From the ridge a road ran forward past the heavily built farmhouse of Mont St Jean, which formed a natural defensive bastion, down a cutting in a single lane into the wide valley rising on the other side to an inn called La Belle Alliance, half a mile away. To the right the land was broken up and planted with tall rye, which served to conceal the movements of men from one another. Ahead of his position there was a farmhouse, just as the road began its descent into the valley, called La Haye Sainte; to the right and farther on down the valley was a small château with a walled garden. Wellington ordered these positions to be heavily reinforced to slow the French attack.
He placed his men in a double line behind the ridge, with instructions to form squares if attacked by cavalry. These were supported by British artillery in clusters along the right. The cavalry were in the centre behind the infantry. However, still intent on securing his line of retreat, Wellington sent some 13,000 men to Hale, thirteen kilometres away. They were never to fight at all. It never occurred to Wellington to take the offensive against Napoleon: he had been surprised, was in his element in defence, and had 67,000 men to the French 74,000. A British attack would have been suicidal. This was almost certainly the right tactic, even if it was far from heroic.
Having made his dispositions he returned to his headquarters at an inn in Waterloo just to the north, where he was spared the rain that drenched his soldiers that historic night. He was desperately anxious, having heard nothing from Blücher and preparing to retreat on Brussels if no aid from the Prussians was forthcoming. Not until 3 a.m. that night did he receive a message from Blücher’s headquarters in Wavre:
I hereby inform you that, in consequence of the communication made to me to the effect that the Duke of Wellington will tomorrow accept battle in the position from Braine l’Alleud to La Haye, my troops will be put in motion in the following way: Bülow’s corps will start very early at dawn from Dion-le-Mont and advance through Wavre by way of St Lambert, in order to attack the enemy’s right wing. The second corps will immediately follow the fourth [Bülow’s] corps; and the first and third corps hold themselves ready likewise to follow thither. The exhaustion of the troops, which in part have not arrived (namely, the tail of the fourth corps), makes it impossible to advance earlier. In return, I beg you to inform me betimes when and how the Duke is attacked, so that I may be able to take measures accordingly.
The order had come after a tense meeting of the Prussian high command at which Blücher had favoured a march to Wellington’s aid, and Gneisenau had opposed it as being too risky. In fact Blücher had already been reinforced by Bülow, which more than made up for his losses at Ligny, and the Prussians believed that the French had sent a force of only 15,000 men to attack them at Wavre, so they could easily afford to spare the troops. Still the cautious Gneisenau resisted his master, distrusting the British and instructing General Muffling to ‘find out accurately whether the Duke has the fixed intention to fight in his present position, or whether possibly nothing but “demonstrations” are intended, as these can only be in the highest degree compromising to our army’. This delayed the despatch of the First, Second and Third Prussian corps until midday the following day.
Napoleon spent the night in a farmhouse a few miles south, then rode up to La Belle Alliance. There he learnt that Grouchy had progressed only six miles towards Wavre and had bedded his army down at Gembloux. Nervously he went for a walk at 1 a.m. The night made an eerie spectacle, with countless small fires in the rain marking the positions of the two huge armies as the fateful dawn approached.
Still suffering from indecision, Napoleon woke at around 10 a.m. before issuing orders to Grouchy to abandon his march on Wavre and instead outflank Blücher by interposing himself between the British and Prussian armies and preventing reinforcements from the latter reaching Wellington. Grouchy misinterpreted the badly drafted orders and continued to move forward to Wavre, even when he began to hear cannon fire in the direction of Waterloo to his left. Napoleon was incensed when he heard. He took a rest in an armchair, lost in his own thoughts, enjoying the summer sunshine, as did both armies after the rainstorm of the previous night.
He decided to observe the battle from behind La Belle Alliance, delegating operational command to Ney, which scarcely suggested he had lost his confidence in him. But first he reviewed his troops. As the French historian Henri Houssaye wrote lyrically, somewhat overlooking the muddy, grimy state of the men:
It was a kaleidoscope of vivid hues and metallic flashes. After the chasseurs, wearing bright green jackets, with facings of purple, yellow or scarlet, came the hussars, with dolmans, pelisses, breeches à la hongroise, plumes upon their shakos, all varying in colour with each regiment . . . Then passed the dragoons with brass casques over turban-helmets of tiger skin, white shoulder belts crossed over a green coat with facings of red or yellow, long guns at their saddle bows and bumping against their stiff boots; the cuirassiers wearing short coats with Imperial blue collars, white breeches, top boots, steel cuirasses and helmets, with crests of copper and floating horsehair manes; the carabiniers, giants of six feet and clad in white, with breastplates of gold and tall helmets with red cords – like those worn by the heroes of antiquity. And now the entire body of the horse guards deployed on the third line; the dragoons in green coats faced with white and with scarlet plumes on their helmets; the grenadiers in blue coats faced with scarlet, leather breeches and high caps of bearskin, with a plume and hanging cords; the lancers with red kurkas and blue plastrons, with light yellow aiguillettes and epaulettes, red trousers with a blue stripe, and the red shapka cap bearing a brass plate inscribed with an N and a crown, and surmounted with white plume half a yard long; and last the chasseurs, with green dolmans embroidered with orange braid, red pelisses edged with fur and kilbachs [or caps] of brilliant scarlet, with great plumes of green and red upon their heads. The epaulettes, the braids, the stripes, the gimps of the officers glittered with a profuse display of gold and silver.
Across the valley the British troops watched dispassionately, unimpressed by the performance. Wellington had ridden up with his staff officers from Waterloo, jovially as though about to attend a meeting of hounds. His attitude masked a desperate anxiety as to the course of the battle, which he believed hinged on whether the Prussians would fulfil their promise to arrive. He expressed contempt for Napoleon: ‘That fellow little thinks what a confounded licking he’ll get before the day is over.’
Meanwhile, back in Brussels the entire British community was panicking. Eerily the low cloud had funnelled the sound of cannon fire that night as far as Brussels and Antwerp; and the sight of stragglers and refugees streaming into Brussels had created a shock. Lord Uxbridge’s sister wrote: ‘The horrors of that night are not to be forgot. The very elements conspired to make it gloomy; for the rain and darkness and wind were frightful and our courtyard was filled during the night with poor wounded drenched soldiers and horses . . .’
Chapter 91
WATERLOO: THE BRITISH BUCKLE
After resting for a while, Napoleon at last gave the order to advance with a concentrated burst of artillery fire against the most advanced British position, the château at Hougoumont, at around 11.30. The British soon replied. The Battle of Waterloo had begun. Napoleon’s brother Jérôme was delegated to launch the first attack on the British position, which was defended by a few hundred men under the heroic James Macdonnell; it covered a small valley which would shelter a French column from British artillery: if it was captured the French would be able to pour troops on to the ridge above.
Soon Jérôme’s men were surging forward from the French side of the valley of death, where a total of 140,000 men faced each other, surrounding the walls of the garden around Hougoumont. Fierce fighting between attackers and defenders lasted an hour and a half, while both the main armies watched without moving. The attackers at last succeeded in breaking down the main gate, but Macdonnell counter-attacked and drove them out, killing all of those remaining within t
he compound. The buildings caught fire.
Wellington coolly wrote instructions to Macdonnell: ‘I see that the fire has communicated itself from the hay stack to the roof of the chateau. You must however still keep your men in those parts to which the fire does not reach. Take care that no men are lost by the falling in the roof or floors. After they will have fallen in, occupy the ruined walls inside of the garden, particularly if it should be possible for the enemy to pass through the embers to the inside of the house.’ The battle around the château raged all day, the gallant defenders holding out in their outpost against far superior forces. Hougoumont was never captured: a colossal total of 10,000 men died in the struggle, most of them French.
At around 12.30 Napoleon’s main battery on a hill just in front of La Belle Alliance opened up, with its seventy-five guns, followed by a major infantry attack of 16,000 men under d’Erlon. The British counter-attacked with infantry volleys and a cavalry charge which, however, was badly mauled. Both sides disengaged with some 10,000 losses between them after just half an hour. General Picton was killed and Sir William Ponsonby cut up with lances. Uxbridge admitted that mistakes had been made in the charge.
Napoleon could now observe Prussian troops approaching from the east, although he misinformed his troops that these were French reinforcements so as not to discourage them. Of Grouchy there was nothing to be seen. He ordered another full-scale attack on La Haye Sainte to break the British centre before the Prussians arrived. Ney, receiving the order, inexplicably commanded his cavalry forward in a massed attack on the narrow ground between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. It seems that Ney had mistaken a redeployment of the British line by Wellington as the beginning of a retreat.
The British were incredulous: an attack by massed cavalry without infantry support against British lines, particularly uphill, was unheard of. Ney admittedly had little sight of the main British lines over the brow of the hill. As the cavalry charged up, packed tightly together, the British formed impregnable squares and the horses shied away while the soldiers’ volleys simply mowed them down.
Uxbridge’s cavalry counter-charged from their own position behind the infantry, driving the broken lines of French cavalry back. But the latter reformed and charged again and again – a total of twelve times in all, each time breaking ranks as they swarmed around the impregnable squares, each time being driven back by British gunfire and cavalry counter-charges: it was magnificently brave, but utterly foolhardy. Still the British were hard pressed. A British lieutenant wrote that the charges of cavalry were ‘in appearance very formidable, but in reality a great relief, as the artillery could no longer fire on us: the very earth shook with the enormous mass of men and horses. I shall never forget the strange noise our bullets made against the breastplates of Kellermann’s and Mihaud’s cuirassiers . . . who attacked us with great fury. I can only compare it, with a somewhat homely simile, to the noise of a violent hail-storm beating on panes of glass.’
Wellington looked ‘perfectly composed but . . . very thoughtful and pale,’ taking refuge in a square whenever attacked. The Duke was wondering what was holding up Blücher’s Prussians, for without them he might still lose the battle and he was desperately hard-pressed. He did not know the difficulty of the terrain they were crossing, nor that Napoleon had sent 16,000 men to intercept them.
What indeed had happened to the Prussians? The first corps, that of Bülow, was the freshest, but also the farthest from the battlefield and it was delayed by marching through, instead of around the town of Wavre, where there was a narrow bridge, and a fire broke out nearby, causing them to pause. A second corps under General Pirch followed him and a third under General von Ziethen set out to the north to join Wellington’s left wing which he had deliberately left lightly defended because he was expecting the Prussians there, and it had a steep slope running down to three small villages. The distance to be covered was some ten miles.
Astonishingly the two first corps were assigned to attack Plancenoit, a heavily entrenched village behind French lines: it took the Prussians no less than five hours to dislodge the French from the village. Ziethen’s was the weakest Prussian corps, having lost nearly half of its whole strength at Ligny, some 225 officers and 12,500 men, and it did not start on its march until 2 p.m.
Bülow’s attack was intercepted by Lobau, whose force was driven back after an hour and a half to Plancenoit. However the Young Guard reinforced him and drove Bülow back. Thus some 14,000 key troops on Napoleon’s right flank were diverted from the main battle. However, the Prussians then renewed the attack, and Napoleon was forced to divert two battalions of his Old and Middle Guard to regain the village.
On the main battlefield, the intensity of French artillery fire was making inroads into the British. At around 5 p.m. Ney ordered seven infantry columns forward to seize the key British position of La Haye Sainte, which was in fact largely defended by Hanoverians. There the defenders held out valiantly but, owing to a serious British oversight, had not been re-supplied with ammunition and now had no choice but to give up before an overwhelming French assault, only some forty members of the 360 strong garrison escaping the carnage on the farm. This threatened to blast a path right through the centre of the allied lines.
At that moment the twenty-year-old Prince of Orange gave orders for the body of Hanoverians still holding the line to attack the French infantry: as these were overwhelmingly superior and supported by cavalry, this was madness; but the order was insistently repeated, and gallantly Christian von Ompteda led the attack: his men were wiped out, and a gaping hole opened in the allied line.
Wellington ordered a few Brunswickers to plug the gap left by von Ompteda, but the battle seemed all but over. Against the massed French infantry attacks the British line was barely holding. He desperately sent an emissary to the nearest Prussian commander, General von Ziethen: but he refused to come to Wellington’s aid and instead marched to reinforce the Prussians at Plancenoit. Wellington had made the mistake of dispersing his forces along too broad a front, and had insufficient men to redeploy towards the disintegrating centre.
What he did not know was that Ney, fighting furiously with his usual courage at the head of his men at La Haye Sainte, also had no more reinforcements. Napoleon angrily informed his couriers that he could spare no more. In fact he had fourteen regiments of the crack Imperial Guard, which he was anxious to keep in reserve at all costs. Napoleon now roused himself from his vantage point on a hill at Rossome like some tired old general and moved forward a few hundred yards to the inn at La Belle Alliance itself.
There he could see little of the fighting through the dense columns of black smoke clouding the valley. Instead he could see to Plancenoit, where he feared the Prussians were outflanking the French right and threatening to cut his communications and getaway route to Paris. He was furious with Ney for having attacked frontally without specific orders and thus endangeirng the battle. He had little idea that Ney was on the verge of victory.
He decided to send two further battalions of the precious Imperial Guard in reserve towards Plancenoit and retain three on the plateau where he was standing. Thus the Prussian diversion in fact kept seven of Napoleon’s most elite forces from reinforcing Ney at exactly the moment when he could have broken through; a further seven were in reserve below him.
An extraordinary altercation was taking place to the east where General von Reiche, chief of staff to General von Ziethen, was suddenly intercepted by a staff officer from Blücher, ordering Ziethen to go to the aid of Bülow at Plancenoit as ‘things were beginning to go badly there’. Muffling, the Prussian liaison officer with Wellington, rode up and desperately urged him to send the corps to Wellington’s aid instead or the day would be lost. Reiche was undecided until Ziethen himself rode up and decided to disobey Blücher’s order and go to Wellington’s assistance.
The Prussians moved forward and supported Wellington’s weak left flank, but were only minimally involved in the battle, just one brigade be
ing engaged and only one of their officers being killed and eight wounded. Napoleon spotted Ziethen’s corps and told his men that they were in fact General Grouchy’s army, come to the battle at last: it was a bare-faced lie, but understandable in the circumstances. Cries of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ broke out. Ney shouted, ‘Courage, France is victorious.’
Napoleon decided at last to send the Imperial Guard into the battle: it was half past seven and the sun was beginning to descend through the thick smoke. A French victory seemed all but inevitable. To the intense joy of the French, it was observed that Napoleon himself was leading the Imperial Guard into battle. This turned to dismay when, supported by some of his generals but not by others, he veered aside and sought the shelter of a small quarry on the side of the road. His brother Jérôme exclaimed, ‘Can it be possible that he will not seek death here? He will never find a more glorious grave!’
The exhausted and valiant Ney took command again – but instead of moving the Imperial Guard up the narrow road towards Ziethen’s approaching Prussians, preferred the more open ground to the left, the scene of so many cavalry charges, but deep in mud and exposed to enemy artillery fire. Ney’s horse was shot from under him for the fifth time that day: still he picked himself up and urged his men on.
Wellington, exposed on his horse on the ridge, observed the move and ordered reinforcements from his infantry behind the ridge under General Maitland in his five-deep squares, supported by artillery. The British waited behind the brow of the hill, holding their fire until the French reached it, before Wellington screamed in his high-pitched voice: ‘Now, Maitland, now is your turn. Up guards, make ready, fire!’
The French front line recoiled in astonishment. A second British line commanded by Sir John Colborne marched in perfect order around the flank of the French: under two fires, the ‘immortals’ – the Imperial Guard fresh to the battle and jealously husbanded by Napoleon – wavered. The Prussians later claimed, as Muffling wrote, that the presence of Ziethen’s corps was the critical factor: yet, as noted, only one brigade of this actually took part in the fighting, and the sixteen guns of the Prussians were only employed for half an hour, half of them being small 8-pounders, while one battery quickly ceased firing when it threatened British forces. Moreover, the Prussian guns and brigades were too far to the right of the French to have much impact.
The War of Wars Page 95