladies of Brussels, however, greatly made up for this deficiency; numbers were busily employed – some strapping and bandaging wounds, others serving out tea, coffee, soups, and other soothing nourishments; while many occupied themselves stripping the sufferers of their gory and saturated garments, and dressing them in clean shirts and other habiliments; indeed, altogether careless of fashionable scruples, many of the fairest and wealthiest of the ladies of that city now ventured to assert their pre-eminence …1
That morning, when the 15th Hussars accompanied Wellington’s army towards Nivelles in pursuit of the French, accompanied by their senior surgeon, the junior assistant went to Brussels. William Gibney was thus left at Waterloo to look after his colonel, Leighton Dalrymple, and other seriously wounded officers. ‘The accommodation for the wounded in these villages was hideously bad: each house was packed to overflowing, each room was full as it could hold, and little relief given, often none. The cries of these wounded for help were heard in the street; but even this, bad as it was, was shelter.’ At daybreak
I was horrified to see, lying about indiscriminately on each side of the road, wounded soldiers of every arm of the service in all stages of suffering; some imploring medical aid and others silent, only looking to death as an alleviation to their miseries. Of course aid could not be given to all. The numbers lying about were too considerable for even a fair proportion to receive relief, and doubtless not a few perished from want of immediate attendance; though this last is applicable chiefly to the French prisoners, as our own countrymen naturally claimed first attention.
As the British had been moved to Brussels, after three days at Waterloo Gibney was left almost exclusively with French wounded. The village was chaotic, violent arguments breaking out on the busy and crowded roads. ‘Even now, at the end of three days, all the wounded had not been brought in, some of the French yet awaiting removal. There was a sad paucity of medical officers and assistants.’2 He was impressed by the wounded men’s fortitude; he and others noted how many of them devoted their dying breath to Bonaparte.
Like Gibney, Donald Finlayson, assistant surgeon of the 33rd Foot, remained at Waterloo, ‘collecting as many, taking care of dressing & sending away the wounded’, until on 23 June he was instructed to go to Brussels to ‘assist at the hospitals’. He wanted to stay there to look after ‘a school fellow of mine in the same regiment with a sad compressed fracture of the thigh’ and told the senior doctor that his friend ‘was very ill, that I was apprehensive for his life & that I should very much like to remain & take care of him,’ but as soon as things were a little less frantic he was ordered to rejoin his regiment in France, told that ‘other officers were in the same predicament, what misery war causes’.3 Finlayson himself was to die before November of unknown causes.
Hospital assistant George Finlayson, Donald’s brother, had arrived in Brussels from Britain on 21 June and went straight to work:
For three successive days we were constantly occupied in getting our wounded under cover & getting their wounds dressed. During that time no medical officer shut an eye; at least I can say this much for myself. Hundreds of wagons, carts, &c., crowded the streets leading to the hospitals. We have had numerous operations, though many of the cases requiring it did not come into our hands [until] four or five days after they had been wounded. Those operated in the field are doing well … It has been found impossible to bury the killed, they are thrown with horses on one heap & burnt. A hundred men from all the neighbouring parishes are employed for this purpose & the field of battle will be clean of the dead by today [26 June].4
In Brussels thousands of people were now volunteering to make lint, dress wounds and attend sick beds. Six military general hospitals were suddenly improvised in churches and barracks, together with Belgian civilian hospitals. The best were the Jesuits’ and the Annunciate in the higher part of town, followed by the Orpheline, the Notre Dame and the Elizabeth Caserne which, although it was low lying, was clean and well ventilated. The worst was the Gendarmerie, set in the swampy low town, which had been a particularly filthy police barracks before it became a hospital for the most seriously wounded Frenchmen. The Brunswick hospital, near their late Duke’s former headquarters at Laeken, was also set on low-lying, swampy ground, and was far too small for their numerous wounded, who lay crowded together on the floor. Gangrene was rife and almost all amputations terminated fatally, not through gangrene but through a feverish disease that killed the patients within a day or two. Further back at Antwerp another five hospitals treated at least 2500 casualties: there was capacity for 1000 beds in the Corderie alone, this being the converted ropewalk attached to the naval base, a quarter of a mile long. Hospitals in other towns, such as Termonde, also cared for casualties.
On 23 June, when the flow had just commenced, Donald Finlayson estimated that there might be 6000 wounded French prisoners, writing that ‘one of the Purveyor’s department last night drew rations for 4,000 of them’. The diarist Fanny Burney, married to a French royalist officer, spent half her day tending to the British wounded while some of her aristocratic French friends devoted themselves to their countrymen. The vast strain on resources from sheer numbers of casualties meant that they suffered worst, as Burney explained:
The immense quantity of English, Belgians, and Allies, who were first, of course, conveyed to the hospitals and prepared house
s of Brussels, required so much time for carriage and placing, that although the carts, waggons, and every attainable or seizable vehicle were unremittingly in motion – now coming, now returning to the field of battle for more, – it was nearly a week, or at least five or six days, ere the unhappy wounded prisoners, who were necessarily last served, could be accommodated. And though I was assured that medical and surgical aid was administered to them wherever it was possible, the blood that dried upon their skins and their garments, joined to the dreadful sores occasioned by this neglect, produced an effect so pestiferous, that, at every new entry, eau de Cologne, or vinegar, was resorted to by every inhabitant, even amongst the shopkeepers, even amongst the commonest persons, for averting the menaced contagion.5
Succour for the French was a lower priority, but their lives were saved if they were discovered in time. Chef de bataillon Joseph Lugnot of the 93rd Line had been with a unit that spent much of the day skirmishing from the high corn, which might be why he lay on the battlefield for five days before being found by the British and ultimately cured in England. Dominique Modere of the 1st Line had been involved in the fighting around Hougoumont, where he was shot in the head. He lay on the field for three days before being taken to a village and from there to a church in Brussels; he was admitted to the Gendarmerie hospital only on 30 June.6
As a distinguished Irish staff surgeon, John Hennen, noted: