And now a tragedy occurred. On the French right, and the English left, the head of the column of cuirassiers suddenly recoiled in indescribable confusion. Having surmounted the crest of the ridge, and as they broke into the full fury of their charge on the guns and the squares, the horsemen perceived that between themselves and the enemy there was a deep ditch - a grave. It was the sunken lane of Ohain.
What followed was appalling. This ravine, some fifteen feet deep between sheer banks, appeared suddenly at the feet of the leading horses, which reared and attempted to pull up but were thrust forward by those coming behind, so that horse and rider fell and slid helplessly down, to be followed by others. The column had become a projectile, and the explosive force generated for the destruction of the enemy was now its own destroyer. That hideous gulf could only be crossed when it was filled. Horses and men poured into it, pounding each other into a solid mass of flesh, and when the level of the dead and the living had risen high enough the rest of the column passed over. In this fashion a third of Dubois's brigade was lost.
It was the beginning of the defeat.
According to local tradition, which is clearly exaggerated, two thousand horses and fifteen hundred men perished in the sunken lane of Ohain. The figure probably includes bodies which were thrown into it later, on the day after the battle.
Before ordering the charge Napoleon had carefully surveyed the ground, but without seeing the lane, of which nothing was visible above the level of the plateau. But the sight of the white chapel standing at the bend of the Nivelles road had prompted him to put a question to the guide, Lacoste, presumably concerning the possibility of other obstacles. Lacoste had answered in the negative. It can almost be said that the shaking of a peasant's head was the cause of Napoleon's downfall.
But there are other considerations. To the question, was it possible for Napoleon to win this battle, our answer is, No. Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.
For Napoleon to have won Waterloo would have been counter to the tide of the nineteenth century. Other events were preparing in which he had no part to play, and their opposition to himself had long been apparent.
It was time for that great man to fall.
His excessive weight in human affairs was upsetting the balance; his huge stature overtopped mankind. That there should be so great a concentration of vitality, so large a world contained within the mind of a single man, must in the end have been fatal to civilization. The time had come for the Supreme Arbiter to decide. Probably a murmur of complaint had come from those principles and elements on which the ordering of all things, moral and material, depends. The reek of blood, the over-filled graveyard, the weeping mother, these are powerful arguments. When the earth is overcharged with suffering, a mysterious lament rising from the shadows is heard in the heights.
Napoleon had been impeached in Heaven and his fall decreed; he was troublesome to God.
Waterloo was not a battle but a change in the direction of the world.
The plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean
Simultaneously with the disclosure of the ravine the guns were unmasked. Sixty cannon and the musket-fire from thirteen squares ravaged the cuirassiers at point-blank range. The intrepid General Delord greeted his enemies with a military salute, and the charge of the cuirassiers continued without a pause. The disaster of the sunken lane had decimated but not dismayed them. They were men of the kind whose hearts grow larger as their numbers shrink.
Only Wathier's column had suffered. Delord's column, which Ney had caused to veer to the left, as though he suspected a trap, was still intact. Galloping ventre a terre, reins loose, pistol in hand and sabre between the teeth, the cuirassiers charged the English squares.
There are moments in battle when the souls of men so harden as to turn flesh to stone. Beneath this furious assault the English forces were unshaken. The melee was indescribable. The squares were attacked on all sides, ringed round with an inferno of assailants, and stayed immovable. The first row, kneeling, met the horsemen with their bayonets while the second row fired; and behind the second row the gunners of the light artillery reloaded. The ranks parted to allow the discharge of grape-shot and then re-closed. The cuirassiers' answer was to crush them, the huge horses trampling down the men and overleaping the bayonets to plunge gigantically within those living walls. The hail of fire ploughed gaps in the ranks of the cuirassiers and the cuirassiers forced breaches in the squares. The squares shrank in size as their numbers diminished, but they did not break, and they kept up a ceaseless fire against their assailants. The battle assumed a monstrous aspect, with the squares ceasing to be formations of men and becoming craters, the horsemen ceasing to be cavalry and becoming a tempest, every square a volcano enveloped in a thunder-cloud, lava defying the lightning.
The square on the extreme right, the most vulnerable of all being partly isolated, was almost annihilated in the first assault. It consisted of the 75th Highland regiment. Indifferent to the slaughter around him, the regimental piper, seated on a drum, continued to play airs that were the echo of his native forests, lakes, and hills. Those Scotsmen died remembering Ben Nevis as the Greeks had died remembering Argos - until a sabre-stroke, cutting down both bagpipe and the arm that held it, put an end to the lament.
The cuirassiers, relatively few in numbers and further weakened by the disaster of the sunken lane, were opposed to nearly the whole strength of Wellington's army, but they seemed to multiply, each man to possess the strength of ten. Certain of the Hanoverian battalions showed signs of giving ground, and seeing this Wellington bethought him of his own cavalry. If Napoleon at the same moment had thought of his infantry he would have won the battle. This oversight was his fatal error.
Suddenly the attacking cuirassiers found themselves under a two-fold attack, the infantry squares in front of them and in their rear Somerset with his fourteen hundred dragoons. On his right was Dornberg with the German Light Horse, and on his left Trip with the Belgian heavy cavalry. The cuirassiers were thus attacked on all sides, but they were a whirlwind, their bravery beyond words. Only Englishmen of equal stature could confront Frenchmen such as these.
It was no longer a conflict of men but of shadows, furies, spirits exalted in a tempest of high courage amid the flashing of swords. Within minutes Somerset's fourteen hundred dragoons had been reduced to eight hundred, and Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, was dead. Ney brought in Lefebvre-Desnouettes with his lancers and chasseurs. The Mont-Saint-Jean plateau was taken, re-taken, and taken again. The squares still held, surviving a dozen assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half the cuirassiers were left dead or wounded on the plateau. The struggle lasted two hours.
The English army was profoundly shaken. There can be no doubt that had their first attack not been weakened by the tragedy of the sunken lane the cuirassiers would have broken the centre and gained the day. Clinton, who had seen Talavera and Badajoz, was amazed by that remarkable cavalry, and Wellington, more than half defeated, stoically murmured, 'Splendid!'
The cuirassiers broke seven squares out of the thirteen, captured or spiked sixty guns, and captured six regimental standards which were presented to the Emperor outside the Belle-Alliance farm by a party of three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the Guard.
Wellington's position had decidedly worsened. That battle was like a duel between two grievously wounded men, each with the blood draining out of him, neither willing to yield. The question was, which would be the first to fall?
And still the struggle for the plateau continued. As to exactly how far the cuirassiers penetrated, no one can say, but it is known that the body of a cuirassier, with that of his horse, was found in the toll weighing-shed at the point where the four roads meet - those from Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe, and Brussels - having ridden right through the English lines. One of the men who carried the body away is still living at Mont-Saint-Jean, a man named Dehaze who was then eighteen.
Wellington knew that he was near
to disaster. In a sense the cuirassiers had failed to achieve their objective, since they had not broken the English centre. Both sides were lodged on the plateau, but neither held it, and in fact the English still occupied the greater part. They had the village and its surrounding land, whereas Ney had only the ridge and its slopes. Both sides seemed to have taken root in that fateful soil.
But the weakness of the English seemed past remedy. Their losses had been appalling. Kempt, on the left wing, cried out for reinforcements, to which Wellington replied that there were none - 'they must fight till they drop'. And at almost the same moment, by a coincidence which illustrates the exhaustion of both armies, Ney was asking Napoleon for infantry and Napoleon was exclaiming: 'Where does he think I can get any? Does he expect me to manufacture them?'
Wellington's case was even worse. His infantry had been so badly mauled by the cuirassiers that in some sectors only a few men grouped round the colours marked the remains of a regiment. Battalions were commanded by captains or lieutenants, and indeed the list of senior officers killed or wounded on both sides was hideously long. Moreover Cumberland's Hanoverian Hussars, a whole regiment under their commander, Colonel Hacke (who was later court-martialled and cashiered), took to their heels and bolted into the forest of Soignes, spreading the news of disaster as far as Brussels. Baggage waggons, ammunition-limbers, carts of wounded, seeing the French gain ground and draw near the forest, followed them; and the Dutch cried havoc. By the account of eye-witnesses still living, the train of fugitives stretched five miles and more in the direction of Brussels. So great was the panic that it reached the Prince de Conde at Malines and Louis XVIII at Ghent. Except for a small reserve stationed behind the field hospital set up in the Mont-Saint-Jean farm, and Vivian's and Vandeleur's brigades on his left wing, Wellington had no more cavalry, and a large number of his guns were out of action. These facts are reported by Siborne, and Pringle, somewhat exaggerating, claims that the Anglo-Dutch strength was reduced to 34,000 men. The Iron Duke remained calm but he was white-lipped. The Austrian and French military attaches, who were with the English headquarters staff, believed that the day was lost. At five o'clock Wellington looked at his watch and was heard to murmur: 'Blucher - or darkness.'
It was at about this moment that a line of bayonets came into view in the distance, twinkling on the heights round Frischemont.
This was the turning-point.
The two guides
Napoleon's tragic miscalculation is known to everyone: he looked for Grouchy but it was Blucher who came - death instead of life. Destiny is shaped by moments such as this: with his eyes upon the throne of the world, he saw the shadow of St Helena.
If the shepherd boy who acted as guide to Bulow, Blucher's second-in-command, had advised him to come by the route above Frischemont, instead of by that below Planchenoit, the pattern of the nineteenth century might well have been different. Napoleon would have won Waterloo. Any other road, except the one below Planchenoit, would have brought the Prussian army to a ravine impassable by artillery, and Bulow would not have arrived in time. According to the Prussian General Muffling, a further hour's delay would have spelt disaster.
There had been much delay already. Bulow had bivouacked at Dion-le-Mont and set out at dawn, but he had been greatly hindered by the state of the road. Moreover, he had had to cross the river Dyle by the narrow bridge at Wavre. The French had set fire to the village street leading to the bridge, and since the ammunition waggons could not pass between the rows of burning houses they had to wait for the fire to be put out. It was not until noon that Bulow's advance-guard reached Chapelle-Saint-Lambert.
Had the battle begun two hours earlier it would have been over by four o'clock, and Blucher, too, would have fallen victim to Napoleon. Such are the immeasurable hazards of a Fatality beyond our grasp.
The Emperor, with his field-glass, was the first to see something on the horizon that fixed his attention. 'A sort of cloud,' he muttered. 'It looks to me like troops.' And turning to the Duke of Dalmatia he said: 'Soult, what can you see around Chapelle-Saint-Lambert?' Using his own glass the marshal replied: 'Four or five thousand men, Sire. It must be Grouchy.' All the glasses of the general staff were turned on this 'cloud', which remained motionless. Some officers thought that it was a halted column of men, but the majority believed it to be a grove of trees. The Emperor sent Domon's contingent of light cavalry to reconnoitre.
The fact is that Bulow had not moved because his advance-guard was weak. His orders were to concentrate his main force before joining battle. But at five o'clock, seeing Wellington's precarious state, Blucher ordered Bulow into the attack with the notable words: 'We must give the English a breather.'
Shortly afterwards, the divisions of Losthin, Hiller, Hacke, and Ryssel deployed ahead of Lobau's corps; Prince William of Prussia's cavalry debouched from the Bois de Paris, Planchenoit was in flames, and artillery fire began to reach as far as the ranks of the Imperial Guard drawn up behind Napoleon.
The Imperial Guard
We know the rest, the intervention of a third army and the transformation of the battle: eighty-six pieces of artillery bursting into sudden thunder, Pirch I overtaking Bulow, Zieten's cavalry led by Blucher in person, the French driven back in disorder under the combined English and Prussian fire as darkness began to fall. Disaster in front and disaster on the flank, and the Guard flung in in an attempt to stay the hideous collapse. Knowing they were about to die, the men shouted, 'Vive l'empereur!' History knows no more poignant moment.
The sky had been overcast all day, but at eight o'clock that evening it cleared to allow the sinister red light of the setting sun to flood through the elms of the Nivelles road - the same sun that had risen at Austerlitz.
In this last crisis every battalion was commanded by a general. Friant, Michel, Roguet, Harlet, Porlet de Morvan, all were there. When the tall helmets of the grenadiers, adorned with the eagle badge, emerged from the mist of battle, steadfast, impeccably aligned, magnificent, the enemy felt the splendour of France and for an instant the victors hesitated. But Wellington cried, 'Up Guards and shoot straight!' and the red-coated Englishmen rose from their shelter behind hedges and poured out a withering volley that rent to shreds the tricolour and the eagles. Both sides charged and the last carnage began. The men of the Garde Imperiale felt the army giving way around them in the disorder of total rout, the shouts of 'Vive l'empereur!' turning to 'sauve qui peut', and amid disaster on every side they continued to advance forward, dying with every step they took. No man hesitated, no soldier of the line but was the equal of his general in courage, no man flinched from suicide.
Ney, splendid in his acceptance of death, exposed himself to every hazard. He had a fifth horse killed under him. Foaming at the mouth, wild-eyed and running with sweat, his tunic unbuttoned, one epaulette half shorn away by a sabre-stroke and his eagle-badge pierced by a bullet, bleeding and superb with a broken sword in his hand, he cried, 'This is how a Marshal of France dies on the field of battle!' But he did not die. Distraught and furious, he called to Drouet d'Erlon, 'Why haven't you got yourself killed?' And he cried amid the hail of bullets, 'Isn't there one for me? I'd like the whole lot in my belly!'* He was reserved for French bullets, unhappy man.
Catastrophe
In the rear of the Guard a grievous confusion prevailed.
The army was hastily falling back at every point - from Hougomont, La-Haie-Sainte, Papelotte, Planchenoit. The cry of treason was mingled with the cry of sauve qui peut. A disintegrating army is like the thawing of a glacier, a mindless, jostling commotion, total disruption. Ney found himself another horse and hatless and weaponless sought to make a stand on the Brussels road, striving to hold up both the English and the flying French, who swept past him crying 'Vive le marechal Ney' as they fled. He showered them with appeals and insults but was overborne. Two of Durutte's regiments were weaving this way and that, rebounding like shuttlecocks between the sabres of the Uhlans and the muskets of Wellington's infantry.
Rout is the most hideous of all melees, with friends striking each other down in the effort to escape, formations losing all coherence and becoming the scattered foam of battle. Lobau on one wing and Reille on the other, both were swept away by that tide. Napoleon made vain efforts to set up a barrier with the last of the Guard and the commissariat detachments. Galloping along the lines of fleeing men he, too, besought, urged, threatened. It was all in vain. The gunners, unharnessing the horses from the guns, were using them to get away. Overturned guns and supply-waggons blocked the crowded roads, adding to the slaughter. The Prussian cavalry, newly arrived and unwearied, played havoc with the panic-stricken horde of men who, casting aside their weapons and ignoring their officers, sought to escape by way of roads, footpaths, bridges, fields, hills, and villages. An army of 40,000 men, the lions of France, become sheep for Zieten to slaughter at his leisure. That was the picture.
A last attempt at a stand was made at Genappe, where Lobau succeeded in rallying three hundred men. The entrance to the village was barricaded, but at the first blast of Prussian grape-shot, traces of which are still to be seen on the brickwork of a ruined building outside the village, the flight was resumed. It became atrocious. Blucher ordered that no man was to be spared, and Roguet set an example by announcing that he would shoot every grenadier who had taken a Prussian prisoner. Duhesme, the general commanding the Young Guard, caught in the doorway of a Genappe tavern, offered his sword to a Death's Head hussar in token of surrender; the hussar took it and then killed him. To the dishonour of old Blucher, victory was crowned with murder - let us punish, for we are history! The rout swept through Genappe, Quatre-Bras, Gosselies, Frasnes, Charleroi, Thuin, and did not stop till it reached the frontier - and this rabble of desperate men was the Grande Armee!