Macdonell felt a spark of anger. ‘I ordered you to see a surgeon, Sergeant. You disobeyed. Why?’
Before Dawson could reply, there was a cry of alarm from the rear. Macdonell looked round. A squadron of French Light Dragoons had appeared on the road and stood facing the line of Hussars. They kept their distance and showed no inclination to attack, but they were there, still and watchful. The eight miles to Mont St Jean would be harder, much harder, than the four they had covered. The Dragoons wheeled and cantered off back down the road. Their presence had somehow been more disquieting than a full-blooded charge. In a matter of minutes, Marshal Ney would know exactly where the rear of the Allied army was.
The Hussars watched them go. All but one held their position across the road. A single man cantered back and into the village. The cavalry would need reinforcements.
The sergeant’s arm temporarily forgotten, Macdonell returned to the village. The main road through it was still blocked. He did not waste time finding out why but hurried back to find Harry. ‘Harry, we cannot get through yet and I dare not go around for fear of exposing British backsides to French sabres. Find the best defensive positions you can and tell them to hold their fire until I give the word. We do not want to waste ammunition or shoot a Hussar. We will hope the cavalry holds them and withdraw through the village when we can.’
As if they had heard him, a larger troop of Hussars – perhaps a hundred of them – came trotting up to join their comrades. They formed an extended double line across the road and the fields.
It did not take long for the first Dragoons to appear and when they did the captain of the Hussars ordered an immediate charge. Black plumes waving in the breeze, swords unsheathed and held upright, they galloped straight at the Dragoons, giving them little time to organise themselves.
The engagement was brief and bloody. A hundred or so Hussars surrounded fifty French Dragoons and slaughtered them like cattle. Swords skewered bodies and men screamed. Macdonell stood beside Gooch and Hervey and watched. He had almost forgotten what a cavalry engagement was like. ‘Wish you were in a cavalry regiment, gentlemen?’ he asked, without taking his eyes from the fight. Both shook their heads.
Just one Dragoon managed to escape the circle. Alone, he galloped towards the village, brandishing his sword and shouting his loyalty to France. He was a brave man, but doomed. Macdonell took Dawson’s musket, waited until the Dragoon was thirty yards away, and shot him through the eye. The man fell to one side, his foot trapped in a stirrup, and was dragged away over a field by his mount. Macdonell handed back the musket. ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ he said quietly. ‘A brave man. I would not have wished for anyone else to have killed him.’
The Dragoons could only have been a scouting party and none of them had escaped back to their lines. The Hussars had bought them time. But probably not much of it. The French would soon wonder where their scouts had got to, fear the worst, and send more forward. And if they brought up artillery, there would be carnage. Streets blocked or not, it was time to move.
Halfway through Genappe, they found the cause of the delay. At a sharp bend in the main street two wagons had tipped over, spilling ammunition and supplies onto the cobbles and injuring the horses. The wagons had blocked the road. They had to be unlimbered, righted and new horses found before the column could move on. Amid the confusion, that had taken the best part of an hour. Cursing himself for not having gone forward to take charge of the mess, Macdonell led the companies through and to the road beyond the village. There they re-formed on the right. Behind them, the Hussars formed a screen across the entire width of the retreating army.
The rain which had come and gone for more than a night and a day now settled in for the afternoon. Dripping and miserable, they trudged on, never far from the rear of the column and hoping that they were safe behind the Hussars. An hour passed, then another. Macdonell reckoned they had marched four miles and had four more to Mont St Jean. There were no more villages on the road, just squelching earth and puddles of mud. The rain battered the rye and filled the streams. It went through trousers and overalls like paper, it doubled the weight of a man’s pack and it flowed like a waterfall off his shako.
Harry rode up to Macdonell with an oilskin over his shoulders. ‘At least no one will go thirsty,’ he said. ‘And there has been no sign of the frogs. Perhaps they are sheltering from it.’
‘I doubt it, Harry,’ replied James. ‘Ney will be promising the first man to kill one of us the Emperor’s undying gratitude. They will be galloping up the road, sabres at the ready and dreaming of a life of ease and wealth at the Emperor’s expense. I am only surprised that none of them has arrived yet.’
‘I hate this, James. Retreating like this. The French at our backs and goodness knows what ahead. For all we know, Buonaparte has swept down like the wolf on the fold and torn Picton’s and Alten’s to shreds.’
‘Showing off, Harry? I would not have taken you for a lover of Lord Byron.’
‘Harrow, James. They taught us all manner of odd things. Poetry, Latin, geometry …’ A shout penetrated the rain. They turned towards it. French Lancers. The Hussars had seen them and formed in line. But there was no point in taking chances. If the Lancers broke through, they would be on the infantry in seconds.
‘Form square,’ shouted Macdonell. ‘Prepare to meet cavalry.’ The weary men dragged themselves into squares around their officers, fumbled at their bayonets with slippery hands and prayed that the Hussars would save them from having to keep the Lancers at bay. In this weather, anything could happen. If a horse slipped and crashed into a square, it might break it open. And the exhausted men kneeling and crouching shoulder to shoulder and knee to knee knew it.
In the hands of an expert a lance was a brutal thing, needle-pointed and terrifying, its edges as sharp as a razor. A good lance was perfectly balanced and strong enough to withstand the impact of flesh or bone. There was no lancer more skilled than a French lancer and these Lancers had come to avenge their dead comrades in the Dragoons. They hurled themselves at the Brunswickers, heedless of the treacherous ground beneath their horses’ hooves, heads down and lances poised to kill.
The disadvantage of the lance was that if the target slipped past its point, the lancer was as good as defenceless against a hacking sabre or swinging sword. Unmoving, the Hussars stood ready to receive the Lancers’ charge.
The Brunswickers knew their business. They were there to protect the Allied army from attack from the rear or the flanks. To do that they must prevent pursuing cavalry from reaching the light companies at its rear. They met the charge of the Lancers in tight formation, deflecting the wicked blades with their sabres and thrusting under and round them into unprotected chests and stomachs. Even when a lance found its target, the lancer was as likely as not to be felled by the next man in line. If he did not pull the blade out before its victim fell, the lance would be lost and he would be at the mercy of sabre and sword. For every Hussar who fell, two or three lancers did the same.
The Lancers soon broke off the engagement and retired, sent on their way by a volley of insults and jeers from the Brunswickers. Their captain trotted back to the infantry squares and raised his hat. He noticed that it had lost its splendid blue and gold plume, regarded it distastefully and threw it into the square. He was cheered back to his line.
Twice more over the next two hours the Brunswickers resisted attacks by French cavalry – the first by another troop of Lancers, the second by breast-plated cuirassiers. Each time Macdonell ordered squares to be formed but they were not needed. Thanks to the Hussars no Frenchman came within musket range.
As soon as the French cavalry disappeared, the squares broke up and the march continued. They had to hasten to make up lost ground on the wagons and artillery ahead. It took something out of them. Feet began to drag and heads to drop. But not for long. One of Harry Wyndham’s songs, the rhythm beaten out on kettles and musket barrels, did wonders at reviving spirits.
On they marched
between fields of rye and corn devastated by the rain, through puddles almost big enough to be called ponds and past exhausted soldiers huddled under hedges or prostrate on the roadside. Some were dead, others dying from their wounds or from plain fatigue. Their cries of distress were pitiful. There was no time to offer assistance. They must go on.
It was approaching six in the evening when some two hundred and sixty officers and men of General Byng’s 2nd Brigade light companies reached the village of Planchenois, from where the land dipped into a shallow valley before rising gently up towards the ridge at Mont St Jean, becoming steeper nearer the top. James and Harry stopped and stared. It was like watching an army of ants on the move. Every yard of the road and overflowing into the fields on either side was alive with men and horses and artillery and wagons as far as they could see. James had to blink to convince himself that the road itself was not moving. On the ridge and its southern slope there was endless movement this way and that as if the ants were building a new nest.
‘Have you ever seen anything like that?’ asked Harry.
‘Never. The Duke must be concentrating his entire force there.’
Harry stroked his chin. ‘If Boney’s strength is as they say, even this may not be enough to stop him. It would be reassuring to know that the Prussians are on their way.’
The final mile was the slowest. Men who could do no more than put one foot unthinkingly in front of the other trudged up the slope at the pace of those in front. Artillery teams urged their horses on with hand and whip. Dragoons rode up and down the ragged line calling absurdly for it to go faster. Unless it sprouted wings and flew, it could not.
Macdonell looked to their rear. There was no sign of the French, although they would be close. Their voltigeurs would be pushing forward through the cover of the rye, eager to pick off a retreating Englishman or two, and the best of Boney’s infantry divisions would not be far behind. By nightfall, he reckoned the battle lines would be drawn.
Beyond Planchenois they passed an inn at the tiny hamlet of La Belle Alliance. To their left they had glimpses through copses of trees of a large farm at the base of the slope. Ahead there was another farm. When they reached this one they found it being fortified with timber and stone by a company of the King’s German Legion. Macdonell asked the farm’s name. ‘La Ferme de la Haye Sainte’ he was told.
There was no doubting when they had finally reached the top of the ridge. On both sides, villages of tents and bivouacs stretched east and west, cannon were being heaved and dragged into lines and cavalry horses, safely tethered to trees or each other, were munching away at the sodden grass or at the handfuls of hay sprinkled over it. Farriers went from one to another, checking hooves and shoes. At least the animals had a feed.
At the summit a pair of mounted staff officers were directing traffic. One of them, in the uniform of a captain of the Life Guards, asked Macdonell his name and regiment. The captain consulted his list. ‘General Cooke’s division. To your left, Colonel, about two hundred yards.’
A single elm tree stood where the road met a rough lane. From there Macdonell let his eye rove over the landscape. To the north, arriving troops were making slow progress against a tide of camp followers heading away from danger. Wives and sweethearts, some carrying infants, others leading mules or pushing handcarts, walked alongside the baggage wagons. Macdonell knew the Duke well enough. Just as the captain of a frigate would order his deck cleared for action, Wellington would have ordered all unnecessary obstacles and impediments out of the way. And there were a lot of them. The exodus might go on all night.
To the east, regiments of cavalry – the redoubtable General Picton’s one of them – were bivouacked north of the lane. A high thorny hedge separated them from the infantry on the other side. To the west, on the reverse side of the ridge and thus invisible from below, infantrymen built clusters of bivouacs or huddled around meagre fires while artillery pieces were heaved into place behind them. Further back, quartermasters’ fourgons and ammunition wagons were parked in front of a dense wood. Behind them were the dressing stations. How typical of the peer, he thought, to have nature protect his rear with a wood, into which his infantry could dash for cover if they had to. On the south side of the ridge, the Duke had placed battalions of Netherlanders and Nassauers. Below them, open country was given shape and shadow by folds and hollows in the land. That would be their battleground. And how typical of the peer to have selected a ridge from which he would be able to observe the battle and issue orders. In the peninsula, he had done exactly that more than once.
He led the men in column down the rough lane to their left for about two hundred yards until he found General Cooke’s Second Division, its colours, hanging limp and bedraggled, only just recognisable. As they turned off the lane and into the field, familiar faces looked up and shouted greetings. A few raised a hand in salute. Someone called out to Sergeant Dawson. Someone else lobbed a clump of grass at Lester and shouted at him to wipe himself down. ‘Disgrace to the regiment you are, Joe Lester. Mud all over your new uniform. Get cleaned up.’ Joseph Lester picked up the clod and threw it back, gleefully knocking over the man’s tea.
They found patches of grass and earth and began to set up their bivouacs. They stuck their ramrods into the soft ground, and using the buttons and loops on their blankets to join them together, laid them across to make a roof. It was the Guards’ own way – better than nothing and in the rain it allowed kettles to be boiled for tea, pipes to be lit and frozen hands to be warmed back to life. The muskets without ramrods and flints were stacked neatly among the bivouacs. Ignoring the hubbub and bustle all around, each man concentrated on his own small space and his own affairs.
James and Harry dismounted and watched. They would not settle themselves until the men had done so. Oddly, the Graham brothers were making no attempt to build a shelter or even to light a fire. Instead, they stood together, smoking their foul-smelling pipes, under a blanket draped over their heads. Harry asked them why they were not bivouacked. ‘A feeling, sir,’ replied James, ‘that we are not yet finished for the day.’
‘Not finished?’ Harry was horrified. ‘What else would you have us do?’
‘Not us, Captain, His Grace. We’ve an idea he has more work for us before we get a rest.’
‘What work would that be?’
Joseph scratched his beard and looked thoughtful. ‘We do not know, Captain. It’s just a feeling.’
‘Well, I do hope you are mistaken.’ The brothers sucked on their pipes and looked doubtful.
Sergeant Dawson, even with help from Joseph Lester, was struggling with his bivouac. James noticed that he was favouring his right arm and cursed. He had forgotten. ‘Sergeant Dawson,’ he called out, ‘your arm. Let me see it, please.’ The sergeant let his blanket fall and hurried over. He rolled up his sleeve and held out his arm. The wound had not healed. It was red and swollen and oozing a yellow pus. Macdonell lifted the arm and sniffed it. No trace of gangrene yet, but it needed attention quickly. Without it, the arm would go and then the patient. ‘You must have it attended to at once.’
‘Oh no, Colonel. I hate hospitals and surgeons. Some of their weapons are worse than sabres. The arm will be good as new in the morning.’
‘Nonsense, Sergeant.’ He summoned Joseph Lester. ‘Escort the sergeant to the nearest dressing station and stay with him until his wound has been stitched and dressed.’
‘Yes, sir. If he tries to escape I’ll shoot him. Come on, Sergeant, you’re my prisoner now.’ Dawson fired a furious look at his colonel and trudged off with Lester.
James turned to Harry. ‘Brave as a lion in battle yet terrified of surgeons. In that he is not alone. Now, gin, I rather fancy, Harry. Would you care to take a foraging party to find a quartermaster who has some and tell him it’s badly needed here? Exaggerate our numbers a little if you have to.’
‘Delighted, Colonel,’ replied Harry. ‘And what else would you like for your supper?’
‘Beef and
potatoes would serve, but I’ll settle for whatever you can find.’
‘Very good, Colonel. Leave it to me.’
James had not yet caught sight of Francis Hepburn. Unless he had found himself a more comfortable billet, Francis should be there. His battalion left Quatre Bras well before the light companies and he should by now be safely bivouacked. He asked a corporal in the Foot Guards where Hepburn might be found. ‘Gone to the hospital, Colonel,’ replied the corporal. ‘Said he would be back soon.’
‘Is he wounded?’ asked Macdonell.
‘Don’t think so, Colonel.’
‘Then why has he gone to the hospital?’
‘Couldn’t say, Colonel.’
‘And I do not imagine you know where the hospital is, Corporal.’
‘No, Colonel, I don’t.’ Francis Hepburn’s whereabouts would have to wait. A strangely disgruntled Macdonell returned to his duties.
So much for new uniforms. Mud-splattered, ripped, sopping. Ruined beyond repair. And still it was raining. If it rained all night, would they be able to fight? Would a single musket fire or cannon roar? Would heavy cavalry horses not sink into the mud and gun carriages stick fast? A bizarre image of chess pieces immersed in bloody water crossed Macdonell’s mind.
The Grahams were still making no effort to erect a bivouac. ‘Muskets and powder dry, if you please, Corporals,’ he said, ‘even if you are as wet as an Irish summer.’
‘Dry as tinder, Colonel,’ replied Joseph, holding up his oilskin-covered musket for inspection.
‘And in Ireland the sun always shines,’ added his brother. ‘It’s just that you can’t always see it.’
A troop of engineers had been touring the countryside and returned with their wagons loaded high with fence posts, doors, window frames, furniture and farm gates. They dumped the timber in heaps around the camp. The reverse side of the ridge was soon lit by scores of fires fuelled by dry wood and strong enough to resist the rain. Away to their right, towards the farm, James had noticed through the trees a huge fire had been lit. He wondered what the Duke would make of it.
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