Wellington’s answer was grim. General Halkett’s request for relief was, the Duke said, impossible. ‘Every Englishman on the field must die on the spot we now occupy.’ One measure of just how dire the outlook appeared was an order to take the 30th’s regimental colours to the rear. ‘This measure has been reprobated by many,’ Macready said, ‘but I know I never in my life felt such joy, or looked on danger with so light a heart, as when I saw our dear old rags in safety.’
Colours were only sent to the rear at moments of supreme danger so that, if defeat ensued, at least the enemy would not have the satisfaction of taking the trophies. Other battalions thought about retiring their colours. Ensign James Howard was with the 33rd, the Duke’s old regiment, and 18 June was young Howard’s birthday. He wrote to his brother that ‘we had our share of bloody work. I shall never forget the scene and the carnage.’ After the fall of La Haie Sainte Howard looked around:
Our brigade and a brigade of guards were the only soldiers that we could see, and we were so [isolated] … that I thought that things were going badly, and we made up our minds to send all our colours to the rear, still determined to stay while we had a man left. There we were, we could just maintain our ground, when to our delight came up lots of reinforcements.
Wellington himself brought the reinforcements, and they were his last reserve. For the moment all he could do was keep his men on the ridge and shelter them from the enemy cannon as best he could, but when battalions retreated onto the reverse slope to escape the roundshot and shells, they left the crest open to enemy skirmishers and the French had sent thousands of men in open order to harass the British–Dutch line. The fall of La Haie Sainte had allowed the French to occupy most of the forward slope of the British ridge and the voltigeurs were thick there, while behind them cavalry lurked in the dense powder smoke. ‘The regiment’, Ensign Leeke of the 52nd wrote:
Stood about forty paces below the crest of the position, so that it was nearly or quite out of fire. The roar of round-shot still continued, many only just clearing our heads, others striking the top of our position and bounding over us, others again, almost spent and rolling down gently towards us. One of these, when we were standing in line, came rolling down like a cricket ball, so slowly that I was putting out my foot to stop it, when my colour-sergeant quickly begged me not to do so, and told me that it might seriously have injured my foot. Exactly in front of me, when standing in line, lay, at the distance of two yards, a dead tortoise-shell kitten. It had probably been frightened out of Hougoumont, which was the nearest house to us.
Shells were lobbed over the ridge and did more damage, though one seventeen-year-old private in the 23rd picked up a smoking shell, its fuse fizzing and smoking as it burned towards the central charge, and the boy hurled it far away as if he were throwing a ball. It exploded harmlessly. The roundshot, because their trajectory was flatter, were less dangerous to those men protected by the reverse slope, but even so many soldiers ducked as the balls flew low overhead. Sir John Colville, the charismatic commanding officer of the 52nd, told them to stop ducking, else it would be thought they were the second battalion. It was customary, at least in two battalion regiments, for the first to see active service and for the second to stay at home and train recruits. The reprimand worked and the men stayed upright. The 52nd might have been relatively safe from roundshot, but they were suffering badly from the French skirmishers on the ridge’s crest. Captain Patrick Campbell, a company officer who had been on leave and had returned to the regiment that same afternoon, said the fire was particularly thick when the Duke rode by.
Next to the 52nd was a battalion of the 1st Foot Guards which, like the 52nd, was in square for fear that French cavalry might surge over the ridge top again. Being in square made them an easy target for the skirmishers who infested the ridge’s crest, but the Duke, seeing what was happening, took command of the Guards battalion and ordered it into line, a four-deep line, and took the line forward himself. They drove the skirmishers off the ridge top with volleys of musket fire. Ensign Leeke watched from one of the 52nd’s two squares:
A body of cavalry was now seen approaching, but the [Guards] battalion reformed square with rapidity and regularity. The cavalry refused the square, but receiving its fire, and then dashing along the face of the 52nd regiment, it exposed itself to another vigorous fire by which it was nearly destroyed. The third battalion of the 1st Guards retired in perfect order to its original position.
Other battalions followed the example of the Guards and formed line to drive the voltigeurs away, yet all the discipline in the world, and Leeke’s dry account is witness to the superb drill and discipline of the redcoats in that murderous environment, could not prevent losses mounting as shells exploded, roundshot slashed through ranks and the enemy skirmishers swarmed back. But the French skirmishers did at least one favour for the allies when a sharpshooter put a musket ball into the Prince of Orange’s left shoulder. Slender Billy left the field to get medical attention, which meant he could do no more damage. The French hardly needed his help. Mercer described ‘a cloud of skirmishers’ who had closed up to the British ridge and were galling it with cannon fire while the big guns roared on, their missiles screaming across the smoke-filled valley where the shadows lengthened. Poor Major Baring, who had been evicted from La Haie Sainte, joined his few survivors to another KGL battalion. He had found an abandoned French cavalry horse which he mounted, but five bullets hit the saddle and another knocked off his hat. ‘Nothing’, he wrote:
seemed likely to terminate the slaughter but the entire destruction of one army or the other. My horse, the third which I had had in the course of the day, received a ball in his head; he sprung up, and in coming down again, fell on my right leg, and pressed me so hard into the deep loamy soil, that, despite of all exertion, I could not extricate myself.
He was finally rescued, but he noted that the centre of Wellington’s line ‘was only weakly and irregularly occupied’. He was just to the right of the 27th Foot, which was among the worst-hit of all the British–Dutch units. They were an Irish regiment, brought up from the reserves to strengthen Wellington’s centre, and they were close to the French guns emplaced at La Haie Sainte. The Irishmen stood their ground, and died there too: 16 of their 19 officers were killed or wounded, while out of around 700 other ranks no fewer than 463 were casualties. When the battle was over the 27th was still in square, but a square made largely of dead men. In the square of the 73rd Highlanders who had fought so hard at Quatre-Bras, the ranks were reluctant to close up, fearing perhaps that the next enemy roundshot would follow the same path as the ball that had just slaughtered their comrades. Lieutenant-Colonel Harris, their commanding officer, rode his horse into the gap and said, ‘Well, my lads, if you won’t, I must,’ and that persuaded them to their duty. At some point during their ordeal the Duke approached the square of the 73rd and asked who commanded it. ‘I replied “Colonel Harris”,’ Captain John Garland recalled, and the Duke ‘then desired me to tell Colonel Harris to form line, but should we be attacked by the cuirassiers to reform square’. A line, even one of four ranks, was far less vulnerable to cannon fire than a square.
Poor Garland was to be badly wounded and spent months in a Brussels hospital before returning to his native Dorset, where he named his home Quatre-Bras Cottage. His encounter with Wellington is a reminder of how the Duke was ever at the point of most danger and ready to offer advice or orders. Napoleon watched the battle from afar, but Wellington needed to see and hear what was happening. He had briefly taken command of the Guards battalion, then moved on down the ridge, encouraging men and, above all, being seen. Shaw Kennedy, a British staff officer, talked of the Duke’s ‘coolness’, his ‘precision and energy’, his ‘complete self-possession’.
He left the impression that he was perfectly calm during every phase, however serious, of the action. He felt confident of his own powers of being able to guide the storm which raged around him; and from the determined manner in whic
h he then spoke, it was evident that he had resolved to defend to the last extremity every inch of the position which he then held.
The Duke must have known that Napoleon would make a last effort to break his line and all he could do was preserve that line in readiness for the assault, and so the allied troops had to endure the cannonade. Mark Adkin, who has done more than anyone to study the grim statistics of the battle, estimates that two-thirds of the Duke’s casualties were caused by artillery, and it was during this period that most of those casualties were made. All along the ridge there was death and mutilation. Marshal Ney was probably right. One sharp attack, well conducted by a combination of guns, cavalry and infantry, would surely have shattered Wellington’s attenuated line, but Napoleon’s refusal to send the reinforcements had given the Duke time. He was using it to rally his troops and, because the leading Prussian troops of von Zieten’s Corps were now reaching the eastern end of the ridge, he could bring men from the extreme left of his line to thicken the centre. He sent orders for Major-General Sir Hussey Vivian to bring his light cavalry brigade to the centre of the ridge, but Vivian, an intelligent and experienced cavalry commander, had anticipated the order and was already on his way. He led his men to where the redcoats were suffering:
Never did I witness anything so terrific; the ground actually covered in dead and dying, cannon shots and shells flying thicker than I ever heard even musketry before, and our troops, some of them, giving way.
The troops giving way were some raw young Brunswickers who retreated in panic from the carnage at the ridge top. Vivian’s cavalry checked their flight, but it was the Duke himself who rallied them and led them back to the ridge. He did the same with a strong battalion of Dutch–Belgians, the very last of his reserves. Henry Duperier who, despite his French name, was an officer in the 18th Hussars serving under General Vivian, was posted behind these raw troops and watched their officers:
leathering away (as the drover did the cattle in Spain) to make them smell the gunpowder … I done like the Belgian officers, every one that faced about I laid my sword across his shoulders, and told him that if he did not go back I would run him through, and that had the desired effect, for they all stood it.
By advancing his battalions in strong four-deep lines the Duke managed to clear most of the skirmishers from the ridge’s crest, and that enabled riflemen from the 95th to snipe at the French artillerymen who had established their batteries so close to the crossroads. Yet the lines could not stay on the crest, for fear of the larger French guns further back, and so the skirmishers would swarm back as soon as the allied infantry retired. For many of the allied army these were the worst moments of the battle. The French occupied the forward slope of the Duke’s position and their guns were causing terrible damage to the defenders. Yet it was not the Duke who was in trouble, it was the Emperor, because the Prussians were on the battlefield now and it was Napoleon who was running out of time.
* * *
Marshal von Bülow’s troops drove the French out of Plancenoit. It was gutter fighting, close-quarters carnage with bayonets and musket butts in alleys and cottage gardens. Cannon blasted roundshot and canister down narrow streets fogged by powder smoke and puddled with blood. A few French troops hung on to some houses on the village’s western edge, but they were in danger of being surrounded by Prussian troops advancing in the fields either side of the village.
Napoleon could not afford to lose Plancenoit. It lay behind his line and would make a base from which Blücher’s troops could advance on the Brussels highway. If that highway was cut, then the French would have no road on which to retreat. They would be effectively surrounded, and so the Emperor sent his Young Guard to retake the village.
The Young Guard was part of the Imperial Guard, those elite troops so beloved of the Emperor. To join the Guard a soldier had to have taken part in three campaigns and be of proven character, a requirement less moral than disciplinary, and the successful applicants were rewarded with better equipment, higher pay and a distinctive uniform. Traditionally the Guard, which had its own infantry, cavalry and artillery and so formed an army within the army, was held back from battle so that it was available to make the killing stroke when it was needed. There was, naturally enough, some resentment within the wider French army of the privileges accorded to the Guard, but nevertheless most soldiers held the ambition of being chosen to join its ranks. Their nickname, ‘the Immortals’, was partly sarcastic, referring to the many battles when the Guard had not been called into action (the Guard called themselves grognards, grumblers, because they found it frustrating to be held in reserve when other men were fighting). But if there was resentment there was also admiration. The Guard was intensely loyal to Napoleon, they were proven to be brave men, they fought like tigers, and their boast was that they had never been defeated. No enemy would ever underestimate their fighting ability or their effectiveness.
The Young Guard were skirmishers, though they could fight in line or square like any other battalion, and there were just over 4,700 of them at Waterloo. When it became apparent that Lobau’s outnumbered men were being driven from Plancenoit the Emperor despatched all eight battalions of the Young Guard to retake the village. They were led by General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme, a thoroughly nasty character who was a child of the French Revolution. A labourer’s son, he had risen to high rank because he was competent, but he was also corrupt, venal, cruel and sadistic. He had trained as a lawyer, then become a soldier, and regarded Napoleon with some suspicion, believing, rightly, that the Emperor had betrayed many of the principles of the French Revolution, but Duhesme was too good a soldier to be ignored and Napoleon trusted him with the Young Guard. Duhesme was an expert on light infantry tactics, indeed his slim textbook Essai Historique de l’Infanterie Légère became the standard work on the subject for much of the nineteenth century.
Light infantry, trained to think and act independently, were perfectly suited to the counter-attack on Plancenoit. The Young Guard advanced and took musket fire from houses on the village edge, but Duhesme refused to let them answer that fire, instead leading them straight into the streets and alleys that would be cleared by their bayonets. It worked, and the Prussians were tumbled back out of the village and even pursued for some distance beyond. General Duhesme was badly wounded in the head during the vicious fighting and was to die two days later.
The Young Guard had done everything asked of it and upheld the traditions of the Imperial Guard, but von Bülow’s men were being reinforced minute by minute as more troops crossed the Lasne valley and made their way through the woods to the battlefield. The Prussians counter-attacked, driving the French out of the houses on the western side of the village and besieging the stone-walled churchyard. Colonel Johann von Hiller led one of two Prussian columns that:
succeeded in capturing a howitzer, two cannon, several ammunition wagons and two staff officers along with several hundred men. The open square around the churchyard was surrounded by houses from which the enemy could not be dislodged … a firefight developed at fifteen to thirty paces range which ultimately decimated the Prussian battalions.
The Young Guard was fighting desperately, but Blücher could feed still more men into the turmoil and slowly, inevitably, the Young Guard was forced back. The Prussians recaptured the church and its graveyard, then went house by house, garden by garden, fighting through alleys edged by burning houses, and the Young Guard, now hopelessly outnumbered, retreated grudgingly.
Napoleon had thirteen battalions of the Imperial Guard left in his reserve. He had arrayed them north and south to form a defensive line in case the Prussians broke through at Plancenoit, but to prevent that he now sent two battalions of the Old Guard to reinforce the hard-pressed French troops in the village. The two battalions went into the smoke and chaos with fixed bayonets, their arrival heartened the French survivors and the fight for Plancenoit swung again, this time in favour of the French. The newly arrived veterans of the Old Guard fought their wa
y back to the high churchyard, captured it and garrisoned themselves inside its stone wall. Even they were hard-pressed and at one moment their General, Baron Pelet, seized the precious Eagle and shouted, ‘A moi, Chasseurs! Sauvons l’Aigle ou mourons autour d’elle!’ To me, Chasseurs! Save the Eagle or die around her! The Guard rallied. Pelet, later in the fight, discovered Guardsmen cutting the throats of Prussian prisoners and, disgusted, stopped the murders. For the moment, at least, Pelet had stiffened the French defence and Plancenoit belonged to the Emperor, and so the threat to Napoleon’s rear had been averted.
Yet von Bülow’s men were not the only Prussians arriving at the battlefield. Lieutenant-General Hans von Zieten’s 1st Corps had left Wavre early in the afternoon and taken a more northerly route than von Bülow’s men. They had been delayed because General Pirch’s 2nd Corps was following von Bülow’s southern route and von Zieten’s and Pirch’s Corps, each of several thousand men with guns and ammunition wagons, met at a crossroads and there was inevitable confusion as the two columns tried to cross each other’s line of march. Von Bülow and Pirch had been sent to attack Napoleon’s right wing at Plancenoit, while von Zieten’s men took the more northerly roads so that they could link up with Wellington’s men on the ridge.
Waterloo The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles Page 25