THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO
(_continued_).
1815.
But the situation of Wellington momentarily became more critical.
Masses of the enemy had fallen, but thousands came on anew. With
desperate attachment, the French army passed forward at Napoleon’s
command, and although each advance terminated in defeat and slaughter,
fresh battalions crossed the valley and mounting the ridge with cries
of “Vive l’Empereur!” exhibited a devotion which never had been
surpassed.
Wellington’s reserves had been gradually brought into action--and the
left, though but partially engaged, could not be weakened to send
assistance to the right and centre. Many battalions were miserably
reduced; and the fifth division, already cut up at Quatre Bras on the
evening of the 16th, presented but a skeleton of what these beautiful
brigades had been when they left Brussels two days before. The loss
of individual regiments was prodigious. The 27th had four hundred
men mowed down in square without drawing a trigger; it lost all its
superior officers; and a solitary subaltern who remained, commanded it
for half the day. Another, the 92nd regiment, when not two hundred were
left, rushed at a French column and routed it with the bayonet; and a
third, the 33rd, when nearly annihilated, sent to require support--none
could be given; and the commanding officer was told that he must “stand
or fall where he was!”
Any other save Wellington would have despaired; but he calculated, and
justly, that he had an army which would perish where it stood. But when
he saw the devastation caused by the incessant attacks of an enemy who
appeared determined to succeed, is it surprising that his watch was
frequently consulted, and that he prayed for night or Blucher?
When evening came on, no doubt Buonaparte began to question the
accuracy of his “military arithmetic”--a phrase happily applied to
this meting out death by the hour. Half the day had been consumed in a
sanguinary and indecisive conflict; all his disposable troops but the
Guard had been employed, and still his efforts were foiled; and the
British, with diminished numbers, shewed the same bold front they had
presented at the commencement of the battle. He determined, therefore,
on another desperate attempt upon the whole British line; and while
issuing orders to effect it, a distant cannonade announced that a fresh
force was approaching to share the action. Napoleon, concluding that
Grouchy was coming up, conveyed the glad tidings to his disheartened
columns. But an aide-de-camp quickly removed the mistake, and the
Emperor received the unwelcome intelligence that the strange force now
distinctly observed debouching from the woods of Saint Lambert, was the
advanced guard of a Prussian corps.
Buonaparte appeared, or affected to appear, incredulous; but the fatal
truth was ascertained too soon.
While the delusive hope of immediate relief was industriously
circulated among his troops, Napoleon despatched Count Lobau, with the
sixth corps, to employ the Prussians, while in person he should direct
a general attack upon the British line.
Meanwhile the Prussian advance had debouched from the wood of
Frichermont, and the operations of the old marshal, in the rear of
Napoleon’s right flank became alarming. If Blucher established himself
there in force, unless success against the British in his front was
rapid and decisive, or that Grouchy came promptly to his relief,
Buonaparte knew well that his situation must be hopeless. Accordingly,
he directed the first and second corps and all his cavalry reserves
against the duke; the French mounted the heights once more, and the
British were attacked from right to left.
A dreadful and protracted encounter followed; for an hour the contest
was sustained, and, like the preceding ones, it was a sanguinary
succession of determined attack and obstinate resistance. The
impetuosity of the French onset at first obtained a temporary success.
The British light cavalry were driven back, and for a time a number
of the guns were in the enemy’s possession; but the British rallied
again--the French, forced across the ridge, retired to their original
ground, without effecting any permanent impression.
It was now five o’clock; the Prussian reserve cavalry under Prince
William was warmly engaged with Count Lobau; Bulow’s corps, with the
second, under Pirch, were approaching rapidly through the passes of
Saint Lambert; and the first Prussian corps, advancing by Ohain, had
already begun to operate on Napoleon’s right. Bulow pushed forward
towards Aywire, and, opening his fire on the French, succeeded in
driving them from the opposite heights.
The Prussian left, acting separately, advanced upon the village of
Planchenoit, and attacked Napoleon’s rear. The French maintaining
their position with great gallantry, and the Prussians, being equally
obstinate in their attempts to force the village, produced a bloody and
prolonged combat. Napoleon’s right had begun to recede before the first
Prussian corps, and his officers, generally, anticipated a disastrous
issue, that nothing but immediate success against the British, or
instant relief from Grouchy, could remedy.
The Imperial Guard, his last and best resource, were consequently
ordered up. Formed in close column, Buonaparte in person advanced to
lead them on; but dissuaded by his staff, he paused near the bottom of
the hill, and to Ney, that “spoiled child of victory,” the conduct of
this redoubted body was intrusted.
In the interim, as the French right fell back, the British moved
gradually forward; and converging from the extreme points of Merke
Braine and Braine la Leud, compressed their extent of line, and nearly
assumed the form of a crescent. The British Guards were considerably
advanced, and having deployed behind the crest of the hill, lay down to
avoid the cannonade with which Napoleon covered the onset of his best
troops. Ney, with his proverbial gallantry, led on the Middle Guard;
and Wellington, putting himself at the head of some wavering regiments,
in person brought them forward, and restored their confidence.
As the Imperial Guard approached the crest where the household troops
were couching, the British artillery, which had gradually converged
upon the _chaussée_, opened with canister shot. The distance was so
short, and the range so accurate, that each discharge fell with deadly
precision into the column as it breasted the hill. Ney, with his
customary heroism, directed the attack; and when his horse was killed,
on foot, and sword in hand, he headed the veterans whom he had so often
led to victory. Although the leading files of the Guard were swept
off by the exterminating fire of the British batteries, still their
undaunted intrepidity carried them forward, and they gallantly crossed
the ridge.
Then came the hour of British triumph. The magic word was spoken--“Up,
Guards, and at them!” In a moment the household brigade were on their
feet; then waiting till the French closed, they delivered a murderous
volley, cheered, and rushed forward with the bayonet, Wellington in
person directing the attack.
With the 42nd and 95th, the British leader threw himself on Ney’s
flank, and rout and destruction succeeded. In vain their gallant chief
attempted to rally the recoiling Guard; but driven down the hill, the
Middle were intermingled with the Old Guard, who had formed at the
bottom in reserve.
In this unfortunate _mêlée_, the British cavalry seized on the moment
of confusion, and plunging into the mass, cut down and disorganised
the regiments which had hitherto been unbroken. The British artillery
ceased firing, and those who had escaped the iron shower of the guns,
fell beneath sabre and bayonet.
The unremediable disorder consequent on this decisive repulse, and the
confusion in the French rear, where Bulow had fiercely attacked them,
did not escape the eagle glance of Wellington.
“The hour is come!” he is said to have exclaimed, as, closing his
telescope, he commanded the whole line to advance. The order was
exultingly obeyed; and, forming four deep, on came the British. Wounds,
and fatigue, and hunger, were all forgotten as with their customary
steadiness they crossed the ridge; but when they saw the French, and
began to move down the hill, a cheer that seemed to rend the heavens
pealed from their proud array, as with levelled bayonets they pressed
on to meet the enemy.
But, panic-struck and disorganised, the French resistance was short
and feeble. The Prussian cannon thundered in their rear, the British
bayonet was flashing in their front, and unable to stand the terror of
the charge, they broke and fled. A dreadful and indiscriminate carnage
ensued. The great road was choked with equipages, and cumbered with the
dead and dying; while the fields, as far as the eye could reach, were
covered with a host of helpless fugitives. Courage and discipline were
forgotten; and Napoleon’s army of yesterday was now a splendid wreck--a
terror-stricken multitude! His own words best describe it--“It was a
total rout!”
On a surface of two square miles, it was ascertained that fifty
thousand men and horses were lying! The luxurious crop of ripe grain
which had covered the field of battle was reduced to litter, and beaten
into the earth; and the surface, trodden down by the cavalry, and
furrowed deeply by the cannon wheels, strewn with many a relict of the
fight. Helmets and cuirasses, shattered firearms and broken swords; all
the variety of military ornaments; lancer caps and Highland bonnets;
uniforms of every colour, plume and pennon; musical instruments, the
apparatus of artillery, drums, bugles;--but good God! why dwell on
the harrowing picture of “a foughten field”?--each and every ruinous
display bore mute testimony to the misery of such a battle.
Could the melancholy appearance of this scene of death be heightened,
it would be by witnessing the researches of the living, amid its
desolation, for the objects of their love. Mothers and wives and
children for days were occupied in that mournful duty; and the
confusion of the corpses, friend and foe intermingled as they were,
often rendered the attempt at recognising individuals difficult, and,
in some cases, impossible.
In many places the dead lay four deep upon each other, marking the
spot some British square had occupied, when exposed for hours to the
murderous fire of a French battery. Outside, lancer and cuirassier
were scattered thickly on the earth. Madly attempting to force the
serried bayonets of the British, they had fallen in the bootless essay,
by the musketry of the inner files. Farther on, you traced the spot
where the cavalry of France and Britain had encountered. Chasseur and
hussar were intermingled; and the heavy Norman horse of the Imperial
Guard were interspersed with the grey chargers which had carried
Albion’s chivalry. Here the Highlander and tirailleur lay, side by side
together; and the heavy dragoon, with “green Erin’s” badge upon his
helmet, was grappling in death with the Polish lancer.
Never had France sent a finer army to the field--and never had any
been so signally defeated. Complete as the _déroute_ at Vittoria had
appeared, it fell infinitely short of that sustained at Waterloo.
Tired of slaughtering unresisting foes, the British, early in the
night, abandoned the pursuit of the broken battalions and halted.
But the Prussians, untamed by previous exertion, continued to follow
the fugitives with increased activity, and nothing could surpass the
unrelenting animosity of their pursuit. Plunder was sacrificed to
revenge, and the memory of former defeat and past oppression produced a
dreadful retaliation, and deadened every impulse of humanity. The _vœ
victis_ was pronounced, and thousands besides those who perished in the
field fell that night by Prussian lance and sabre.
What Napoleon’s feelings were when he witnessed the overthrow of his
guard, the failure of his last hope, the death-blow to his political
existence, cannot be described, but may be easily imagined. Turning to
an aide-de-camp, with a face livid with rage and despair, he muttered
in a tremulous voice--“A present c’est fini! sauvons nous”; and turning
his horse, he rode hastily off towards Charleroi, attended by his guide
and staff.
In whatever point of view Waterloo is considered, whether as a battle,
a victory, or an event, in all these, every occurrence of the last
century yields, and more particularly in the magnitude of results. No
doubt the successes of Wellington in Spain were, in a great degree,
primary causes of Napoleon’s downfall; but still, the victory of
Waterloo consummated efforts made for years before in vain to achieve
the freedom of the Continent, and wrought the final ruin of him,
through whose unhallowed ambition a world had been so long convulsed.
As a battle, the merits of the field of Waterloo have been freely
examined, and very indifferently adjudicated. Those who were best
competent to decide, have pronounced this battle as that upon which
Wellington might securely rest his fame, while others, admitting the
extent of the victory, ascribe the result rather to fortunate accident
than military skill.
Never was a falser statement hazarded. The success attendant on the day
of Waterloo can be referred only to the admirable system of resistance
in the general, and an enduring valour, rarely equalled and never
surpassed, in the soldiers whom he commanded. Chance, at Waterloo,
had no effect upon results; Wellington’s surest game was to act only
on the defensive; his arrangements with Blucher for mutual support
being thoroughly matured, he knew that before night the Prussians must
be upon the field. Bad weather and bad roads, with the conflagration
of a town in the line of march, which, to save the Prussian tumbrils
from explosion, required a circuitous movement--all these, while they
protracted the struggle for several hours beyond what might have been
reasonably computed, only go to prove that Wellington, in accepting
battle, under a well-founded belief that he should be supported
in _four hours_, when single-handed he maintained the combat and
resolutely held his ground during a space of _eight_, had left nothing
dependent upon accident, but, providing for the worst contingencies,
had formed his calculations with admirable skill.
The allied loss[15] was enormous, but it fell infinitely short of that
sustained by Napoleon’s army. Of the latter nothing like an accurate
return was ever made; but from the most correct estimates by French
and British officers, upwards of five-and-twenty thousand men were
rendered _hors de combat_; while multitudes were sabred in the flight,
or perished on the roads from sheer fatigue, and in deserted villages
for want of sustenance and surgical relief.
[15] Return of killed and wounded from the War-office, July, 1815.
Killed on the spot, non-commissioned and privates, 1715
Died of wounds, 856
Missing, supposed killed, 353
----
Total, 2924
Wounded, 6831
----
Total killed and wounded, 9755
====
French Artillery captured at Waterloo:--
12-pounder guns, 35
6-pounder guns, 57
6-inch howitzers, 13
24-pounder howitzers, 17
----
Total cannons, 122
====
12-pounder waggons, 74
6-pounder waggons, 71
Howitzer waggons, 50
----
Total, 195
====
On the evening of the 29th, Napoleon quitted the capital, never to
enter it again. Hostilities ceased immediately, the Bourbons were
recalled, and placed upon the throne, and Europe, after years of
anarchy and bloodshed, at last obtained repose, while he, “alike its
wonder and its scourge,” was removed to a scene far distant from that
which had witnessed his triumphs and his reverses, and within the
narrow limits of a paltry island that haughty spirit, for whom half
Europe was too small, dragged out a gloomy existence, until death
loosened the chain and the grave closed upon the Captive of Saint
Helena.