by Peter Snow
He had just been woken from less than three hours’ sleep to be handed a message that had been rushed through wind and rain from Prussian headquarters in Wavre. It was a final and very welcome written promise from Blücher to put two Prussian corps – around 50,000 men – on the road at dawn to support Wellington at Waterloo. If Wellington had any doubts about confronting Napoleon there, they must have vanished at that moment. His trusty horse Copenhagen was saddled up in the early June dawn and the Duke rode off to inspect his men. Gronow watched him riding past that morning with his staff. ‘They all seemed as gay and unconcerned as if they were riding to meet the hounds in some quiet English county.’ Wellington was dressed, immaculately as ever, in civilian clothes: blue jacket and cloak, smart white leather pantaloons, white cravat and cocked hat. He might have had little sleep for the previous three nights, but at least he had had a roof over his head unlike most of his soldiers.
Most of Wellington’s and Napoleon’s men slept, or tried to sleep, in the open. ‘I never remember a worse night in the whole of the Peninsular war,’ wrote Sergeant William Lawrence, ‘for the rain descended in torrents, mixed with fearful thunder and lightning …’ It rained all night and Thomas Todd was so stiff and sore that he couldn’t move freely for some time, but half an allowance of liquor was doled out, ‘the most welcome thing I ever received’. William Leeke, the most junior ensign in John Colborne’s 52nd, was sent off with a small party to get some straw for the troops to sleep on. They pulled some off a thatched roof in a nearby village, but it proved even soggier than lying on the ground. Tom Morris found it far too wet to lie down to sleep, so he and his companions ‘collected armfuls of standing corn’ to place on the ground and then sat on their knapsacks with blankets over their heads to keep dry, ‘which was needless as we were so thoroughly drenched’. Sergeant William Wheeler was glad of his tobacco. ‘You often blamed me for smoking when I was at home last year,’ he wrote to his family. ‘But I must tell you that if I had not had a good stock of tobacco this night I must have given up the Ghost.’
Morris was given the task of distributing the daily allowance of spirits to his company. He had some left over, so he had an extra swig with his friend, Sergeant Burton, who advised him to keep some for after the battle. ‘I told him I thought very few of us would live to see the close of the day.’ ‘Tom,’ he replied, ‘I’ll tell you what it is: there is no shot made yet for either you or me.’ A thousand yards to Morris’s left the Gordon Highlanders were given an allowance of gin that, one Scotsman observed, ‘had the effect of infusing warmth into our almost inanimate frames’. By the middle of the day the Gordons would be in the centre of the action, just as they had been at Quatre-Bras.
When William Hay and Fred Ponsonby woke up among their horses, they found themselves ‘in rather a strange plight, having sunk some 6 or 8 inches deep in the water and clay’. Spirits quickly revived when the sun came out. Most of the troops got breakfast, even if it was only a scrap of biscuit and some broth, and, as the day warmed up, they were soon in their shirtsleeves drying off their clothes and cleaning their weapons. Fred Ponsonby leaped on his horse, and rode up to the front line to look at the lie of the land, which was now, after the storm, crisply visible in the clear air.
The Battle of Waterloo: Morning
Ponsonby scanned the length of the gentle ridge – about 3,500 yards from one end to the other. Behind it, on the north side, Wellington’s 68,000 troops were preparing for battle, nearly all of them out of sight. In front of the ridge, to the south, fields of tall rye sloped down to a shallow valley 300 yards away. Beyond that the ground rose slowly again to where the meadows seethed with French troops parading in columns – waiting to be reviewed by Napoleon. Later that morning the unmistakable figure of the Emperor in his drab grey coat and large black hat could be seen moving through the ranks. Way beyond, on a further ridge behind the packed infantry battalions were the French cavalry, a great mass of blue, red and green uniforms, some in glinting steel helmets and body armour. Ponsonby watched squadron after squadron begin to assemble and mill around as if at the starting gate of a great race. Many French units were still on the road. Napoleon had made little effort to hurry up those of his men approaching from Ligny and Quatre-Bras. It was a further sign of his over-confidence and his faltering grip on the campaign he had started so well. Eventually there would be 72,000 French troops in the field against Wellington, but it would take them much of the morning to be ready for action. And Napoleon had despatched another 33,000 off to the east under Marshal Grouchy to pin down Blücher and prevent him from sending vital reinforcements to Wellington.
Ponsonby was on the left-hand side, the east side, of Wellington’s ridge. Far off at the right-hand end, the ridge sloped down to the Château d’Hougoumont, a cluster of buildings including a barn and a chapel, which guarded Wellington’s extreme right. In the centre, just below the top of the ridge, where it fell away to the valley between the opposing forces, was the farm of La Haye-Sainte, a rectangle of robustly built farm buildings. And over to Ponsonby’s left at the eastern end of the ridge, was the farm of Papelotte, the eastern edge of Wellington’s front line. That was where the Prussians should show by lunchtime – if they kept their promise.
Another middle-ranking officer on horseback out early was Harry Smith. He had managed to persuade his wife Juana, unusually, to stay behind in Brussels during the fighting. He was a staff officer with a mixed force of British and German troops, and he rode forward to find Wellington and ask where he wanted his men posted. ‘It was delightful to see his Grace on his noble horse, Copenhagen, in high spirits and very animated but so cool and clear in the issue of his orders.’ One of Wellington’s staff remarked in Smith’s hearing, ‘I don’t think they will attack today.’ ‘Nonsense,’ said the Duke, whose keen eye had already seen where the French columns were concentrating for an attack.
At Waterloo, Wellington was to employ his well-tried defensive tactic of using the dead ground – the reverse slope behind the ridge – to shelter his men from gunfire. Then, when an enemy attack came in, he would order his men to form long lines in two ranks with bayonets fixed ready to fight. Wellington knew his largely untried units, only a third of them British, would face veterans of Napoleon’s old Grande Armée who had in their time vanquished every opponent they met. So he placed at least one British brigade in each division along his front line to avoid presenting Napoleon with any obvious weak points where he could break through. But just as Napoleon had weakened his main force by sending Grouchy off to secure his right, Wellington too had despatched a large force of some 17,000 men to protect his own right flank at Hal five miles to the west. He still had an uneasy feeling that Napoleon might try and deliver a blow against him from that direction. In the event both detachments proved valueless, and both commanders would deeply regret their absence.
Wellington ordered Harry Smith to take his brigade right to the centre of the British line, next to Picton. He also placed the Rifles (the 1/95th) in the middle of his position, only a hundred yards up the slope from La Haye-Sainte. ‘We made a fire … and boiled a huge camp kettle full of tea,’ recalled John Kincaid. ‘All the bigwigs of the army had occasion to pass … I believe every one of them, from the Duke downwards, claimed a cupful.’
Wellington put Fred Ponsonby, William Hay and William Tomkinson and their light cavalry behind his far left. He posted Fred’s cousin, Major General William Ponsonby, with his Union Brigade of heavy cavalry behind his centre, and all along the slope in front of his main units on the ridge he scattered skirmishers and sharpshooters – to blunt any French attack. Finally he placed the guns at intervals along his front line on top of the ridge. Mercer’s battery – for the moment – was kept in reserve. Hew Ross and his battery, who had followed Wellington from the earliest days in Portugal, found themselves in the front line. Wellington posted Whinyates and his rockets well back – after the absurdity of what had happened at Genappe the day before where the rockets had done
little more than treat the troops to a firework display.
All morning the Duke was riding breezily from unit to unit issuing orders. The more he was visibly seen to be exercising command and control even down to the level of the battalion, the more he reckoned he would give his men the will and confidence to win. His way of inspiring his men was to radiate cool self-confidence and to reassure them that he would make the right decisions and be in the right place at the right time, often at great personal risk. He was in no doubt of the importance of his own personal presence, and, as we have seen, believed Napoleon’s appearance on a battlefield was worth several thousand extra men. But he drew the line at seizing an opportunity to decapitate the French army. At one point later in the day an artillery officer spotted Napoleon in the distance and asked Wellington for permission to fire on him. ‘No! No!’ replied Wellington. ‘It is not the business of commanders to be firing upon each other.’ It would have been unthinkable for a man of Wellington’s sensibilities and against the ethos of the time to approve of what would look more like assassination than the proper conduct of warfare.
Napoleon was certainly visible early that morning reviewing his troops, but he was clearly moody and off colour. He was suffering from piles, which made riding painful. He was also disappointed that he was unable to attack Wellington at the early hour he had intended. Napoleon was now paying the penalty for failing to order his army forward quickly the day before. His guns were proving hopelessly difficult to drag through the mud after the night’s downpours. Besides, the road from Genappe was cluttered with columns of footsoldiers. But Napoleon was convinced he would win. At eight o’clock he gathered his top generals at his headquarters in a house called Le Caillou, two-and-a-half miles south of the British line. The record of the meeting, as related by the French historian Henri Houssaye, suggests that the Emperor was arrogant, testy and over-confident. ‘We have ninety chances in our favour and not ten against us,’ he said. Nicolas Soult, one of those who had switched sides yet again and was now Napoleon’s chief of staff, was uneasy. Years of confronting Wellington had taught Soult to respect him. He advised Napoleon to recall Grouchy at once. He would need the extra men. Napoleon scoffed at him: ‘Because you have been beaten by Wellington, you consider him a great general. I tell you, Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad troops and that this affair is nothing more serious than eating one’s breakfast.’ ‘I earnestly hope so,’ replied Soult.
Napoleon then consulted Reille, who had also been worsted by Wellington at Vitoria, in the Pyrenees and in southern France. ‘Well posted, as Wellington knows how to post it, and attacked from the front, I consider the English infantry to be impregnable,’ Reille told him, ‘owing to its calm tenacity and its superior aim in firing.’ He added that the best way to attack the English was not from the front but by manoeuvre, at which the French were superior. A little later Napoleon’s brother Jérôme said that he had heard rumours of Blücher and Wellington joining up. ‘Nonsense,’ said Napoleon, ‘the Prussians and English cannot possibly link for another two days after such a battle [as Ligny]’. Napoleon then turned his attention to Grouchy. But instead of recalling him urgently, he sent him a curiously vague message: ‘His Majesty desires you will head for Wavre in order to draw near to us.’ It was sloppy, contradictory wording. To head for Wavre, as Grouchy continued to do when he received this order, would draw him away from, not near to, the battlefield at Waterloo.
The Battle of Waterloo finally began at 11.30 a.m. Napoleon’s plan was remarkably conventional for one so adept at fast manoeuvre and surprise. It called for a series of major frontal attacks, supported massively by his guns. The Emperor had begun his career as an artillery officer and was a firm believer in using the power of heavy guns to cause chaos in enemy ranks before throwing his infantry against them. He had 246 guns at Waterloo, nowhere near the number he had fielded at Austerlitz and Leipzig, but far more than the 157 trundled out by Wellington, who in any case had far less confidence in his artillery.
Napoleon began by ordering his gunners to open up on the most critical point of Wellington’s line – the Château d’Hougoumont. The well-fortified group of farm buildings with its walled gardens and orchards was chosen by Wellington as the bastion that would protect his right. As long as Wellington held it, Napoleon could not deliver a left hook at the Anglo-allied line. Without the farm Wellington’s army would be exposed to attack from the flank as well as in front. Hougoumont was vital, and that was what Wellington told the man he placed in command, Lieutenant Colonel James Macdonnell of the Coldstream Guards, a giant Highlander from Invergarry in Scotland. Macdonnell had his men up early on 18 June punching loopholes in the brick wall of the garden. He commanded 1,200 defenders of Hougoumont – 200 guardsmen and 1,000 Germans.
The fight for the farm at Hougoumont was an epic struggle that lasted all day. Soon after Napoleon’s guns opened up on the farm, his brother Jérôme, commanding on the French left, sent in his infantry. They cleared the woods to the south of the buildings but were soon raked by British, Dutch and German musket fire from behind the walls. There was savage face-to-face combat as the French pressed forward against Hougoumont with swords and bayonets. Muskets fired at extra-close range dealt horrific wounds and caused hundreds of deaths. Somehow, for over an hour, the defenders kept the French away from the farm’s vulnerable North Gate, through which Wellington ordered a constant feed of ammunition to the besieged. First, 4,000 French infantry threw themselves at the walls, then another 3,500, then another 5,000 from General Foy’s division.
The most dangerous moment for the defenders was when a huge Frenchman called Legros, nicknamed ‘L’Enfonceur’ (the Smasher), wielding an axe, managed to hack his way through to the North Gate and smash it open. He and a small group piled through it with wild shouts of triumph and ferocious duels soon littered the courtyard with severed limbs and bloody corpses. With his men desperately fighting the intruders, Macdonnell and four others hurled themselves at the gate in a frantic effort to close it. Somehow they managed to force it shut inch by inch and then slam down a great beam to hold it in place. Next they turned on the trapped Frenchmen. Only a small drummer boy was spared in the carnage that followed. ‘The success of the battle of Waterloo’, Wellington said later, ‘depended on the closing of the gates of Hougoumont.’
The artillery battle over Hougoumont swung in Wellington’s favour when Colonel Augustus Frazer, his Royal Horse Artillery commander, who had served him so well in the siege of San Sebastián, suggested using howitzers on the French attackers in the woods around Hougoumont. Wellington pointed out that the allies’ own troops were fighting in the woods as well. ‘Colonel Frazer,’ Wellington said, ‘you are going to do a delicate thing. Can you depend upon the force of your howitzers? Part of the wood is held by our troops, part by the enemy.’ Frazer replied that his gunners could be depended upon not to kill their own troops, and he called upon his howitzers to fire at a high angle over the heads of the British and German troops. The shrapnel shells then took a severe toll of the French. Remarkably, while Wellington understood the value of using artillery in defence of Hougoumont, neither Napoleon nor any of his generals made effective use of their artillery against its walls. It seems inconceivable that the walls or wooden gates could have stood up to a properly focused bombardment. Curiously, it never happened. Napoleon missed another opportunity and thousands of footsoldiers were sacrificed in fruitless attacks on the farm. The only French artillery that had any success were the howitzers that fired a few incendiary devices and set light to some of the buildings. ‘Burning timbers crashed down on the men … and thick choking smoke billowed everywhere making their eyes stream … Through the roar of the flames came cries of help from the wounded and the wild neighing of panic-stricken horses.’
All through the day the struggle for Hougoumont continued. Wellington kept a keen eye on the action there and reinforced the garrison to 2,600 in the afternoon by adding two complete Guards battalions. By
the afternoon Jérôme Bonaparte’s exhausted division had been decimated and the division of General Foy, who had suffered many a beating by Wellington in the Peninsula, was gravely weakened as well. Some 3,500 British and Germans had pinned down 14,000 French troops all day. Macdonnell’s dogged defence of Hougoumont tied up one-fifth of Napoleon’s army and prevented it operating anywhere else on the battlefield.
Like most others in Wellington’s army, Jonathan Leach spent much of the morning in a state of suspense. He was in charge of two forward companies of the Rifles posted 150 yards in front of the main British line in a sandpit just short of the farmhouse of La Haye-Sainte. He was right in the centre of the allied battlefront. He had listened to the artillery and small-arms fire from Hougoumont way over to his right till mid-morning. ‘As yet all was quiet in the immediate front of our division. But after a calm comes a storm.’ From about 11.30 Leach watched a line of French guns being dragged forward until they were ‘staring us in the face’ – around 500 yards away. He couldn’t yet see the vast columns of French infantry that he, rightly, guessed were lining up behind the guns.
Napoleon moved forward to watch the build-up of 17,000 troops under Count d’Erlon. They were forming up behind the eighty guns of the new Grand Battery that Leach had seen and that were now awaiting the signal to fire. D’Erlon’s infantrymen were to punch through Wellington’s centre left and seize the crossroads that would put Napoleon on the road to Brussels. To maximise their firepower they would apply a lesson learned in the Peninsula. They would advance in much longer lines. Each of D’Erlon’s twenty-five battalions would form into three ranks – each one of about 150 men abreast. They wouldn’t be as long as Wellington’s two thin red lines, but they would be a far cry from the much narrower columns that had been crushed time and again in Portugal and Spain. The battalions would follow each other in four great blocks, one battalion behind another. Count d’Erlon would lead – from the front, accompanied, some sources say, by the indomitable Marshal Ney. Then, at around one o’clock, just as the order was being given for Napoleon’s newly placed guns to open fire, the Emperor himself noticed movement and a growing concentration of men four miles away to his right in the hills and woods around Château Saint-Lambert. They were coming from the direction of Wavre. His first reaction was one of relief – that Grouchy was racing to his assistance. An aide told him it was Grouchy. He put a glass to his eye and said, ‘No, no. Black is black and blue is blue: those are Prussians.’ A cavalry patrol was despatched and reported that it was indeed the Prussians. Napoleon found it hard to believe: ‘I can … scarcely comprehend why it was a Prussian division and not that of Grouchy,’ he said later. He had counted on the Prussians being out of the fight for at least a day or two more, and on Grouchy responding to the sound of gunfire. He immediately sent a further message to Grouchy demanding his urgent support, and then he turned to watch D’Erlon’s assault on Wellington.*