Waterloo: The History of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

by Cornwell, Bernard

  What was his alternative? If he did not attack then he would be attacked. He was already being assaulted in Plancenoit and if he withdrew his soldiers to the ridge where they had started the day then he could expect a combined assault from the British–Dutch and the Prussians. The sensible course was to retreat, to take what was left of his army and withdraw across the River Sambre and so live to fight another day, but retreat would be difficult if not impossible. He would have to send thousands of men south along the Charleroi road and hope to hold off the enemy as his troops withdrew, and a few miles along that road was the narrow bridge at Genappe, a bridge just eight feet wide, the only place where all his cannon and ammunition and baggage wagons could cross the smaller River Dyle. Retreat would probably lead to chaos, to confusion and defeat. So attack. Send the Immortals to do what they were so good at doing: winning the Emperor’s battles. ‘Fortune’, the Emperor once said, ‘is a woman, she will change!’ But fortune needed help, and that was why the Imperial Guard existed, to make certain fortune gave the Emperor victory.

  La Garde au feu! En avant! Vive l’Empereur! The drums were beating the pas de charge as the Guard, the unbeaten Guard, marched north along the highway led by 150 bandsmen playing patriotic tunes. The band stopped well short of La Haie Sainte and the Emperor stayed with the musicians as the eight battalions swerved left off the road. They were in the flat valley bed now where five battalions of the Middle Guard formed their attack columns. Roundshot and shell screamed overhead, hammering the British–Dutch ridge. The Guard sent no skirmishers ahead, there were already skirmishers enough on the slope. The Guard would march to the attack and spread into line when they reached the enemy and blast him off the ridge’s top with musketry. Some historians have wondered why Ney led them leftwards instead of marching straight up the highway, but it would have been almost impossible to keep the columns in formation if the Guard had to negotiate the sunken road beside La Haie Sainte, let alone the farm itself and the sandpit beyond and the shattered gun carriages and the hundreds of corpses that lay on the crushed rye. So Ney led them towards the slope where he had charged with the cavalry, and that slope was thick with the dead too, but it was less obstructed, more inviting ground. The Guards wore tall bearskin hats that made them seem huge. They wore blue greatcoats with red epaulettes and those tall bearskin hats were plumed in red. They did not always wear the plumes, which could be stored in a cardboard tube, but they had been told they would parade in full dress uniform in the Grand Place of Brussels, and it seems they wore the plumes to battle that summer evening. The road to Brussels was the open ground that rose to the ridge’s crest, a slope of dead horses and dying men, a road to victory.

  Officers led the columns. They could see the ridge ahead through the smoke, and they saw no enemy there except for the gunners who opened fire almost as soon as the Guard columns formed. Shrapnel cracked overhead, roundshot slashed through the ranks that closed up and kept closing up as they marched. The drums beat, pausing to let the Guardsmen shout, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’

  They were assaulting Wellington’s right, his strongest flank, the same flank that had seen off Bachelu and Foy. Beyond the crest, unseen on the reverse slope, Wellington had three of his strongest units. To the west, nearest Hougoumont, was General Adam’s brigade, every battalion a veteran of the Peninsular War. They included the 52nd, the large Oxfordshire battalion. To their left was Maitland’s Brigade of Guards. The British Guards would defend against the Imperial Guard, and closest to the crossroads was a division of Hanoverian troops reinforced by King’s German Legion battalions and General Halkett’s British redcoats. They were on the reverse slope, so the French, marching up the slope, saw no enemy infantry. They saw the flash of gunfire from blackened cannon muzzles, saw the smoke billow thick, saw their own ranks fall as the roundshot slashed through, and as they got closer the gunners switched to double-shot, loading canister over roundshot, and the carnage got worse, but it was never enough to stop the Guard. They were the Immortals and they were marching to destiny.

  Napoleon watched from the valley’s far side. He saw the Imperial Guard divide into two columns; no one is sure why that happened, but the two climbed up the far slope and did Napoleon remember his conversation at breakfast? He had asked his generals for their opinion of Wellington and of British troops and he had not liked their answers. It was General Reille who had said that British infantry, well posted, was impregnable. Well, that remained to be seen. On s’engage, et alors on voit. The Immortals were about to engage the Impregnable. The unbeaten would fight the unbeatable.

  * * *

  It is strange that this climactic clash between the Imperial Guard and Wellington’s infantry is still wrapped in mystery. There is disagreement about what formation the Imperial Guard used. Was it in column or did they advance in square? And why did the original formation divide into two? We do not know. The fight that ensued is one of history’s most famous passages of arms, we have eyewitness accounts, thousands of men took part and many retold their experiences, yet still we do not know exactly what happened. There is even disagreement about who should take the victor’s honours, yet perhaps none of that is surprising. No one on either side was taking notes. The survivors disagreed about what time the clash occurred, though probably the Guard was ordered to advance soon after 7:30 p.m. and it was all over by 8:30 p.m. And the men who were there, the men who made history, could only see a few yards around them, and what they saw was obscured by thick smoke, and their ears were assailed by the buzz of musket balls, the crash of cannons firing, the cries of the wounded, the clamour of officers and sergeants shouting, the explosions of shells, the incessant hammering of musket volleys, the pounding of more distant guns, the drums beating and trumpets screaming. It was noise without relief, deafening. One British officer recalled that he shouted orders and even the man standing next to him could not hear his words. How was a man to make sense of what happened when all he could see was smoke, blood and flame, and he was deafened, and life itself depended on doing your duty despite the fear that clawed at the heart? That was the purpose of training and discipline, that at the moment when destiny hangs in the balance, when chaos rules, when death is leering close, then a man does his duty. The instinct is to flee such horror, but discipline offers another way through.

  The Old Guard’s horse artillery was the first of the Guard into action. They had divided into four sections and the batteries unlimbered where the steepest part of the slope ended, so they were firing from the edge of the crest’s fairly flat summit. The ridge curved so that the Imperial Guard was attacking into the belly of the arc and the allied guns were converging their fire into the tight-packed ranks that kept advancing. Now, as the Guard’s own artillery came into action, the French could hit back. ‘The rapidity and precision of this fire was appalling,’ Captain Mercer wrote:

  Every shot almost took effect, and I certainly expected we should all be annihilated. Our horses and limbers being a little retired down the [reverse] slope, had hitherto been somewhat under cover from the direct fire in front; but this plunged right amongst them, knocking them down by pairs and creating horrible confusion. The drivers could hardly extricate themselves from one dead horse ere another fell … One shell I saw explode under the two finest wheel-horses in the troop, down they dropped.

  Not every allied cannon could fire. Some had lost their crews, or a wheel of their carriage had been smashed and not yet replaced, but sufficient guns remained to do terrible damage to the advancing Guard, yet not enough to stop them. Smoke thickened with every discharge, men remembered seeing the passage of roundshot through the Guard’s ranks marked by flying muskets, but the Guard closed ranks and the drummers drove them up the slope towards the flat crest where the allied infantry waited. Ensign Macready, who we last met as he watched his battalion’s colours being carried to the rear, was in position to receive the easternmost column of the Guard, the one advancing closest to the ridge’s centre. Macready was just seventeen, and fac
ing the Emperor’s veterans. They were seen ‘ascending our position,’ he said:

  in as correct order as at a review. As they rose step by step before us, and crossed the ridge, their red epaulettes and cross-belts put on over their blue great-coats, gave them a gigantic appearance, which was increased by their high hairy caps and long red feathers, which waved with the nod of their heads as they kept time to a drum in the centre of their column. ‘Now for a clawing,’ I muttered, and I confess, when I saw the imposing advance of these men, and thought of the character they had gained, I looked for nothing but a bayonet in my body, and I half breathed a confident sort of wish that it might not touch my vitals.

  Macready and his battalion, the 30th, would be attacked by two battalions of the Middle Guard, both Grenadiers of the Guard. The name Grenadiers was obsolete, the troops no longer carried grenades, but traditionally the Grenadiers were the heavy infantry, the assault troops. In a British battalion there was a Light Company, who were the skirmishers, and a Grenadier Company, who were expected to do the heavy, close-quarters work. These two battalions of the Middle Guard were marching directly at Major-General Sir Colin Halkett’s brigade. Halkett was a Peninsular veteran who had served most of his career in the King’s German Legion, though at Waterloo he commanded four British battalions. All four had suffered severely at Quatre-Bras thanks to Slender Billy’s stupidity, so the four battalions were reorganized as two. Macready’s 30th was in square with the 73rd, while to their left was a square of the 33rd and the unfortunate 69th, who had lost their colour at Quatre-Bras. They were not alone, of course. To their right were the British Guards and to their left were battalions of German and Dutch troops. But nor were the two attacking battalions alone either. They were supported by the heavy swarms of men from General Reille’s Corps who climbed the ridge behind the Guard, they were being assisted by close-quarters artillery fire, and the remaining French cavalry were ready to take advantage of any breakthrough. Historian Mark Adkin says: ‘In effect this attack was as near a general advance, spearheaded by the Guard, that the French achieved at Waterloo.’

  The Guard’s spearhead was on the flat ridge top. Were they in column? Or square? Mark Adkin demonstrates very persuasively that, though many of the eyewitnesses on the allied side saw columns, the French were in square, presumably because they feared a repetition of the disaster that had struck d’Erlon’s attack. A compact square, its sides shrinking as the ranks closed up after artillery strikes, would look very much like a column, and neither formation, column or square, would be fully coherent on that evening. Not only were the ranks and files being struck by roundshot and canister, but their route was littered with the bodies of dead or wounded horses. Only the best infantry could hope to keep their formations tight under such circumstances and the Imperial Guard were the best and so, despite the obstacles and despite the cannon fire, they reached the ridge’s wide crest where they had to deploy into line. General Halkett’s four British battalions had also been in square because of the French cavalry that had threatened all evening, but as the French Guard reached the ridge top the General ordered the redcoats into a four-deep line. ‘My boys,’ he shouted, ‘you have done everything I could have wished and more than I could expect, but much remains to be done. At this moment we have nothing for it but a charge!’

  Macready takes up the story:

  The enemy halted, carried arms about forty paces from us, and fired a volley. We returned it, and giving our ‘Hurrah!’ brought down the bayonets. Our surprise was inexpressible, when, pushing through the clearing smoke, we saw the back of the Imperial Grenadiers; we halted and stared at each other as if mistrusting our eyesight. Some 9-pounders from the rear of our right poured in the grape amongst them, and the slaughter was dreadful. In no part of the field did I see carcasses so heaped upon each other.

  Macready wrote to his father some three weeks after the battle. ‘When they came within twenty paces,’ he says in that letter:

  we gave them a volley and a huzza, and prepared for a charge, but they spared us the trouble, away they went … But I am endeavouring to do an impossibility, to describe a battle; so little did we know of it … Our General of Brigade Halkett … made an elegant speech to us in the middle of the action, which was answered, by the reiterated shouts of our brave fellows, ‘Let’s charge your honour, we’ll stick it to them.’

  Macready makes it sound easy, which it was not. A Hanoverian brigade to the left of the redcoats was forced back by what a Hanoverian officer described as ‘such a powerful attack’. The Hanoverians had run out of ammunition, and their commanding officer was killed as they retreated. Meanwhile Halkett’s brigade had driven the French Guards back by volley fire and by the threat of bayonets, but then something strange happened. The Imperial Guard gunners were close to Halkett’s brigade and firing at the redcoats who had advanced across the road running along the ridge’s top. For the moment it seemed the Guard infantry was defeated, but the gunners were raking the redcoat four-deep line and so the brigade was ordered to turn about and take shelter behind the hedge and bank that lined the road behind them. Macready again:

  We faced about by word of command, and stepped off in perfect order. As we descended the [reverse slope] the fire thickened tremendously, and the cries from men struck down, as well as from the numerous wounded on all sides of us, who thought themselves abandoned, were terrible. An extraordinary number of men and officers of both regiments went down almost in no time. Prendergast of ours was shattered by a shell, McNab killed by grape-shot, and James and Bullen lost all their legs by round-shot during this retreat, or in the cannonade immediately preceding it. As I recovered my feet from a tumble, a friend knocked against me, screaming, half maddened by his five wounds and the sad scene going on, ‘Is it deep, Mac, is it deep?’ At this instant we found ourselves commingled with the 33rd and 69th Regiments; all order was lost.

  The brigade had panicked. They had turned the Grenadiers of the Imperial Guard back, then frightened themselves into retreat and the panic was spreading fast. Officers and sergeants tried to halt them, to no effect. ‘Fifty cuirassier would have annihilated our brigade,’ Macready reckoned, and for a moment it seemed the brigade’s discipline had gone entirely. Men were fighting, jostling their way to the rear, but then, Macready says, one man cheered and the cheer reversed the panic as other men joined in. General Halkett is said to have seized a colour of the 33rd, just as General Pelet had seized an Eagle in Plancenoit, and stood with it till men formed on him, and Wellington was there and he was ever a steadying influence. Besides, he had once commanded the 33rd, and God help them if they disgraced him now. And a Dutch gun battery opened fire on the French at close range, decimating the Guard’s wounded ranks, and a Dutch–Belgian brigade was firing volleys at the Frenchmen, and somehow the panic was stilled. ‘The officers did wonders,’ Macready said, ‘but the shout alone saved us. I never could learn who raised it.’ And so, after the momentary terror, the four battalions turned, formed line again and stood their ground. To Henry Duperier, the paymaster of the British 18th Hussars, the sudden reappearance of Halkett’s brigade was a surprise. He was stationed with the rest of the cavalry behind the infantry on Wellington’s ridge and watching the Dutch infantry fire when ‘Lord Wellington brought some little red-coated fellows from where I do not know, I could just see them through the cloud of smoke.’

  ‘I am endeavouring to do an impossibility,’ Macready had written to his father, ‘to describe a battle.’ So what did happen at the ridge top when the first column, or square, of Imperial Guardsmen attacked? There was confusion on both sides. The Hanoverians retreated in some disorder, but so did the redcoats. The Dutch–Belgians had fought well, and their gunners did sterling work. The French also retreated, blasted by that immense opening volley from General Halkett’s line. The French gunners were causing havoc, and it was their fire more than anything else that provoked the panic in General Halkett’s brigade. It is to the brigade’s credit that the panic was mome
ntary, but they were fortunate that no French troops were able to take advantage of the brief disorder. The French themselves were probably close to panic. They had retreated from the terrible opening volley, the Dutch guns were crashing canister and roundshot into them, the ridge was shrouded in smoke and their leading ranks were dead or wounded. All that can be said with certainty is that the westernmost column of the Imperial Guard failed, that they were thrown back from Wellington’s line and stayed back. General Halkett was wounded in the fight, but had the satisfaction of knowing his men had rallied and were holding their ground.