Almost immediately after the news of the arrival of the Prussians, the
assembly began to beat, the soldiers of the different battalions formed
their ranks, and ours, with another from Quiot's brigade, was left to
guard Haie-Sainte, and all the others went on to join General d'Erlon's
corps, which had advanced again into the valley, and was endeavoring to
flank the enemy on the left.
The two battalions went to work at once to barricade the doors and the
breaches in the walls with timbers and paving stones, and men were
stationed in ambush at all the holes which the enemy had made in the
wall on the side toward the orchard and on that next the highway.
Buche and I, with the remainder of our company, were posted over a
stable in a corner of the barn, about ten or twelve hundred paces from
Hougoumont. I can still see the row of holes which the Germans had
knocked in the wall, about as high as a man's head, in order to defend
the orchard. As we went up into this stable, we looked through these
holes, and we could see our line of battle, the high-road to Brussels
and Charleroi, the little farms of Belle-Alliance, Rossomme, and
Gros-Caillou, which lie along this road at little distances from each
other; the Old Guard which was stationed across it, with their
shouldered arms, and the staff on a little eminence at the left, and
farther away in the same direction, in the rear of the ravine of
Planchenois, we could see the white smoke rising continually above the
trees. This was the attack of the first Prussian corps.
We heard afterward that the Emperor had sent Lobau with ten thousand
men to turn them back. The battle had begun, but the Old and the Young
Guard, the cuirassiers of Milhaud and of Kellerman, and the chasseurs
of Lefebvre-Desnoettes; in fact the whole of our magnificent cavalry
remained in position. The great, the real battle was with the English.
What a crowd of thoughts must have been suggested, by that grand
spectacle and that immense plain, to the Emperor, who could see it all
mentally better than we could with our own eyes.
We might have stayed there for hours, if Captain Florentin had not come
up suddenly, and exclaimed, "What are you doing here? Are we going to
dispute the passage with the Guard? Come! hurry! Knock a hole in that
wall on the side toward the enemy!"
We picked up the sledges and pickaxes which the Germans had dropped on
the floor, and made holes through the wall of the gable.
This did not take fifteen minutes, and then we could see the fight at
Hougoumont; the blazing buildings, the bursting of the bombs from
second to second among the ruins, and the Scotch chasseurs in ambuscade
in the road in the rear of the place, and on our right about two
gunshots distant, the first line of the English artillery, falling back
on their centre, and stationing their cannon, which our gunners had
begun to dismount, higher up the hill. But the remainder of their line
did not change; they had squares of red and squares of black touching
each other at the corners like the squares of a chess-board, in the
rear of the deep road; and in attacking them we would come under their
crossfire. Their artillery was in position on the brow of the hill,
and in the hollow on the hill-side toward Mont-St.-Jean their cavalry
was waiting.
The position of the English seemed to me still stronger than it was in
the morning; and as we had already failed in our attack on their left
wing, and the Prussians had fallen on our flank, the idea occurred to
me, for the first time, that we were not sure of gaining the battle.
I imagined the horrible rout that would follow in case we lost the
battle--shut in between two armies, one in front and the other on our
flank, and then the invasion which would follow; the forced
contributions, the towns besieged, the return of the emigres, and the
reign of vengeance.