‘The best of all that France possesses,’ General Foy said, watching in amazement as the cavalry rode again and again to its doom. ‘I saw their golden breastplates,’ a French infantry officer said of the cuirassiers, ‘they passed me by and I saw them no more.’
At times the cavalry paused between the squares. They were daring the British infantry to fire because all horsemen knew that their best chance of breaking a square was just after a volley had been fired and when the rear two ranks were reloading; that was how the square at Wagram had been broken, but British infantry was trained to fire by platoon or company so that there were always some loaded muskets. The French cavalry stood no chance. They rode on past the squares, taking fire, and were met by British light cavalry who waited at the rear of the infantry formations. Some Frenchmen tried to escape the return trip through the musket-spitting squares by riding clean round the back of Hougoumont and thus back to their own side of the valley. They were cuirassiers, their horses were tired and many were wounded, but the horsemen found a sunken lane that seemed to offer a safe way back to the French lines, except it was not safe. The lane was blocked with an abatis and the 51st, a Yorkshire battalion, and a regiment of Brunswickers were waiting close by. Sergeant William Wheeler of the 51st tells what happened in a letter written to his parents five days later:
We saw them coming and was prepared, we opened our fire, the work was done in an instant. By the time we had loaded and the smoke had cleared away, one and only one, solitary individual was seen running over the brow in our front. One other was saved by Capt. Jno. Ross from being put to death by some of the Brunswickers. I went to see what effect our fire had, and never before beheld such a sight in as short a space, as about an hundred men and horses could be huddled together, there they lay. Those who were shot dead were fortunate for the wounded horses in their struggles by plunging and kicking soon finished what we had begun.
Wheeler saw just the one survivor, but in truth there were a few more, and a French infantry major saw them return to his side of the valley:
We saw smoke rising, like that from a burning hay stack … We ran to the place and saw fifteen to eighteen cuirassiers … Men and horses were distorted, covered in blood and black with mud … One sous-lieutenant had gathered these men from that terrible, lethal passage through half an army! The horses were smothered in sweat and the smoke we had seen was nothing more than the steam from their bodies … What a dreadful charge!
And still the horsemen returned and still they were repulsed. The 14th Foot was a Bedfordshire regiment and, alone of all the British battalions at Waterloo, was not a veteran of Wellington’s Peninsular campaigns. The commanding officer was Lieutenant-Colonel Tidy, ‘Old Frank’ to his men, and his daughter wrote down her father’s advice to his inexperienced soldiers as they watched the fearsome cavalry come towards them:
‘Now, my young tinkers,’ said he, ‘stand firm! While you remain in your present position, old Harry himself can’t touch you, but if one of you give way, he will have every mother’s son of you, as sure as you are born!’
And that was the key. To stand firm, because as long as the square kept its cohesion then the French cavalry was impotent. Sergeant Wheeler admired:
the cool intrepid courage of our squares, exposed as they often were to a destructive fire from the French Artillery and at the same time or in less than a minute surrounded on all sides by the enemy’s Heavy Cavalry, who would ride up to the very muzzles of our men’s firelocks and cut at them in the squares. But this was of no use, not a single square could they break.
Yet the French cavalry was just as brave, riding again and again through the hell of artillery fire into the murderous musket barrages. Lieutenant John Black, of the Royal Scots, almost pitied the enemy, ‘it was the grandest sight you can imagine’, he wrote to his father:
to see the men coming at full gallop all in shining armour and shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur’ with all their souls and our men shouting too as loud as they could bawl. We gave them such a volley their two front ranks fell to a man and away they scampered, our men pricking them down in the most horrid manner until they rode round the outside of the hill and came down on the opposite face, here they met the same reception and faced about … to our rear where they made their third charge with the lancers in front. The cuirassiers were nearly all destroyed, the few remaining were in rear of the lancers, they pushed the charge within ten yards of us but our fire was so hot they could not stand it and they broke in the centre and a part ran round one side of our square and some on the other, so they had the whole fire of these two sides and also our front and some of the men ran to the top of the hill and snapped them going down and out of 500 or 600 [of] the most beautiful troops in the world 5 men and 4 horses escaped, can you believe it, but it is true on my honour.
But if the most beautiful troops in the world were dying, so were the redcoats. They hardly suffered from the cavalry, but in between the charges the French gunners kept firing and ‘Close ranks!’ was the repeated command. Some squares shrank into triangles. The roundshot skimmed the crest, slamming into squares. Sergeant Wheeler saw General ‘Daddy’ Hill, who commanded the right flank of Wellington’s army, come into the 51st’s square and ask for a drink because he was parched, and while he was drinking from a private’s wooden canteen, a roundshot killed four men close by. The cavalry charges were failing, at least as far as Marshal Ney was concerned. He was so frustrated after having yet another horse shot from beneath him that he was seen beating his sword against a British cannon barrel, but inadvertently he was abrading the British–Dutch forces because, so long as they must stay in square to resist the threat of cavalry, so long were they a choice target for the skilled French gunners.
The Dutch and British cannon were abandoned between charges, then re-manned as soon as the horsemen withdrew. Those horsemen did not retreat far. Several eyewitnesses say that the cavalry went back across the ridge, but their caps and helmets stayed visible just beyond the crest as they re-formed their ranks for yet another fruitless assault. How many charges? No one knows. Some say seven or eight, others twelve or even more, and it is doubtful that the French themselves knew. They just kept coming until they could stand the losses no longer, and in between, as they prepared for yet another charge, the French guns bit at the Dutch–British line. One battalion officer recorded:
We had three companies almost shot to pieces, one shot killed or wounded twenty-five of the 4th Company, another of the same kind killed poor Fisher, my captain, and eighteen of our company … I was speaking to [Fisher] and I got all his brains, his head was blown to atoms.
Private John Smith of the 71st was more graphic: ‘Limbs, arms, heads was flying in all directions, nothing ever touched me.’ He reckoned the French cavalry ‘was the boldest we ever seed, charged us many times but we stood like a rock … they fell to the ground in fifties and sixties, horses and men tumbling in heaps.’ So many horses died. Earlier in the battle, before the great cavalry charge, Captain Mercer had watched the gunners of a neighbouring battery try to drive a wounded horse away from their guns and limbers, but the poor beast kept returning, wanting to be with the other horses. They finally drove the animal away and he took refuge with Mercer’s team-horses. ‘A sickening sensation came over me,’ Mercer recalled, ‘mixed with a deep feeling of pity.’
A cannon shot had completely carried away the lower part of the animal’s head, immediately below the eyes. Still he lived, and seemed fully conscious of all around, whilst his full, clear eye seemed to implore us not to chase him from his companions. I ordered the farrier to put him out of his misery, which, in a few minutes he reported having accomplished, by running his sabre into the animal’s heart. Even he evinced feeling.
Some French infantry skirmishers had followed the cavalry and they proved a nuisance, sniping from the lip of the plateau at the gunners while the cavalry re-formed on the lower slope. Mercer’s men wanted to use canister on the skirmishers, but he had been
ordered to conserve his ammunition and, besides, using canister on a scattered skirmish line was wasteful and probably ineffective. So Mercer decided he must set an example by riding his horse up and down in front of his guns’ muzzles:
This quieted my men; but the tall blue gentlemen, seeing me thus dare them, immediately made a target of me, and commenced a very deliberate practice, to show me what bad shots they were, and verify the old artillery proverb, ‘The nearer the target, the safer you are.’ One fellow certainly made me flinch, but it was a miss; so I shook my finger at him and called him coquin, etc. The rogue grinned as he reloaded, and again took aim … As if to prolong my torment, he was a terrible time about it. To me it seemed an age. Whenever I turned, the muzzle of his infernal carbine still followed me. At length bang it went, and whiz came the ball close to the back of my neck.
The cavalry charges lasted around two hours. It was a waste, destroying much of Napoleon’s cavalry for small purpose and, more importantly, using up precious time. Marshal Ney persevered with a tactic that was not working, and Napoleon, watching from close to La Belle Alliance, did not interfere. Wellington, in contrast, was in the thick of it, riding from battalion to battalion, sometimes taking shelter inside a square and sometimes using his horse’s speed to escape an onrush of enemy cavalry. His presence was important. Men watched him, saw his apparent calm and took confidence from it. He spoke to officers, making sure men could hear him above the appalling din: ‘Damn the fellow, he’s a mere pounder after all!’ He encouraged men to endure, promising them a period of peace if the battle was won. He was also heard to mutter that nightfall or the Prussians had better come soon. Yet, so close to the longest day of the year, nightfall was still at least four hours away.
But sometime during the massacre of the French horsemen guns sounded far off to the east. Probably no one in the British–Dutch squares or in the charging squadrons noticed the sound. It would have been drowned out by the blast of allied cannon, by the rattle of musketry, by the distinct sound of musket balls striking breastplates like ‘the noise of a violent hail-storm beating on panes of glass’, Gronow said, and by the thunder of hoofs, but it was an ominous sound, at least to the French, because it was the thunder of the first Prussian guns. The battle of Waterloo had just become the battle of three armies.
* * *
The Prussians had endured a long, gruelling march on bad roads, and all the while they could hear the guns of Mont St Jean getting nearer and louder. Once past the treacherous defile of the River Lasne they were in the deep, thick Bois de Paris, through which a single muddy track led westwards, and all their guns and ammunition limbers had to be dragged by tired horses along the rutted road. It all took time. There was no point in leaking men onto the battlefield, battalion by battalion, where they would be easy meat for the French; they had to arrive together, ready to fight, and so Blücher arrayed his men in the wood.
He had a choice. He could have tended northwards so that his army joined Wellington’s men on their ridge, or he could be bold and strike southwards in an attempt to encircle the French. He chose the latter course. General von Bülow’s Corps, which had not fought at Ligny, would attack towards the village of Plancenoit, which lay behind Napoleon’s position. Thirty-one thousand men would make the initial attack, and when they came from the wood and spread into their battalion columns on the fields beyond they would see the spire of Plancenoit’s church as a landmark.
The 1st Corps, under General von Zieten, which had suffered terribly at Ligny, followed von Bülow’s men towards the battlefield. They were taking a more northerly route because their task was to link up with the British–Dutch on their ridge. Messengers had been riding back and forth all day, but now Blücher sent two cavalry officers to announce his arrival to the Duke of Wellington. The two men, in their distinctive Prussian uniforms, galloped along the face of the Duke’s left wing which was still littered with the corpses of d’Erlon’s infantry. They were cheered all along the line.
It was around 4:30 p.m. when the Prussians made their dramatic appearance from the woods, and so the flanking tactic, which had failed at Ligny and at Quatre-Bras, had at last worked. Napoleon had hoped d’Erlon would make a flank attack at Ligny, while Blücher had the same hopes of Wellington. Now, two days later, a flank attack was happening. Napoleon had prayed it would be Grouchy making the assault, but Grouchy was still at Wavre, where he had found the Prussian rearguard and was attacking it. Grouchy was fighting the wrong battle in the wrong place and the men he had been sent to fight were now fighting Napoleon. ‘Our men were exhausted,’ Franz Lieber wrote, ‘but old Blücher allowed us no rest.’
As we passed the Marshal … our soldiers began to hurrah, for it was always a delight to them to see the ‘Old One’ as he was called. ‘Be quiet, my lads,’ said he, ‘hold your tongues; time enough after the victory is gained.’ He issued his famous order … which concluded with the words, ‘We shall conquer because we must conquer.’
Lieber’s Colberg Regiment was in reserve, and they watched as von Bülow’s men advanced across the open fields towards the distant church spire. Cavalry, infantry and artillery advanced together, an ‘all-arms’ attack, which was precisely what Marshal Ney had failed to do when he sent the French cavalry up their slope of death. The French artillery began a duel with the heavy Prussian guns, which needed to be moved every few minutes to keep up with the advance. It was a classic attack: guns and infantry together with cavalry supporting them, and with skirmishers out in front. French cavalry constantly threatened the Prussian skirmish line, but only charged them once. Major von Colomb, of the Prussian hussars, chased them away. A little later von Colomb was ordered to attack a French square and he asked for volunteers from his regiment. ‘Volunteers, advance!’ called von Colomb, and his whole regiment spurred their horses a few paces forward.
There was no cover on those open fields, no reverse slopes to shelter men, and the gunners of both sides had easy targets. Colonel Auguste Pétiet watched as a single roundshot:
beheaded one squadron commander, took two legs from the horse of another and killed the horse of Colonel Jacquinot, the commanding officer of the 1st Lancers and brother to the Division’s general. At a stroke the three senior officers of the 1st Lancers were down.
General Lobau was outnumbered and being pushed back, but behind him was Plancenoit, the biggest village in the district. The French and Prussians had learned in the narrow alleys of Ligny and St-Amand just how vicious a fight in a village could be; now they faced the same ordeal at Plancenoit. The cottages were stone-walled, as was the churchyard, and Lobau made the village into a fortress. It had to be held, or else the Prussian army could march behind Napoleon’s forces and cut the Brussels road. Lobau did not disappoint Napoleon, his men offered a superb defence, but Prussian numbers mounted and soon Blücher’s battalions threatened to surround the village. Lobau appealed for help.
Lieutenant-General Johann von Thielmann also pleaded for help. He was the commander of the Prussian rearguard, left at Wavre to stave off any attack by Grouchy’s Corps. Grouchy had 33,000 men, von Thielmann just half that number, but the Prussians had the River Dyle as a defence line. The fighting was fierce, especially about the Bridge of Christ in Wavre, but French numbers allowed Grouchy to outflank von Thielmann, who sent messengers to Blücher appealing for reinforcements.
‘Not a horse’s tail shall he get,’ was Blücher’s response. Blücher knew that the fight at Wavre was a sideshow. As Gneisenau said, ‘it doesn’t matter if he’s beaten, so long as we gain the victory here.’
It was a summer evening. Smoke lay thick across the valley and now spread from the guns at Plancenoit. The fight for that village had begun, but meanwhile, to the north, where Wellington’s line was bloodied and thinned, the French attacked again.
* * *
Marshal Ney’s cavalry assault had been brave and hopeless, hurling horses and men against immovable squares.
Those squares could have been broken b
y artillery if Ney had managed to bring more guns close to the line, or he could have destroyed them with infantry. That was the scissors, paper and stone reality of Napoleonic warfare. If you could force an enemy to form square then you could bring a line of infantry against it and overwhelm it with musket fire, and very late in the afternoon Marshal Ney at last tried that tactic, ordering 8,000 infantry to attack the British squares. One historian has suggested that Napoleon allowed the cavalry charges to continue because the presence of the horsemen forced the British–Dutch forces to stand in square and so become vulnerable to his artillery, and doubtless the artillery had made a terrible slaughter in Wellington’s ranks, but was it enough to weaken them and so let a further infantry attack break through the line?
The 8,000 were the infantry from General Reille’s Corps who had not been sucked into the fight for Hougoumont. That battle still raged, but the French were no nearer taking the château. Musket balls still hammered the walls, shells exploded in the smouldering wreckage of the main house, and the dead were piled in the orchard and kitchen garden, but Hougoumont was holding.
The château’s defenders would have seen the French columns climbing the slope to their east. Eight thousand men marched, their drums beating and Eagles flying. Waterloo was such a vast battle, so overwhelming in its intensity and drama, that this attack by Reille’s 8,000 infantry is often overlooked, as if it was a minor skirmish, yet it deserves notice. The largest French infantry assault in the whole Peninsular War was the same size, when 8,000 Frenchmen marched into the horrors of Albuera, and now Marshal Ney sent General Bachelu’s division and General Foy’s division up the long slope. Their task was to deploy into line and then smother the British squares with musketry, but the British would only be in square if the cavalry threatened and the French cavalry was exhausted. They had charged again and again, they had shown extraordinary courage and too many of them were now dead on the hillside. There was no charge left in them, so the infantry climbed the hill without cavalry support, which meant the British could receive them in line. It was a four-deep line, which restricted British firepower, but the battalion commanders knew that the cavalry might return and a four-deep line was a compromise which allowed a square to be formed more swiftly.