Wellington's line, must be captured if yet a further effort was to be
attempted by Napoleon. Major Baring had held it with his small body of
Germans all day long. Twice had he thrust back a general assault, and
throughout more than five hours he had resisted partial and equally
unsuccessful attacks. Now Ney, ordered to carry it at whatever cost,
brought up against it a division, and more than a division. The French
climbed upon their heaped dead, broke the doors, shot from the walls, and,
at the end of the butchery, Baring with forty-two men--all that was left
him out of nine companies--cut his way back through to the main line, and
the farm was taken. Hougomont, on the left, round which so meaningless a
struggle had raged all day long, was never wholly cleared of its
defenders, but the main body of it was in flames, and with the capture of
La Haye Sainte the whole front was free for a final attack at the moment
which Napoleon should decide.
Meanwhile, at Plancenoit, further French reinforcements had recaptured the
village and again lost it. The Sixth Corps had given way before the
Prussian advance, as we have seen. The next French reinforcements, though
they had at first thrust the Prussians back, in turn gave way as the last
units of the enemy arrived, and the Prussian batteries were dropping shot
right on to the fields which bordered the Brussels road.
Napoleon took eleven battalions of the Guard (the Imperial Guard was his
reserve, and had not yet come into action[25]) and drew them up upon his
flank to defend the Brussels road; with two more battalions he reinforced
the wavering troops in Plancenoit. They cleared the enemy out of the
village with the bayonet, and for the moment checked that pressure upon
the flank and rear which could not but ultimately return.
It was somewhat past seven by the time all this was accomplished. Napoleon
surveyed a field over which it was still just possible (in his judgment at
least) to strike a blow that might save him. He saw, far upon the left,
Hougomont in flames; in the centre, La Haye Sainte captured; on the right,
the skirmishers advancing upon the slope before the English line; his
eastern flank for the moment free of the Prussians, who had retired before
the sudden charge of the Guard. He heard far off a cannonade which might
be that of Grouchy.
But even as he looked upon his opportunity he saw one further thing that
goaded him to an immediate hazard. Upon the north-eastern corner of his
strained and bent-back line of battle, against the far, perilous, exposed
angle of it, he saw new, quite unexpected hordes of men advancing. It was
Ziethen debouching with the head of his First Prussian Army Corps at this
latest hour--and Napoleon saw those most distant of his troops ready to
yield to the new torrent.
The sun, now within an hour of setting, had shone out again. Its light
came level down the shallow valley, but all that hollow was so filled with
the smoke of recent discharges that the last stroke which Napoleon was now
preparing was in part hidden from the Allies upon the hill. That final
stake, the only venture left, was to be use of his last reserve and the
charge of the Guard.
No combat in history, perhaps, had seen a situation so desperate
maintained without the order for retreat. Wellington's front, which the
French were attacking, was still held unbroken; upon the French flank and
rear, though the Fourth Prussian Army Corps were for the moment held, they
must inevitably return; more remained to come: they were in the act of
pressing upon the only line open to the French for retreat, and now here
came Ziethen with his new masses upon the top of all.
If, at this hour, just after seven, upon that fatal day, retreat had been
possible or advisable to Napoleon, every rule of military art demanded it.
He was now quite outnumbered; his exhausted troops were strained up to and
beyond the breaking point. To carry such strains too far means in all
things, not only in war, an irretrievable catastrophe.
But retreat was hardly possible as a military action; it was impossible as
a political one.
Napoleon could hardly retreat at that hour, although he was already
defeated, because the fury and the exhaustion of the combat, its
increasing confusion, and the increasing dispersion of its units, made any
rapid concentration and organisation for the purposes of a sudden
retirement hazardous in the extreme. The doomed body, held closer and
closer upon its right flank, menaced more and more on its right rear, now
suddenly threatened on its exposed salient angle, would fight on.
Though Napoleon had withdrawn from the combat an hour before, when Buelow's
30,000 had struck at his right flank and made his destruction certain;
though he had then, while yet he could, organised a retirement, abandoned
the furious struggle for La Haye Sainte before it was successful, and
covered with his best troops an immediate retreat, that retreat would not
have availed his cause.
The appearance of the Prussians on his right proved glaringly the nature
of his doom. Grouchy--a quarter of his forces--was cut off from him
altogether. The enemy, whom he believed to be beyond Grouchy, and pursued
by Grouchy, had appeared, upon the contrary, between Grouchy and himself.
Now Ziethen too was here.
Did Napoleon retire, he would retire before forces half as large again as
his own, and destined to grow to double his own within a few hours. His
retirement would leave Grouchy to certain disaster.
Politically, retreat was still more hopeless. He himself would re-enter
France defeated, with, at the most, half the strength that had crossed the
frontier three days before. He would so re-enter France--the wealthier
classes of which watched his power, nearly all of them with jealousy, most
with active hate--surrounded by general officers not ten of whom, perhaps,
he could sincerely trust, and by a whole society which supported him only
upon the doubtful condition of victory.
Such a retirement was ruin. It was more impossible morally even than it
was impossible physically, under the conditions of the field. Therefore it
was that, under conditions so desperate, with his battle lost if ever
battle was, the Emperor yet attempted one ultimate throw, and in this
half-hour before the sunset sent forward the Guard.
In those solemn moments, wherein the Imperial Guard formed for their
descent into that hollow whose further slope was to see their last feat of
arms, Ziethen, with the First Prussian Corps, pressed on into the far
corner the field of battle. At the far end of the long ridge of the Mont
St Jean, more than a mile away, this last great body and newest
reinforcement of the Emperor's foes had emerged from the walls and
thickets of Smohain and, new to the fighting, was already pushing in the
weary French line that had stood the carnage of six hours. It was not
enough that the Fourth Prussian Corps should have determined the day
already with its 30,000 come up from the east against him; now the
foremost battalions of the First coming up from the north were appearing
to clinch the matter altogether.
It was under such conditions of irretrievable disaster that Napoleon
played for miracle, and himself riding slowly down the valley at the head
of his comrades and veterans, gave them over to Ney for the final attack
against Wellington's line which still held the opposing slope.
It was then, at the moment when Ziethen and the men of the First Prussian
Army Corps began to press upon the north-eastern angle of the fight, and
were ready to determine it altogether, that the Guard began its ponderous
thrust up between Hougomont and La Haye Sainte, to the west of the
Brussels road. Up that fatal hill, which had seen the four great cavalry
charges, and more recently the breaking of the Second Corps, the tall men,
taller for the bearskins and the shouldered musket, the inheritors of
twenty-two victorious and now immortal years, leant forward, advancing. To
the hanging smoke of the cannon in the vale was added the rising mist of
evening; and when the furious cannonade which was to support their attack
had ceased with their approach to the enemy's line, a sort of silence fell
upon the spectators of that great event.
The event was brief.
It was preceded by a strange sight: a single horseman galloped unharmed
from the French to the English line (a captain); he announced to the enemy
the approaching movement of the Guard. He was a hater of the flag and of
the Revolution, and of its soldier: he was for the old Kings.
There was no need for this dramatic aid. The lull in the action,
Napoleon's necessity for a last stroke, possibly through the mist and
smoke the actual movement of the Guard, were apparent. The infantry whom
Wellington had retired behind the ridge during the worst of the artillery
preparation was now set forward again. It was the strongest and the most
trusted of his troops whom Wellington posted to receive the shock--Adams'
brigade and the brigade of Guards. Three batteries of the reserve were
brought forward, with orders not to reply to the French cannon, but to
fire at the advancing columns of the charge.
As the Guard went upward, the whole French front to the right moved
forward and supported the attack. But upon the left, the Second Army
Corps, Reille's recently broken 6000, could not yet move. They came far
behind and to the west of the Brussels road; the Guard went up the slope
alone.
At two hundred yards from the English line the grape began to mow through
them. They closed up after each discharge. Their advance continued
unchecked.
Of the four columns,[26] that nearest to the Brussels road reached,
touched, and broke the line of the defenders. Its strength was one
battalion, yet it took the two English batteries, and, in charging
Halkett's brigade, threw the 30th and the 73rd into confusion. It might
have been imagined for one moment that the line had here been pierced, but
this first and greatest chance of success was defeated, and with it all
chances, for it is the head of a charge that tells.
The reader will have seen upon the map, far off to the west or left, at
Braine l'Alleud, a body of reserve, Belgian, which Wellington had put so
far off in the mistaken notion that the French would try to turn him in
that direction. This force of 3000 men with sixteen guns Wellington had
recalled in the last phases of the battle. It was their action, and
especially that of their artillery, that broke this first success of the
Guard. The Netherlanders charged with the bayonet to drive home the effect
of their cannon, and the westernmost column of the French attack was
ruined.
As the four columns were not all abreast, but the head of the first a
little more forward than that of the second, the head of the second than
that of the third, and so forth, the shock of the French guard upon the
British came in four separate blows, each delivered a few moments later
than the last.
We have seen how the Dutch broke the first column.
The second column, which attacked the right of Halkett's brigade, failed
also. The 33rd and 69th wavered indeed, but recovered, and their recovery
was largely due to the personal courage of their chief.
The next column, again, the third, came upon the British Guards; and the
Guards, reserving their fire until the enemy were at a stone's-throw,
fired point-blank and threw the French into confusion. During that
confusion the brigade of Guards charged, pursued the enemy part of the way
down the slope, were closed upon by the enemy and driven back again to the
ridge.
The fourth column of the French was now all but striking the extremity of
the British line. Here Adams' brigade, a battalion of the 95th, the 71st,
and the 52nd regiments, awaited the blow.
The 52nd was the inmost of the three.
It stood just where the confusion of the Guards as they were thrown back
up the hill joined the still unbroken ranks of Adams' extremity of the
British line.
The 52nd determined the crisis of that day. And it was then precisely that
the battle of Waterloo was decided, or, to be more accurate, this was the
moment when the inevitable breaking-point appeared.
Colborne was its commander. Instead of waiting in the line, he determined
to run the very grave risk of leaving it upon his own initiative, and of
playing a tremendous hazard; he took it upon himself to bring the 52nd
out, forward in advance of and perpendicular to the defending line, and so
to bring a flank fire upon the last French charge.
[Illustration]
The peril was very great indeed. It left a gap in the English line; the
possibility, even the chance, of a French advance to the left against that
gap and behind the 52nd meant ruin. It was the sort of thing which, when
men do it and fail, is quite the end of them. Colborne did it and
succeeded. No French effort was made to the left of the 52nd. It had
therefore but its front to consider; it wheeled round, left that
dangerous gap in the English line, and poured its fire in flank upon the
last charge of the fourth French column. That fire was successful. The
assault halted, wavered, and began to break.
The French line to the right, advancing in support of the efforts of the
Guard, saw that backward movement, and even as they saw it there came the
news of Ziethen's unchecked and overwhelming pressure upon the north-east
of the field, a pressure which there also had at last broken the French
formation.
The two things were so nearly simultaneous that no historical search or
argument will now determine the right of either to priority. As the French
west of the Brussels road gave way, the whole English line moved together
and began to advance. As the remnants of the First French Army Corps to
the east of the Brussels road were struck by Ziethen _they_ also broke. At
which point the first flexion occurred will never be determined.
The host of Napoleon, stretched to the last limit, and beyond, snapped
with the more violence, and in those last moments of daylight a complete
confusion seized upon all but two of its numerous and scattered units.
Those two were, first, certain remnants of the Guard itself, and secondly,
Lobau's troops, still stubbornly holding the eastern flank.
Squares of the Old Guard, standing firm but isolated in the flood of the
panic, checked the pursuit only as islands check a torrent. The pursuit
still held. All the world knows the story of the challenge shouted to
these veterans, and of Cambronne's disputed reply just before the musket
ball broke his face and he fell for dead. Lobau also, as I have said, held
his troops together. But the flood of the Prussian advance, perpetually
increasing, carried Plancenoit; the rear ranks of the Sixth Army Corps,
thrust into the great river of fugitives that was now pouring southward in
panic down the Brussels road, were swept away by it and were lost; and at
last, as darkness fell, the first ranks also were mixed into the mass of
panic, and the Imperial army had ceased to exist.
There was a moon that night; and hour after hour the Prussian cavalry, to
whom the task had been entrusted, followed, sabring, pressing, urging the
rout. Mile after mile, past the field of Quatre Bras itself, where the
corpses, stripped by the peasantry, still lay stark after those two days,
the rush of the breakdown ran. Exhaustion had weakened the pursuers before
fear had given way to fatigue with the pursued; and when the remnants of
Napoleon's army were past the Sambre again, not 30,000 disjointed,
unorganised, dispersed, and broken men had survived the disaster.[27]
FINIS
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Footnotes:
[1] I use the word "English" here to emphasise the character of
Wellington's command; for though even this second half of the allied line
was not in its majority of British origin, yet it contained a large
proportion of British troops; the commander was an Englishman, the Duke of
Wellington, and the best elements in the force were from these islands.
[2] Rather more than 106,000; guns 204.
[3] Surely an error in judgment, for thus the whole mass of the army, all
of it except the First and Second Corps, would be crossing the Sambre at
that one place, with all the delay such a plan would involve. As a fact,
the Fourth Corps, or right wing of the advance, was at last sent over the
river by Chatelet, but it would have been better to have given such orders
at the beginning.
[4] There were some five hundred Prussian prisoners.
[5] See _ante_, pp. 27 and 32.
[6] A lengthy digression might here be admitted upon the question of how
defence against aerial scouting will develop. That it will develop none
can doubt. Every such advantage upon the part of one combatant has at last
been neutralised by the spread of a common knowledge and a common method
to all.
[7] To be accurate, not quite five-twelfths.
[8] It is worth remarking that Perponcher had been told by Wellington,
when he first heard of Napoleon's approach, to remain some miles off to
the west at Nivelles. Wellington laboured, right up to the battle of
Waterloo, under the fantastic impression that the French, or a
considerable body of them, were, for some extraordinary reason, going to
leave the Brussels road, go round westward and attack his _right_. He was,
as might be expected of a defensive genius, nervous for his
communications. Luckily for Wellington, Perponcher simply disobeyed these
orders, left Nivelles before dawn, was at Quatre Bras before sunrise, and
proceeded to act as we shall see above.
[9] Or at the most sixteen.
[10] This first division of the Guards consisted of the two brigades of
Maitland and of Byng.
[11] Let it be remembered, for instance, that Ziethen's corps, which
helped to turn the scale at Waterloo, two days later, only arrived, on the
field of battle _less than half an hour before sunset_.
[12] I have in this map numbered separate corps and units from one to ten,
without giving them names. The units include the English cavalry and
Dornberg's brigade, with the Cumberland Hussars, the First, Second, Third,
and Fifth Infantry Divisions, the corps of Brunswick, the Nassauers, and
the Second and Third Netherlands Divisions. All of these ultimately
reached Quatre Bras with the exception of the Second Infantry Division.
[13] In which 15,000, as accurate statistics are totally lacking, and the
whole thing is a matter of rough estimate, we may assign what proportion
we will to killed, to wounded, and to prisoners respectively.
[14] The reason he was thus ignorant of what had really happened to the
Prussians was, that the officer who had been sent by the chief of the
Prussian staff to the Duke after nightfall to inform him of the Prussian
defeat had never arrived. That officer had been severely wounded on the
way, and the message was not delivered.
[15] There has arisen a discussion as to the whole nature of this retreat
between the French authorities, who insist upon the close pursuit by their
troops and the precipitate flight of the English rearguard, and the
English authorities, who point out how slight were the losses of that
rearguard, and how just was Wellington's comment that the retreat, as a
whole, was unmolested.
This dispute is solved, as are many disputes, by the consideration that
each narrator is right from his point of view. The French pursuit was most
vigorous, the English rearguard was very hard pressed indeed; but that
rearguard was so well handled that it continually held its own, gave back
as good as it got, and efficiently protected the unmolested retreat of the
mass of the army.
[16] "Dead" ground means ground in front of a position sheltered _by its
very steepness_ from the fire of the defence upon the summit. The ideal
front for a defence conducted with firearms is not a very steep slope, but
a long, slight, open and _even_ one.
[17] Almost exactly ten per cent.
[18] It is from thirty to fifty feet above the spur on which he had just
ranged his guns in front of the army, some twenty-five feet higher than
the crest occupied a mile off by the allied army, and a few feet higher
than the bare land somewhat more than four miles off, upon which Napoleon
first discerned the arriving Prussians.
[19] See map opposite title-page.
[20] There is conflict of evidence as to how long the brigade was exposed
to this terrible ordeal. It was slightly withdrawn at some moment, but
what moment is doubtful.
[21] The group marked "C" upon the coloured map. It was for the most part
under the command of Milhaud, but the rear of it was under the command of
Desnoettes.
[22] See sketch opposite page 134.
[23] This is the wood upon the extreme right hand of the coloured map.
[24] In the model on p. 155 Plancenoit is not shown. It would be out of
the model, nearer the spectator, behind Napoleon's position at A, and
between A and N.
[25] The Guard as a whole had lain behind the French line in reserve all
day upon the point marked D upon the coloured map.
[26] Virtually, this advance in echelon had turned into four columns.