by Colin Brown
It was a mad charge to the grave for many. The heavy cavalry careered on, like Shaw and Lieutenant Colonel Hamilton, slashing all before it, driven either by gin or by the intoxication of war. Hamilton was terribly injured in both arms, but a major saw him going at full speed towards the French guns holding the bridle-reins of his horse in his teeth. Hamilton’s body was found on the field, shot through the heart. His sword had gone, but his scabbard and a sash were still intact, and these were taken back to his family.6
Napoleon was moved to say, ‘These terrible grey horses, how they fight!’ He sent in the lancers to cut them to pieces. The Union Brigade’s horses including the Greys, like Rattler, were blown, and when the troopers reined in, they saw their retreat was cut off in the muddy bottom of the valley between Hougoumont and La Belle Alliance by the lancers of Baron Jacquinot’s 1st Cavalry Division, and Edouard Milhaud’s cuirassiers, who had rallied for a counter-charge.
The death of Major General Ponsonby by M. Dubourg after Manskirch, printed 1 January 1817. (Musée Wellington, Waterloo)
Ponsonby was chased into a ploughed-up waterlogged field, where his horse was overtaken and he was speared by a lancer. British accounts say he was surrounded and captured in the mud – after handing a picture and a watch out of his pocket to his ADC to give to his wife – when there was an attempt by three Scots Greys to rescue him. He was brutally speared to death by his captor.
But according to the French Colonel Louis Bro, commander of Napoleon’s 4th Lancers, the truth was less romantic. Ponsonby was trying to seize a third French eagle, when his Lancers crashed into the Greys: ‘I was lost in a fog of gunsmoke. When it cleared, I saw some English officers surrounding Lieutenant Verrand, the eagle-bearer. Gathering some riders I went to his aid. Sergeant Orban killed General Ponsonby with a blow of his lance. My sabre felled three of his captains. Two others fled.’ The French account is probably nearer to the truth: Major De Lacy Evans made no mention of the eagle but admitted he was with Ponsonby in the thick of the action, and had to abandon him to his fate because Ponsonby’s horse was blown:
Everyone saw what must happen. Those whose horses were best or least blown, got away. Some attempted to escape back to our position by going round the left of the French lancers. Sir William Ponsonby was one of that number. All these fell into the hands of the enemy. Others went back straight – among whom myself – receiving a little fire from some French infantry towards the road on our left as we retired.7
De Lacy Evans added that ‘Poor Sir William’ would have got away with his life, but he was on the small bay hack that was blown. He was one of the most senior British officers killed at Waterloo and Ponsonby’s wife, Georgiana, gave birth to his son and heir in February, 1816.
In all, more than 2,000 French soldiers were taken prisoner after the charge of the heavy brigades; it was claimed up to forty pieces of cannon were put out of action; and two eagles were captured. D’Erlon’s attack was turned by the charge of the heavy cavalry just when it threatened to break Wellington’s thin red line. To that extent, it was a success. But the price paid by the two brigades was appalling. Somerset’s 1st Brigade, which was led by Uxbridge, lost a total 525 men killed, wounded or missing; Ponsonby’s 2nd Brigade posted 533 men killed, wounded or missing, a grand total of 1,058 men out of a total strength on paper of 2,651 horsemen (the actual number who took part in the charge of the two heavy cavalry brigades was slightly less, making the casualty rate worse). This amounted to a casualty rate of 40 per cent.8 The Scots Greys had 102 killed and 97 injured with 179 horses killed and 47 mounts injured. Ewart’s troop fared reasonably well – of 53 officers and men commanded by Captain Robert Vernor, ten were injured – a casualty rate of under 20 per cent.
Across the battlefield, Ponsonby’s second cousin, Sir Frederick Cavendish Ponsonby, had also been left for dead. Sir Frederick, commanding two squadrons of the 12th Light Dragoons in Sir John Vandeleur’s 4th Brigade, was ordered to cover the retreat of the Union Brigade as it was trying to extricate itself from its charge to the guns, when he was wounded. His Light Dragoons, in blue tunics with yellow facings and silver lace, had charged through a column of French infantry and then upon the right flank of the lancers when he was cut across the head and both arms, and knocked from his horse.
Sir Frederick, brother of the scandalous Lady Caroline Lamb, who nursed him back to health, later gave his graphic account – one of the most remarkable personal stories of the battle – to Frances, Lady Shelley, who passed it on by letter to his mother, Lady Bessborough:
We were attacked in our turn before we could form, by about 300 Polish Lancers, who had come down to their relief—the French artillery pouring in amongst us a heavy fire of grape-shot, which, however, for one of our men killed three of their own. In the melee I was disabled almost instantly in both my arms, and followed by a few of my men who were presently cut down—for no quarter was asked or given—I was carried on by my horse, till receiving a blow on my head from a sabre, I was thrown senseless on my face to the ground. Recovering, I raised myself a little to look round, being I believe at that time in a condition to get up and run away, when a Lancer, passing by, exclaimed : ‘Tu n’es pas mort, coquin,’ [‘You’re not dead, scoundrel’] and struck his lance through my back. My head dropped, the blood gushed into my mouth; a difficulty of breathing came on, and I thought all was over. Not long afterwards (it was then impossible to measure time, but I must have fallen in less than ten minutes after the charge) a tirailleur came up to plunder me, threatening to take away my life. I told him that he might search me, directing him to a small side pocket, in which he found three dollars, being all I had. He unloosed my stock [high collar], and tore open my waistcoat, then leaving me in a very uneasy posture. He was no sooner gone, than another came up for the same purpose, but assuring him I had been plundered already, he left me. When an officer, bringing on some troops (to which probably the tirailleurs belonged) and halting where I lay, stooped down and addressed me, saying he feared I was badly wounded, I replied that I was, and expressed a wish to be removed into the rear. He said it was against the orders to remove even their own men, but that if they gained the day, as they probably would, for he understood the Duke of Wellington was killed and that six battalions of the English army had surrendered, every attention in his power should be shown me. I complained of thirst, and he held his brandy bottle to my lips, directing one of his men to lay me down on my side, and placed a knapsack under my head. He then passed on into the action, and I shall never know to whose generosity I was indebted, as I conceive, for my life. Of what rank he was I cannot say; he wore a blue great-coat.* By-and-bye another tirailleur came, and knelt down and fired over me, loading and firing many times, and conversing with great gaiety all the while. At last he ran off, saying: ‘Vous serez bien aise d’entendre que nous allons nous retirer. Bon jour, mon ami.’
Lady Caroline, known as Caro, typically saw romanticism mixed with the horrors of the injured like her brother when they brought him back to Brussels. In a letter to her mother-in-law, Lady Melbourne, Caro wrote:
It is rather a love-making moment, the half-wounded Officers reclining with pretty ladies visiting them … It is rather heart-breaking to be here, however, & one goes blubbering about – seeing such fine people without their legs & arms, some in agony, & some getting better ... Lady Conyngham is here—Lady C. Greville—Lady D. Hamilton, Mrs. A. B. Smith, Lady F. Somerset, Lady F. Webster most affected; Lady Mountmorress, who stuck her parasol yesterday into a skull at Waterloo
Frederick later married the daughter of Lord Bathurst, the War Minister, and landed a plum job as governor of Malta. He died suddenly in a pub in Basingstoke in 1837 aged 53.
With such true stories of valour as Cavendish Ponsonby’s – the stuff of legend – the charge of the heavy brigades and the capture of the two eagles in a single action was seen as a famous triumph at home and caught the imagination of the Prince Regent, who promptly made himself Captain General of the L
ife Guards and Blues for their ‘brilliant’ conduct at Waterloo.
The legend of the cavalry charge was further ornamented for a Victorian audience in a celebrated heroic painting titled Scotland Forever! by Lady Elizabeth Butler, which remains one of the most often reproduced images of Waterloo. It shows the Scots Greys in a headlong charge, their sabres raised, their horses’ nostrils flared, as if they are about to leap out of the canvas at the viewer. She was one of the few women artists who specialised in military subjects and continued painting to the First World War. Elizabeth Thompson was married to Lieutenant General Sir William Francis Butler, who is said to have arranged for the Scots Greys to charge past her as she made sketches from life. Scotland Forever! was painted in 1881, long after Ewart had died, and included a portrait of the hero bare-headed after losing his bearskin. Her painting of the Scots Greys is scoffed at by some military experts today as inaccurate because they are charging, but she caught the madness in the eyes of the horses and the thrill on the faces of the men, just as Corporal Dickson described it.
Today, the glory of capturing the eagles and turning d’Erlon’s attack into a rout still masks the inconvenient truth. Those closer to the action at the time realised the charge of the heavy cavalry ended in a disaster. Captain Rees Howell Gronow, of the 1st Foot Guards claimed:
The Duke of Wellington was perfectly furious that this arm had been engaged without his orders and lost not a moment in sending them to the rear where they remained during the rest of the day ... I recollect that when his grace was in our square, our soldiers were so mortified at seeing the French deliberately walking their horses between our regiment and those regiments to our right and left that they shouted, ‘Where are our cavalry? Why don’t they come and pitch into those French fellows?’
Uxbridge shouldered the blame for the losses, saying he had been wrong to lead the charge himself, because he could no longer hope to control it from that position: ‘After the overthrow of the cuirassiers I had in vain attempted to stop my people by sounding the rally but neither voice nor trumpet availed ... I committed a great mistake in having myself led the attack.’9 In his own defence, he said that when he returned to the ridge, Wellington and his whole corps diplomatique militaire seemed ‘joyous – they thought the battle was over’.
Wellington took the view recklessness was endemic in the British cavalry. Captain Gronow claimed that a few days after his arrival in Paris, the Duke was told by Colonel Felton Hervey, who carried despatches from London, about the Prince Regent’s self-appointment as a cavalry Captain General. Wellington, Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Horse Guards, replied, ‘Ah, his Royal Highness is our Sovereign and can do what he pleases; but this I will say, the cavalry of other European armies have won victories for their generals, but mine have invariably got me into scrapes …’ Gronow encountered a French officer, Marshal Exelmans, who said the fine horses and riders of the British cavalry were spoiled by their officers:
who have nothing to recommend them but their dash and sitting well in their saddles ...The British cavalry officer seems to be impressed with the conviction that he can dash and ride over everything; as if the art of war were precisely the same as that of fox hunting.10
When compounded by confused orders, the readiness of British cavalry to make suicidal charges against overwhelming odds was to cause the catastrophe thirty-nine years later at Balaklava, known to history as the Charge of the Light Brigade. On 25 October 1854, the Light Brigade led by the incendiary Lord Cardigan, who had clashed with his commanding officer Lieutenant General Lord Lucan, charged 25,000 Russian troops powerfully defended by artillery. Of the 673 men who rode into the valley at Balaklava, only 195 returned – an attrition rate of 71 per cent. The man who presided over the allied army in the Crimea that day was the one-armed, doddery Lord Raglan, formerly FitzRoy Somerset, Wellington’s military secretary at Waterloo, who – like Ewart – had watched in horror as the cavalry rode to their deaths.
Capturing the eagle may have saved Ewart’s life. After watching the horror unfold from the ridge, he took the eagle into Brussels ‘amid the acclamations of thousands of spectators who saw it.’
In his dotage, Ewart went for a drink with a reporter from the Observer in Ayrshire, called James Paterson,11 in a pub in Kilmarnock called The Monument Inn. Over a few drinks, Ewart told Paterson his life story, and about his capture of the eagle. The old soldier proved a fund of stories for Paterson, who incorporated a brief biography of the hero who captured an eagle in a book of his own reminiscences.
Sergeant Ewart was 46, the same age as Wellington, and, like the Duke, not expecting to go to war in Europe, when Bonaparte escaped from Elba. After Waterloo, Ewart spent some months with the occupying forces in Paris and had a stroke of luck in Calais while he was waiting for embarkation on a packet ship to England. While cooling his heels on the dockside, he met Sir John Sinclair, a friend of the Duke of York, the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, who had heard about Ewart’s fame for capturing the eagle. Sir John said he was so moved by Ewart’s ‘modesty and valour’ that he asked Sergeant Ewart what reward he wanted most in life? Ewart was a very practical Scot: he said if he could be made an Ensign in a veteran battalion, he could retire on an officer’s pension.
Sinclair gave Ewart a letter addressed to Major General Sir Henry Torrens (ADC to the Prince Regent) and instructed Ewart to deliver it in person to Torrens at Horse Guards. Sir Henry wrote to Sir John in 1816 confirming that the Prince Regent, under the direction of his brother the Duke of York, ‘has been pleased ... to appoint Serjeant Ewart of the 2nd Dragoons to an ensigncy in the 3rd Veteran Battalion.’
Ewart’s elevation to the officer classes caused a vacancy for a sergeant that was filled by Dickson, who became a sergeant major and served for twenty-seven years in the Scots Greys. Dickson lived to a ripe old age, still regaling locals at a little Fifeshire inn in Crail with his recollections on the anniversary of 18 June. He died on 16 July 1880, aged 90.
Ensign Ewart returned to Britain as a national hero, and on 18 June 1816 he was invited to attend the first Waterloo dinner at the Edinburgh Assembly Rooms. The Edinburgh Advertiser reported:
Nearly 400 noblemen and gentlemen sat down to an elegant dinner in the Assembly Rooms, the Rt Hon William Arbuthnot, Lord Provost of the city, in the chair. After several toasts had been given and duly honoured, Sir Walter (then Mr) Scott proposed a bumper to the health of Ensign Ewart, late of the Scots Greys, whose bravery was so conspicuous where he took a French Eagle and killed with his own hand three of Napoleon’s guard. The toast was drunk with great acclamation, and a general expectation prevailed that Ensign Ewart, who was present, would address the company. After a short pause, the Lord Provost rose and, at the request of Mr Ewart, stated how much he felt honoured by this mark of the company’s approbation but that he would much rather fight the battle all over again and take another Eagle, than make a speech.
He managed a few words and was given thunderous applause. His fame increased when he was portrayed capturing the eagle in an heroic painting The Fight for the Standard by Richard Ansdell (who was born in Liverpool and was even more famous with Victorians for his Stag at Bay). It was reproduced as a print, and the popular image was reprinted many times. It shows Ewart about to slice through the neck of the colour-guard with his sabre. The original painting is on show in pride of place in the ancient Great Hall, Edinburgh Castle, near to the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards museum, which has his eagle.
Around 1821, the veterans’ battalion* was disbanded and Ewart, 52, was finally retired on his Ensign’s pension of 5s 10d a day. He went to live in Salford with his wife ‘Maggie’, Margaret Geddes, who had been with him on some of his campaigns. Ewart supplemented his pension by spending his retirement as a fencing instructor. Fencing and boxing were fashionable pursuits for gentlemen in the Georgian period and Ewart’s fame would have gained him a good living. He overcame his fear of public speaking and continued to tour the country recounting his memori
es of capturing the eagle into the Victorian era, sometimes with Sir Walter Scott, who became a friend and his unofficial agent. When he was interviewed by Paterson for his Autobiographical Reminiscences, the journalist said Ewart, in his seventies, could have passed for a man of 60.
Ewart died at Davyhulme, a suburb of Manchester, on 23 March 1846 at the age of 77. Ensign Ewart was given a hero’s funeral and was laid to rest at the New Jerusalem Temple in Bolton Street, Salford. Maggie survived him by ten years but was buried in the Geddes family plot at the east end of the churchyard in nearby Flixton. An inscription at the foot of the Geddes family gravestone read: ‘Also Margaret, Relict* of Ensign Ewart, late of the Scots Greys.’ A local history of Davyhulme12 published in 1898 complained about Ewart and Maggie being apart in death:
It is somewhat pitiful that these two worthies who held on to one another through such eventful episodes, should in death be separated. The officers of the Scots Greys, I understand, did, sometime during last year, send an emissary relative to these two graves with the idea of (with other things) re-interring Sergeant Ewart to the grave of his ‘Maggie’ but the contemplated alterations at the east end of Flixton Church caused the project to remain in abeyance.
That is where Ensign Ewart’s story should have ended. But the church and the churchyard where he was buried at Bolton Street became redundant, and his grave was lost beneath the lumber and detritus of a builders’ yard. I went to see what had happened to his burial place.
I am standing at the scruffy entrance to a surface car park by the side of the Salford Central railway station. The minicab driver thought I was crazy when I asked for Bolton Street. It is now no more than a short stub, jutting into the side of the car park, with double yellow lines to stop anyone parking here. A fragment of wall blackened by ancient soot is all that remains of the buildings that were once there. The taxi driver gets interested when I tell him the reason I have come here.