Dashwood had been dragged inside and almost all the Guards were safe when Macdonell climbed onto the cowshed roof to see whether the French were preparing for another attack or had withdrawn to the safety of the lane. A French colonel, mistakenly sensing the moment of victory, came galloping down the lane, sabre raised. He yanked on the reins, turned his mount sharply and aimed a cutting stroke at one of the few Guards still outside the gates, a sergeant named Fraser. The sergeant, a small, wiry fellow, avoided the stroke and seized the Frenchman’s arm. He pulled the colonel off his horse, jumped into the saddle and to a loud cheer rode it triumphantly through the gates. The colonel was left defenceless on the ground and at the mercy of a row of muskets trained on him from the cowshed roof. ‘The man is helpless,’ shouted Macdonell. ‘Let him go.’ The muskets did not fire and the colonel rose, saluted, and walked slowly back to the lane. The remaining Frenchmen followed him.
The last of Dashwood’s Guards were inside the gates, which were hastily pushed shut. The Graham brothers lifted the crossbeam and replaced it in its housings. The north gates were secure. ‘Come on, Harry,’ called out Macdonell. ‘Time we inspected the garden.’
But they had barely reached the garden gate when there was a splintering sound not unlike that of a tree falling, followed by cries of alarm. They ran back to the gates. The two panels had not quite shut fully, and through a narrow gap between them, an axe was making short work of the cross-beam. The axeman must be a goliath. The beam was solid oak and the gap allowed him to raise his axe only a foot or two. Yet before they could react the beam split and the gates were pushed open. Thirty or forty Frenchmen, led by a bearded sous-lieutenant – a giant several inches taller than either of the Grahams – had turned back and smashed open the gate.
The French charged into the yard. The lieutenant was uttering blood-curdling threats, brandishing a long-handled axe and looking ready to take on an entire battalion by himself. He swiped at a head, missed, reversed the axe and sliced into the head from behind. Faced with the swinging axe, the Guards with empty muskets backed away. A Hanoverian private ran for the farmer’s house and got his hand on the door handle. He was just too late. The axe fell with brutal force and removed his hand at the wrist. The giant ran through the archway and past the chateau towards the south gate. A dozen of his comrades followed him.
Blue jackets were pouring in through the gates and filling the yard. The Guards could not hold back the tide. They fired into the mass of bodies and defended themselves with bayonet and musket, but were being swiftly overpowered.
Macdonell put his head down and charged at the intruders like a bull. They must close the gates immediately. Leave them open and hundreds of cheering Frenchmen would sweep through the farm, the chateau and the garden. And Hougoumont would fall.
Almost simultaneously, Harry Wyndham and the Graham brothers followed, hacking and slashing their way through the melee. A handful of Guards, led by the two ensigns, joined them. The rest formed a line to block the route to the south gate.
‘The gates,’ yelled Macdonell, over the clash of steel and the crack of muskets. ‘Close the gates.’ Ignoring a sharp sting on his left arm he jabbed his sword into the eye of a Frenchman, shouldered another aside and kicked a third in the knee. Beside him, James and Joseph Graham, shoulder to shoulder, were also carving a bloody path. The enemy were all around them yet it was French blood that spurted from heads and stomachs and Frenchmen who fell dying. The three of them reached the left gate and put their weight on it. For all their strength, it was blocked by the crush of bodies outside and barely moved. Straining for purchase in the mud, they tried again. This time it moved a few inches, and, gradually, painfully slowly, gathered momentum.
The right-hand gate was still wide open. Harry and the Guards had not been able to reach it and were fighting with their fists and feet. More blue jackets ran into the yard. One, a corporal, turned back and aimed a slash at James Graham’s back. His brother saw the strike coming and yelled a warning. Just in time, James swivelled, grabbed the corporal’s wrist, twisted it and kicked him in the groin. The man dropped his sword, fell like a sack of flour and lay gasping in the mud.
Without Graham’s weight behind it, the French had pushed the left gate open a little. A private slipped around it. Graham picked up the corporal’s sword and pierced the private’s windpipe. The man fell back, blood gushing from the wound. Graham dropped the sword and put his shoulder to the gate. Immediately it moved again, creaked and groaned and was closed.
On the other side Harry was still struggling. James Hervey stood beside him, smashing his musket into French faces, but making no progress towards the gate. Henry Gooch and a handful of guards were fighting to reach them. The gate was open and the French were still coming in.
Macdonell made a decision. ‘This one’s yours, gentlemen,’ he gasped, taking his weight off the gate. He stepped over a body and launched himself at a French back. The man fell like a skittle. Macdonell jumped over him and fought his way to Harry.
The muskets on the cowshed roof were firing into the French outside, barely taking aim, just firing and firing again into the mass of bodies. Men fell, blocked the path of those behind and had to be dragged out of the way. The flow of Frenchmen through the gates slowed.
Macdonell reached the gate. He put all his weight on it, slipped in the mud and lost his footing. He was up in a trice with Hervey at his shoulder. Harry landed a punch in a French face and was with them. They leant on the gate. It began to move, slowly at first, then under its own momentum, faster. The French too were finding it difficult to keep their footing in the mud. The gap was little more than a foot wide when, out of the corner of his eye, Macdonell saw a tiny figure slip through it and run into the yard. He had no time to dwell on it. One more heave and the gates closed. It took two men to lift a timber and drop it in the housings but he could not spare two men. He called for a Guard to take his place, dashed to the cowshed, squatted to get his forearms under a timber, straightened his legs and back, rose unsteadily and staggered back to the gates. With a huge groan, he dropped it in place. The gates were closed.
But the fight was not over. Three Frenchmen had managed to climb onto the wall. Two fired and jumped back to safety. The third took careful aim at Harry Wyndham, doubled over and trying to catch his breath. At the moment the Frenchman fired, a bullet from James Graham’s musket exploded into his mouth. His own shot went wide and he died instantly. Barely able to stand, Harry leant on James Graham’s arm until he could breathe. ‘My thanks, Corporal,’ he gasped. Graham grinned but did not reply.
Ignorant of the struggle at the gates, Major Bull’s howitzers were sending their exploding shells to rain havoc on the French in the valley and Prince Jérôme’s heavy cannon were blasting away at General Byng’s 2nd Brigade on the hillside. Below them, while the guns thundered and their deadly missiles flew overhead, eardrums were battered by the blasts and eyes rendered red and weeping by the smoke. Breathing was difficult, swallowing was agony. Throats burning from the taste of powder were scraped raw. And there were at least thirty Frenchman still inside the walls.
Macdonell wiped sweat from his forehead, picked a musket from the ground and ran for the south gate. If the intruders opened that, the French would pour in from the woods. He was almost too late. In the south yard, the crash of cannon and howitzer had drowned the clamour of the struggle at the north gate. The intruders had taken Sergeant Dawson’s troop by surprise and fired into their backs, killing a dozen instantly. The giant sous-lieutenant had used his axe to carve a path to the gate while his comrades fought with sword and musket to protect his back. Bloody bodies lay outside the chapel and the gardener’s house, from where Guards had rushed out to join the fight.
The lieutenant was within touching distance of the bricks and timber piled up behind the gate. His comrades had surrounded him and were taking the Guards’ musket fire themselves. They were brave men, intent upon their purpose, and they had very nearly achieved it.
The Guards who had followed Macdonell into the south yard had had time to reload their muskets. On his order, they raised them and sent twenty bullets into French faces. They fell, all of them but the giant lieutenant, who had put down his axe to lift a length of timber from the barricade. He turned to face them, threw the timber to one side and defiantly picked up another. Macdonell charged at him, shoulder down, and knocked the timber from his grasp. The giant reached out for his attacker’s throat. Macdonell ducked down to pick up the axe, slashed at his knees and rose to bury it in his chest. Astonishingly, the man did not fall. His huge hands were on the axe handle when a musket fired. A hole appeared over his eye and he collapsed face down into the mud.
Macdonell stood for a moment to regain his breath. Harry put a hand on his arm. ‘Was that wise, James?’ he asked quietly. ‘We could have shot him.’
‘It was necessary, Harry. Some things just are.’ He filled his lungs and shouted over the cannon fire. ‘Clear the dead, wounded to the barn. Check muskets and flints.’
‘And what shall I do with this, Colonel?’ asked a voice behind him.
He turned. Sergeant Dawson was holding a boy of about twelve by the collar of his tunic. He was a drummer boy, the boy who had slipped in while the north gates were closing.
‘Tu es très brave, mon garçon,’ said Macdonell. ‘Mais pourquoi?’
The boy pointed to a dead Frenchman. ‘Mon père,’ he replied.
Macdonell nodded. ‘Ton père était brave aussi.’ And to Dawson, ‘Put him in the barn. Ask the orderlies to keep an eye on him.’
Dawson glanced at Macdonell’s sleeve. ‘Perhaps you should visit the barn yourself, Colonel.’
Macdonell looked down. His left sleeve was ripped and dripping blood. The sting he had felt must have been from a musket ball. He pulled back the sleeve. It was no more than a graze. ‘If you would fetch me a bandage, Sergeant, I will not trouble the surgeon.’
‘Very well, Colonel,’ replied Dawson doubtfully. When it came to surgeons, the colonel apparently did not care to take his own advice. ‘Come on now, boy, let’s get you out of the way.’ The boy, who was unlikely to speak a word of English, took the sergeant’s meaning and went off with him.
‘How are we faring, Harry?’ asked Macdonell. ‘Casualties? Have you counted?’
Harry nodded. ‘I have. Seventeen dead, two officers wounded. Colonel Dashwood’s shoulder is broken. And you, of course.’
‘A scratch. Get Colonel Dashwood to the chateau. He can wait there for the surgeon. And other casualties?’
‘About forty, half serious. The rest can hold a musket and near enough see a target.’
‘Perhaps Prince Jérôme will give us time to lick our wounds and prepare for his next visit. Have we enough water?’
‘No. The well is all but empty. There’s gin, but it scorches like fire down a raw throat.’
‘Then let us hope General Cooke takes pity on us and sends down a supply wagon loaded with water and bullets and powder. If he can, that is. Are the frogs in the sunken lane yet?’
‘I don’t know. They might be.’
The sound of the howitzer was unmistakeable. Instinctively, they both looked up. A shell passed over the trees and landed in the orchard. It had come not from the slope behind them but from the woods. Far from allowing them a rest, the Prince had called up his own howitzer battery.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When their sighting shots had given their teams the range, the deadly howitzers began their bombardment on the orchard. Saltoun’s tired and miserable troops could do little but seek meagre shelter from the shards of burning metal exploding over their heads. If they ran for the garden, the French would be into the orchard instantly, so they crouched behind apple trees and in the hedge, while the shells rained down like lethal hailstones, killing and wounding and maiming. Macdonell saw ten men carried to the barn, most with terrible wounds to the head, and ten more killed instantly. The awful howitzers were doing their duty and he expected them at any moment to turn their attention to the farm. Yet they did not. It soon became clear why.
From around the woods to the south galloped a company of Dragoons and, at the same time, several companies of infantry emerged from the trees beyond the gate, outside which scores of French bodies had lain since their last attack. Prince Jérôme, it seemed, had decided that the defenders’ strength was sufficiently depleted and their ammunition low enough for another attempt to be made.
He was right. Saltoun’s troops were pinned down in the orchard, Wyndham’s were defending the garden and the barn was filling up with the wounded. The farm was under threat at both north and south gates and ammunition supplies were already dangerously low. Only the chateau itself was secure. At least until the French turned their heavy cannon on to it. Then its ancient walls would surely crumble and fall.
Macdonell ran to the garden, climbed on a wooden crate and peered over the south wall. The Dragoons had formed in line facing the wall, ready to charge the moment they saw a breach. The infantry were gathering behind them and on the edge of the trees beyond the gate. Drums sounded the advance, orders were shouted, and muskets raised. Under cover of their fire, French light troops dashed to the south walls of the garden and farm. Through loopholes and windows, the guards fired back, picking their targets and killing them with ease. So many fell that their bodies filled the clearing and obstructed the advance of those behind.
Yet they kept coming. For every man who died, two more ran out of the woods. They grabbed the burning hot barrels of muskets sticking out of loopholes, fired through the gaps and, still without ladders, climbed on each other’s backs to reach the top of the garden walls. In the clearing a mounted French colonel, impervious to the Guards’ fire, exhorted his troops forward. When his horse was shot from under him he walked briskly back to the trees and returned on another one.
By sheer force of numbers, the French would breach the walls and take Hougoumont. Jérôme’s divisions would sweep through and around the farm and up the slope to attack the Allied army’s right wing. At the same time, his brother, the great Buonaparte, would continue to blast the Allied centre and left wing with his heavy cannon before unleashing his fearsome cavalry. If Wellington’s right wing was exposed, Buonaparte’s army of tough professional soldiers would destroy the Allied ragbag of Dutch militia, Belgians, Germans and raw British recruits without pausing to draw breath. It would be slaughter. Buonaparte clearly thought so too. He would take Hougoumont whatever the cost.
A French face appeared over the wall. Macdonell smashed the hilt of his sword into it and heard bones snap. All along the wall and at every window, individual battles of life and death were being fought. An attacker fired at a defender’s head and saw him fall. A defender thrust his bayonet into an attacker’s stomach and heard the life sucked out of him. The attackers, exposed to fire from every vantage point behind the walls, were taking enormous losses. Their dead piled up like sacks of grain, their wounded – those who could – limped and crawled back to the woods, pursued by fire from the chateau and the tower. As many as ten Frenchmen were dying for each Guard. But on they came, more and more of them, heedless of the unceasing fire, climbing over their bloody dead, most not even reaching the walls, those that did dying there.
Then everything changed. The French withdrew to the trees and brought up a pair of four-pounders, placed them just inside the treeline and began firing over the heads of their own troops into the gardener’s house and the yard beyond. Unlike the gun teams behind the wood, these could see where they were aiming. And the Gunners were skilled in their work. Their first salvo crashed through the upper windows of the gardener’s house, the second blasted the roof of the stable.
Macdonell ran back to the farm. He had been expecting this. Indeed, if he had been in Jérôme’s shoes, he would have brought up his light cannon as soon as he had possession of the wood. It can only have been the Prince’s pride that led him to believe he could take Hougoumont without destroying i
t. To win the praise of his brother, the man had been prepared to sacrifice hundreds, even thousands of French lives. Now he had been forced to change his tactics.
The cannon fired and fired again. It could not go on. A single breach in the wall and the French would be inside. Worse, enough direct hits and the south gate would be blasted into firewood. Macdonell found Sergeant Dawson and asked for a man to take a message to General Byng. The man must be quick and nimble. The sergeant handed him a blood-soaked bandage for his arm and went to find a man suitable.
The cannon roared again and the stable wall took two more hits. The horses had been moved to the cowshed by the north gate, but that was scant comfort. Muskets fired from the gardener’s house and the roofs. They had no effect. The gun teams went busily about their work, making ready the cannon, loading, aiming and firing.
Macdonell was struggling with the bandage when there was a quiet voice behind him. ‘You sent for me, Colonel.’
He turned. It was Joseph Lester. Dawson had made a good choice. ‘I did, Private. Slip out of the west gate and through the woods behind us. You will find General Byng on the ridge near the Nivelles Road. Ask him if we might have a little assistance.’
‘Yes, Colonel. Can I help with your bandage?’
‘I’ll manage. Quick as you like, Private.’
Macdonell hated seeking help but there was nothing else for it. If he led an attack on the guns from the farm, the gate would have to be opened. That was too big a risk. If he did nothing, there would soon be no gate. Help it would have to be.
A round shot whistled over the roof of the gardener’s house and exploded against the wall of the chateau, sending bricks and debris flying across the yard. A man screamed and grasped his stomach. Another, struck on the head by a brick, fell to the ground without a sound. The French heavy artillery had started up again. Howitzers, light cannon, and now heavy cannon. Jérôme was taking the risk of killing his own men. But he would kill a thousand Frenchmen with his own hands if it meant taking Hougoumont. C’était la guerre.
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