He descended the stairs and stood in the yard inside the south gate. On every roof, at every window and over the walls, muskets pointed out at the woods, where the Jägers waited for the first of the French infantry to attack. He wondered how long the Jägers would hold out before being forced back behind the walls. Not long, probably, and then the French would sweep through the wood and hurl themselves at the south wall. Prince Jérôme, desperate to win his brother’s praise, would take no account of casualties. He would blast the farm and chateau with his artillery and drive his troops forward and forward again until they stormed the gates and claimed victory.
To hold them off, Macdonell had four hundred men of the light companies in the chateau and farm, six hundred under Major Sattler in the orchard and about the same number in the wood. He checked his watch again. It was fifteen minutes past eleven o’clock. From the direction of the valley beyond the wood a cannon roared and round shot screeched over their heads.
It had started.
CHAPTER TWELVE
There was no foreplay, no caress, no gentle exploration. In their dozens, the French guns thundered, their teams reloaded and they thundered again. It was sudden and brutal and for Macdonell’s Guards there was no respite and no escape. The first of them went down, struck by bouncing round shot or stabbed by splinters of timber and brick ripped from the walls of the chateau and the farm buildings. In no time the yard was a swamp of blood, mud and debris and the air full of the cries of the injured.
The wounded who could walk to the barn did so; those who could not were helped there by comrades. The dead were carried to a corner of the yard near the tower. For an infantryman this was the very worst time. Against cavalry he could form square, against infantry he could fight with musket and bayonet or his bare hands. Against artillery fire he could do nothing but pray. Like them, Macdonell hated it.
In the yard he stood and listened and watched. He was watching his men, assessing their spirits, observing their reactions to the onslaught. He had known good men crumble in the face of round shot or canister and he knew the signs. Here there were none. And he was listening. Listening for an end to the artillery bombardment that would signal the advance of the infantry.
From the hill behind them General Byng’s cannon returned fire. Their height gave them an advantage and, ignoring the Duke’s standing instructions never to engage in long-range artillery battles, they fired over the wood and into the valley behind. The French Gunners immediately altered their aim and the Guards in the garden and the farm and the Nassauers and Hanoverians in the orchard found themselves watching shot hurtling over their heads from both front and rear.
The spark that had ignited the fire of battle at Hougoumont soon did the same in the fields and lanes beyond. Great twelve-pound cannon sent death into the sky to rip heads and limbs from brave men who might see and hear it coming but were expected not to move, not even to flinch. That was a matter of honour for all from the loftiest general to the humblest private. Yet any man who had stood in square and faced an artillery attack knew that it was impossible to stand entirely still in the face of round shot and canister exploding all around, ripping heads from shoulders and limbs from bodies. Macdonell had experienced it himself. He knew what it was like. Terrifying, ear-splitting, blood-soaked hell.
The farm and chateau were enveloped in foul smoke. Everywhere men coughed and spluttered and screwed their eyes shut. Macdonell yelled an order. ‘Eyes on the wood. Watch the wood.’ A shot crashed against the chapel wall, showering the dead with brick dust but leaving the chapel standing. He ran into the gardener’s house and up the stairs to a window. He strained his eyes to peer through the smoke until tears ran down his face. In the wood, muskets fired and men screamed, but he could see nothing. Perhaps the Nassauers and Jägers were holding the French at bay.
They were not. As he watched from the window, green-jacketed men began to emerge from the wood into the clearing outside the gate. They were firing back into the trees as they withdrew, covering each other as best they could. A man went down clutching his knee and was dragged to the wall by a burly sergeant.
Macdonell could not risk removing the barricade and opening the gate to let the retreating men in. He yelled at them to run for the orchard hedge. The Hanoverians and Lüneburgs did so, but some of the Nassauers sloped off into the fields behind the farm. A night in the woods and an attack by French voltigeurs had apparently been enough for them. Macdonell shrugged. There was no point in trying to stop them. A man whose heart was not in the fight would be worse than useless.
Behind the retreating Hanoverians, voltigeurs and tirailleurs poured out of the wood and ran for the gate, firing as they went and shouting the name of their Emperor. It was not what skirmishers were for and little more than foolish bravado. They were met by a storm of musket fire from the roofs and windows and fell in their scores. The few who managed to reach the garden wall were clubbed or hacked down as they tried to climb it. They carried no ladders. Macdonell barely suppressed a grin as James Graham reached over to grab a Frenchman by the neck and heaved him bodily over his shoulder to be dealt with by the Guards behind.
The attackers faced a hopeless task. They could not hope to hit targets protected by walls and hidden behind windows, or to survive the merciless fire rained down upon them. Yet they kept coming, the skirmishers soon being joined by regular infantry and to their right facing the garden, by Dragoons.
Macdonell dashed round the chateau to the north gates. They were secure, guarded by James Hervey’s men on the roofs of the sheds and behind the wall. In the garden, Harry Wyndham’s company was picking off Frenchmen through the loopholes and from the fire steps. Macdonell climbed onto a step for a better view. The private beside him fired and a French shot whistled past his shoulder. The man had found his target in the nick of time. Macdonell clapped him on the shoulder and jumped off the step.
All around the garden, in the farm, at the walls and gates, men died with the crack of muskets and the screech of round shot in their heads. And then a new sound, subtly different from the roar of cannon. Now that the wood was clear of Allied troops, Major Bull’s battery of howitzers had joined the fray. Their shells rose high into the sky, dropping steeply to explode above the trees and rain down a storm of shrapnel on enemy heads. There was no soldier in any army in the world who was not terrified at the mere thought of shrapnel. Iron shot and evil shards of hot metal caused wounds more terrible than any other.
More Frenchmen poured from the wood. But the Guards had had time to reload and picked them off like rabbits. Singly and in groups, the French braved the deadly fire of the Coldstreams, charged across the clearing and threw themselves at the gate and the walls. Dead or dying, they fell there in their dozens and in no time the ground was littered with bodies. Yet they came on and on again. It was hard not to admire the courage of these men but it was futile courage. And the only real damage to the defences or the defenders had been caused by the French artillery. Their infantry were achieving next to nothing. The hundred men of the 3rd Guards Light Company now stationed in and around the lane on the west side of the farm were not even engaged. The French could not reach them.
Macdonell made his way into the garden where yet more French infantry were attacking the wall. Despite their numbers, they were faring little better than their comrades at the south gate. The loopholes afforded almost complete protection to Harry Wyndham’s men shooting through them, and the brave men who did reach the wall were smashed brutally back by the butt of a musket or the thrust of a bayonet. All manner of objects were being put to use – lengths of timber, bricks and stones, even kettles. A kettle jammed into a moustachioed French face appearing above the wall did the job as well as anything.
Harry Wyndham, mounted on his fifteen-hand grey and sword in hand, was in the middle of the garden watching for signs of weakness and shouting for more ammunition or more men where he judged they were needed. From where he was, Harry had a good view of the whole garden and was
directing its defence with calm skill while deliberately exposing himself to enemy fire. Wellington himself would have approved.
In the orchard, it was a different story. Major Sattler’s battalion, protected only by the ragged hedge, were suffering. Even reinforced by the Hanoverians who had been driven out of the wood, they would not be able to hold the position for much longer. French Dragoons had already dismounted and broken through the hedge on the east side and were streaming through the gap. The defenders were being driven remorselessly back, yard by yard, towards the garden and the lane leading up to the ridge. If the French occupied the lane, reinforcements would be unable to reach Hougoumont.
The Hanoverians fought ferociously with sword and musket, but they were increasingly outnumbered. Watching from behind the garden wall, Macdonell knew it could only be a matter of minutes before the whole orchard was in French hands.
In fact it was less. Major Sattler, realising the hopelessness of his task, called for a withdrawal to the lane. Leaving the orchard strewn with bodies, his Hanoverians managed to work their way to the lane where they re-formed on the bank and in the hedge alongside it. It was a skillful manouevre which not only saved lives but also kept the lane open.
But the French now had the orchard, from where they would attack the garden wall and pepper the farm and chateau with case-shot. Light case fired at close range from small four-pound guns could do terrible damage, as Macdonell had seen for himself at Salamanca, where he had watched in horror as ranks of advancing guards were ripped to shreds by the iron balls that exploded out of the case and into their bodies and faces.
Without reinforcements, they could not hope to retake the orchard. Macdonell cursed. His defence of Hougoumont looked like being short-lived. He rushed back into the garden and shouted for Harry. ‘The French have the orchard, Harry,’ he yelled. ‘Every man you can spare to the east wall. They must not get into the garden.’ Harry heard him, immediately gathered fifty men and ran to the wall. James picked up a discarded musket, gave the flint a cursory glance, made sure it was loaded and ran to join them. For all the heaped fortifications around it, a crumbling section of the wall on the east side was their most vulnerable point and where the French would probably try to break through.
The French Dragoons were working their way steadily through the orchard, sheltering behind the fruit trees and using the mounds and hollows in the ground for cover. They were fighting like voltigeurs – fire, move, reload, fire – hard to see in the smoke and even harder to hit. Each Guard was getting off three or even four shots a minute, but they were firing almost blind. And at any moment, the French light guns might start spitting their lethal charges over the heads of their own men and into the garden and the farm.
James and Harry heard them before they saw them. A thundering of hooves and feet down the sunken lane, followed by the light companies of the 1st Brigade, Alexander Saltoun, mounted on a grey charger at their head, bursting out of the cover of the hedge and into the orchard. Major Sattler’s Hanoverians, screaming their ancient battle cries, followed behind.
Taken by surprise, the French Dragoons turned to face the new threat and exposed their backs to fire from the garden wall. Through the thinning smoke, Macdonell saw a number fall, killed by musket shot or skewered by a bayonet. He exchanged a glance with Harry, grinned and jumped down into the orchard. Harry and his company were quick to follow. They ran at the Dragoons, bayonets ready to strike, and yelling with glee. The enemy, hemmed in on all sides, had nowhere to hide and, bravely as they fought, were doomed. A few managed to break through the hedge and escape. Most went down, sliced, hacked or disembowelled by bayonet or sword.
A Dragoon captain was one of the last to fall. He stood with his back to an apple tree, using his sword to parry and thrust. He was a courageous man and a skilful one. The bodies of two Guards lay beside him, a third staggered off with an arm hanging by threads of skin. A Guard raised his musket and aimed at the captain’s head. ‘Hold your fire, man,’ yelled Macdonell. ‘We will make the captain our prisoner.’ He was too late. The Guard fired and the captain fell, a bullet in his brain.
Saltoun gave orders for the dead to be heaped in a corner of the orchard, the wounded to be taken to the barn while Major Sattler’s men set about patching up the hedge. It would not be long before the French returned to recover the ground they had held so briefly.
‘Well, James,’ said Saltoun, ‘I do not know what you are doing in my orchard but I am pleased to see you.’
‘And I you. Was there a change of orders?’
‘I really do not know. On our way back to the ridge we met Wellington who told us he knew of no order for us to leave Hougoumont and that we should stay where we were. A little later he rode down again and ordered us back into the fray. I can only think that the excellent General d’Aubremé, whose English is less than perfect, mistook the order to reinforce for one to replace.’ Saltoun looked about. ‘Just as well the Duke met us when he did, I’d say.’
From the direction of the chateau came more sounds of battle. Muskets fired and men screamed. Without another word, James turned and ran back through the yard and into the gardener’s house. He elbowed aside a Guard and looked out of a window. The French were attacking the south gate again.
For all the losses they had already suffered, their general had thrown them back at the gate. Out of the woods they came like sheep driven by their shepherd, firing, shouting, falling and dying. They climbed on and over the corpses of their comrades, apparently fearless and determined to smash their way through the gate. It was madness. Why did Jérôme not bring up his light artillery and blast a way through the door? Thick as it was, the oak would not stand many direct hits from four-pound cannon.
In the yard, the same thought had plainly occurred to Henry Gooch. He had ordered his company to keep away from the door and had concentrated his strength at the windows and on the roofs, from where they had clear lines of sight into the clearing. Gooch had taken a horse from the stable and, like Harry Wyndham, chosen to fight mounted. This gave him the advantage of height but made him an easy target for a French musket fired over the wall. So far, there had been none of those and Gooch was unharmed.
Macdonell walked over and took hold of the horse’s bridle. ‘You might wish to spend the remainder of the day on foot, Mister Gooch,’ he shouted over the crack and clamour. ‘I would not want to lose you so early.’
‘As you wish, Colonel,’ replied the ensign, dismounting. ‘I merely thought to follow His Grace’s example.’
‘You may do that when you are a general, Mister Gooch. For now, kindly stay alive and hold this gate.’
A shout came from the upper floor of the gardener’s house. Macdonell looked up to see Sergeant Dawson’s face at a window. ‘The frogs are in the lane,’ he called out, pointing to the west side of the farm. ‘A company, at least.’
Thank God Wellington had sent orders for the lane to be defended and James had moved a hundred men of the 3rd Guards there. They were light company men, well trained, tough and disciplined. And they were led by Charles Dashwood, a veteran of Maida and Toulouse.
Unless he left by the north gates and entered the lane in the rear of Dashwood’s company, the only way for Macdonell to see what was happening was to look over the top of the small west gate. There were no windows in the west walls of the barn or stables.
The men guarding the gate had found old crates and ammunition boxes on which to stand. Six of them were shoulder to shoulder, firing into the lane while another six reloaded. Macdonell stepped up onto a crate and looked down. Dashwood’s company had been pushed back halfway up the lane towards the north gate. The lane itself was narrow and defined by the farm walls and a four-foot bank on the other side. It was not difficult to defend but beyond it was open ground, over which the French had extended their line, forcing the light company to do the same. Without reinforcements they would not hold the lane for long.
Macdonell jumped down and ran to the north gates whic
h, so far, had not been threatened. James Hervey, unlike Henry Gooch, was on foot. ‘Mister Hervey,’ shouted Macdonell, ‘Colonel Dashwood’s company will soon be outside the gates. Make ready to let them in and to close the gates immediately after them. Not a Frenchman must enter.’
‘Not one, Colonel,’ replied Hervey. ‘You may count upon it.’
‘Good. Send someone to fetch Captain Wyndham and Mister Gooch and anyone else who can be spared. Now.’ For the first time the north gates were about to come under attack. They too must be held.
A guard on the roof of the shed on the west side of the gates was the first to sound a warning. He filled his lungs and bellowed. ‘Open the gates. Colonel Dashwood’s company approaching. Open the gates.’
It took two men to lift the heavy cross-beam from its housings. They threw it to one side and joined the others pulling the doors open. Macdonell stood at the open gate, urging the retreating Guards inside. They began to withdraw to safety, backs to the farm and trying desperately to keep the pursuing French at bay. Muskets empty, they fought with broken butts and with their fists whilst trying to manouevre backwards through the gates. A Guard slipped in the mud and tripped the man in front of him. Both died at the point of a French sword. Charles Dashwood, at the front of his men, yelled at them to make haste. He took a blow to the shoulder from a musket, dropped his sword and fell to one knee. A Frenchman raised his own sword to strike at the colonel’s unprotected neck and let out a brutal cry of triumph. Two seconds later he was dead, killed by a shot from the roof of the cowshed. Above the clash and clamour, the shout could be heard clearly. ‘Got the bugger, filthy frog bastard.’ Macdonell looked up in surprise. Patrick Luke, of all people, had saved the life of Colonel Dashwood.
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