All the King’s Men, page 53
The second Eagle, property of the 105th Infantry Regiment, was captured by Captain Alexander Clark of the 1st Dragoons (Royals). ‘When I first saw it,’ he wrote later,
it was perhaps about forty yards to my left and a little in my front. The officer who carried it, and his companions, were moving with their backs towards me, and endeavouring to force their way through the crowd. I gave the order to my squadron ‘Right shoulders forward! Attack the colour!’ … On reaching it, I ran my sword into the officer’s right side, a little above the hip-joint. He was a little to my left side, and fell to that side, with the Eagle across my horse’s head. I tried to catch it with my left hand, but could only touch the fringe of the flag, and it is probable it would have fallen to the ground had it not been prevented by the neck of Corporal Styles’ horse … On taking up the Eagle, I endeavoured to break [it] from the pole with the intention of putting it into the breast of my coat; but I could not break it. Corporal Styles said, ‘Pray, sir, do not break it,’ on which I replied, ‘Very well, carry it to the rear as fast as you can, it belongs to me.’18
Much of the Household Brigade and the right squadron of the Royals, meanwhile, had clashed with French cuirassiers on either side of La Haye-Sainte. Private Smithies of the Royals recalled:
On we rushed at each other, and when we met the shock was terrific. We wedged ourselves between them as much as possible, to prevent them from cutting, and the noise of the horses, the clashing of swords against their steel armour, can be imagined only by those who have heard it. There were some riders who caught hold of each other’s bodies – wrestling fashion – and fighting for life, but the superior physical strength of our regiment soon showed itself.19
At this point, having succeeded in their aim of breaking up the French infantry attack, the British cavalry should have reined in and trotted back over the ridge. But their blood was up and, egged on by their officers, horsemen of both brigades careered on down the slope and up the far side, a few scattered groups making it as far as Napoleon’s Grande Batterie. Dickson recalled: ‘Colonel Hamilton rode up to us crying “Charge, Charge the guns” and went off like the wind up the hill towards the terrible batteries. We got among the guns and had our revenge. Such slaughtering! We sabred the gunners, lamed their horses and cut their traces and harness. I can hear the Frenchmen yet crying “Diable” when I struck at them and the long hiss through their teeth as my sword went home.’20
The British cavalry had, however, overreached themselves. On blown horses, deep in the enemy position, they were counter-attacked by French lancers and few made it back to their own lines. A quartermaster-sergeant of the Scots Greys recorded: ‘We were obliged to retreat, which was no sooner discovered by the Lancers than they made an oblique movement, and got round between us and the British lines, which led to a severe conflict, from which few indeed of the Greys returned … All that were left of the 400 Greys were about 60 rank and file.’21
Among the survivors were the quartermaster-sergeant and Corporal Dickson, both aided by the timely arrival of a squadron of 16th Light Dragoons who saw off their pursuers. The dead included Colonel Hamilton, last seen with wounds in both arms and the reins in his teeth, and the brigade commander, Ponsonby, who was speared by a lancer as he tried to urge his exhausted horse up the slope. ‘Ponsonby might have escaped if he had been better mounted,’ wrote a contemporary historian, ‘but the groom with his chestnut charger could not be found at the moment of the charge, and he was riding a small bay hack, which soon stuck fast in the heavy ground. Seeing he must be overtaken, he was handing over his watch and a miniature to his brigade major to deliver to his family, when the French lancers came up and killed them both.’22
Of the 2,500 sabres that charged, more than a thousand were killed or wounded, putting both brigades to all intents and purposes out of action. According to Gronow, Wellington was ‘perfectly furious that this arm had been engaged without his orders and sent them to the rear’. Uxbridge was suitably chastened, admitting later: ‘The pursuit had been continued without order and too far … After the overthrow of the Cuirassiers I had in vain attempted to stop my people by sounding the Rally, but neither voice nor trumpet availed; so I went back to seek the support of the 2nd line … I committed a great mistake in having led the attack. The carrière once begun, the leader is no better than any other man; whereas if I had placed myself at the head of the 2nd line, there is no saying what great advantages might not have accrued from it.’23
Yet Wellington had emerged from the first two serious crises of the day in a strong position: Hougoumont and La Haye-Sainte were still in his hands (he personally rode down to the latter to re-establish the 1/95th in the sandpit); a large proportion of two French corps had been badly mauled; and, most importantly, he now knew for certain that Prussian help was close at hand.
Following the repulse of d’Erlon’s infantry, Ney ordered a mass cavalry attack of 5,000 horsemen – later reinforced by a similar number – through the gap between the two British strongpoints. Why he did this has never been properly explained: some have conjectured that he misread the withdrawal of some ambulance wagons as a sign that the Allies were wavering; others that he mistook a redeployment in Wellington’s lines for a general retreat. It may be that he hoped to replicate the success of the British cavalry over his own infantry. Whatever the reason, the outcome was utterly predictable. As the cavalry approached the ridge, the British gunners abandoned their batteries and took refuge in the hollow infantry squares that were, as the French officer observed, almost impregnable to enemy horsemen. ‘The first charge was magnificent,’ recalled Ensign Macready of the 30th.
As soon as they quickened their trot into a gallop the Cuirassiers bent their heads so that the peak of their helmets looked like visors and they seemed cased in armour from the plume to the saddle. Not a shot was fired till they were within thirty yards when the word was given … The effect was magical. Thro’ the smoke we could see helmets falling – cavaliers starting from their seats with convulsive springs as they received our balls, horses plunging &rearing in the agonies of fright and pain, and crowds of the soldiery dismounted; part of the squadrons in retreat, but the more daring remainder backing their horses to force them on our bayonets. Our fire soon disposed of these gentlemen. The main body reformed in our front were reinforced and rapidly and gallantly repeated their attacks. In fact from this time (about four o’clock) till near six we had a constant repetition of these brave but unavailing charges … The best cavalry is contemptible to a steady and well supplied Infantry regiment – even our men saw this and began to pity the useless perseverance of their assailants and as they advanced would growl out ‘here come those damned fools again.’24
Not all the squares got off so lightly. Sergeant Tom Morris of the 73rd remembered some French horsemen bringing up gunners who turned an abandoned cannon on his square, its fire proving ‘very destructive, making complete lanes through us’. Many squares were hit by French artillery fire as the cavalry attacks receded, and by late afternoon the situation for Morris’s battalion was ‘truly awful; our men were falling by dozens from enemy fire.’ A single shell killed and wounded seventeen men.25
Lieutenant Gronow described the square of the 1st Foot Guards as a ‘perfect hospital, being full of dead, dying and mutilated soldiers’, and found the cavalry charges a ‘great relief, as the artillery could no longer fire on us’. At one point Wellington took refuge in the guardsmen’s square and Gronow thought him ‘perfectly composed’, but looking ‘very thoughtful and pale’.26 He could hear cannon-fire from beyond his left flank and knew that the Prussians must be near.
They were. At around 4.30 p.m., von Bülow’s vanguard attacked the French posts in the village of Plancenoit, to the right rear of the main French battle line. Von Bülow’s original intention had been to reinforce the weak left of Wellington’s line at Smohain, but, seeing the latter under attack, he had swung further south to turn Napoleon’s flank. The emperor had countered by sending Lobau’s corps of 10,000 men – later reinforced by the 4,000-strong elite Young Guard Division – to stop him and, though outnumbered by more than three to one, this force managed to hold up von Bülow’s advance at Plancenoit for more than two hours.
As von Bülow’s men were entering the fray, Napoleon received the crushing news that Grouchy was heavily engaged with Johann von Thielmann’s Prussian corps near Wavre and would not make it to Waterloo. The emperor’s only hope now was to defeat Wellington before the Prussian presence could make itself felt, and to this end he ordered Ney to capture La Haye-Sainte at all costs. A fresh attack was launched by three battalions and some engineers; and finally, at around 6.30 p.m., with the defenders almost out of ammunition, the farm fell to the French after a heroic last stand by its KGL garrison, only 43 of whom escaped out of the original 400. Soon after a brave but suicidal attempt to retake the farm was made by Colonel Christian von Ompteda and the 5th KGL, at the request of General Alten; it ended with Ompteda’s death, the destruction of his battalion and the loss of its standards to French cuirassiers, who were once again on the prowl.
Elated, Ney moved forward his horse artillery and blasted away at Wellington’s centre, which, because of the lie of the land, was not as protected by the ridge as on both flanks. The 27th Inniskillings, for example, lost more than 400 men before firing a shot. So alarmed was Halkett by his casualties that he sent Wellington a message, begging ‘that his brigade, which had lost two-thirds, should be relieved for a short time; but there was no reserve to take its place, and Wellington replied, “Tell him, what he asks is impossible: he and I, and every Englishman on the field, must die on the spot we now occupy.” ’27
To shore up his crumbling centre, however, Wellington moved troops across from the right, including Sir Hussey Vivian’s brigade of cavalry and part of the Brunswick Contingent. He himself rode up and down the line, positioning cavalry reserves behind wavering infantry to discourage them from breaking. With French sharpshooters just 300 yards away, it was a time of great danger for Wellington; so many of his staff had already been killed or wounded – including William De Lancey, his quartermaster-general, who was talking to the duke when a round-shot struck him in the back, and Lord FitzRoy Somerset, his military secretary, whose elbow was shattered by a rifle-ball fired from La Haye-Sainte – that he was forced to use stray civilians to carry his orders. And all the time he glanced anxiously to the east for a sign that the Prussians were near. ‘God bring me night or bring me Blücher,’ he was heard to remark.28 ‘The time they occupied in approaching seemed interminable,’ he wrote later. ‘Both they and my watch seemed to have stuck fast.’
Recognizing that now was the time for a final effort to breach Wellington’s line, Ney asked Napoleon for reinforcements. ‘Troops!’ responded the exasperated emperor. ‘Where do you want me to get them from? Do you want me to make them?’29 He had begun the day with a reserve of 37 battalions for just this moment; but the threat from the Prussians had caused him to send no fewer than 23 of these battalions to Plancenoit. That left him with just 14 battalions of the Imperial Guard, elite troops he would commit only when he was certain they could make a difference. Now was not that moment, because the Prussians had just driven the Young Guard out of Plancenoit, and Napoloen knew he had to stabilize his right flank before he committed his reserve. So he sent two battalions of the Old Guard to recapture Plancenoit and, when word came back they had been successful, released all but one battalion of the rest for Ney’s final attack.
Napoleon himself led these 6,000 ferocious-looking soldiers – six battalions of the Middle Guard and five of the Old Guard (all moustachioed giants, veterans of at least ten campaigns, looking like pirates with their garish tattoos and gold earrings) – down the cobblestone road to the smoking ruin of La Haye-Sainte, where he handed them over to Ney. He also instructed his aides to spread the rumour that the troops approaching from the south-east were Grouchy’s men. ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ shouted Ney’s adjutant as he galloped along the line. ‘Soldats, voilà Grouchy!’ Thousands of soldiers took up the cry, convinced that victory was near.30 But they had been deceived and, unbeknown even to Napoleon, the vanguard of von Ziethen’s I Corps had by now reached the hamlet of Smohain on the extreme left of Wellington’s defensive line, thus enabling the duke to move more troops across to his threatened centre.
At around 7.30 p.m., Ney led the first line of five battalions of the Middle Guard up the slope in person, flanked on both sides by the remnants of Reille’s and d’Erlon’s corps, as well as cuirassiers and horse artillery. Moving in open squares to protect them from a cavalry counter-attack, they brushed aside a Brunswick battalion and captured the guns of two field brigades. Then they engaged Halkett’s badly mauled brigade, pressing back both the 2/30th and 2/73rd Foot, which had few officers left to rally them. ‘I cannot conceive what the enemy was about during our confusion,’ wrote Ensign Macready. ‘Fifty cuirassiers would have annihilated our brigade.’31 Fortunately the foremost battalion of the Middle Guard, the 1/3rd Grenadiers, paused after their long climb, giving Halkett’s remaining officers the chance to rally their men; he himself had been taken to the rear after a bullet passed through both cheeks.
It was now that a Dutch–Belgian brigade, recalled from Braine-l’Alleud, made a decisive contribution by driving back the 1/3rd Grenadiers and the flanking troops of d’Erlon’s corps with grapeshot from horse artillery guns and a bayonet charge. But the rest of the Middle Guard continued to advance and, supported by cannon, the 1/4th Grenadiers engaged Halkett’s remaining two battalions, the 33rd and 2/69th Foot.
While this struggle was going on, two battalions of the Middle Guard’s 3rd Chasseurs à pied approached the ridge to the right of Halkett’s brigade, a sector defended by two units of the 1st Foot Guards that Wellington had moved across from the right. It would be the first and only time these elite units faced each other in battle. The British guardsmen, part of Maitland’s brigade, were lying on the reverse slope with Wellington a short way behind them. As the 3rd Chasseurs crested the ridge and stopped to deploy, Wellington cried out: ‘Now, Maitland! Now’s your time! Up Guards! Make ready! Fire!’32
Standing in four ranks, and at a distance of less than 60 yards, the volley of the 1st Foot Guards was devastating. ‘Those who from a distance and more on the flank could see the affair,’ wrote a guards’ officer, ‘tell us that the effect of our fire seemed to force the head of the Column bodily back.’33 Maitland’s men then advanced with fixed bayonets and were astonished to see the 3rd Chasseurs turn and flee. Gronow recorded:
We rushed on with fixed bayonets and that hearty ‘hurrah’ peculiar to British soldiers. It appeared that our men, deliberately and with calculation, singled out their victims, for as they came upon the Imperial Guard our line broke, and the fighting became irregular. The impetuosity of our men seemed almost to paralyze their enemies. I witnessed several of the Imperial Guard who were run through the body apparently without any resistance on their parts. I observed a big Welshman by the name of Hughes, who was six feet seven inches in height, run through with his bayonet and knock down with the butt-end of his firelock, I should think a dozen at least of his opponents.34
In their haste to pursue, the 1st Foot Guards were almost outflanked by the last battalion of the Middle Guard, the 4th Chasseurs; but they managed to stop in time and retire to the ridge. There they held the 4th Chasseurs long enough for artillery and Adam’s brigade to come to their assistance. Taken in flank by Colonel John Colborne’s 52nd Light Infantry, the 4th Chasseurs broke and ran. ‘Go on, Colborne!’ shouted Wellington as he waved his hat for a general advance. ‘Go on. They won’t stand. Don’t give them time to rally.’35
As Napoleon’s praetorians fled down the slope, a cry rose from their astonished comrades: ‘La Garde recule!’ (‘The Guard is retreating!’)36 The shock of seeing the Imperial Guard, a unit that had swept all before it, fleeing in disarray was compounded by the awful realization that the troops firing from Smohain were not French but Prussian. ‘Treason!’ cried some. ‘We have been betrayed!’37
Panic spread through Napoleon’s army like a contagion and, within minutes of the Imperial Guard’s repulse, it was streaming to the rear with the Allies in close pursuit. Captain Mercer, whose troop of horse artillery was too shattered to join the general advance, recalled:
We had ceased firing – the plain below being covered with masses of troops, which we could not distinguish from each other. Captain Walcot of the horse-artillery had come to us, and we were all looking out anxiously at the movements below, and on the opposite ridge, when he suddenly shouted out, ‘Victory! Victory! They fly!’ and sure enough we saw some of the masses dissolving, as it were, and those composing them streaming away in confused crowds over the field, whilst the already desultory fire of their artillery ceased altogether. I shall never forget this joyful moment! This moment of exaltation!38
Captain Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons remembered ‘riding in all directions at parties trying to make their escape, and in many cases had to cut down men who had taken up their arms after having laid them down’.39 Wellington followed the pursuit, against the advice of an aide who warned ‘we are getting into enclosed ground, and your life is too valuable to be thrown away.’ The duke replied: ‘Never mind. Let them fire away. The battle’s gained: my life’s of no consequence now.’40
