by Victor Hugo
CHAPTER II.
HOUGOMONT.
Hougomont was a mournful spot, the beginning of the obstacle, thefirst resistance which that great woodman of Europe, called Napoleon,encountered at Waterloo; the first knot under the axe-blade. It wasa château, and is now but a farm. For the antiquarian Hougomont isHugo-mons: it was built by Hugo, Sire de Sommeril, the same who endowedthe sixth chapelry of the Abbey of Villers. The wayfarer pushed openthe door, elbowed an old carriage under a porch, and entered the yard.The first thing that struck him in this enclosure was a gate of the16th century, which now resembles an arcade, as all has fallen aroundit. A monumental aspect frequently springs up from ruins. Near thearcade there is another gateway in the wall, with key-stones in thestyle of Henri IV., through which can be seen the trees of an orchard.By the side of this gateway a dung-hill, mattocks, and shovels, a fewcarts, an old well with its stone slab and iron windlass, a friskingcolt, a turkey displaying its tail, a chapel surmounted by a littlebelfry, and a blossoming pear-tree growing in _espalier_ along thechapel wall,--such is this yard, the conquest of which was a dreamof Napoleon's. This nook of earth, had he been able to take it, wouldprobably have given him the world. Chickens are scattering the dustthere with their beaks, and you hear a growl,--it is a large dog, whichshows its teeth and fills the place of the English. The English didwonders here; Cooke's four companies of Guards resisted at this spotfor seven hours the obstinate attack of an army.
Hougomont, seen on a map, buildings and enclosures included, presentsan irregular quadrangle, of which one angle has been broken off. Inthis angle is the southern gate within point-blank range of thiswall. Hougomont has two gates,--the southern one which belongs tothe château, and the northern which belongs to the farm. Napoleonsent against Hougomont his brother Jérôme; Guilleminot's, Foy's, andBachelie's divisions were hurled at it; nearly the whole of Reille'scorps was employed there and failed; and Kellermann's cannon-ballsrebounded from this heroic wall. Bauduin's brigade was not strongenough to force Hougomont on the north, and Soye's brigade could onlyattack it on the south without carrying it.
The farm-buildings border the court-yard on the south, and a pieceof the northern gate, broken by the French, hangs from the wall. Itconsists of four planks nailed on two cross-beams, and the scars of theattack may still be distinguished upon it. The northern gate, whichwas broken down by the French, and in which a piece has been let into replace the panel hanging to the wall, stands, half open, at theextremity of the yard; it is cut square in a wall which is stone atthe bottom, brick at the top, and which closes the yard on the northside. It is a simple gate, such as may be seen in all farm-yards, withtwo large folding-doors made of rustic planks; beyond it are fields.The dispute for this entrance was furious; for a long time all sortsof marks of bloody hands could be seen on the side-post of the gate,and it was here that Bauduin fell. The storm of the fight still lurksin the court-yard: horror is visible there; the incidents of thefearful struggle are petrified in it; people are living and dying init,--it was only yesterday. The walls are in the pangs of death, thestones fall, the breaches cry out, the holes are wounds, the bent andquivering trees seem making an effort to fly.
This yard was more built upon in 1815 than it is now; buildings whichhave since been removed, formed in it redans and angles. The Englishbarricaded themselves in it; the French penetrated, but could not holdtheir ground there. By the side of the chapel stands a wing of thechâteau, the sole relic left of the Manor of Hougomont, in ruins; wemight almost say gutted. The château was employed as a keep, the chapelserved as a block-house. Men exterminated each other there. The French,fired upon from all sides, from behind walls, from granaries, fromcellars, from every window, from every air-hole, from every crack inthe stone, brought up fascines, and set fire to the walls and men; themusketry fire was replied to by arson.
In the ruined wing you can look through windows defended by iron bars,into the dismantled rooms of a brick building; the English Guards wereambuscaded in these rooms, and the spiral staircase, hollowed out fromground-floor to roof, appears like the interior of a broken shell. Thestaircase has two landings; the English, besieged on this landing andmassed on the upper stairs, broke away the lowest. They are large slabsof blue stone which form a pile among the nettles. A dozen steps stillhold to the wall; on the first the image of a trident is carved, andthese inaccessible steps are solidly set in their bed. All the restresemble a toothless jaw. There are two trees here, one of them dead,and the other, which was wounded at the root, grows green again inApril. Since 1815 it has taken to growing through the staircase.
Men massacred each other in the chapel, and the interior, which isgrown quiet again, is strange. Mass has not been said in it sincethe carnage, but the altar has been left,--an altar of coarse woodsupported by a foundation of rough stone. Four whitewashed walls, adoor opposite the altar, two small arched windows, a large woodencrucifix over the door, above the crucifix a square air-hole stoppedup with hay; in a corner, on the ground, an old window sash, with thepanes all broken,--such is the chapel. Near the altar is a woodenstatue of St. Anne, belonging to the 15th century; the head of theinfant Saviour has been carried away by a shot. The French, masters fora moment of the chapel and then dislodged, set fire to it. The flamesfilled the building, and it became a furnace; the door burned, theflooring burned, but the wooden Christ was not burned; the fire nibbledaway the feet, of which only the blackened stumps can now be seen, andthen stopped. It was a miracle, say the country people. The walls arecovered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ you read the nameHenquinez; then these others, Conde de Rio Maïor, Marquis y Marquisade Almagro (Habana). There are French names with marks of admiration,signs of anger. The wall was whitewashed again in 1849, for the nationsinsulted each other upon it. It was at the door of this chapel thata body was picked up, holding an axe in its hand; it was the body ofSub-lieutenant Legros.
On leaving the chapel you see a well on your left hand. As there aretwo wells in this yard, you ask yourself why this one has no bucketand windlass? Because water is no longer drawn from it. Why is it notdrawn? Because it is full of skeletons. The last man who drew waterfrom this well was a man called William van Kylsom: he was a peasantwho lived at Hougomont, and was gardener there. On June 18, 1815, hisfamily took to flight and concealed themselves in the woods. The forestround the Abbey of Villers sheltered for several days and nights thedispersed luckless country people. Even at the present day certainvestiges, such as old burnt trunks of trees, mark the spot of thesepoor encampments among the thickets. Van Kylsom remained at Hougomontto "take care of the château," and concealed himself in a cellar. TheEnglish discovered him there; he was dragged from his lurking-place,and the frightened man was forced by blows with the flat of a sabreto wait on the combatants. They were thirsty, and he brought themdrink, and it was from this well he drew the water. Many drank therefor the last time, and this well, from which so many dead men drank,was destined to die too. After the action, the corpses were hastilyinterred; death has a way of its own of harassing victory, and itcauses pestilence to follow glory. Typhus is an annex of triumph. Thiswell was deep and was converted into a tomb. Three hundred dead werethrown into it, perhaps with too much haste. Were they all dead? Thelegend says no. And it seems that, on the night following the burial,weak voices were heard calling from the well.
This well is isolated in the centre of the yard; three walls, half ofbrick, half of stone, folded like the leaves of a screen, and forming asquare tower, surround it on three sides, while the fourth is open. Theback wall has a sort of shapeless peep-hole, probably made by a shell.This tower once had a roof of which only the beams remain, and the ironbraces of the right-hand wall form a cross. You bend over and look downinto a deep brick cylinder full of gloom. All round the well the lowerpart of the wall is hidden by nettles. This well has not in front of itthe large blue slab usually seen at all Belgian wells. Instead of it,there is a frame-work, supporting five or six shapeless logs of knottedwood which resemble
large bones. There is no bucket, chain, or windlassremaining: but there is still the stone trough, which served to carryoff the water. The rain-water collects in it, and from time to time abird comes from the neighboring forest to drink from it and then flyaway.
One house in this ruin, the farm-house, is still inhabited, and thedoor of this house opens on the yard. By the side of a pretty Gothiclock on this gate there is an iron handle. At the moment when theHanoverian lieutenant Wilda seized this handle in order to take shelterin the farm, a French sapper cut off his hand with a blow of his axe.The old gardener Van Kylsom, who has long been dead, was grandfatherof the family which now occupies the house. A gray-headed woman saidto me: "I was here, I was three years old, and my sister, who wasolder, felt frightened and cried. I was carried away to the woods inmy mother's arms, and people put their ears to the ground to listen. Iimitated the cannon and said, 'Boom, boom.'" A door on the left handof the yard, as we said, leads into the orchard, which is terrible. Itis in three parts, we might almost say, in three acts. The first partis a garden, the second the orchard, the third a wood. These threeparts have one common _enceinte_; near the entrance, the buildings ofthe château and the farm, on the left a hedge, on the right a wall,and at the end a wall. The right-hand wall is of brick, the bottomone of stone. You enter the garden first; it slopes, is planted withgooseberry-bushes, is covered with wild vegetation, and is closed by amonumental terrace of cut stones with balustrades. It was a Seigneurialgarden in the French style, that preceded Le Notre: now it is ruinsand briers. The pilasters are surmounted by globes that resemble stonecannon-balls. Forty-three balustrades are still erect; the others arelying in the grass, and nearly all have marks of musket-balls. Onefractured balustrade is laid upon the stem like a broken leg.
It was in this garden, which is lower than the orchard, that sixvoltigeurs of the 1st light regiment, having got in and unable toget out, and caught like bears in a trap, accepted combat withtwo Hanoverian companies, one of which was armed with rifles. TheHanoverians lined the balustrade and fired down: the voltigeurs, firingup, six intrepid men against two hundred, and having no shelter but thegooseberry-bushes, took a quarter of an hour in dying. You climb up afew steps and reach the orchard, properly so called. Here, on these fewsquare yards, fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour. The wallseems ready to recommence the fight, for the thirty-eight loop-holespierced by the English at irregular heights may still be seen. In frontof the wall are two English tombs made of granite. There are onlyloop-holes in the south wall, for the principal attack was on thatside. This wall is concealed on the outside by a quickset hedge. TheFrench came up under the impression that they had only to carry thishedge, and found the wall an obstacle and an ambuscade; the EnglishGuards, behind the thirty-eight loop-holes, firing at once a storm ofcanister and bullets; and Soye's brigade was dashed to pieces againstit. Waterloo began thus.
The orchard, however, was taken; as the French had no ladders, theyclimbed up with their nails. A hand-to-hand fight took place under thetrees, and all the grass was soaked with blood, and a battalion ofNassau, 700 strong, was cut to pieces here. On the outside the wall,against which Kellermann's two batteries were pointed, is pock-markedwith cannon-balls. This orchard is sensitive, like any other, to themonth of May; it has its buttercups and its daisies, the grass is tallin it, the plough-horses browse in it, hair ropes on which linen ishung to dry occupy the space between the trees, and make the visitorbow his head, and as you walk along your foot sinks in mole-holes.In the middle of the grass you notice an uprooted, outstretched, butstill flourishing tree. Major Blackman leaned against it to die. Underanother large tree close by fell the German General Duplat, a Frenchrefugee belonging to a family that fled upon the revocation of theedict of Nantes. Close at hand an old sickly apple-tree, poulticed witha bandage of straw and clay, hangs its head. Nearly all the apple-treesare dying of old age, and there is not one without its cannon-ball orbullet. Skeletons of dead trees abound in this orchard, ravens flyabout in the branches, and at the end is a wood full of violets.
Bauduin killed; Foy wounded; arson, massacre, carnage, a streamcomposed of English, French, and German blood furiously mingled;a well filled with corpses; the Nassau regiment and the Brunswickregiment destroyed; Duplat killed; Blackman killed; the English Guardsmutilated; twenty French battalions of the forty composing Reille'scorps decimated; three thousand men in this château of Hougomontalone, sabred, gashed, butchered, shot, and burnt,--all this that apeasant may say to a traveller at the present day, "If you like togive me three francs, sir, I will tell you all about the battle ofWaterloo."