"Beneath their fire, in full career,Rush'd on the ponderous cuirassier,The lancer couch'd his ruthless spear,And hurrying as to havoc near,The cohorts' eagles flew.In one dark torrent, broad and strong,The advancing onset roll'd along,Forth harbinger'd by fierce acclaimThat, from the shroud of smoke and flame,Peal'd wildly the imperial name!"—SCOTT.
The attack of the Household and Union Brigades at Waterloo is one of the most dazzling and dramatic incidents of the great fight. For suddenness, fire, and far-reaching results, it would be difficult to parallel that famous charge in the history of war. The Household Brigade, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Life Guards, and the Dragoon Guards, with the Blues in support, moved first. Lord Uxbridge, temporarily exchanging the functions of general for those of a squadron-leader, heading the attack. They leaped the hedge, or burst through it, crossed the road—at that point of shallow depth—and met the French cuirassiers in full charge. The British were bigger men on bigger horses, and they had gained the full momentum of their charge when the two lines met. The French, to do them justice, did not shrink. The charging lines crashed together, like living and swiftly moving walls, and the sound of their impact rang sharp, sudden, deep, and long drawn out, above the din of the conflict. The French wore armour, and carried longer swords than the British, but they were swept away in an instant, and went, a broken and shattered mass of men and horses, down the slope. Some of them were tumbled into the sand-pit, amongst the astonished Rifles there, who instantly bayoneted them. Others were swept upon the masses of their own infantry, fiercely followed by the Life Guards.
The 2nd Life Guards and the Dragoons, coming on a little in the rear, struck the right regiment of the cuirassiers and hurled them across the junction of the roads. Shaw, the famous Life Guardsman, was killed here. He was a perfect swordsman, a man of colossal strength, and is said to have cut down, through helmet and skull, no fewer than nine men in themêlée. How Shaw actually died is a matter of dispute. Colonel Marten says he was shot by a cuirassier who stood clear of themêlée, coolly taking pot-shots at the English Guardsmen. Captain Kelly, a brilliant soldier, who rode in the charge beside Shaw, says that Shaw was killed by a thrust through the body from a French colonel of the cuirassiers, whom Kelly himself, in return, clove through helmet and skull.
Meanwhile the Union Brigade on the left, consisting of the Royals and the Inniskillings, with the Scots Greys in support, had broken into the fight. The Royals, coming on at full speed over the crest of the ridge, broke upon the astonished vision of the French infantry at a distance of less than a hundred yards. It was an alarming vision of waving swords, crested helmets, fierce red nostrils, and galloping hoofs. The leading files tried to turn, but in an instant the Royals were upon them, cutting them down furiously. De Lacy Evans, who rode in the charge, says, "They fled like a flock of sheep." Colonel Clark Kennedy adds that the "jamb" in the French was so thick that the men could not bring down their arms or level a musket, and the Dragoons rode in the intervals between their formation, reaching forward with the stroke of their long swords, and slaying at will. More than 2000 Frenchmen flung down their arms and surrendered; and on the next morning the abandoned muskets were still lying in long straight lines and regular order, showing that the men had surrendered before their lines were broken. The charge of the Inniskillings to the left of the Royals was just as furious and just as successful. They broke on the front of Donzdot's divisions and simply ground them to powder.
The Scots Greys were supposed to be "in support"; but coming swiftly up, they suddenly saw on their left shoulder Marcognet's divisions, the extreme right of the French. At that sight the Greys swung a little off to their left, swept through the intervals of the 92nd, and smote the French battalions full in front. As the Greys rode through the intervals of the footmen—Scotch horsemen through Scotch infantry—the Scotch blood in both regiments naturally took fire. Greetings in broadest Doric flew from man to man. The pipes skirled fiercely. "Scotland for ever!" went up in a stormy shout from the kilted lines. The Greys, riding fast, sometimes jostled, or even struck down, some of the 92nd; and Armour, the rough-rider of the Greys, has told how the Highlanders shouted, "I didna think ye wad hae saired me sae!" Many of the Highlanders caught hold of the stirrups of the Greys and raced forward with them—Scotsmen calling to Scotsmen—into the ranks of the French. The 92nd, in fact, according to the testimony of their own officers, "went half mad." What could resist such a charge?
The two British cavalry brigades were by this time riding roughly abreast, the men drunk with warlike excitement and completely out of hand, and most of their officers were little better. They simply rode over D'Erlon's broken ranks. So brave were some of the French, however, that again and again a solitary soldier or officer would leap out of the ranks as the English cavalry came on, and charge them single-handed! One French private deliberately ran out as the Inniskillings came on at full gallop, knelt before the swiftly galloping line of men and horses, coolly shot the adjutant of the Inniskillings through the head, and was himself instantly trodden into a bloody pulp! The British squadrons, wildly disordered, but drunk with battle fury, and each man fighting for his "ain hand," swept across the valley, rode up to the crest of the French position, stormed through the great battery there, slew drivers and horses, and so completely wrecked the battery that forty guns out of its seventy never came into action again. Some of the men, in the rapture of the fight, broke through to the second line of the French, and told tales, after the mad adventure was over, of how they had come upon French artillery drivers, mere boys, sitting crying on their horses while the tragedy and tumult of themêléeswept past them. Some of the older officers tried to rally and re-form their men; and Lord Uxbridge, by this time beginning to remember that he was a general and not a dragoon, looked round for his "supports," who, as it happened, oblivious of the duty of "supporting" anybody, were busy fighting on their own account, and were riding furiously in the very front ranks.
Then there came the French counter-stroke. The French batteries opened on the triumphant, but disordered British squadrons; a brigade of lancers smote them on the flank and rolled them up. Lord Edward Somerset, who commanded the Household Brigade, was unhorsed, and saved his life by scrambling dexterously, but ignobly, through a hedge. Sir William Ponsonby, who commanded the Union Brigade, had ridden his horse to a dead standstill; the lancers caught him standing helpless in the middle of a ploughed field, and slew him with a dozen lance-thrusts. Vandeleur's Light Cavalry Brigade was by this time moving down from the British front, and behind its steady squadrons the broken remains of the two brigades found shelter.
Though the British cavalry suffered terribly in retiring, nevertheless they had accomplished what Sir Evelyn Wood describes as "one of the most brilliant successes ever achieved by horsemen over infantry." These two brigades—which did not number more than 2000 swords—wrecked an entire infantry corps, disabled forty guns, overthrew a division of cuirassiers, took 3000 prisoners, and captured two eagles. The moral effect of the charge was, perhaps, greater than even its material results. The French infantry never afterwards throughout the battle, until the Old Guard appeared upon the scene, moved forward with real confidence against the British position. Those "terrible horsemen" had stamped themselves upon their imagination.
The story of how the eagles were captured is worth telling. Captain Clark Kennedy of the Dragoons took one. He was riding vehemently in the early stage of the charge, when he caught sight of the cuirassier officer carrying the eagle, with his covering men, trying to break through themêléeand escape. "I gave the order to my men," he says, "'Right shoulders forward; attack the colours.'" He himself overtook the officer, ran him through the body, and seized the eagle. He tried to break the eagle from the pole and push it inside his coat for security, but, failing, gave it to his corporal to carry to the rear. The other colour was taken by Ewart, a sergeant of the Greys, a very fine swordsman. He overtook the officer carrying the colour, and, to quote his own story, "he and I had a hard contest for it. He made a thrust at my groin; I parried it off, and cut him down through the head. After this a lancer came at me. I threw the lance off by my right side, and cut him through the chin and upwards through the teeth. Next, a foot-soldier fired at me, and then charged me with his bayonet, which I also had the good luck to parry, and then I cut him down through the head. Thus ended the contest. As I was about to follow the regiment, the general said, 'My brave fellow, take that to the rear; you have done enough till you get quit of it.'"
"But yet, though thick the shafts as snow,Though charging knights like whirlwinds go,Though bill-men ply the ghastly blow,Unbroken was the ring;The stubborn spearmen still made goodTheir dark impenetrable wood,Each stepping where his comrade stood,The instant that he fell.No thought was there of dastard flight;Linked in the serried phalanx tight,Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,As fearlessly and well."—SCOTT.
Napoleon's infantry had failed to capture either Hougoumont or La Haye Sainte, which was stoutly held by Baring and his Hanoverians. The great infantry attack on the British left had failed, and though the stubborn fight round the two farmhouses never paused, the main battle along the ridge for a time resolved itself into an artillery duel. Battery answered battery across the narrow valley, nearly four hundred guns in action at once, the gunners toiling fiercely to load and fire with the utmost speed. Wellington ordered his men to lie down on the reverse of the ridge; but the French had the range perfectly, and shells fell thickly on the ranks of recumbent men, and solid shot tore through them. The thunder of the artillery quickened; the French tirailleurs, showing great daring, crept in swarms up the British slope and shot down the British gunners at their pieces. Both Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte were on fire at this stage of the battle. The smoke of the conflict, in an atmosphere heavy with moisture, hung like a low pall of blackest crape over the whole field; and every now and again, on either ridge, columns of white smoke shot suddenly up and fell back like gigantic and vaporous mushrooms—the effect of exploding ammunition waggons. "Hard pounding this, gentlemen," said Wellington, as he rode past his much-enduring battalions. "Let us see who will pound longest."
At four o'clock came the great cavalry attack of the French. Through the gap between, not merely the two farmhouses, but the two farmhouses plus their zone of fire—through a gap, that is, of probably not more than 1000 yards, the French, for two long hours, poured on the British line the whole strength of their magnificent cavalry, led by Ney in person. To meet the assault, Wellington drew up his first line in a long chequer of squares, five in the first line, four, covering their intervals, in the second. In advance of them were the British guns, with their sadly reduced complement of gunners. Immediately behind the squares were the British cavalry brigades; the Household Brigade, reduced by this time to a couple of squadrons; and behind them, in turn, the Dutch-Belgian infantry, who had fortitude enough not to run away, but lacked daring sufficient to fill a place on the fire-scourged edge of actual battle. When the British front was supposed to be sufficiently macadamised by the dreadful fire of the French batteries, Ney brought on his huge mass of cavalry, twenty-one squadrons of cuirassiers, and nineteen squadrons of the Light Cavalry of the Guard.
At a slow trot they came down the French slope, crossed the valley, and, closing their ranks and quickening their stride, swept up to the British line, and broke, a swirling torrent of men and horses, over the crest. Nothing could be more majestic, and apparently resistless, than their onset—the gleam of so many thousand helmets and breastplates, the acres of wind-blown horse-hair crests and many-coloured uniforms, the thunder of so many galloping hoofs. Wellington had ordered his gunners, when the French cavalry reached their guns, to abandon them and run for shelter beneath the bayonets of the nearest square, and the brave fellows stood by their pieces pouring grape and solid shot into the glittering, swift-coming human target before them till the leading horses were almost within touch of the guns, when they ran and flung themselves under the steady British bayonets for safety.
The French horsemen, as they mounted the British slope, saw nothing before them but the ridge, empty of everything except a few abandoned guns. They were drunk with the rapture of victory, and squadron after squadron, as it reached the crest, broke into tempests of shouts and a mad gallop. All the batteries were in their possession; they looked to see an army in rout. Suddenly they beheld the double line of British squares—or, rather, "oblongs"—with their fringe of steady steel points; and from end to end of the line ran the zigzag of fire—a fire that never slackened, still less intermitted. The torrent and tumult of the horsemen never checked; but as they rode at the squares, the leading squadron—men and horses—smitten by the spray of lead, tumbled dead or dying to the ground. The following squadrons parted, swept past the flanks of the squares, scourged with deadly volleys, struggled through the intervals of the second line, emerged breathless and broken into the space beyond, to be instantly charged by the British cavalry, and driven back in wreck over the British slope. As the struggling mass left the crest clear, the French guns broke in a tempest of shot on the squares, while the scattered French re-formed in the valley, and prepared for a second and yet more desperate assault.
Foiled in his first attack, Ney drew the whole of Kellerman's division—thirty-seven squadrons, eleven of cuirassiers, six of carabineers, and the Bed Lancers of the Guard—into the whirlpool of his renewed assault, and this time the mass, though it came forward more slowly, was almost double in area. Gleaming with lance and sword and cuirass, it undulated as it crossed the broken slopes, till it seemed a sea, shining with 10,000 points of glancing steel, in motion. The British squares, on the reverse slope, as they obeyed the order, "Prepare to receive cavalry!" and fell grimly into formation, could hear the thunder of the coming storm—the shrill cries of the officers, the deeper shouts of the men, the clash of scabbard on stirrup, the fierce tramp of the iron-shod hoofs. Squadron after squadron came over the ridge, like successive human waves; then, like a sea broken loose, the flood of furious horsemen inundated the whole slope on which the squares were drawn up. But each square, a tiny, immovable island of red, with its fringe of smoke and steel and darting flame, stood doggedly resolute. No French leader, however daring, ventured to ride home on the very bayonets. The flood of maddened men and horses swung sullenly back across the ridge, while the British gunners ran out and scourged them with grape as they rode down the slope.
From four o'clock to six o'clock this amazing scene was repeated. No less than thirteen times, it was reckoned, the French horsemen rode over the ridge, and round the squares, and swept back wrecked and baffled. In the later charges they came on at a trot, or even a walk, and they rode through the British batteries and round the squares, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, "as if they owned them." So dense was the smoke that sometimes the British could not see their foes until, through the whirling blackness, a line of lances and crested helmets, or of tossing horse-heads, suddenly broke. Sometimes a single horseman would ride up to the very points of the British bayonets and strike at them with his sword, or fire a pistol at an officer, in the hope of drawing the fire of the square prematurely, and thus giving his comrades a chance of breaking it. With such cool courage did the British squares endure the fiery rush of the French cavalry, that at last the temper of the men grew almost scornful. They would growl out, "Here come these fools again," as a fresh sweep of horsemen came on. Sometimes the French squadrons came on at a trot; sometimes their "charge" slackened down to a walk. Warlike enthusiasm had exhausted itself. "The English squares and the French squadrons," says Lord Anglesey, "seemed almost, for a short time, hardly taking notice of each other."
In their later charges the French brought up some light batteries to the crest of the British ridge, and opened fire at point-blank distance on the solid squares. The front of the 1st Life Guards was broken by a fire of this sort, and Gronow relates how the cuirassiers made a dash at the opening. Captain Adair leaped into the gap, and killed with one blow of his sword a French officer who had actually entered the square! The British gunners always ran swiftly out when the French cavalry recoiled down the slope, remanned their guns, and opened a murderous fire on the broken French. Noting this, an officer of cuirassiers drew up his horse by a British battery, and while his men drew off, stood on guard with his single sword, and kept the gunners from remanning it till he was shot by a British infantryman. Directly the broken cavalry was clear of the ridge, the French guns opened furiously on the British lines, and men dropped thick and fast. The cavalry charges, as a matter of fact, were welcomed as affording relief from the intolerable artillery fire.
For two hours 15,000 French horsemen rode round the British squares, and again and again the ridge and rear slope of the British position was covered with lancers, cuirassiers, light and heavy dragoons, and hussars, with the British guns in their actual possession; and yet not a square was broken! A gaily dressed regiment of the Duke of Cumberland's (Hanoverian) Hussars watched the Homeric contest from the British rear, and Lord Uxbridge, as the British cavalry were completely exhausted by their dashes at the French horsemen as they broke through the chequer of the squares, rode up to them and called on them to follow him in a charge. The colonel declined, explaining that his men owned their own horses, and could not expose them to any risk of damage! These remarkable warriors, in fact, moved in a body, and with much expedition, off the field, Seymour (Lord Uxbridge's aide) taking their colonel by the collar and shaking him as a dog shakes a rat, by way of expressing his view of the performance.
"Three hundred cannon-mouths roar'd loud;And from their throats with flash and cloudTheir showers of iron threw."—SCOTT.
One of the most realistic pictures of the fight at this stage is given by Captain Mercer, in command of a battery of horse artillery. Mercer was on the extreme British right during the first stage of the battle, and only got occasional glimpses of the ridge where the fight was raging—intermittent visions of French cavalry riding in furious charges, and abandoned British batteries with guns, muzzle in air, against the background of grey and whirling smoke. About three o'clock, in the height of the cavalry struggle, Fraser, who was in chief command of the horse artillery, galloped down the reverse slope to Mercer's battery, his face black with powder, his uniform torn, and brought the troop at full gallop to the central ridge, explaining as they rode the Duke's orders, that, when the French cavalry charged home, Mercer and his men should take refuge under the bayonets of the nearest square.
As they neared the crest at a gallop, Mercer describes the humming as of innumerable and gigantic gnats that filled the bullet-torn air. He found his position betwixt two squares of Brunswickers, in whose ranks the French guns were making huge gaps, while the officers and sergeants were busy literally pushing the men together. "The men," says Mercer, "were like wooden figures, semi-paralysed with the horrors of the fight about them;" and to have attempted to run to them for shelter would certainly have been the signal for the whole mass to dissolve. Through the smoke ahead, not a hundred yards distant, were the French squadrons coming on at a trot. The British guns were swung round, unlimbered, loaded with case-shot, and fire opened with breathless speed. Still the French came on; but as gun after gun came into action, their pace slowed down to a walk, till the front files could endure the terrific fire no longer. They turned round and tried to ride back. "I actually saw them," says Mercer, "using the pommels of their swords to fight their way out of themêlée." Some, made desperate by finding themselves penned up at the very muzzles of the British guns, dashed through their intervals, but without thinking of using their swords. Presently the mass broke and ebbed, a flood of shattered squadrons, down the slope. They rallied quickly, however, and their helmets could be seen over the curve of the slope as the officers dressed the lines.
The French tirailleurs, meanwhile, crept up within forty yards of the battery, and were busy shooting down Mercer's gunners. Mercer, to keep his men steady, rode slowly to and fro in front of the muzzles of his guns, the men standing with lighted port-fires. The tirailleurs, almost within pistol-shot, seized the opportunity to take pot-shots at him. He shook his glove, with the word "Scélérat," at one of them; the fellow grinned, and took a leisurely aim at Mercer, the muzzle of his gun following him as he turned to and fro in his promenade before his own pieces. The Frenchman fired, and the ball passed at the back of Mercer's neck into the forehead of the leading driver of one of his guns.
But the cavalry was coming on again in solid squadrons, a column so deep that when the leading files were within sixty yards of Mercer's guns the rear of the great mass was still out of sight. The pace was a deliberate trot. "They moved in profound silence," says Mercer, and the only sound that could be heard from them, amidst the incessant roar of battle, was the low, thunder-like reverberation of the ground beneath the simultaneous tread of so many horses, through which ran a jangling ripple of sharp metallic sound, the ring of steel on steel. The British gunners, on their part, showed a stern coolness fully equal to the occasion. Every man stood steadily at his post, "the guns ready loaded with round-shot first, and a case over it; the tubes were in the vents, the port-fires glared and sputtered behind the wheels." The column was led on this time by an officer in a rich uniform, his breast covered with decorations, whose earnest gesticulations were strangely contrasted with the solemn demeanour of those to whom they were addressed. Mercer allowed the leading squadron to come within sixty yards, then lifted his glove as the signal to fire. Nearly the whole leading rank fell in an instant, while the round shot pierced the column. The front, covered with struggling horses and men, was impassable. Some of the braver spirits did break their way through, only to fall, man and horse, at the very muzzles, of the guns. "Our guns," says Mercer, "were served with astonishing activity, and men and horses tumbled before them like nine-pins." Where the horse alone was killed, the cuirassier could be seen stripping himself of his armour with desperate haste to escape. The mass of the French for a moment stood still, then broke to pieces and fled. Again they came on, with exactly the same result. So dreadful was the carnage, that on the next day, Mercer, looking back from the French ridge, could identify the position held by his battery by the huge mound of slaughtered men and horses lying in front of it. The French at last brought up a battery, which opened a flanking fire on Mercer's guns; he swung round two of his pieces to meet the attack, and the combat raged till, out of 200 fine horses in Mercer's troop, 140 lay dead or dying, and two men out of every three were disabled.
Ney's thirteen cavalry charges on the British position were magnificent, but they were a failure. They did not break a single square, nor permanently disable a single gun. Both Wellington and Napoleon are accused of having flung away their cavalry; but Wellington—or, rather, Uxbridge—by expending only 2000 sabres, wrecked, as we have seen, a French infantry corps, destroyed a battery of 40 guns, and took 3000 prisoners. Ney practically used up 15,000 magnificent horsemen without a single appreciable result. Napoleon, at St. Helena, put the blame of his wasted cavalry on Ney's hot-headed impetuosity. The cavalry attack, he said, was made without his orders; Kellerman's division joined in the attack without even Ney's orders. But that Napoleon should watch for two hours his whole cavalry force wrecking itself in thirteen successive and baffled assaults on the British squares, without his orders, is an utterly incredible supposition.
If two hours of cavalry assault, punctuated as with flame by the fire of 200 guns, did not destroy the stubborn British line, it cannot be denied that it shook it terribly. The British ridge was strewn with the dead and dying. Regiments had shrunk to companies, companies to mere files. "Our square," says Gronow, "presented a shocking sight. We were nearly suffocated by the smoke and smell from burnt cartridges. It was impossible to move a step without treading on a wounded or slain comrade." "Where is your brigade?" Vivian asked of Lord Edward Somerset, who commanded the Life Guards. "Here," said Lord Edward, pointing to two scanty squadrons, and a long line of wounded or mutilated horses. Before nightfall the two gallant brigades that made the great cavalry charge of the morning had contracted to a single squadron of fifty files. Wellington sent an aide-de-camp to ask General Hackett, "What square of his that was which was so far in advance?" It was a mass of killed and wounded men belonging to the 30th and 73rd regiments that lay slain, yet in ranks, on the spot the square had occupied at one period of the fight, and from which it had been withdrawn. Seen through the whirling smoke, this quadrangle of corpses looked like a square of living men. The destruction wrought by the French guns on the British squares was, in brief, terrific. By a single discharge of grape upon a German square, one of its sides was completely blown away, and the "square" transfigured into a triangle, with its base a line of slaughtered men. The effect produced by cannon-shot at short range on solid masses of men was sometimes very extraordinary. Thus Croker tells how an officer received a severe wound in the shoulder, apparently from a jagged ball. When the missile was extracted, however, it turned out to be a huge human double-tooth. Its owner's head had been shattered by a cannon-ball, and the very teeth transformed into a radiating spray of swift and deadly missiles. There were other cases of soldiers being wounded by coins driven suddenly by the impact of shot from their original owners' pockets. The sustained fire of the French tirailleurs, too, wrought fatal mischief.
La Haye Sainte by this time had been captured. The brave men who held it for so many hours carried rifles that needed a special cartridge, and supplies of it failed. When the French captured the farmhouse, they were able to push some guns and a strong infantry attack close up to the British left. This was held by the 27th, who had marched from Ghent at speed, reached Waterloo, exhausted, at nine A.M., on the very day of the battle, slept amid the roar of the great fight till three o'clock, and were then brought forward to strengthen the line above La Haye Sainte. The 27th was drawn up in square, and the French skirmishers opened a fire so close and fatal, that, literally, in the space of a few minutes every second man was shot down!
"On came the whirlwind—like the last,But fiercest sweep of tempest blast—On came the whirlwind—steel-gleams brokeLike lightning through the rolling smoke;The war was waked anew."—SCOTT.
Napoleon had expended in vain upon the stubborn British lines his infantry, his cavalry, and his artillery. There remained only the Guard! The long summer evening was drawing to a close, when, at half-past seven, he marshalled these famous soldiers for the final attack. It is a curious fact that the intelligence of the coming attack was brought to Wellington by a French cuirassier officer, who deserted his colours just before it took place. The eight battalions of the immortal Guard formed a body of magnificent soldiers, the tall stature of the men being heightened by their imposing bearskin caps. The prestige of a hundred victories played round their bayonets. Their assault had never yet been resisted. Ney and Friant led them on. Napoleon himself, as the men marched past him to the assault, spoke some fiery words of exhortation to each company—the last words he ever spoke to his Guard.
It is a matter of keen dispute whether the Guard attacked in two columns or in one. The truth seems to be that the eight battalions were arranged in echelon, and really formed one mass, though in two parallel columns of companies, with batteries of horse artillery on either flank advancing with them. Nothing could well be more majestic, nothing more menacing, than the advance of this gallant force, and it seemed as if nothing on the British ridge, with its disabled guns and shot-torn battalions, could check such an assault. Wellington, however, quickly strengthened his centre by calling in Hill's division from the extreme right, while Vivian's Light Cavalry, surrendering the extreme left to the advancing Prussians, moved, in anticipation of orders, to the same point. Adams's brigade, too, was brought up to the threatened point, with all available artillery. The exact point in the line which would be struck by the head of the Guard was barred by a battery of nine-pounders. The attack of the Guard was aided by a general infantry advance—-usually in the form of a dense mass of skirmishers—against the whole British front, and so fierce was this that some Hanoverian and Nassau battalions were shaken by it into almost fatal rout. A thread of British cavalry, made up of the scanty remains of the Scots Greys and some of Vandeleur's Light Cavalry, alone kept the line from being pierced.
All interest, however, centred in the attack of the Guard. Steadily, on a slightly diagonal line, it moved up the British slope. The guns smote it fiercely; but never shrinking or pausing, the great double column moved forward. It crossed the ridge. Nothing met the eyes of the astonished French except a wall of smoke, and the battery of horse artillery, at which the gunners were toiling madly, pouring case-shot into the approaching column. One or two horsemen, one of whom was Wellington himself, were dimly seen through the smoke behind the guns. The Duke denied that he used the famous phrase, "Up Guards, and at 'em!" "What I may have said, and possibly did say," he told Croker, "was, 'Stand up, Guards!' and then gave the commanding officers the order to attack."
An officer who took part in the fight has described the scene at the critical moment when the French Old Guard appeared at the summit of the British ridge: "As the smoke cleared away, a most superb sight opened on us. A close column of the Guard, about seventies in front, and not less than six thousand strong, their drums sounding thepas de charge, the men shouting 'Vive l'Empereur!' were within sixty yards of us." The sudden appearance of the long red line of the British Foot Guards rising from the ground seems to have brought the French Guard to a momentary pause, and, as they hesitated, along the whole line of the British ran—and ran again, and yet again—the vivid flash of a tremendous volley. The Guard tried to deploy; their officers leaped to the front, and, with shouts and waving swords, tried to bring them on, the British line, meanwhile, keeping up "independent" firing. Maitland and Lord Saltoun simultaneously shouted the order to "Charge!" The bayonets of the British Guards fell to level, the men came forward at a run, the tramp of the charging line sounded louder and louder, the line of shining points gleamed nearer and yet nearer—the bent and threatening faces of the British came swiftly on. The nerve of the French seemed to fail; the huge battalion faltered, shrank in upon itself, and tumbled in ruin down the hill!
But this was only the leading battalion of the right segment of the great column, and the left was still moving steadily up. The British Guards, too, who had followed the broken battalion of the French down the hill, were arrested by a cry of "Cavalry!" and fell back on the ridge in confusion, though the men obeyed instantly the commands of the officers. "Halt! Front! Re-form!" Meanwhile the left section of the huge column was moving up, the men as steady as on parade, the lofty bearskins of the Grenadiers, as they mounted the ridge, giving them a gigantic aspect. The black, elongated shadows, as the last rays of the setting sun smote the lines, ran threateningly before them. But the devoted column was practically forcing itself up into a sort of triangle of fire. Bolton's guns crossed its head, the Guards, thrown slightly forward, poured their swift volleys in waves of flame on its right shoulder, the 52nd and 71st on its left scourged it with fire, beneath which the huge mass of the French Guard seemed sometimes to pause and thrill as if in convulsion.
Then came the movement which assured victory to the British. Colborne, a soldier with a singular genius for war, not waiting for orders, made his regiment, the 52nd, bring its right shoulder forward, the outer company swinging round at the double, until his whole front was parallel with the flank of the French Guard. Adams, the general in command of the brigade, rode up and asked him what he was going to do. Colborne replied, "To make that column feel our fire," and, giving the word, his men poured into the unprotected flank of the unfortunate Guard a terrific volley. The 52nd, it should be noted, went into action with upwards of one thousand bayonets, being probably the strongest battalion in the field. Colborne had "nursed" his regiment during the fight. He formed them into smaller squares than usual, and kept them in shelter where possible, so that at this crisis the regiment was still a body of great fighting force, and its firing was of deadly volume and power. Adams swiftly brought the 71st to sustain Colborne's attack, the Guards on the other flank also moved forward, practically making a long obtuse angle of musketry fire, the two sides of which were rapidly closing in on the head of the great French column.
The left company of the 52nd was almost muzzle to muzzle with the French column, and had to press back, while the right companies were swinging round to bring the whole line parallel with the flank of the Guard; yet, though the answering fire of the Frenchmen was broken and irregular, so deadly was it—the lines almost touching each other—that, in three minutes, from the left front of the 52nd one hundred and fifty men fell! When the right companies, however, had come up into line with the left, Colborne cried, "Charge! charge!" The men answered with a deep-throated, menacing shout, and dashed at the enemy. Napoleon's far-famed Guard, the victors in a hundred fights, shrank, the mass swayed to and fro, the men in the centre commenced to fire in the air, and the whole great mass seemed to tumble, break into units, and roll down the hill!
The 52nd and 71st came fiercely on, their officers leading. Some squadrons of the 23rd Dragoons came at a gallop down the slope, and literally smashed in upon the wrecked column. So wild was the confusion, so dense the whirling smoke that shrouded the whole scene, that some companies of the 52nd fired into the Dragoons, mistaking them for the enemy; and while Colborne was trying to halt his line to remedy the confusion, Wellington, who saw in this charge the sure pledge of victory, rode up and shouted, "Never mind! go on! go on!"
Gambier, then an officer of the 52nd, gives a graphic description of how that famous regiment fought at this stage:—
"A short time before, I had seen our colonel (Colborne), twenty yards in front of the centre, suddenly disappear, while his horse, mortally wounded, sank under him. After one or two rounds from the guns, he came striding down the front with, 'These guns will destroy the regiment.'—'Shall I drive them in, sir?'—'Do.'—'Right section, left shoulders forward!' was the word at once. So close were we that the guns only fired their loaded charges, and limbering up, went hastily to the rear. Reaching the spot on which they had stood, I was clear of the Imperial Guard's smoke, and saw three squares of the Old Guard within four hundred yards farther on. They were standing in a line of contiguous squares with very short intervals, a small body of cuirassiers on their right, while the guns took post on their left. Convinced that the regiment, when it saw them, would come towards them, I continued my course, stopped with my section about two hundred yards in front of the centre square, and sat down. They were standing in perfect order and steadiness, and I knew they would not disturb that steadiness to pick a quarrel with an insignificant section. I alternately looked at them, at the regiment, and up the hill to my right (rear), to see who was coming to help us.
"A red regiment was coming along steadily from the British position, with its left directly upon me. It reached me some minutes before the 52nd, of which the right came within twenty paces of me. Colonel Colborne then called the covering sergeants to the front, and dressed the line upon them. Up to this moment neither the guns, the squares of the Imperial Guard, nor the 52nd had fired a shot. I then saw one or two of the guns slewed round to the direction of my company and fired, but their grape went over our heads. We opened our fire and advanced; the squares replied to it, and then steadily facing about, retired. The cuirassiers advanced a few paces; our men ceased firing, and, bold in their four-deep formation, came down to a sort of elevated bayonet charge; but the cuirassiers declined the contest, and turned. The French proper right square brought up its right shoulders and crossed thechaussée, and we crossed it after them. Twilight had manifestly commenced, and objects were now bewildering. The first event of interest was, that getting among some French tumbrils, with the horses attached, our colonel was seen upon one, shouting 'Cut me out!' Then we came upon the hollow road beyond La Belle Alliance, filled with artillery and broken infantry. Here was instantly a wildmêlée: the infantry tried to escape as best they could, and at the same time turn and defend themselves; the artillery drivers turned their horses to the left and tried to scramble up the bank of the road, but the horses were immediately shot down; a young subaltern of the battery threw his sword and himself on the ground in the act of surrender; his commander, who wore the cross of the Legion of Honour, stood in defiance among his guns, and was bayoneted, and the subaltern, unwisely making a run for his liberty, was shot in the attempt. Themêléeat this spot placed us amid such questionable companions, that no one at that moment could be sure whether a bayonet would be the next moment in his ribs or not."
It puts a sudden gleam of humour into the wild scene to read how Colonel Sir Felton Harvey, who led a squadron of the 18th, when he saw the Old Guard tumbling into ruins, evoked a burst of laughter from his entire squadron by saying in a solemn voice, "Lord Wellington has won the battle," and then suddenly adding in a changed tone, "If we could but get the d——d fool to advance!" Wellington, as a matter of fact, had given the signal that launched his wasted and sorely tried battalions in one final and victorious advance. Vivian's cavalry still remained to the Duke—the 10th and 18th Hussars—and they, at this stage, made a charge almost as decisive as that of the Household and Union Brigades in the morning. The 10th crashed into some cuirassiers who were coming up to try and relieve the flank of the Guard, overthrew them in a moment, and then plunged into the broken French Guard itself. These veterans were retreating, so to speak, individually, all formation wrecked, but each soldier was stalking fiercely along with frowning brow and musket grasped, ready to charge any too audacious horsemen. Vivian himself relates how his orderly alone cut down five or six in swift succession who were trying to bayonet the British cavalry general. When Vivian had launched the 10th, he galloped back to the 18th, who had lost almost every officer. "My lads," he said, "you'll follow me"; to which the sergeant-major, a man named Jeffs, replied, "To h——, general, if you will lead us!" The wreck of Vandeleur's brigade, too, charged down the slope more to the left; batteries were carried, cavalry squadrons smashed, and infantry battalions tumbled into ruin. Napoleon had an entire light cavalry brigade still untouched; but this, too, was caught in the reflux of the broken masses, and swept away. The wreck of the Old Guard and the spectacle of the general advance of the British—cavalry, artillery, and infantry—seemed to be the signal for the dissolution of the whole French army.
Two squares of the French Guard yet kept their formation. Some squadrons of the 10th Hussars, under Major Howard, rode fiercely at one. Howard himself rode home, and died literally on the French bayonets; and his men rivalled his daring, and fought and died on two faces of the square. But the Frenchmen kept their ranks, and the attack failed. The other square was broken. The popular tradition that Cambronne, commanding a square of the Old Guard, on being summoned to surrender, answered, "La Garde meurt, et ne se rend pas," is pure fable. As a matter of fact, Halkett, who commanded a brigade of Hanoverians, personally captured Cambronne. Halkett was heading some squadrons of the 10th, and noted Cambronne trying to rally the Guard. In his own words, "I made a gallop for the general. When about cutting him down, he called out he would surrender, upon which he preceded me to the rear. But I had not gone many paces before my horse got shot through his body and fell to the ground. In a few seconds I got him on his legs again, and found my friend Cambronne had taken French leave in the direction from which he came. I instantly overtook him, laid hold of him by the aiguillette, and brought him back in safety, and gave him in charge of a sergeant of the Osnabruckers to deliver to the Duke."
Napoleon himself, from a spot of rising ground not far from La Haye Sainte, had watched the advance of his Guard. His empire hung on its success. It was the last fling of the dice for him. His cavalry was wrecked, his infantry demoralised, half his artillery dismounted; the Prussian guns were thundering with ever louder roar upon his right. If the Guard succeeded, the electrifying thrill of victory would run through the army, and knit it into energy once more. But if the Guard failed——!
"And while amid their scattered bandRaged the fierce riders' bloody brand,Recoil'd in common rout and fear,Lancer and Guard and Cuirassier,Horsemen and foot—a mingled host,Their leaders fall'n, their standards lost."—SCOTT.
Napoleon watched the huge black echelon of battalions mount the slope, their right section crumbled under the rush of the British Guards. Colborne and the 52nd tumbled the left flank into ruin; the British cavalry swept down upon them. Those who stood near Napoleon watched his face. It became pale as death. "Ils sont mêlés ensemble" ("they are mingled together"), he muttered to himself. He cast one hurried glance over the field, to right and left, and saw nothing but broken squadrons, abandoned batteries, wrecked infantry battalions. "Tout est perdu," he said, "sauve qui peut," and, wheeling his horse, he turned his back upon his last battlefield. His star had set!
Napoleon's strategy throughout the brief campaign was magnificent; his tactics—the detailed handling of his troops on the actual battlefield—were wretched. "We were manoeuvred," says the disgusted Marbot, "like so many pumpkins." Napoleon was only forty-seven years old, but, as Wolseley says, "he was no longer the thin, sleek, active little man he had been at Rivoli. His now bloated face, large stomach, and fat and rounded legs bespoke a man unfitted for hard work on horseback." His fatal delay in pursuing Blücher on the 17th, and his equally fatal waste of time in attacking Wellington on the 18th, proved how his quality as a general had decayed. It is a curious fact that, during the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon remained for hours motionless at a table placed for him in the open air, often asleep, with his head resting on his arms. One reads with an odd sense of humour the answer which a dandy officer of the British Life Guards gave to the inquiry, "How he felt during the battle of Waterloo?" He replied that he had felt "awfully bored"! That anybody should feel "bored" in the vortex of such a drama is wonderful; but scarcely so wonderful as the fact that the general of one of the two contending hosts found it possible to go to sleep during the crisis of the gigantic battle, on which hung his crown and fate. Napoleon had lived too long for the world's happiness or for his own fame.
The story here told is that of Waterloo on its British side. No attempt is made to describe Blücher's magnificent loyalty in pushing, fresh from the defeat of Ligny, through the muddy cross-roads from Wavre, to join Wellington on the blood-stained field of Waterloo. No account, again, is attempted of Grouchy's wanderings into space, with 33,000 men and 96 guns, lazily attacking Thielmann's single corps at Wavre, while Blücher, with three divisions, was marching at speed to fling himself on Napoleon's right flank at Waterloo. It is idle to speculate on what would have happened to the British if the Prussians had not made their movement on Napoleon's right flank. The assured help of Blücher was the condition upon which Wellington made his stand at Waterloo; it was as much part of his calculations as the fighting quality of his own infantry. A plain tale of British endurance and valour is all that is offered here; and what a head of wood and heart of stone any man of Anglo-Saxon race must have who can read such a tale without a thrill of generous emotion!
Waterloo was for the French not so much a defeat as a rout. Napoleon's army simply ceased to exist. The number of its slain is unknown, for its records were destroyed. The killed and wounded in the British army reached the tragical number of nearly 15,000. Probably not less than between 30,000 and 40,000 slain or wounded human beings were scattered, the night following the battle, over the two or three square miles where the great fight had raged; and some of the wounded were lying there still, uncared for, four days afterwards. It is said that for years afterwards, as one looked over the waving wheat-fields in the valley betwixt Mont St. Jean and La Belle Alliance, huge irregular patches, where the corn grew rankest and was of deepest tint, marked the gigantic graves where, in the silence and reconciliation of death, slept Wellington's ruddy-faced infantry lads and the grizzled veterans of the Old Guard. The deep cross-country road which covered Wellington's front has practically disappeared; the Belgians have cut away the banks to build up a huge pyramid, on the summit of which is perched a Belgian lion, with tail erect, grinning defiance towards the French frontier. A lion is not exactly the animal which best represents the contribution the Belgian troops made to Waterloo.
But still the field keeps its main outlines. To the left lies Planchenoit, where Wellington watched to see the white smoke of the Prussian guns; opposite is the gentle slope down which D'Erlon's troops marched to fling themselves on La Haye Sainte; and under the spectator's feet, a little to his left as he stands on the summit of the monument, is the ground over which Life Guards and Inniskillings and Scots Greys galloped in the fury of their great charge. Right in front is the path along which came Milhaud's Cuirassiers and Kellerman's Lancers, and Friant's Old Guard, in turn, to fling themselves in vain on the obstinate squares and thin red line of the British. To the right is Hougoumont, the orchard walls still pierced with loopholes made by the Guards. A fragment of brick, blackened with the smoke of the great fight, is one of the treasures of the present writer. Victors and vanquished alike have passed away, and, since the Old Guard broke on the slopes of Mont St. Jean, British and French have never met in the wrestle of battle. May they never meet again in that fashion! But as long as nations preserve the memory of the great deeds of their history, as long as human courage and endurance can send a thrill of admiration through generous hearts, as long as British blood beats in British veins, the story of the brave men who fought and died at their country's bidding at Waterloo will be one of the great traditions of the English-speaking race.
Of Wellington's part in the great fight it is difficult to speak in terms which do not sound exaggerated. He showed all the highest qualities of generalship, swift vision, cool judgment, the sure insight that forecasts each move on the part of his mighty antagonist, the unfailing resource that instantly devises the plan for meeting it. There is no need to dwell on Wellington's courage; the rawest British militia lad on the field shared that quality with him. But in the temper of Wellington's courage there was a sort of ice-clear quality that was simply marvellous. He visited every square and battery in turn, and was at every point where the fight was most bloody. Every member of his staff, without exception, was killed or wounded, while it is curious to reflect that not a member of Napoleon's staff was so much as touched. But the roar of the battle, with its swift chances of life and death, left Wellington's intellect as cool, and his nerve as steady, as though he were watching a scene in a theatre. One of his generals said to him when the fight seemed most desperate, "If you should be struck, tell us what is your plan?" "My plan," said the Duke, "consists in dying here to the last man." He told at a dinner-table, long after the battle, how, as he stood under the historic tree in the centre of his line, a Scotch sergeant came up, told him he had observed the tree was a mark for the French gunners, and begged him to move from it. Somebody at the table said, "I hope you did, sir?" "I really forget," said the Duke, "but I know I thought it very good advice at the time."
Only twice during the day did Wellington show any trace of remembering what may be called his personal interest in the fight. Napoleon had called him "a Sepoy general." "I will show him to-day," he said, just before the battle began, "how a Sepoy general can defend himself." At night, again, as he sat with a few of his surviving officers about him at supper, his face yet black with the smoke of the fight, he repeatedly leaned back in his chair, rubbing his hands convulsively, and exclaiming aloud, "Thank God! I have met him. Thank God! I have met him." But Wellington's mood throughout the whole of the battle was that which befitted one of the greatest soldiers war has ever produced in the supreme hour of his country's fate. The Duke was amongst the leading files of the British line as they pushed the broken French Guard down the slope, and some one begged him to remember what his life was worth, and go back. "The battle is won," said Wellington; "my life doesn't matter now." Dr. Hulme, too, has told how he woke the Duke early in the morning after the fight, his face grim, unwashed, and smoke-blackened, and read the list of his principal officers—name after name—dead or dying, until the hot tears ran, like those of a woman, down the iron visage of the great soldier.
As Napoleon in the gathering darkness galloped off the field, with the wreck and tumult of his shattered army about him, there remained to his life only those six ignoble years at St. Helena. But Wellington was still in his very prime. He was only forty-six years old, and there awaited him thirty-seven years of honoured life, till, "to the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation," he was laid beside Nelson in the crypt of St. Paul's, and Tennyson sang his requiem:—
"O good grey head, which all men knew,O voice from which their omens all men drew,O iron nerve, to true occasion true;O fall'n at length that tower of strengthWhich stood four-square to all the winds that blew."