To War with Wellington

by Peter Snow

  From 1 p.m. to around 1.30 the Grand Battery fired more than 4,000 rounds at Wellington’s lines. Most of them were roundshot, solid cannon balls, only a third of them shells packed with explosive. Little of Wellington’s army was visible to the French gunners. The Duke had kept most of his men – except Leach’s riflemen, some guns and a Dutch–Belgian battalion – hidden behind the top of the ridge. The Dutch–Belgians were hopelessly exposed and soon withdrew. Most of the roundshot ploughed harmlessly into the mud on or near the almost empty crest of the ridge: the howitzer shells which dropped behind the ridge were more lethal. With his main force sheltering well back, Wellington relied on the skirmishers on the forward slope to alert them to the arrival of the French assault. It wasn’t long in coming.

  John Kincaid watched from the sandpit as what looked to him like ‘countless columns’ of enemy infantry advanced towards him. ‘We saw Buonaparte himself take post on the side of the road, immediately in our front, surrounded by a numerous staff, and each regiment as they passed him rent the air with shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” Backed by the thunder of their artillery and carrying with them the rubidub of drums and the tantarara of trumpets … it looked at first as if they had some hopes of scaring us off the ground.’ Leach kept Kincaid and his other sharpshooting riflemen picking off the advancing French as long as he could. But he had no choice but to retreat when D’Erlon’s men tramped past them. Frenchmen tried to keep their long lines as straight as possible, but they had to struggle through the tall rye. Suddenly, as they passed over the top of the ridge, they were confronted by the men of Picton’s division who had come forward to meet them. It was the first major clash of the two sides at Waterloo. The weight and momentum of the French columns initially began to force Picton’s men back. This brought Sir Thomas himself up to the front roaring at his men to throw all their weight at the French. ‘Charge! Hurrah! Hurrah!’ he shouted. Then very abruptly, without making a sound, he slumped back on to his horse – killed instantly by a musket ball which had pierced his hat and lodged in his brain. Wellington’s most tempestuous but formidable general had fulfilled his own prophecy and died fighting.

  For a moment the battle hung in the balance, but then with a speed and ferocity that set the British cheering, Uxbridge’s heavy cavalry – 2,600 strong – thundered in from behind the British infantry and plunged into the French ranks. ‘To Paris!’ shouted one exuberant cavalry colonel. ‘Scotland for ever!’ cried the hard-pressed Gordon Highlanders, as the Scots Greys and five other regiments of charging horsemen swept through them and set the French running for their lives. A Royal Dragoons squadron commander, Captain A. Clark Kennedy, claimed that the cavalry came to the rescue of Picton’s division in the nick of time. The enemy ‘had forced their way through our line … the crest of the height had been gained, and the charge of the cavalry at the critical moment recovered it. Had the charge been delayed two or three minutes, I feel satisfied it would probably have failed …’

  Corporal John Dickson of the Scots Greys never forgot the strange thrill that ran through him as ‘I dug my spurs into my brave old Rattler and we were off like the wind.’ With the sound of the Gordons’ bagpipes ringing in his ears, Dickson headed for the first Frenchman he could see. ‘A young officer of Fusiliers made a slash at me with his sword, but I parried it and broke his arm: the next second we were in the thick of them. We could not see five yards ahead for the smoke.’ A sergeant of the Gordons recalled the speed with which the heavy cavalry turned the battle around: ‘It was fearful to see the carnage that took place. The dragoons were lopping off heads at every stroke, while the French were calling for quarter. We were also busy with the bayonet and what the cavalry did not execute we completed.’ Clark Kennedy spotted an enemy colour with an eagle attached to it. ‘Right shoulders forward, attack the colour,’ he shouted. He ran his sword through the Frenchman holding it, and it fell across his horse’s head. He attempted to break the eagle off the end of it, but one of his corporals riding close by urged him to keep it in one piece. ‘Very well,’ said Clark Kennedy to him, ‘carry it to the rear as fast as you can. It belongs to me.’ The eagle was a French regiment’s most precious emblem and a prized trophy in the hands of an enemy. Another eagle was captured by Sergeant Charles Ewart of the Scots Greys.*

  The great massed waves of footsoldiers that D’Erlon had led so proudly up the hill were utterly broken. Two thousand prisoners were taken and the remnants of the force fell back in disorder as Napoleon watched in dismay. Spurred on by their destruction of D’Erlon, Uxbridge’s heavy cavalry now charged on with reckless abandon. Nothing was going to stop them. Dickson recalled an officer riding past him, shouting ‘Charge! Charge the guns!’ and although the ground was slippery with mud they spurred their horses on up the hill to where the line of the Grand Battery was, ‘and we had our revenge. Such slaughtering! We sabred the gunners, lamed the horses and cut their traces and harness. I can hear the Frenchmen yet crying “Diable!” when I struck at them, and the long drawn hiss through their teeth as my sword went home.’ At one stage Dickson’s beloved Rattler went down and he had to grab a French horse. But then quite suddenly he and the other troopers realised that something had gone terribly wrong. Galloping in behind them, and between them and the British lines, came three regiments of French cavalry, and more heavy cavalry appeared ahead of them. Dickson saw lancers to his left and cuirassiers to his right. ‘I shall never forget the sight. The Cuirassiers, in their sparkling steel breastplates and helmets mounted on strong black horses, with great blue rugs across the croups, were galloping towards me, tearing up the earth as they went …’

  The British cavalry had done it again. Over-confident and driven wild by their own initial success they had rampaged out of control just as they had – to Wellington’s fury – at Vimeiro and Talavera. And they had not even managed to spike the French guns they had reached. Convinced they were unstoppable, they had left themselves no avenue of escape. Now, disorganised and separated from each other, their horses breathless, they were a prey to enemy cavalrymen on fresh horses. What followed was butchery on a massive scale. The French cuirassiers – their swords six inches longer than those of the British cavalry – and a regiment of lancers – with their eight-foot-long weapons easily outreaching the sabres wielded by the exhausted British – hacked and stabbed their way through Uxbridge’s six disordered regiments. Uxbridge himself was later to take much of the blame for the disaster: ‘I committed a great mistake in having myself led the attack.’ He had ridden with the first wave rather than with the second where he could have exercised more control. But Uxbridge, like Ney, always led from the front. Of the 2,700 horsemen who had charged minutes earlier, 589 of the Household Brigade (the Royal Horse Guards, the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the 1st Dragoon Guards) and 612 of the Union Brigade (the Scots Greys, the Enniskilling Dragoons and the Royal Dragoons) were lost.

  Fred Ponsonby’s cousin William, the major general who commanded the Union Brigade, and a veteran of many a battle in the Peninsula, was one of the victims. He hadn’t been able to find his horse that morning, as his groom wasn’t within call, so he had had to ride a ‘small bay hack’. Wading through the soft mud in a newly ploughed field William Ponsonby’s weak horse slowed down, exhausted, just as some of Napoleon’s much feared Polish lancers galloped up. Since his ADC was better mounted than he was, William Ponsonby was in the act of handing him his watch and a miniature of his wife for safe keeping when both of them were speared by the lancers and died immediately.

  Fred Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons, together with the 11th and 16th, had spent a quiet morning on the extreme left of Wellington’s line. But when the fighting began later in the morning, they moved across to watch the approach of D’Erlon’s attack and the countercharge by the British heavy cavalry. Fred Ponsonby, like the other two regimental commanders in his brigade of light dragoons, appears to have been given some authority to act when he thought fit. He saw the broken waves of Frenchmen rolling dow
n the hill before him. Way beyond them, he spotted the British heavy cavalry now being hard pressed by cuirassiers and lancers. He felt sure they ‘were in the utmost peril unless some support were immediately afforded them’. He decided to lead his regiment against a French infantry unit in an effort to take the pressure off the beleaguered heavy dragoons. He signalled to his men to advance in two long lines on a 260-yard front – three squadrons of around 150 men each.

  Ponsonby rode out in front of the centre squadron with a bugler beside him. William Hay was the right-hand man in the left-hand squadron, about thirty yards to his colonel’s left. Their attack was immediately successful and they were soon slashing with their light cavalry sabres, killing or wounding scores of French infantry who were on the ground or running for their lives. But Ponsonby’s light dragoons then made the same mistake his cousin’s had made earlier. They went too far and found themselves surrounded by French cavalry. They were outnumbered three to one and had to face bigger men on heavier horses. ‘I know we ought not to have been there, and that we fell into the same error which we went down to correct, but I believe that this is an error almost inevitable after a successful charge.’

  Hay managed to lead his squadron out of the mêlée, but as he was shepherding his men back, a shell burst under his horse and a splinter pierced its leg. The horse sat down; Hay used his spurs to try to get it up again. He failed and slid back over the horse’s tail only to hear his men shouting a warning to him. Charging straight at him were two lancers ‘coming full tilt at me, one instant more and both their lances would have been in the small of my back, and I have little doubt that the well directed aim of some of our noble infantry accounted for them and made them pay for their temerity by leaving their corpses where they intended mine should be left’. Fred Ponsonby was less lucky. He emerged from the fray and shouted to Hay, ‘Hang it, what can detain our centre squadron? I must get back and see.’ ‘Those were his last words, poor fellow, he uttered that day.’ Moments later Ponsonby was trapped by some lancers who thrust at him and wounded him in both arms. His horse carried him on a little but he was then struck by a blow on the head and tumbled to the ground. He tried to stagger to his feet but a lancer rode up to him shouting, ‘Tu n’est pas mort, coquin?’ (‘You’re not dead, you rascal?’) and thrust his lance between Ponsonby’s shoulders and through one of his lungs. The Frenchman then rode off, leaving Ponsonby for dead.

  For the second time that day Wellington had succeeded in resisting Napoleon’s attempt to break through his line, but this time at grave cost. He had lost around 6,000 men in half an hour. Fred Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons alone had lost more than a hundred of their 450 men. Wellington, who had watched his cavalry’s action first with elation and then with growing horror, was heard to remark scathingly to Uxbridge when he returned with the survivors: ‘Well, Paget [addressing him by his ordinary family name], I hope you are satisfied with your cavalry now.’ A few days later the Duke said to a colleague: ‘The cavalry of other European armies have won victories for their generals, but mine have invariably got me into scrapes.’

  So far Wellington’s line had held. Years of experience of fighting the French in the Peninsula were paying off. But as he squinted through his telescope at the tens of thousands of fresh troops Napoleon had not yet committed, he must have known this was the greatest challenge he had ever faced. There was a limit to the amount of this ‘hard pounding’, as he called it, that his unevenly mixed Anglo-allied army could stand. If the Prussians didn’t join the battle soon, his men would be hard pressed to hold the ridge at Waterloo much longer. And there were still six more long hours of daylight ahead.

  19

  Now, Maitland, now’s your time!

  Waterloo, afternoon 18 June 1815

  AT AROUND 4 p.m. Captain Cavalié Mercer and his battery of horse artillery found themselves right in the centre of the action in the Battle of Waterloo. ‘Suddenly,’ Mercer recalled, ‘a dark mass of cavalry appeared for an instant on the main (French) ridge and then came sweeping down the slope in swarms, reminding me of an enormous surf bursting over the prostrate hull of a stranded vessel, and then running, hissing and foaming, up the beach.’ Mercer and his guns were in Wellington’s front line when it was attacked by wave after wave of French cavalry led by Marshal Ney. Once again the Duke’s army faced a challenge that brought it near to breaking point.

  Of all Napoleon’s commanders none had a more passionate will to win than Michel Ney. It was almost a death wish. He was determined he would be in the front line of every major assault that day. Defeat at Waterloo was unthinkable. He had betrayed Napoleon in 1814. In 1815 he had betrayed the King. There would be no third chance. It was death or victory. Ney was no great strategist, but he could inspire men to fight. His flair and exemplary courage had helped Napoleon win great victories such as Jena and Friedland. He had earned the title of Prince of Moscow for his leadership at the Battle of Borodino outside the Russian capital and the nickname ‘Bravest of the Brave’ for his resourcefulness during the disastrous retreat from Moscow in 1812. At Waterloo that morning, according to some sources, he had accompanied D’Erlon in the first massed infantry attack. Now he was leading one of the most spectacular cavalry assaults in history. Ney was sparked into action when he noticed numbers of Anglo-allied troops withdrawing beyond the crest of the ridge. Wellington had ordered them back to the reverse slope to shield them from French gunfire. Ney thought Wellington’s line was cracking. With Napoleon apparently preoccupied with countering the Prussian threat from the east, Ney took it upon himself to lead a series of attacks over the next two hours with more than 9,000 horsemen on Wellington’s centre right (the western half of the allied line). As he led off the first wave of cuirassiers at the trot, he shouted ‘Forward! The salvation of France is at stake.’

  The Battle of Waterloo: 4.00–6.00 p.m.

  The first Captain Mercer and his horse artillery battery knew about the great French cavalry attack was in mid-afternoon, when Sir Augustus Frazer, Wellington’s horse artillery commander, galloped up to them. ‘Left, limber up, and as fast as you can!’ cried Frazer, whose face was ‘black as a chimney-sweep’s from the smoke’. He told Mercer that the French had assembled a mass of cavalry in front of the centre right of Wellington’s position and that they might charge at any moment.

  As they sweated up towards the top of the ridge, Mercer noticed the air growing hotter and hotter. Suddenly, as they left the protection of the dead ground behind the crest, he and his men were exposed to a massive French cannonade on Wellington’s front line. ‘So thick was the hail of balls and bullets that it seemed dangerous to extend the arm lest it should be torn off.’ It was the prelude to Ney’s cavalry assault. Wellington had spotted the build-up, and sent the alert along his line: ‘Prepare to receive cavalry.’ He was confident his Peninsular veterans would stand firm, but he had his doubts about regiments like the Brunswickers, which he had had to feed into his front line to allow the Guards to reinforce Hougoumont. Everything would depend on how well the officers had drilled into their men the need to kneel or stand in square formation, shoulder to shoulder, in the face of charging horsemen. Wellington’s infantry rapidly formed into squares, each side four men deep with bayonets thrust out in front of them, four rows of tightly packed blades, which, if the men stayed steady, would scare off any horse. But the two squares of Brunswickers Mercer passed between were being battered by the gunfire: he saw officers and sergeants desperately trying to close the gaps in the ranks made by the cannon balls. Frazer shouted to Mercer that Wellington’s orders were for all gunners, when charged by French cavalry, to seek refuge in the squares. Mercer judged that that would be fatal. The Brunswickers looked so dispirited that to seek refuge in their squares would be ‘madness … The very moment our men ran from their guns, I was convinced, would be the signal for their disbanding.’ So Mercer hurried his horse-drawn guns forward to the gap between the two Brunswicker squares, and shouted the order to load canister sho
t.

  The first wave of some 4,500 French cavalry – stretched over a front of some 800 yards with Ney himself leading them on – were mainly cuirassiers, with their glinting steel helmets and breastplates. Behind them rode the lancers in brilliantly coloured uniforms with a banner on each lance, and the Chasseurs à Cheval, Imperial Guardsmen, decked out richly in green and gold. As they moved off, more than eighty French guns delivered a heavy bombardment on to and beyond the top of Wellington’s ridge. The Duke had ordered most of his men back behind the skyline, but some of the better-aimed roundshot took a heavy toll of the closely huddled squares concealed there out of sight. And then the French guns fell silent so as not to strike their own men and the Anglo-allied guns opened up, as the French cavalry approached the top of Wellington’s ridge.