The French infantry had formed up in the bullet-shattered wood below Hougoumont, then marched to the attack. They sent skirmishers ahead, and those men fought against British skirmishers, both sides using the numerous dead and dying horses for shelter. And behind the French tirailleurs came the attack columns. ‘No sooner had we left the wood’, Colonel Trefçon, an aide to General Bachelu, said:
than musket balls and canister rained on us. I was next to General Bachelu when he was hit and had his horse killed … Just as we reached the English with our bayonets we were met by a fire of unbelievable violence. Our soldiers fell in hundreds and the rest had to retreat hurriedly or not one of them would have come back.
‘Retreat hurriedly’ is one way of describing it. General Foy, who led his brigade to the left of Bachelu’s division, was blunter:
When we were on the point of meeting the English we received a very lively fire of canister and musketry. It was a hail of death. The enemy … had their front rank kneeling and presented a hedge of bayonets. The columns of [General] Bachelu’s division fled first and their flight caused my columns to flee. At that moment I was wounded. A ball passed through the top of my right arm, though the bone was not touched. I thought I only had a bruise and stayed on the battlefield. Everyone was fleeing. I rallied the remnants of my brigade in the valley next to the wood of Hougoumont. We were not pursued.
British infantry firepower had again shown its effectiveness and again the line had overcome the column. Eight thousand men had been defeated in seconds, blasted off the ridge by concentrated musket volleys and shredded by canister. The survivors fled down that terrible slope that was slick with blood, thick with dead and dying horses, and with dead and wounded men. It was littered with breastplates discarded by unhorsed cuirassiers running for their lives, and with scabbards because many of the French cavalry had pointedly thrown away their sword scabbards to show that they would not sheathe their blades until they had victory.
It had been foolish to send unsupported infantry to attack British troops who, though wounded, were unbroken, as foolish as it had been to send cavalry unsupported by infantry or adequate close artillery support. If the Emperor had really thought that sacrificing his cavalry would mean the destruction of Wellington’s infantry then he had been proved horribly wrong by ‘a hail of death’ and ‘a fire of unbelievable violence’. If the French were going to break through Wellington’s line then they would have to play the lethal game of scissors, paper and stone with far more skill, because Generals Foy and Bachelu had just discovered that the British battalions, battered though they might be, could still deliver overwhelming volleys of musket fire.
The long-range cannonade continued. The redcoats moved further back from the crest and the howitzer shells fell among them and the roundshot skimmed the flat-topped ridge, but this battle was not going to be won by artillery. The French had to attack the British–Dutch line again, and so far every attempt to break through had failed. But then, at last, came the success the French needed.
It was the great crisis at the centre of Wellington’s line.
‘Battle of Mont-Saint-Jean’: this view was painted and annotated during the action by Major Kunts of the Hanoverian unit. Hougoumont can be seen burning fiercely at the right.
‘Attack on the British Squares by French Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo’, by Denis Dighton. Fire from La Haie Sainte and Hougoumont forced the cavalrymen inwards and the resultant pressure was so great that some horses were lifted off the ground by the animals on either side.
‘Cuirassiers charging the Highlanders’ (detail), by Felix Philippoteaux. The cavalry charges were a waste, destroying much of Napoleon’s cavalry for small purpose and, more importantly, using up precious time.
‘The Duke of Wellington Rallying the Infantry on the Battlefield’, by Robert Alexander Hillingford. Wellington 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.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Defend yourselves! Defend yourselves! They are coming in everywhere!
‘HARD POUNDING THIS, GENTLEMEN,’ the Duke of Wellington said as the French guns kept up their bombardment of his line, ‘let’s see who will pound longest.’
The Duke’s strategy was simple enough. He had decided to fight on the ridge and hope to hold Napoleon at bay until Blücher arrived. Now Blücher was at the battlefield, but the Prussian advance seemed frustratingly slow. Wellington gave the appearance of calm, but men noticed how often he consulted his watch and the Duke later remarked that the hands seemed to have slowed to an imperceptible crawl. The Prussian attack on Plancenoit was drawing French troops away from the battle being fought between the two ridges, but that was not yet apparent to Wellington or to his men. They were still being bombarded by the massed artillery, and infantry was being assembled on the French ridge in preparation for another assault on the Duke’s position.
Napoleon’s beautiful daughters were pounding Wellington’s ridge, but artillery alone would not shift the British–Dutch. There would have to be another assault. So far the French had unwittingly helped Wellington. They delayed the start of the fighting to let the ground dry and, on a day when every minute counted, that was a godsend to the Duke. Then d’Erlon had attacked in a cumbersome formation that made it almost impossible for his men to form square, and so they had been broken by cavalry, while Ney, in a fit of optimistic hubris, had thrown the Emperor’s cavalry onto British firepower. But now, as the sound of gunfire hammered from around Plancenoit, the French got it right.
La Haie Sainte (the name, mysteriously, means the Holy Hedge) was the central bastion of the Duke’s position, a fortress that lay ahead of the ridge beside the main Brussels-to-Charleroi highway. It was a substantial farm, though nowhere near as large as Hougoumont, and built entirely of stone. Nearest the French was an orchard, beyond that lay the farmyard, while closest to the British ridge, and about two hundred yards from the crossroads, was the kitchen garden. The farmyard had buildings on three sides, while the fourth side, flanking the road, was protected by a long and high stone wall pierced by two gates. A large barn formed the southern side of the farmyard, and the barn had big doors that opened onto the fields where the French cavalry had charged, but in their desperation for fires during the wet night the garrison had pulled down, broken up and burned the two doors. The western side of the farmyard was a row of stables and cowsheds, while the northern flank was the farmhouse itself, which was pierced by a narrow passage running from the yard out to the kitchen garden.
The farm had been under siege throughout the battle, but unlike Hougoumont it had not been properly prepared for defence. Those huge barn doors were gone, offering the French an easy entranceway, while the walls had not been loopholed. The pioneers, the men who performed engineering work on the battlefield, had all been sent to prepare Hougoumont for its ordeal and La Haie Sainte had been ignored. A British staff officer was bitter about this failure:
The garrison was insufficient, the workmen were taken away, the place was declared to be sufficiently strong for all that was wanted of it, and nothing whatever was done during the night towards its defence; in place of which, the works of scaffolding, loopholing, building up gates and doors, partial unroofing, throwing out the hay and securing a supply of ammunition, should have been in progress all the night.
Nevertheless the German defenders staved off every French assault. The French had captured the orchard and kitchen garden, but they were baulked by the stone-built quadrangle of stout buildings and by the riflemen of the King’s German Legion. The kitchen garden was recaptured by the garrison when d’Erlon’s Corps was broken and retreated, but French skirmishers remained in the orchard. They tried to set fire to the barn roof, but a small pond in the yard provided the garrison with water that they hurled up to extinguish the flames. Major George Baring, an experienced and talented officer, l
ed the defenders. He had started the battle with 400 men, but now, with the reinforcements who had been fed into the farm through the afternoon, he commanded some 800 men.
Their existence was a huge nuisance to the French. Any attack on Wellington’s ridge came under flanking fire from the KGL rifles and from the British riflemen in the sandpit just behind the farm and across the road. La Haie Sainte denied the French a chance to attack straight up the centre of Wellington’s ridge, forcing them to channel their assaults between the farm and Hougoumont, or between the farm and the buildings on the left of the British–Dutch line.
So La Haie Sainte, despite being underprepared for its ordeal, was proving a major obstacle to French attacks, and they had been attempting to capture it all afternoon. The enemy, Baring wrote, ‘fought with a degree of courage which I had never before witnessed in Frenchmen’. The wide-open barn door had been barricaded and it was now partially blocked by enemy corpses, while crude loopholes had been hacked in the exterior walls, some by enemy cannon fire, through which both sides fired. Now, late in the afternoon, after the failure to break through the British left, Marshal Ney was ordered to get rid of the nuisance. He mustered the battalions from d’Erlon’s Corps and led them north along the high road, and this time he brought cavalry and mobile artillery too.
The outcome, though Ney was not to know it, was inevitable because the garrison was running perilously short of ammunition. Baring had sent messenger after messenger, desperately appealing for cartridges, but none arrived. The ammunition was behind the ridge, ready to be distributed, but for some reason none of Baring’s messages reached the right person and so the garrison’s supply dwindled. ‘What must have been my feelings,’ Baring asked, ‘when, on counting the cartridges, I found that on average there was not more than three to four each!’
So, under the sinking sun and the thinning clouds, and beneath the thick pall of sulphurous smoke, the French attacked again. They surrounded the farm and the story of what happened next is best told by one of the German survivors, Rifleman Frederik Lindau. He was singled out as a hero by Baring because earlier in the afternoon he had been twice wounded in the head and, ordered to make his way back to the ridge to find medical help, he had refused to abandon his comrades. He fought on with an inadequate rum-soaked bandage round his scalp so that blood continually trickled down his face. He was in the barn when the big assault came:
As the loopholes behind us were not fully manned the French fired vigorously at us through these. I and some comrades posted ourselves at these loopholes whereupon the enemies’ fire became weaker. Just as I had fired a shot a Frenchman seized my rifle to pull it away. I said to my neighbour; ‘Look, that dog is pulling at my rifle.’ ‘Wait,’ he said, ‘I have a shot loaded,’ and the Frenchman fell away. Just then another grabbed at my rifle, but my neighbour to the right stabbed him in his face. Now as I was about to pull my rifle back to reload a mass of balls flew by me … one of them ripped off my woollen shoulder roll and another smashed my rifle’s cock. To obtain another I went to the pond where Sergeant Reese was about to die, he could not even talk anymore, but when I tried to take his rifle, I knew it was a good one, he made a grim face at me. I took another one, there were plenty lying about, and went back to my loophole. But I had soon fired off all my cartridges and before I could keep on firing I searched the pouches of my fallen comrades, most of which were already empty … Soon after I heard an [officer] shouting all through the farm; ‘Defend yourselves! Defend yourselves! They are coming in everywhere!’ I observed several Frenchmen on top of the wall. One of them jumped down … but at that same moment I drove my sword bayonet into his chest. He fell down on me and I flung him aside, but my sword bayonet had been bent and I had to throw it away. I saw my Captain in a hand to hand fight with the French at the door of the house. One of them was about to shoot Ensign Frank, but Captain Graeme pierced him with his sword and struck another in the face. I tried to run there to help, but suddenly I was surrounded by the French. I now made good use of the butt of my rifle. I flailed about until only the barrel of my rifle was left, but freed myself. Behind me I heard curses … and noticed two Frenchmen driving Captain Holtzermann into the barn. I was going to help him when a Frenchman gripped me by the chest … then another stabbed at me with his bayonet. I threw the Frenchman sideways so that he became the one to be stabbed; he let go of me and shouting ‘Mon Dieu, mon Dieu,’ fell to the ground. Now I hurried to the barn where I hoped to escape, but when I found the entrance blocked by a crowd I leaped over a partition to where Captain Holtzermann and some of my comrades were standing. Soon a great crowd of Frenchmen moved in on us …
Lindau was taken prisoner. He was fortunate. He was looted of a great deal of plunder that he, in turn, had looted, but he was not killed by his captors who, in their battle-anger, slaughtered many of the garrison who were trying to surrender. Of the 400 men who had formed the original garrison, just 42 escaped by the narrow passageway that led through the farmhouse. One of those was Lieutenant George Graeme:
We all had to pass through a narrow passage. We wanted to stop there and make a charge but it was impossible; the fellows were firing down the passage. [One Frenchman] was about five paces away and levelling his piece at me when [an officer of my company] stabbed him in the mouth and out through his neck; he fell immediately. But now they crowded in.
Major Baring takes up the tale. Not all the men trying to escape through the passage could reach the garden, presumably because the narrow corridor became blocked by dead or dying men:
Among the sufferers here was Ensign Frank, who had already been wounded; the first man that attacked him he ran through with his sabre, but at the same moment his arm was broken by a ball from another; nevertheless he reached a bedroom and succeeded in concealing himself behind a bed. Two of the men also took refuge in the same place, but the French followed close at their heels, crying ‘No pardon for you bastard greens!’ and shot them before his face.
Ensign Frank stayed hidden and was never discovered. Lieutenant Graeme also managed to evade capture and made a dash through the kitchen garden and so back to the ridge top. While this struggle was going on the Prince of Orange, Slender Billy, ordered a battalion of the King’s German Legion to advance on the farm in an attempt to relieve the garrison. The commander of the battalion, Colonel Ompteda, protested that the French had cavalry in support of their infantry and that his battalion could not cope with both, but the callow Prince of Orange knew better and insisted that Ompteda, a vastly experienced soldier, obey his orders. Ompteda obeyed and died, and his battalion was virtually destroyed by cuirassiers, who captured another colour. Slender Billy had struck again.
La Haie Sainte was lost because its garrison had run out of ammunition, so that men were forced to fight against an outnumbering enemy with bayonets, swords and rifle butts. Wellington took responsibility for the loss. Many years later the 5th Earl Stanhope recorded a conversation with the Duke, who:
lamented the loss of La Haie Sainte from the fault of the officer commanding there ‘who was the Prince of Orange’; but immediately correcting himself – ‘No – in fact it was my fault, for I ought to have looked into it myself.’
The French had lost a large number of men in the assault, but their capture of the farm meant they were able to bring horse artillery to the compound. They garrisoned the buildings and sent skirmishers up the slope to harass the British–Dutch line. The cannons, especially, made horrific slaughter among Wellington’s men because they were now close enough to fire canister. Ensign the Honourable George Keppel, just sixteen years old, was in the 14th Regiment that was marched to reinforce the centre of Wellington’s threatened line. The battalion was forced to form square because of the proximity of enemy cavalry and a bugler of the 51st Regiment, who had been out with the skirmishers and now retreated, mistook the 14th’s square for his own, but took refuge anyway. ‘Here I am again,’ Keppel remembers the bugler saying, ‘safe enough.’
The word
s were scarcely out of his mouth, when a round shot took off his head and spattered the whole battalion with his brains, the colours and the ensigns in charge of them coming in for an extra share. One of them, Charles Fraser, a fine gentleman in speech and manner, raised a laugh by drawling out, ‘How extremely disgusting!’
The 14th was the young regiment that had not served with Wellington in the Peninsula. About half its men and half its officers were below the age of twenty, and now it suffered grievously because the French gunners, Keppel said, had ‘brought us completely within range’. The regiment was ordered to lie down and Keppel instead took a seat on a drum where he petted the muzzle of the Colonel’s horse.