Some of the French had managed to slip round the west wall and up the lane towards the north gates. If they breached the gates and attacked the Guards from the rear, the battle would be over. Macdonell could only trust that Hervey and his small troop would keep them out. He had no inkling of what was happening in the garden or the orchard but as no French had yet appeared behind them, hoped that they were still held.
Their backs were now hard against the wall of the house and the shed beside it. Macdonell stood beside the portly figure of Sergeant Dawson under the arch of the gate. They could retreat no further without surrendering the farm and the chateau, so they would stand where they were. James Graham was still swinging the axe with brutal force, Dawson was thrusting his bayonet into stomachs and groins, every Guard and every Brunswicker was smashing, cutting and gouging at whatever he could.
And so was every Frenchman. Their commander had only to call his men back to allow his muskets a clear sight, and they would drop the Guards like a row of skittles. But the French attackers were not to be called back. They had suffered grievous casualties and would not allow them to have been in vain. Neither order nor threat would deter them. They would have the glory of taking Hougoumont.
Sergeant Dawson thrust his bayonet at another French groin, lost his footing and fell face down in the mud. The butt of a musket smashed into the back of his head and he lay still. Macdonell grabbed the musket, tore it free and jammed it into its owner’s face, which dissolved into a mess of blood and bone. He stooped quickly to put a hand to Dawson’s neck. The sergeant was dead. As he rose, a blow slammed into his shoulder, sending a stab of pain down his wounded arm. He lashed out with his sword, felt it strike bone and lashed again. A Frenchman fell with blood spurting from his thigh. A thrust into his windpipe and he too was dead.
The first cries came from outside the orchard. At first Macdonell could not make out even if the voices were English or French. But as they increased, he thought he could hear what they were saying. It was not possible. He must be mistaken. The cry was taken up outside the garden. He listened harder. ‘La Garde recule, La Garde recule.’ Was it possible?
The French in the wood and the clearing heard it too. The Imperial Guard, Buonaparte’s immortales, never defeated in battle, were in retreat. Yet it could not be. The Emperor only sent forward his Guard when victory was assured. It was a perfidious British trick. They did not believe that the Guard were retreating and they would not be denied their victory. They launched themselves at the defenders with desperate fury. They would take Hougoumont.
The Guards and the Brunswickers stood firm. They knew what the cry meant and if it was true, there was still hope. Try as they might, the furious French could not break their line.
Now the woods echoed with the cry. La Garde recule. La Garde recule. And suddenly the Guards were facing French backs. It was as if the realisation that it was true had drained every ounce of courage from them. If the mighty Guard really had been put to flight, what hope was there for them? They ran back to the woods. The tiny figure of the drummer boy jumped out from behind a pile of bricks and sped after them.
‘Let them go,’ croaked Macdonell. ‘Where is Mister Gooch?’ Henry Gooch, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, raised his sword. He could not speak. ‘Mister Gooch, hold this position, if you please, until I order otherwise. Assume that the frogs will be back. Water and gin, muskets ready.’ Gooch nodded. ‘Corporal Graham, Sergeant Dawson is dead. You will take his place.’
The Irishman rested his huge hands on the axe handle and breathed deeply. He might have killed twenty Frenchmen. ‘Very good, Colonel.’
All along the garden wall, in the fields and the orchard, there was barely a blue jacket to be seen other than those lying dead or wounded. It was not until Macdonell reached the far end of the orchard that he could see what was happening. The entire French army was in full retreat. As he watched, squadrons of British cavalry set off in hot pursuit. He shuddered. A man with his back to charging cavalry would be lucky not to be sliced in half. But the retreat was total. He saw no attempt to stand and fight, no attempt to form square, certainly no counter-attack.
Down the slope the cavalry galloped, whooping and bellowing and brandishing their sabres. Somehow the wily Duke had kept them hidden for just this moment and they were going to make the most of it. All along the ridge behind them, the infantry and artillery teams cheered them on. And the French were running. The first of the cavalry reached them and the slaughter began. Macdonell turned away. He had seen enough blood spilt that day.
He could only guess at what the Duke had done but he would wager a hundred guineas he was right. Once again, the old fox had chosen his ground, concealed his strength and awaited his moment. And once again, the French had fallen for it. Having bombarded the ridge with his cannon and believing the battle as good as won, Buonaparte had sent his Imperial Guard forward to finish it off. They had been met first by artillery and then by cavalry they did not know existed. They had panicked and run, taking the rest of the French army with them.
‘Now that,’ said Harry Wyndham, who had left the garden to watch the spectacle, ‘is something I did not expect to see today. The Guard have indeed reculed, and so have the rest of them.’ James did not reply. The energy of battle had drained from him and he was too exhausted even to whisper. ‘Are you hurt, James?’ asked Harry. James shook his head. ‘I am happy for it. I too have been lucky. I dread to think how many were not. Did the Prussians arrive?’ James shrugged. He wanted only to lie down and sleep.
But he could not. There was still work to be done – the roll-call, the wounded to be taken to the dressing stations behind the ridge, food and water to be found. He put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, smiled weakly, and returned to the farm.
He had seen hundreds die that day, and many more wounded. He had killed a dozen himself. Yet he had survived with little more than burnt hands and a scratch on the arm. The capricious fortunes of war.
Outside the south wall, a Brunswicker corporal offered him a canteen of water. He tipped it down his rasping throat and managed to splutter his thanks. As instructed, Henry Gooch and James Graham had kept the troops at their posts. ‘Stand them down, Mister Gooch,’ he croaked. ‘It is over.’ Gooch, still unable to speak through his swollen mouth, nodded to Graham, who gave the order. A ragged cheer went up and every man sat or lay where he stood.
Hougoumont was a smoking ruin. The clearing outside the south gate was a graveyard. The remains of the barn were a charnel house. In the yard heaps of bodies lay awaiting burial. They would have to wait. Macdonell would order burial pits dug the next morning. In the garden Sellers was doing his best for the wounded. Macdonell found Mrs Osborne, her dress soaked in blood from her wound. Mrs Rogers was with her. ‘The battle is over, ladies,’ he said, ‘and we are victorious. Do your husbands live?’
‘They do, Colonel,’ replied Mrs Rogers. ‘Both safe, thank the good Lord.’
‘And you, Mrs Osborne, how do you fare?’
‘A bullet through my breast and into my shoulder, Colonel. The surgeon says he will extract it and I will live to be an old lady.’
‘I am glad of it. How did you get to Hougoumont without my knowing?’
‘We slipped down with the men when you were with the Duke, Colonel. We wanted to be with them,’ replied Mrs Rogers with a grin.
Macdonell nodded and moved on. He exchanged a word or two with each wounded man until he came to Joseph Graham. His thigh had been bandaged with a pair of trousers. He was deathly pale. ‘Corporal Graham?’ whispered Macdonell. The Irishman opened his eyes briefly. He showed no sign of recognising his colonel. Macdonell left him to sleep.
James Hervey and his troops were in the north yard, inside the gates. ‘I think we may open the gates now, Mister Hervey,’ said Macdonell. ‘We must get the wounded up to the dressing stations.’
Two guards lifted the cross-beam off its housings and pushed open the gates. Outside them, the lane was full of French b
odies. ‘Check for wounded, Mister Hervey. If there are any, send them up too.’
‘I will, Colonel.’
‘And send a foraging party up to the ridge. Food and water, whatever they can find.’
Darkness was falling and the clash of battle had been replaced by the cries of the wounded. Macdonell found James Graham in the south yard. ‘James, we need wagons for the wounded. Send a party to fetch some. Your brother is in the garden. Make sure he and Mrs Osborne are on the first wagon. Are you hurt?’
‘Me, sir? Good Lord, no, sir. Not a scratch. But I fear for Joseph.’
‘He has lost much blood. Get him to a surgeon, James.’
From the corner of his eye, Macdonell saw two figures emerge from the gardener’s house – a broad-shouldered man in a leather jerkin and a battered old hat and a blonde girl of about five in a dirty white smock. They were holding hands and, despite the failing light, were blinking as if they had emerged from a cave into bright sunlight. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he called out before collapsing into a fit of coughing. The two figures came towards him and the man held out a bottle. James took a mouthful and coughed again. It was brandy. He handed back the bottle. ‘Thank you. Merçi.’
‘Mon plaisir, monsieur. Je m’appelle van Cutsem, le jardinier. Voiçi ma fille.’ Macdonell shook his head. The man claimed to be the gardener and the little girl to be his daughter. Where had they come from?
With mounting astonishment, he discovered that Monsieur van Cutsem and his daughter had spent a night and a day in the cellar under the gardener’s house and had emerged only when the sounds of battle had died. They did not know which way the battle had gone until they climbed the stairs and saw red uniforms in the farm and the garden. The gardener did not trust the French and was relieved that they had been defeated. Best of all, he had food and wine in the cellar, and would be happy to share them with the British soldiers. Macdonell advised him not to visit the garden with his daughter until it had been cleared of bodies. He did not tell them that they were fortunate not to have been burnt alive or buried under a ton of rubble.
More than half the remaining Guards did not wait for the foraging party to return. They simply found a place to sleep and something with which to cover themselves and lay down. They lay in the gardener’s house and the shed, among horses burnt to skeletons by the fire and among their own dead comrades in the yards and the garden. Wagons trundled down the lane to take the wounded up to a dressing station or the makeshift hospital in the village.
When the last of the wounded had gone and such food and water as the foragers could find had been distributed, Macdonell went to the chapel and crept inside. The fire had destroyed the door, the walls were scorched and blackened. He looked up to where the wooden carving of Christ had hung over the door. It was still there. The flames had reached his feet and no further. The rest of the carving was intact.
Macdonell found a place in the gardener’s house, spread a filthy blanket on the stone floor, lay down and slept.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
19th June
It was an hour after dawn and the sun was rising into a cloudless sky. After the recent storms, it would be another scorching day.
The two men sat on their horses under the elm tree at the crossroads at Mont St Jean from which Wellington had conducted the battle. Behind the slope of the ridge to their right, where he had concealed the main body of his army, tired men lit fires, grubbed about looking for food and sipped tea or gin. There had been no issue of rations. Some nursed wounds, all were battered, numb, starving. They were the lucky ones.
In the valley below them, as far as the eye could see to their left, to the Château Hougoumont on their right and as far as the inn at La Belle Alliance on the far side of the valley, the fields were piled with the bodies of men and horses and the detritus of war. Some still lived, pleading pitifully for help but too weak to stand or walk unaided. Most were dead. Friend and foe together, they lay entwined, heaped one on top of another, under broken artillery pieces and beside upturned wagons. They lacked arms and legs and stomachs and heads.
Grotesquely injured horses wandered aimlessly, heads down, exhausted, dying. One by one the wretched beasts were put out of their misery with a single pistol shot. Some were hacked into bloody chunks and carted up the slope in carts. And while the butchers worked, so did the blacksmiths. The saddles and bridles of cavalry horses were valuable and horseshoes could be hammered back into shape and reused. The chipping of the smiths’ hammers rang out in the still air.
Clouds of carrion crows filled the sky above the fields, squawking their hateful warnings and swooping to fight over a scrap. Silent figures in peasants’ smocks and strange long-eared hats moved among the corpses, hands slipping under jackets and into packs in search of coins or tobacco or a silver watch. Grubby children crawled in the dirt, looking for treasures. Dogs sniffed and licked and lifted their legs. Muskets and swords and boots were loaded into handcarts. Earrings were ripped from the ears of the Emperor’s guards, gold buttons from officers’ uniforms. Bodies were stripped even of the uniforms themselves, leaving them cruelly naked and exposed. A coat or a shirt not too bloodstained might fetch a few pennies.
Among the women and children and dogs, soldiers too searched for plunder. As survivors they thought it their right and knew that their officers would turn a blind eye. Red uniforms rifling the packs and pockets of their comrades and enemies alike made a gruesome sight, but in the eyes of a soldier it was no more than justice. He had fought, he had won and he would take the spoils. The dead did not need them any more than dead Imperial Guardsmen needed their pigtails. They too were cut off and stuffed into packs.
Most shocking, perhaps, of all, a tall figure in morning coat and black top hat picked his way carefully among the bodies, a handkerchief pressed to his nose. Now and again he prodded a body with his cane. The first of the sightseers had arrived.
Outside the ruins of the farm at La Haye Sainte, a company of bare-chested pioneers hacked at the earth with picks and shovels. They were digging the first of the many huge graves that would be needed before the dead were finally put to rest. There would be no distinction – officers, private soldiers, cavalry, infantry and artillery, British, German, Dutch, French, Catholic, Protestant and heathen – all would share the same graves. There were too many of them to do otherwise.
Here and there a fight broke out. Wives and sweethearts who had been sent to the rear before the battle started were beginning to arrive. They too wandered among the dead, hoping to find a husband or a brother or a sweetheart. They waved their fists and shrieked insults at the looting Belgian women, who stood and stared dumbly back until they were shoved aside and forced to slouch off in search of easier pickings elsewhere.
Neither of the mounted men at the crossroads wore jackets or shakos. Their trousers and shirts were bloody and ragged. Their boots were streaked with mud and gore.
‘Is there an artist or author who could do justice to this?’ asked James Macdonell. He was dirty and unshaven and black rings drooped under his eyes.
‘There is not,’ replied Alexander Saltoun. ‘And even if there were, he would not be believed.’ A livid bruise from the hilt of a French sabre ran from his ear to his chin.
‘Yet it was a victory. Buonaparte was beaten.’
‘He was, and has fled to Paris, I hear, chased by the Prussians.’
‘So he lives. How many do not?’
‘Tens of thousands,’ said a quiet voice behind them. General Byng had ridden from the town of Waterloo and seen the two of them at the tree. ‘Can there be a more melancholy sight than a field of battle after the battle is done?’ He paused. ‘But you gentlemen are alive and I rejoice for it.’
‘We are obliged, General,’ replied Macdonell. ‘And rejoice also for you.’
‘The fortunes of war, James. Picton and Ponsonby are dead, Somerset may not live, Cooke is wounded, Uxbridge has lost a leg, Fitzroy and Harris have one pair of arms between them. Yet the Du
ke, astonishingly, is unharmed. He was seldom out of danger and four of his aides fell around him. At one time he found himself without an aide to hand and had to send a civilian down to General Kempt to warn him to form square. A button salesman who had come to watch the battle, the Duke says. The man got rather more than he had bargained for. The fortunes of war.’
‘I had four horses shot from under me yet I too have not a scratch,’ added Saltoun.
‘You know,’ went on Byng, ‘the young frog ordered me to evacuate Hougoumont when he saw the fire. He did not believe it could be held. I ignored the order. He, too, is wounded, although not seriously.’
‘One trusts there will not be ramifications, General.’
‘There will not. The Prince was proved wrong and in any event will have forgotten the matter or possibly even remembered that his orders were to hold the place.’ He gazed out over the valley. ‘Look at the poor devils. Brave men who fought and died and are now robbed and stripped and will be dumped in unmarked holes.’
‘Was it not ever the lot of the soldier, General?’ asked Macdonell.
‘It was, of course, James, yet I pray never to look on anything like this again. I doubt if the Duke is yet aware of the scale of his victory or of its price and I shall not be the one to tell him. I do not have the words. It was a desperate affair, was it not? And your own efforts will not go unnoticed, gentlemen.’
‘Others would have done the same,’ replied Macdonell, a trifle gruffly. He had never been comfortable with compliments.
‘Perhaps,’ replied the general. ‘Old Blücher did arrive, although late in the day, and I thank God for it. His Prussians kept two French divisions occupied around Planchenois. Their losses were high, but without them, the outcome might have been very different.’
‘And what now, General?’ asked Saltoun. ‘Will Buonaparte try again?’
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