THE SHADOW ON THE LAND.
It was still drizzling in the morning, with brown drifting clouds and a
damp chilly wind. It was a queer thing for me as I opened my eyes to
think that I should be in a battle that day, though none of us ever
thought it would be such a one as it proved to be. We were up and
ready, however, with the first light, and as we threw open the doors of
our barn we heard the most lovely music that I had ever listened to
playing somewhere in the distance. We all stood in clusters hearkening
to it, it was so sweet and innocent and sad-like. But our sergeant
laughed when he saw how it pleased us all.
"Them are the French bands," said he; "and if you come out here you'll
see what some of you may not live to see again."
Out we went, the beautiful music still sounding in our ears, and stood
on a rise just outside the barn. Down below at the bottom of the slope,
about half a musket-shot from us, was a snug tiled farm with a hedge and
a bit of an apple orchard. All round it a line of men in red coats and
high fur hats were working like bees, knocking holes in the wall and
barring up the doors.
"Them's the light companies of the Guards," said the sergeant. "They'll
hold that farm while one of them can wag a finger. But look over yonder
and you'll see the camp fires of the French."
We looked across the valley at the low ridge upon the further side, and
saw a thousand little yellow points of flame with the dark smoke
wreathing up in the heavy air. There was another farm-house on the
further side of the valley, and as we looked we suddenly saw a little
group of horsemen appear on a knoll beside it and stare across at us.
There were a dozen Hussars behind, and in front five men, three with
helmets, one with a long straight red feather in his hat, and the last
with a low cap.
"By God!" cried the sergeant, "that's him! That's Boney, the one with
the grey horse. Aye, I'll lay a month's pay on it."
I strained my eyes to see him, this man who had cast that great shadow
over Europe, which darkened the nations for five-and-twenty years, and
which had even fallen across our out-of-the-world little sheep-farm, and
had dragged us all--myself, Edie, and Jim--out of the lives that our
folk had lived before us. As far as I could see, he was a dumpy
square-shouldered kind of man, and he held his double glasses to his
eyes with his elbows spread very wide out on each side. I was still
staring when I heard the catch of a man's breath by my side, and there
was Jim with his eyes glowing like two coals, and his face thrust over
my shoulder.
"That's he, Jock," he whispered.
"Yes, that's Boney," said I.
"No, no, it's he. This de Lapp or de Lissac, or whatever his devil's
name is. It is he."
Then I saw him at once. It was the horseman with the high red feather
in his hat. Even at that distance I could have sworn to the slope of
his shoulders and the way he carried his head. I clapped my hands upon
Jim's sleeve, for I could see that his blood was boiling at the sight of
the man, and that he was ready for any madness. But at that moment
Bonaparte seemed to lean over and say something to de Lissac, and the
party wheeled and dashed away, while there came the bang of a gun and a
white spray of smoke from a battery along the ridge. At the same
instant the assembly was blown in our village, and we rushed for our
arms and fell in. There was a burst of firing all along the line, and
we thought that the battle had begun; but it came really from our
fellows cleaning their pieces, for their priming was in some danger of
being wet from the damp night.
From where we stood it was a sight now that was worth coming over the
seas to see. On our own ridge was the chequer of red and blue
stretching right away to a village over two miles from us. It was
whispered from man to man in the ranks, however, that there was too much
of the blue and too little of the red; for the Belgians had shown on the
day before that their hearts were too soft for the work, and we had
twenty thousand of them for comrades. Then, even our British troops
were half made up of militiamen and recruits; for the pick of the old
Peninsular regiments were on the ocean in transports, coming back from
some fool's quarrel with our kinsfolk of America. But for all that we
could see the bearskins of the Guards, two strong brigades of them, and
the bonnets of the Highlanders, and the blue of the old German Legion,
and the red lines of Pack's brigade, and Kempt's brigade and the green
dotted riflemen in front, and we knew that come what might these were
men who would bide where they were placed, and that they had a man to
lead them who would place them where they should bide.
Of the French we had seen little save the twinkle of their fires, and a
few horsemen here and there upon the curves of the ridge; but as we
stood and waited there came suddenly a grand blare from their bands, and
their whole army came flooding over the low hill which had hid them,
brigade after brigade and division after division, until the broad slope
in its whole length and depth was blue with their uniforms and bright
with the glint of their weapons. It seemed that they would never have
done, still pouring over and pouring over, while our men leaned on their
muskets and smoked their pipes looking down at this grand gathering and
listening to what the old soldiers who had fought the French before had
to say about them. Then when the infantry had formed in long deep
masses their guns came whirling and bounding down the slope, and it was
pretty to see how smartly they unlimbered and were ready for action.
And then at a stately trot down came the cavalry, thirty regiments at
the least, with plume and breastplate, twinkling sword and fluttering
lance, forming up at the flanks and rear, in long shifting, glimmering
lines.
"Them's the chaps!" cried our old sergeant. "They're gluttons to fight,
they are. And you see them regiments with the great high hats in the
middle, a bit behind the farm? That's the Guard, twenty thousand of
them, my sons, and all picked men--grey-headed devils that have done
nothing but fight since they were as high as my gaiters. They've three
men to our two, and two guns to our one, and, by God! they'll make you
recruities wish you were back in Argyle Street before they have finished
with you."
He was not a cheering man, our sergeant; but then he had been in every
fight since Corunna, and had a medal with seven clasps upon his breast,
so that he had a right to talk in his own fashion.
When the Frenchmen had all arranged themselves just out of cannon-shot
we saw a small group of horsemen, all in a blaze with silver and scarlet
and gold, ride swiftly between the divisions, and as they went a roar of
cheering burst out from either side of them, and we could see arms
outstretched to them and hands waving. An instant later the noise had
died away, and the two armies stood facing each other in absolute deadly
silence--a sight which often comes back to me in my dreams. Then, of a
sudden, there was a lurch among the men just in front of us; a thin
column wheeled off from the dense blue clump, and came swinging up
towards the farm-house which lay below us. It had not taken fifty paces
before a gun banged out from an English battery on our left, and the
battle of Waterloo had begun.
It is not for me to try to tell you the story of that battle, and,
indeed, I should have kept far enough away from such a thing had it not
happened that our own fates, those of the three simple folk who came
from the border country, were all just as much mixed up in it as those
of any king or emperor of them all. To tell the honest truth, I have
learned more about that battle from what I have read than from what I
saw, for how much could I see with a comrade on either side, and a great
white cloud-bank at the very end of my firelock? It was from books and
the talk of others that I learned how the heavy cavalry charged, how
they rode over the famous cuirassiers, and how they were cut to pieces
before they could get back. From them, too, I learned all about the
successive assaults, and how the Belgians fled, and how Pack and Kempt
stood firm. But of my own knowledge I can only speak of what we saw
during that long day in the rifts of the smoke and the lulls of the
firing, and it is just of that that I will tell you.
We were on the right of the line and in reserve, for the Duke was afraid
that Boney might work round on that side and get at him from behind; so
our three regiments, with another British brigade and the Hanoverians,
were placed there to be ready for anything. There were two brigades of
light cavalry, too; but the French attack was all from the front, so it
was late in the day before we were really wanted.
The English battery which fired the first gun was still banging away on
our left, and a German one was hard at work upon our right, so that we
were wrapped round with the smoke; but we were not so hidden as to
screen us from a line of French guns opposite, for a score of round shot
came piping through the air and plumped right into the heart of us.
As I heard the scream of them past my ear my head went down like a
diver, but our sergeant gave me a prod in the back with the handle of
his halbert.
"Don't be so blasted polite," said he; "when you're hit, you can bow
once and for all."
There was one of those balls that knocked five men into a bloody mash,
and I saw it lying on the ground afterwards like a crimson football.
Another went through the adjutant's horse with a plop like a stone in
the mud, broke its back and left it lying like a burst gooseberry.
Three more fell further to the right, and by the stir and cries we could
tell that they had all told.
"Ah! James, you've lost a good mount," says Major Reed, just in front of
me, looking down at the adjutant, whose boots and breeches were all
running with blood.
"I gave a cool fifty for him in Glasgow," said the other. "Don't you
think, major, that the men had better lie down now that the guns have
got our range?"
"Tut!" said the other; "they are young, James, and it will do them
good."
"They'll get enough of it before the day's done," grumbled the other;
but at that moment Colonel Reynell saw that the Rifles and the 52nd were
down on either side of us, so we had the order to stretch ourselves out
too. Precious glad we were when we could hear the shot whining like
hungry dogs within a few feet of our backs. Even now a thud and a
splash every minute or so, with a yelp of pain and a drumming of boots
upon the ground, told us that we were still losing heavily.
A thin rain was falling and the damp air held the smoke low, so that we
could only catch glimpses of what was doing just in front of us, though
the roar of the guns told us that the battle was general all along the
lines. Four hundred of them were all crashing at once now, and the
noise was enough to split the drum of your ear. Indeed, there was not
one of us but had a singing in his head for many a long day afterwards.
Just opposite us on the slope of the hill was a French gun, and we could
see the men serving her quite plainly. They were small active men, with
very tight breeches and high hats with great straight plumes sticking up
from them; but they worked like sheep-shearers, ramming and sponging and
training. There were fourteen when I saw them first, and only four left
standing at the last, but they were working away just as hard as ever.
The farm that they called Hougoumont was down in front of us, and all
the morning we could see that a terrible fight was going on there, for
the walls and the windows and the orchard hedges were all flame and
smoke, and there rose such shrieking and crying from it as I never heard
before. It was half burned down, and shattered with balls, and ten
thousand men were hammering at the gates; but four hundred guardsmen
held it in the morning and two hundred held it in the evening, and no
French foot was ever set within its threshold. But how they fought,
those Frenchmen! Their lives were no more to them than the mud under
their feet. There was one--I can see him now--a stoutish ruddy man on a
crutch. He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of
Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come after him.
For five minutes he stood there, strolling about in front of the
gun-barrels which spared him, but at last a Brunswick skirmisher in the
orchard flicked out his brains with a rifle shot. And he was only one
of many, for all day when they did not come in masses they came in twos
and threes with as brave a face as if the whole army were at their
heels.
So we lay all morning, looking down at the fight at Hougoumont; but soon
the Duke saw that there was nothing to fear upon his right, and so he
began to use us in another way.
The French had pushed their skirmishers past the farm, and they lay
among the young corn in front of us popping at the gunners, so that
three pieces out of six on our left were lying with their men strewed in
the mud all round them. But the Duke had his eyes everywhere, and up he
galloped at that moment--a thin, dark, wiry man with very bright eyes, a
hooked nose, and big cockade on his cap. There were a dozen officers at
his heels, all as merry as if it were a foxhunt, but of the dozen there
was not one left in the evening.
"Warm work, Adams," said he as he rode up.
"Very warm, your grace," said our general.
"But we can outstay them at it, I think. Tut, tut, we cannot let
skirmishers silence a battery! Just drive those fellows out of that,
Adams."
Then first I knew what a devil's thrill runs through a man when he is
given a bit of fighting to do. Up to now we had just lain and been
killed, which is the weariest kind of work. Now it was our turn, and,
my word, we were ready for it. Up we jumped, the whole brigade, in a
four-deep line, and rushed at the cornfield as hard as we could tear.
The skirmishers snapped at us as we came, and then away they bolted like
corncrakes, their heads down, their backs rounded, and their muskets at
the trail. Half of them got away; but we caught up the others, the
officer first, for he was a very fat man who could not run fast.
It gave me quite a turn when I saw Rob Stewart, on my right, stick his
bayonet into the man's broad back and heard him howl like a damned soul.
There was no quarter in that field, and it was butt or point for all of
them. The men's blood was aflame, and little wonder, for these wasps
had been stinging all morning without our being able so much as to see
them.
And now, as we broke through the further edge of the cornfield, we got
in front of the smoke, and there was the whole French army in position
before us, with only two meadows and a narrow lane between us. We set
up a yell as we saw them, and away we should have gone slap at them if
we had been left to ourselves; for silly young soldiers never think that
harm can come to them until it is there in their midst. But the Duke
had cantered his horse beside us as we advanced, and now he roared
something to the general, and the officers all rode in front of our line
holding out their arms for us to stop. There was a blowing of bugles, a
pushing and a shoving, with the sergeants cursing and digging us with
their halberts; and in less time than it takes me to write it, there was
the brigade in three neat little squares, all bristling with bayonets
and in echelon, as they call it, so that each could fire across the face
of the other.
It was the saving of us, as even so young a soldier as I was could very
easily see; and we had none too much time either. There was a low
rolling hill on our right flank, and from behind this there came a sound
like nothing on this earth so much as the beat of the waves on the
Berwick coast when the wind blows from the east. The earth was all
shaking with that dull roaring sound, and the air was full of it.
"Steady, 71st! for God's sake, steady!" shrieked the voice of our
colonel behind us; but in front was nothing but the green gentle slope
of the grassland, all mottled with daisies and dandelions.
And then suddenly over the curve we saw eight hundred brass helmets rise
up, all in a moment, each with a long tag of horsehair flying from its
crest; and then eight hundred fierce brown faces all pushed forward, and
glaring out from between the ears of as many horses. There was an
instant of gleaming breastplates, waving swords, tossing manes, fierce
red nostrils opening and shutting, and hoofs pawing the air before us;
and then down came the line of muskets, and our bullets smacked up
against their armour like the clatter of a hailstorm upon a window. I
fired with the rest, and then rammed down another charge as fast as I
could, staring out through the smoke in front of me, where I could see
some long, thin thing which napped slowly backwards and forwards. A
bugle sounded for us to cease firing, and a whiff of wind came to clear
the curtain from in front of us, and then we could see what had
happened.
I had expected to see half that regiment of horse lying on the ground;
but whether it was that their breastplates had shielded them, or
whether, being young and a little shaken at their coming, we had fired
high, our volley had done no very great harm. About thirty horses lay
about, three of them together within ten yards of me, the middle one
right on its back with its four legs in the air, and it was one of these
that I had seen flapping through the smoke. Then there were eight or ten
dead men and about as many wounded, sitting dazed on the grass for the
most part, though one was shouting "_Vive l'Empereur!_" at the top of
his voice. Another fellow who had been shot in the thigh--a great
black-moustached chap he was too--leaned his back against his dead horse
and, picking up his carbine, fired as coolly as if he had been shooting
for a prize, and hit Angus Myres, who was only two from me, right
through the forehead. Then he out with his hand to get another carbine
that lay near, but before he could reach it big Hodgson, who was the
pivot man of the Grenadier company, ran out and passed his bayonet
through his throat, which was a pity, for he seemed to be a very fine
man.
At first I thought that the cuirassiers had run away in the smoke; but
they were not men who did that very easily. Their horses had swerved at
our volley, and they had raced past our square and taken the fire of the
two other ones beyond. Then they broke through a hedge, and coming on a
regiment of Hanoverians who were in line, they treated them as they
would have treated us if we had not been so quick, and cut them to
pieces in an instant. It was dreadful to see the big Germans running
and screaming while the cuirassiers stood up in their stirrups to have a
better sweep for their long, heavy swords, and cut and stabbed without
mercy. I do not believe that a hundred men of that regiment were left
alive; and the Frenchmen came back across our front, shouting at us and
waving their weapons, which were crimson down to the hilts. This they
did to draw our fire, but the colonel was too old a soldier; for we
could have done little harm at the distance, and they would have been
among us before we could reload.
These horsemen got behind the ridge on our right again, and we knew very
well that if we opened up from the squares they would be down upon us in
a twinkle. On the other hand, it was hard to bide as we were; for they
had passed the word to a battery of twelve guns, which formed up a few
hundred yards away from us, but out of our sight, sending their balls
just over the brow and down into the midst of us, which is called a
plunging fire. And one of their gunners ran up on to the top of the
slope and stuck a handspike into the wet earth to give them a guide,
under the very muzzles of the whole brigade, none of whom fired a shot
at him, each leaving him to the other. Ensign Samson, who was the
youngest subaltern in the regiment, ran out from the square and pulled
down the hand-spike; but quick as a jack after a minnow, a lancer came
flying over the ridge, and he made such a thrust from behind that not
only his point but his pennon too came out between the second and third
buttons of the lad's tunic. "Helen! Helen!" he shouted, and fell dead
on his face, while the lancer, blown half to pieces with musket balls,
toppled over beside him, still holding on to his weapon, so that they
lay together with that dreadful bond still connecting them.
But when the battery opened there was no time for us to think of
anything else. A square is a very good way of meeting a horseman, but
there is no worse one of taking a cannon ball, as we soon learned when
they began to cut red seams through us, until our ears were weary of the
slosh and splash when hard iron met living flesh and blood. After ten
minutes of it we moved our square a hundred paces to the right; but we
left another square behind us, for a hundred and twenty men and seven
officers showed where we had been standing. Then the guns found us out
again, and we tried to open out into line; but in an instant the
horsemen--lancers they were this time--were upon us from over the brae.
I tell you we were glad to hear the thud of their hoofs, for we knew
that that must stop the cannon for a minute and give us a chance of
hitting back. And we hit back pretty hard too that time, for we were
cold and vicious and savage, and I for one felt that I cared no more for
the horsemen than if they had been so many sheep on Corriemuir. One
gets past being afraid or thinking of one's own skin after a while, and
you just feel that you want to make some one pay for all you have gone
through. We took our change out of the lancers that time; for they had
no breastplates to shield them, and we cleared seventy of them out of
their saddles at a volley. Maybe, if we could have seen seventy mothers
weeping for their lads, we should not have felt so pleased over it; but
then, men are just brutes when they are fighting, and have as much
thought as two bull pups when they've got one another by the throttle.
Then the colonel did a wise stroke; for he reckoned that this would
stave off the cavalry for five minutes, so he wheeled us into line, and
got us back into a deeper hollow out of reach of the guns before they
could open again. This gave us time to breathe, and we wanted it too,
for the regiment had been melting away like an icicle in the sun.
But bad as it was for us, it was a deal worse for some of the others.
The whole of the Dutch Belgians were off by this time helter-skelter,
fifteen thousand of them, and there were great gaps left in our line
through which the French cavalry rode as pleased them best. Then the
French guns had been too many and too good for ours, and our heavy horse
had been cut to bits, so that things were none too merry with us.
On the other hand, Hougoumont, a blood-soaked ruin, was still ours, and
every British regiment was firm; though, to tell the honest truth, as a
man is bound to do, there were a sprinkling of red coats among the blue
ones who made for the rear. But these were lads and stragglers, the
faint hearts that are found everywhere, and I say again that no regiment
flinched. It was little we could see of the battle; but a man would be
blind not to know that all the fields behind us were covered with flying
men. But then, though we on the right wing knew nothing of it, the
Prussians had begun to show, and Napoleon had set 20,000 of his men to
face them, which made up for ours that had bolted, and left us much as
we began. That was all dark to us, however; and there was a time, when
the French horsemen had flooded in between us and the rest of the army,
that we thought we were the only brigade left standing, and had set our
teeth with the intention of selling our lives as dearly as we could.
At that time it was between four and five in the afternoon, and we had
had nothing to eat, the most of us, since the night before, and were
soaked with rain into the bargain. It had drizzled off and on all day,
but for the last few hours we had not had a thought to spare either upon
the weather or our hunger. Now we began to look round and tighten our
waist-belts, and ask who was hit and who was spared. I was glad to see
Jim, with his face all blackened with powder, standing on my right rear,
leaning on his firelock. He saw me looking at him, and shouted out to
know if I were hurt.
"All right, Jim," I answered.
"I fear I'm here on a wild-goose chase," said he gloomily, "but it's not
over yet. By God, I'll have him, or he'll have me!"
He had brooded so much on his wrong, had poor Jim, that I really believe
that it had turned his head; for he had a glare in his eyes as he spoke
that was hardly human. He was always a man that took even a little
thing to heart, and since Edie had left him I am sure that he was no
longer his own master.
It was at this time of the fight that we saw two single fights, which
they tell me were common enough in the battles of old, before men were
trained in masses. As we lay in the hollow two horsemen came spurring
along the ridge right in front of us, riding as hard as hoof could
rattle. The first was an English dragoon, his face right down on his
horse's mane, with a French cuirassier, an old, grey-headed fellow,
thundering behind him, on a big black mare. Our chaps set up a hooting
as they came flying on, for it seemed shame to see an Englishman run
like that; but as they swept across our front we saw where the trouble
lay. The dragoon had dropped his sword, and was unarmed, while the
other was pressing him so close that he could not get a weapon.
At last, stung maybe by our hooting, he made up his mind to chance it.
His eye fell on a lance beside a dead Frenchman, so he swerved his horse
to let the other pass, and hopping off cleverly enough, he gripped hold
of it. But the other was too tricky for him, and was on him like a
shot. The dragoon thrust up with the lance, but the other turned it,
and sliced him through the shoulder-blade. It was all done in an
instant, and the Frenchman cantering his horse up the brae, showing his
teeth at us over his shoulder like a snarling dog.
That was one to them, but we scored one for us presently. They had
pushed forward a skirmish line, whose fire was towards the batteries on
our right and left rather than on us; but we sent out two companies of
the 95th to keep them in check. It was strange to hear the crackling
kind of noise that they made, for both sides were using the rifle.
An officer stood among the French skirmishers--a tall, lean man with a
mantle over his shoulders--and as our fellows came forward he ran out
midway between the two parties and stood as a fencer would, with his
sword up and his head back. I can see him now, with his lowered eyelids
and the kind of sneer that he had upon his face. On this the subaltern
of the Rifles, who was a fine well-grown lad, ran forward and drove full
tilt at him with one of the queer crooked swords that the rifle-men
carry. They came together like two rams--for each ran for the other--
and down they tumbled at the shock, but the Frenchman was below.
Our man broke his sword short off, and took the other's blade through
his left arm; but he was the stronger man, and he managed to let the
life out of his enemy with the jagged stump of his blade. I thought
that the French skirmishers would have shot him down, but not a trigger
was drawn, and he got back to his company with one sword through his arm
and half of another in his hand.