The Duchess of Richmond gave a ball on the night of the 15th June, the
list of invited guests being curious, and not a little melancholy.
Among the two hundred odd names we read those of Wellington, Uxbridge,
and Hussey Vivian; two Ponsonbys, one of whom was to die three days
later; Hay, the handsome lad who had won a sweepstake at Grammont
the Tuesday before, and whose young life ebbed out on the Friday at
Quatre Bras; Cameron, of Fassifern, who also fell there; Dick of the
42nd, killed at Sobraon in ’46; and _aide-de-camp_ Cathcart, who
lived till Inkerman, where a ball and three bayonet thrusts closed his
strange career. These and many others of more or less note danced in
the long, low-roofed, barn-like room which His Grace of Richmond had
hired for the occasion from his neighbour, Van Asch, the coachbuilder.
About midnight Wellington, having already learned that the outposts had
been engaged, went to the ball, where he found the Prince of Orange.
Now, the Prince of Orange, who seemed fated to cause the useless
sacrifice of valuable life, ought to have been at his post at Binche,
and thither the duke promptly sent him, after first inquiring if there
were any news.
“No, nothing, but that the French have crossed the Sambre, and
had a brush with the Prussians!” Müffling had previously brought
the intelligence, which should have arrived much sooner, the duke
afterwards saying to Napier: “I cannot tell the world that Blücher
picked the fattest man in his army to ride with an express to me, and
that he took thirty hours to go thirty miles.”
Far from being surprised (as some writers have it), the duke’s
orders were despatched _before_ he went to that now historic
entertainment, and the dancing continued long after he and his officers
had left.
At two o’clock, while it was yet dark, strange sounds were heard under
the trees--the shuffling of men’s feet, the ringing of musket-butts
on the ground, short words of command, and the running ripple of the
roll-call along the ranks.
People opened their windows and looked out; carriages returning from
the ball drew up and waited: it was Picton’s Division off to the front.
[Illustration: PICTON’S DIVISION OFF TO THE FRONT.]
At four o’clock Pack’s Highlanders, in kilt and feather bonnet, swung
across the Place Royale and passed through the Namur Gate--the rising
sun glinting on their accoutrements, their bagpipes waking the sleeping
streets. “Come to me and I will give you flesh,” was the weird pibroch
of the Black Watch, and many a Highland laddie heard it that morning
for the last time.
Some of the officers marched in silk stockings and dancing-pumps.
Lingering too long at the ball, they had not had time--or perhaps, as
the night was warm, they had not troubled--to change them; and there
were not a few who never found time again.
Out in the early morning along the great highway they went, past
lonely farms and clustering villages, through the grey-green gloom
of the beech woods of Soigne to Mont St. Jean, where they halted for
breakfast, and where about eight the duke passed them with his staff,
leaving strict orders to keep the road clear; and at noon the troops
were on the march again for Quatre Bras, which was the fiery prelude to
the greatest battle fought in modern times.
The heat was so intense that one man of the 95th Rifles went mad,
and fell dead in the road; but the others pushed on, and were soon
afterwards under fire.
If you take a map of Belgium, placing your finger on Brussels, and pass
it down the great road running south, you will find, some twelve miles
from the capital, the village of Mont St. Jean; a little beyond which
place a cross-road from Wavre intersects the _chaussée_, and at
that point move your finger at right angles, right and left, for a mile
or so each way, and you have, roughly, the English position on the 18th
June.
Continuing again, still southward, you will pass La Belle Alliance and
Genappe, and nine miles from the cross-roads before Mont St. Jean is
Quatre Bras.
Rolling ridges of waving grain, some woods in all their summer beauty,
a gabled farmhouse, and a few cottages where four ways meet--that is
one’s impression of Quatre Bras, which Ney had orders to take, and
drive out Perponcher’s Dutch Belgians posted there; but we arrived
to their assistance, corps after corps, at intervals, and forming up
in line and square, repulsed the Cuirassiers and Lancers who charged
through the tall rye.
The crops were so high that the gallant French cavalry had to resort
to a curious device in singling out our regiments. A horseman would
dash forward, find out the position, plant a lance in the ground, and
disappear; then, in a few moments, guided by the fluttering pennon,
his comrades would burst upon us--invisible until within a few
horse-lengths.
Waterloo has put Quatre Bras into the shade, but few conflicts have
been more brilliant.
Our 69th--thanks to Orange, who interfered with its formation just as
the 8th Cuirassiers came through the corn--lost its only colour, taken
by Trooper Lami, although Volunteer Clarke received twenty-three wounds
and lost the use of an arm in its defence.
The 69th’s other colour had been captured at Bergen-op-Zoom, and was
hung in the Invalides.
By four o’clock the 44th had upwards of 16 officers and 200 men killed
and wounded.
A grey-headed French lancer drove his point into Ensign Christie’s
left eye, down through his face, piercing his tongue and entering the
jaw; but in that shocking condition he still stuck manfully to the
colour-pole, until, finding himself overpowered, he threw the colour
down and lay upon it, and some privates of the regiment closing round
the Frenchman, lifted him out of his saddle on their bayonet points!
The 92nd Highlanders--the old Gordons of Peninsular fame--were the last
of Picton’s men to reach the field, and were formed up in line.
“Ninety-second, don’t fire till I tell you!” cried Wellington, as a
mass of Cuirassiers charged them in his presence; and the word was not
given until the dashing horsemen were within twenty yards.
A little later, the duke said again: “Now, 92nd, you must charge these
two columns of infantry”; and charge they did, over a ditch, driving
the French before them, but their beloved colonel, Cameron, received a
death-wound from the upper windows of a house.
His horse turned and bolted with him, back along the road, until he
came to his master’s groom holding a second mount, when, stopping
suddenly, the dying man was pitched on his head on to the stone
causeway. But he had been terribly avenged; for the kilted Highlandmen
burst into the house with a roar and put every soul inside to the
bayonet.
“Where is the rest of the regiment?” asked Picton in the evening. Alas!
upwards of half the “gay Gordons” had perished in the fray.
Through the broiling heat of that summer day our infantry stood
firm, growing stronger as regiment after regiment arrived, and fresh
batteries unlimbered in the trampled corn, until at night Ney fell
back, leaving us in possession; our cavalry came up, jaded by their
long marches; and we bivouacked on the battle-field, cooking our
suppers in the cuirasses of the slain.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Napoleon had beaten Blücher a few miles away at Ligny,
but had neglected, in most un-Napoleonic fashion, to follow up his
advantage, and the wily old hussar--he was over seventy-three--slipped
off in the dark and retreated on Wavre.
When Wellington learned this next morning, he said to Captain Bowles:
“Old Blücher has had a ---- good licking, and has gone back to Wavre.
As he has gone back, we must go too. I suppose in England they will
say we have been licked. I can’t help that.” So back we went, along
the Brussels road, our cavalry covering the retreat until we reached
the stronger position before Mont St. Jean, where we halted and faced
about, and glued ourselves on the ridge across the causeway in such a
manner that all the magnificent chivalry of France could never move us.
During the retreat from Quatre Bras on the 17th, all went well until
the middle of the day. The wounded had been collected; the columns
filed off along the road; one of the regiments even found time to halt
and flog a marauder: when, the enemy’s cavalry pressing our rear-guard
too closely, some Horse Artillery guns opened fire, and the discharge
seemed to burst the heavy rainclouds.
It poured down in torrents; roads were turned into watercourses, the
fields and hollows became swamps; we had a smart brush with some
Lancers at Genappe, where our 7th Hussars and 1st Life Guards charged
several times; the 10th Hussars had also occasion to dismount some
men and line a hedgerow with their carbines; but the main feature of
the retreat was a weary tramp in a deluge of rain. The cavalry had
their cloaks, it is true, but the greatcoats of the foot-soldiers
had been sent back to England. Soaked to the skin, we arrived at the
ridge above La Haye Sainte, and prepared to pass the night without
covering of any kind. The French advanced almost up to us, and Captain
Mercer was giving them a few rounds from his 9-pounders when a man in
a shabby old drab overcoat and rusty round hat strolled towards him
and began a conversation. Mercer, who thought him one of the numerous
_amateurs_ with whom Brussels was swarming, answered curtly
enough, and the stranger went away.
That shabby man was General Picton, who fell next day on the very spot
where he received this unmerited snubbing. He fought at Quatre Bras
in plain clothes, having joined the army hurriedly in advance of his
baggage, and there is good reason to believe that he wore the same
dress at Waterloo.
Now commenced preparations for a dismal bivouac. The French fell back
and did not disturb us again, they too suffering from the drenching
rain, which beat with a melancholy hissing on the cornfields, the
clover, the potato patches and ploughed land which formed both
positions.
Some of our officers found shelter in neighbouring cottages; Lord
Uxbridge, afterwards Marquis of Anglesey, crept into a piggery and
sipped tea with Waymouth of the 2nd Life Guards; but most of them
cowered with their men round wretched fires which here and there were
coaxed into burning.
One of Mercer’s lieutenants had an umbrella, which had caused much
merriment during the march, but he and his captain found it a haven of
refuge under the lee of a hedge that night.
The cavalry stood to their horses, cloaked, with one flap over
the saddle; some few were lucky enough to get a bundle of straw
or peasticks to sit down upon, and all looked anxiously for the
dawn--fated to prove the last to thousands of them. With morning the
rain gradually declined to a drizzle, which finally ceased; fires
sprang up, arms were cleaned, and a buzz of voices rose along the line
as tall Lifeguardsmen went down behind La Haye Sainte to dig potatoes,
where, a few hours later, they were charging knee to knee, and every
one made shift to get what he could--with most it was only a hard
biscuit--and to dry himself, which was a still more difficult matter.
Wet to the skin, splashed from head to foot in mud and mire, cold,
shivering, unshaven (the foundation laid of acute rheumatism, to which
a pension of _five pence_ a day, in some cases ten pence, was
applied by a grateful country, to its indelible disgrace), such was
the condition of those brave hearts who were about to make the name of
“Waterloo-man” a household word for all the ages.
* * * * *
The Brussels road runs across a shallow valley, three-quarters of a
mile in width, all green and golden with the ripening grain, dipping
sharply into it by the white-walled, blue-roofed farmstead of La Haye
Sainte, and rising gently out again at the cabaret of La Belle Alliance
on its way to the frontier beyond Charleroi.
The valley is bounded by two ridges: on the northern one along the
cross road which runs nearly the whole length of the position, our
army was posted in the form of a thin crescent; on the southern ridge
and the slopes leading down into the valley the French forces were
afterwards distributed, also, to some extent, in crescent shape.
These crescents had their tips advanced towards each other, and
enclosed in the oval thus formed were two important strongholds--La
Haye Sainte, in advance of our left centre, and the château of
Hougoumont, some distance in front of our right wing; while away to the
extreme left, the white buildings of Papelotte partly concealed Ter La
Haye farm and the red-tiled hamlet of Smohain, the end of our line in
that direction.
[Illustration:
_D. H. Parry, inv._] _R. Simkin, del._
THE FIELD OF WATERLOO ON THE MORNING OF THE BATTLE, SUNDAY,
JUNE 18, 1815.
A and B, Napoleons first and second positions; C, Napoleon’s
last position, from which he saw the defeat of the Imperial
Guard; D, Wellington’s position when the battle began; E,
where Wellington stood when he ordered the whole line to
advance; F, Mercer’s post when he repulsed three charges of
the Guard; G, post of 27th Regiment when Lambert’s Brigade
came into the front line; H, the 23rd Regiment, of Mitchell’s
Brigade, is shown, behind Byng, the others are out of plan
at H, except company of 51st keeping the _abattis_. The
spectator is supposed to be behind Mont St. Jean farm, a
little to the left, and raised above the field.]
[Illustration: “A SHOUT OF ‘VIVE L’EMPEREUR!’ ROLLED
ALONG THE FIELD” (_p._ 58).]
The cross-road which I have mentioned as lying along our position, and
which was the celebrated “sunken road of Ohain,” runs in some places
between banks, at others on the level; it is paved down its centre,
like most Belgian roads, with irregular stones, terrible to traverse
for any distance, and it undulates gently, as the ridge rises and
falls, until it joins the Nivelle _chaussée_ beyond Hougoumont.
Hougoumont, surrounded by a quadrangle of tall trees, lies in a hollow
in front of our ridge, perhaps halfway between it and the enemy’s line.
A Flemish château with a garden laid out in the French style, and a
smaller garden full of currant bushes; barns and quaint outbuildings
clustering round the château, a brick wall about the height of a tall
man, built on lower courses of grey stone, enclosing the garden, and at
the east end of it a large open orchard; from the north-west corner,
an avenue of ancient poplars winding into the Nivelle road with an
_abattis_ of tree trunks there, held by a company of the 51st
Light Infantry; between the south wall and the French, a beech wood,
through which one could see the corn-clad slopes beyond: and that was
Hougoumont on the day of the battle.
The beech wood has been cut down, the apple-trees are sparse and scanty
now, the château was burned by the French shells, and the garden is
a grassy paddock; but the rest remains, loopholed and pockmarked
with balls, a monument to the gallantry of two brave nations. The
light companies of the Foot Guards occupied it on the 17th, and all
night long they were busy, boring walls, barricading the gateways and
erecting platforms from which to pour their fire.
* * * * *
On the high ground behind Hougoumont on our side the 2nd Brigade of
British Guards was posted, having Maitland’s Guards on its left;
beyond Maitland was Alten’s Infantry and Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians,
flanked in their turn by the gallant King’s German Legion, in the pay
of England, whose left rested on the Brussels _chaussée_, behind
La Haye Sainte. On the other side of the _chaussée_ was Kempt,
then Pack’s Highlanders, the Royal Scots, and 44th Regiment, some more
Hanoverians, under Best, the 5th Hanoverians of Vincke, Vandeleur’s
Light Dragoons, and Vivian’s Hussar Brigade.
The 2nd Rifles of the German Legion held La Haye Sainte, three
companies of our 95th occupying a knoll and sandpit on the other side
of the road, and Papelotte was garrisoned by Dutch Belgians, who
behaved with the greatest gallantry.
Along the front of this, our first fighting line, the artillery was
posted at intervals, and sufficient justice has not been done to the
brave gunners, the duke always being unfairly severe on that arm of the
service. Our heavy cavalry stood, in hollows behind the line, right and
left of the great road in front of the farm of Mont St. Jean, already
full of the Quatre Bras wounded. Other troops were in reserve out of
sight of the enemy, behind our ridge, ready to advance and fill up any
gaps, and we had a strong force in and about Braine l’Alleud, two miles
to our right, in case the French should try to turn us there.
Crops, as at Quatre Bras, covered the valley and ridges, and the
whole plain undulated in every direction. The battle-field to-day is
full of surprises. Sudden dips occur where the land seems flat from a
little distance; tongues of ground and barley-covered hillocks rise
unexpectedly as you approach them; and it is possible to lose sight of
the entire field by a few yards of walking in some directions; so that,
flat as Belgium is generally considered, it is not astonishing that the
survivors of Waterloo could only speak to events in their own immediate
vicinity.
* * * * *
Between nine and ten there was loud cheering, as the Duke of Wellington
rode along the line with his Staff. He wore a blue frock coat, white
cravat, and buckskin breeches, with tasselled Hessian boots; a short
blue cloak with a white lining, and a low cocked hat with the British
black cockade, and three smaller ones for Spain, Portugal, and the
Netherlands. He was mounted on his favourite chestnut, Copenhagen, a
grandson of Eclipse, and carried a long field-telescope drawn out for
use.
At nine o’clock there was a movement on the opposite side of the
valley; columns debouched into the fields right and left of the
_chaussée_, and took up their positions as orderly as if upon
parade; glittering files of armoured Cuirassiers trotted through the
corn, and formed behind the infantry, lance-pennons fluttered on each
flank, and by half-past ten 61,000 French soldiers were drawn up in
battle array, their right opposite Papelotte, their centre at La Belle
Alliance, their left wing somewhat beyond Hougoumont.
The two greatest living commanders were about to measure swords for the
first and only time; and as Napoleon galloped along his line, the music
of the French bands was distinctly heard; helmets and weapons were
brandished in the air, and a shout of “Vive l’Empereur!” rolled across
the field.
Blue-coated infantry formed their first ranks, with batteries of brass
cannon dotted here and there; behind stood the heavy cavalry with more
guns, supported, on their right, by the gay light horse of the Guard,
on the left by the heavy cavalry of the Imperial cohort, and in rear of
the centre about the farm of Rossomme, stood the invincible infantry of
the Guard, the most renowned body of warriors in Europe.
* * * * *
Napoleon was unwell.
At two in the morning he had been reconnoitring, and his horses were
ordered for seven; at ten he still sat in an upper room in an attitude
of bodily and mental suffering.
A little later he came down the steep ladder, and as his page, Gudin,
was helping him into the saddle he lifted the Imperial elbow too
suddenly, and Napoleon pitched over on the offside, nearly coming to
the ground.
“_Allez_” he hissed, “_à tous les diables!_” and away he
started in a great rage.
The page stood watching the _cortège_ with tearful eyes, but when
it had gone some hundred yards the ranks of the Staff opened, and
Napoleon came riding back alone.
With one hand placed tenderly on the lad’s shoulder he said, very
softly, “My child, when you assist a man of my girth to mount, it is
necessary to proceed more carefully.” Yet it was of this man that
Wellington could say, in after years, “The fellow was no gentleman”!
The page became a general, and fell in a sortie from Paris during the
Franco-Prussian war.
* * * * *
There was a lull before the storm, and the duke went to have a final
look at Hougoumont, where, in addition to the Guards, he had posted,
in the woods and grounds, some Nassauers, Hanoverians, and Luneberg
riflemen.
These foreigners were dissatisfied at their position, and as Wellington
rode away _several bullets came whistling after him_! “How can
they expect me to win a battle with troops like those?” was his only
comment.
About half-past eleven came the FIRST ATTACK!
One booming cannon echoed dully in the misty Sabbath morning, and a
cloud of dark-blue skirmishers ran forward against Hougoumont, firing
briskly into the wood.
Puffs of white smoke issued from the trees; here and there a blue-coat
turned a somersault and lay still; but the cloud increased, and a loud
rattle of musketry was kept up on both sides, which lasted, with short
intervals, the whole day.
Our men fell back upon the buildings through the open beech-trees, and
in twenty minutes the French supporting columns were pouring up the
hill towards the château grounds.
Cleeve’s German battery opened on them, and his first shot killed
_seventeen_ men, the guns checking the advance and sending the
column, broken and bleeding, down the ridge again.
Our batteries on the right now began; the French artillery replied;
Kellermann’s horse batteries joined in, and the infernal concert was in
full blast.
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS PICTON.
(_From the Painting by Sir M. A. Shee, P.R.A._)]
The green Lunebergers and the yellow knapsacks of the Hanoverians
came helter-skelter back across the orchard, but the Foot Guards went
forward at a run and drove the enemy off.
Bull’s howitzers sent a shower of 5½-inch shells over the château
into the wood, and as often as the death-dealing globes fell crashing
through the branches, so often did the enemy retire in confusion,
until Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, who was in command at
Hougoumont, brought up Foy’s Division to help the attack.
Bravely led by their officers, the tall shakoes and square white
coat-facings of the line regiments, the dark-blue and black gaiters
of the light infantry, pressed through the wood until they reached a
stiff quickset hedge, separated by a thin strip of apple orchard from
the long south wall, over which peeped the head-gear of our Guardsmen,
and in the confusion of smoke and skirmish the bright-red brickwork was
mistaken for a line of British--you can see to-day where the French
balls crumbled that barrier. But soon discovering their error, the
brave fellows struggled through the hedge and rushed forward.
A line of loopholes perforated the wall about three feet from the
ground, crossed bayonets protruded viciously from the openings, and
a hail of bullets poured forth with such ghastly effect that in
half-an-hour there were _fifteen hundred_ of God’s creatures dead
and dying on the green grass in the orchard, and still the others came
on.
Some got as far as the loopholes, and seized the bayonets; others
struck with their gunbutts at the men, who, on platforms behind
the wall, fired down over the top, piling up the dead in dreadful
heaps--privates and officers, conscripts and veterans.
From time to time our Foot Guards charged over the large orchard at
the east end of the enclosed garden, and also at the south-west angle
of the farm buildings, where a haystack helped to cover them until the
French burned it; and this repulse and attack went on, time and again,
until the evening, the enemy gaining no advantage but the beechwood for
all their desperate valour.
[Illustration: THE FARM OF HOUGOUMONT.]
The rest of our line had remained passive listeners to the firing,
except for a little skirmishing here and there, but a hurricane was
brewing and about to burst against our left and centre.
* * * * *
La Haye Sainte was a farm, lying like Hougoumont in a hollow; it was
on the Brussels road, and was built with barn and stabling round three
sides of an oblong yard, the fourth side being a high white wall, with
a gate and a piggery alongside the roadway.