THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO
(_continued_).
1815.
Napoleon passed the night of the 17th in a farmhouse which was
abandoned by the owner, named Bouquean, an old man of eighty, who had
retired to Planchenoit. It is situated on the high road from Charleroi
to Brussels. It is half a league from the chateau of Hougomont and
La Haye Sainte, and a quarter of a league from La Belle Alliance and
Planchenoit. Supper was hastily served up in part of the utensils of
the farmer that remained. Buonaparte slept in the first chamber of this
house; a bed with blue silk hangings and gold fringe was put up for him
in the middle of this room. His brother Jerome, the Duke of Bassano,
and several generals, lodged in the other chambers. All the adjacent
buildings, gardens, meadows, and enclosures, were crowded with military
and horses.
Morning broke; the rain still continued, but with less severity than
during the preceding night; the wind fell, but the day lowered, and
the dawn of the 18th was gloomy and foreboding. The British soldiers
recovered from the chill cast over them by the inclemency of the
weather, and, from the ridge of their position, calmly observed the
enemy’s masses coming up in long succession, and forming their numerous
columns on the heights in front of La Belle Alliance.
The bearing of the French was very opposite to the steady and cool
determination of the British soldiery. With the former, all was
exultation and arrogant display; while, with characteristic vanity,
they boasted of an imaginary success at Quatre Bras, and claimed a
decisive victory at Ligny!
Although in point of fact beaten by the British on the 16th, Napoleon
tortured the retrograde movement of the Duke on Waterloo into a defeat,
and the winning a field from Blucher, attended with no advantage beyond
the capture of a few disabled guns, afforded a pretext to declare in
his dispatches that the Prussian army was routed and disorganised,
without a prospect of being rallied.
The morning passed in mutual dispositions for battle, and the French
attack commenced soon after eleven o’clock. The first corps, under
Count D’Erlon, was in position opposite La Haye Sainte, its right
extending towards Frichemont, and its left leaning on the road to
Brussels. The second corps, uniting its right with D’Erlon’s left,
extended to Hougomont, with the wood in its front.
The cavalry reserve (the cuirassiers) were immediately in the rear of
these corps; and the Imperial Guard, forming the grand reserve, were
posted on the heights of La Belle Alliance. Count Lobau, with the sixth
corps, and D’Aumont’s cavalry, were placed in the rear of the extreme
right, to check the Prussians, should they advance from Wavre, and
approach by the defiles of Saint Lambert. Napoleon’s arrangements were
completed about half-past eleven, and immediately the order to attack
was given.
The place from which Buonaparte viewed the field, was a gentle rising
ground beside the farmhouse of La Belle Alliance. There he remained for
a considerable part of the day, dismounted, pacing to and fro with his
hands behind him, receiving communications from his aides-de-camp, and
issuing orders to his officers. As the battle became more doubtful,
he approached nearer the scene of action, and betrayed increased
impatience to his staff by violent gesticulation, and using immense
quantities of snuff. At three o’clock he was on horseback in front of
La Belle Alliance; and in the evening, just before he made his last
attempt with the Guard, he had reached a hollow close to La Haye Sainte.
Wellington, at the opening of the engagement, stood upon a ridge
immediately behind La Haye, but as the conflict thickened, where
difficulties arose and danger threatened, there the duke was found. He
traversed the field exposed to a storm of balls, and passed from point
to point uninjured; and on more than one occasion, when the French
cavalry charged the British squares, the duke was there for shelter.
A slight skirmishing between the French tirailleurs and British light
troops had continued throughout the morning, but the advance of a
division of the second corps, under Jerome Buonaparte, against the post
of Hougomont, was the signal for the British artillery to open, and
was, in fact, the commencement of the battle of Waterloo. The first
gun fired on the 18th was directed by Sir George Wood upon Jerome’s
advancing column; the last was a French howitzer, at eight o’clock in
the evening, turned by a British officer against the routed remains of
that splendid army with which Napoleon had begun the battle.
Hougomont was the key of the duke’s position, a post naturally of
considerable strength, and care had been taken to increase it. It was
garrisoned by the light companies of the Coldstream and 1st and 3rd
Guards; while a detachment from General Byng’s brigade was formed on an
eminence behind, to support the troops defending the house and the wood
on its left. Three hundred Nassau riflemen were stationed in the wood
and garden; but the first attack of the enemy dispersed them.
To carry Hougomont, the efforts of the second corps were principally
directed throughout the day. This fine corps, thirty thousand strong,
comprised three divisions, and each of these, in quick succession,
attacked the well-defended farmhouse. The advance of the assailants
was covered by a tremendous cross-fire of nearly one hundred pieces,
while the British guns in battery on the heights above, returned the
cannonade, and made fearful havoc in the dense columns of the enemy
as they advanced or retired from the attack. Although the French
frequently occupied the wood, it afforded them indifferent shelter from
the musketry of the troops defending the house and garden; for the
trees were but slight, and planted far asunder. Foy’s division passed
entirely through and gained the heights in the rear; but it was driven
back with immense loss by part of the Coldstream and 3rd Guards.
At last, despairing of success, the French artillery opened with shells
upon the house; the old tower of Hougomont was quickly in a blaze; the
fire reached the chapel, and many of the wounded, both assailants and
defenders, perished miserably there. But still, though the flames raged
above, shells burst around, and shot ploughed through the shattered
walls and windows, the Guards nobly held the place, and Hougomont
remained untaken.
The attack against the position of Hougomont lasted, on the whole,
from twenty-five minutes before twelve until a little past seven at
night. Within half an hour one thousand five hundred men were killed in
the small orchard at Hougomont, not exceeding four acres. The loss of
the enemy was enormous. The division of General Foy alone lost about
three thousand; and the total loss of the enemy in the attack of this
position is estimated at ten thousand in killed and wounded. Above six
thousand men of both armies perished in the farm of Hougomont; six
hundred British were killed in the wood; twenty-five in the garden;
one thousand one hundred in the orchard and meadow; four hundred men
near the farmer’s garden; two thousand of both parties behind the great
orchard. The bodies of three hundred British were buried opposite the
gate of the chateau; and those of six hundred French were buried at the
same place.
The advance of Jerome on the right was followed by a general onset
upon the British line, three hundred pieces of artillery opening their
cannonade, and the French columns in different points advancing to
the attack. Charges of cavalry and infantry, sometimes separately and
sometimes with united force, were made in vain. The British regiments
were disposed individually in squares, with triple files, each placed
sufficiently apart to allow it to deploy when requisite. The squares
were mostly parallel, but a few were judiciously thrown back; and this
disposition, when the French cavalry had passed the advanced regiments,
exposed them to a flanking fire from the squares behind. The British
cavalry were in the rear of the infantry, and the artillery in battery
over the line. The fight of Waterloo may be easily comprehended by
simply stating, that for ten hours it was a continued succession of
attacks of the French columns on the squares; the British artillery
playing upon them as they advanced, and the cavalry charging when they
receded.
But no situation could be more trying to the unyielding courage of the
British army than this disposition in squares at Waterloo. There is
an excited feeling in an attacking body that stimulates the coldest
and blunts the thoughts of danger. The tumultuous enthusiasm of the
assault spreads from man to man, and duller spirits catch a gallant
frenzy from the brave around them. But the enduring and devoted courage
which pervaded the British squares when, hour after hour, mowed down by
a murderous artillery, and wearied by furious and frequent onsets of
lancers and cuirassiers; when the constant order, “Close up! close up!”
marked the quick succession of slaughter that thinned their diminished
ranks; and when the day wore later, when the remnants of two and even
three regiments were necessary to complete the square which one of
them had formed in the morning--to support this with firmness, and
“feed death,” inactive and unmoved, exhibited that calm and desperate
bravery which elicited the admiration of Napoleon himself.
At times the temper of the troops had nearly failed; and, particularly
among the Irish regiments, the reiterated question of--“When shall
we get at them?” showed how ardent the wish was to avoid inactive
slaughter, and, plunging into the columns of the assailants, to avenge
the death of their companions. But the “Be cool, my boys!” from their
officers was sufficient to restrain their impatience, and, cumbering
the ground with their dead, they waited with desperate intrepidity for
the hour to arrive when victory and vengeance should be their own!
While the second corps was engaged at Hougomont, the first was directed
by Napoleon to penetrate the left centre. Had this attempt succeeded,
the British must have been defeated, as it would have been severed and
surrounded. Picton’s division was now severely engaged. Its position
stretched from La Haye Sainte to Ter le Haye; in front there was an
irregular hedge; but being broken and pervious to cavalry, it afforded
but partial protection. The Belgian infantry, who were extended in
front of the fifth division, gave way as the leading columns of
D’Erlon’s corps approached, the French came boldly to the fence, and
Picton, with Kempt’s brigade, as gallantly advanced to meet them.
A tremendous combat ensued. The French and British closed; for the
cuirassiers had been already received in square, and repulsed with
immense loss. Instantly Picton deployed the division into line; and
pressing forward to the hedge, received and returned the volley of
D’Erlon’s infantry, and then crossing the fence, drove back the enemy
at the point of the bayonet. The French retreated in close column,
while the fifth mowed them down with musketry, and slaughtered them
in heaps with their bayonets. Lord Anglesea seized on the moment,
and charging with the Royals, Greys, and Enniskilleners, burst
through everything that opposed him. Vainly the mailed cuirassier and
formidable lancer attempted to withstand this splendid body of heavy
cavalry; they were overwhelmed, and the French infantry, already
broken and disorganised by the gallant fifth, fell in hundreds beneath
the swords of the British dragoons. The eagles of the 45th and 105th
regiments, and upwards of two thousand prisoners, were the trophies of
this brilliant charge.
But, alas! like most military triumphs, this had its misfortune to
alloy it. Picton fell! But where could the famed commander of the old
“Fighting Third” meet with death so gloriously? He was at the head of
the division as it pressed forward with the bayonet; he saw the best
troops of Napoleon repulsed; the ball struck him, and he fell from his
horse; he heard the Highland lament answered by the deep execration of
Erin; and while the Scotch slogan was returned by the Irish hurrah, his
fading sight saw his excited division rush on with irresistible fury.
The French column was annihilated, and two thousand dead enemies told
how desperately he had been avenged. This was, probably, the bloodiest
struggle of the day. When the attack commenced--and it lasted not an
hour--the fifth division exceeded five thousand men; and when it ended
it scarcely reckoned eighteen hundred bayonets!
While Picton’s division and the heavy cavalry had repulsed D’Erlon’s
effort against the left, the battle was raging at La Haye Sainte, a
post in front of the left centre. This was a rude farmhouse and farm,
defended by five hundred German riflemen; and here the attack was
fierce and constant, and the defence gallant and protracted. While a
number of guns played on it with shot and shells, it was assailed by
a strong column of infantry. Thrice they were repulsed; but the barn
caught fire, and the number of the garrison decreasing, it was found
impossible, from its exposed situation, to supply the loss and throw in
reinforcements. Still worse, the ammunition of the rifle corps failed,
and, reduced to a few cartridges, their fire had almost ceased.
Encouraged by this casualty, the French, at the fourth attempt, turned
the position. Though the doors were burst in, still the gallant Germans
held the house with their bayonets; but, having ascended the walls
and roof, the French fired on them from above, and, now reduced to a
handful, the post was carried. No quarter was given, and the remnant of
the brave riflemen were bayoneted on the spot.
This was, however, the only point where, during this long and
sanguinary conflict, Buonaparte succeeded. He became master of a
dilapidated dwelling, its roof destroyed by shells, and its walls
perforated by a thousand shot-holes; and when obtained, an incessant
torrent of grape and shrapnels from the British artillery on the
heights above, rendered its acquisition useless for future operations,
and made his persistence in maintaining it, a wanton and unnecessary
sacrifice of human life.
There was a terrible sameness in the battle of the 18th of June,
which distinguished it in the history of modern slaughter. Although
designated by Napoleon “a day of false manœuvres,” in reality there
was less display of military tactics at Waterloo than in any general
action we have on record. Buonaparte’s favourite plan, to turn a wing,
or separate a corps, was the constant effort of the French leader.
Both were tried at Hougomont to turn the right, and at La Haye Sainte
to break through the left centre. Hence, the French operations were
confined to fierce and incessant onsets with masses of cavalry and
infantry, generally supported by a numerous and destructive artillery.
Knowing that to repel these desperate and sustained attacks a
tremendous sacrifice of human life must occur, Napoleon, in defiance
of their acknowledged bravery, calculated on wearying the British into
defeat. But when he saw his columns driven back in confusion, when
his cavalry receded from the squares they could not penetrate, when
battalions were reduced to companies by the fire of his cannon, and
still that “feeble few” shewed a perfect front, and held the ground
they had originally taken--no wonder his admiration was expressed to
Soult:
“How beautifully these British fight! but they must give way!”
And well did British bravery merit that proud encomium which their
enduring courage elicited from Napoleon. For hours, with uniform and
unflinching gallantry, they repulsed the attacks of troops who had
already proved their superiority over the soldiers of every other
nation in Europe. When the artillery united its fire, and poured
exterminating volleys on some devoted regiment, the square, prostrate
on the earth, allowed the storm to pass over them. When the battery
ceased--to permit their cavalry to charge and complete the work of
destruction--the square was again upon their feet, no face unformed, no
chasm to allow the horsemen entrance, but a serried line of impassable
bayonets was before them, while the rear ranks threw in a reserved fire
with murderous precision. The cuirass was too near the musket then to
avert death from the wearer; men and horses went down in heaps; each
attempt ended in defeat, and the cavalry at last retired, leaving
their best and boldest before a square which, to them, had proved
impenetrable.
When the close column of infantry came on, the square had deployed
into line. The French were received with a destructive volley, and
next moment the wild cheer which accompanies the bayonet charge,
announced that Britain advanced with the weapon she had always found
irresistible. The French never crossed bayonets fairly with the
British, for when an attempt was made to stand, a terrible slaughter
attested Britain’s superiority.