Authors: Sherry Lynn Ferguson
By the northwest gate, where a small pond lay in the shade
of elm trees, the night’s flood of rain gradually created a marsh.
At some early hour of the morning, perhaps two or three,
David woke from an hour of sleep upon a loft’s bed of straw. The French had moved into the wood, encountering a patrol
of the Germans, who quickly routed them. But the success
was too early and too small to quell anticipation of a massive
engagement later in the morning. Out again in the kitchen garden before dawn, David missed Wellington’s brief visit to
Hougoumont, a visit that indicated the importance in which
the allied commander held the farm. David managed to swallow some tea and a proffered bowl of “stirrabout,” the mens’
simple oatmeal porridge. Despite the mists and continuing
clouds, the morning was drier; he might otherwise have considered it promising, but it could hardly seem so under the circumstances. Half a mile in the distance, visible from the
upper floors in the chateau, French banners and massed men
and horses covered the rise of ground beyond the grain fields
to the southeast. By contrast, the allied army, upon the ridge
behind them, was hardly visible. Oddly, their immediate
enemy-the French troops beyond the wood immediately to
Hougoumont’s south-could not be seen at all. But everyone
knew they were there; they had heard the Nassauers’ encounter and musket fire in the wee hours.
As that Sunday morning progressed, the anomaly was that
nothing further occurred. David had expected Bonaparte,
in the emperor’s usual bold manner, to attack with daylight,
yet the stillness continued.
The chateau was prepared; there was little else they could
do to buttress their small garrison, except to maintain their
confidence. David knew the farm held some of the army’s
best troops, at least the most experienced. He himself was so
experienced that he was rather curiously optimistic. Before a
battle he was never certain whether to ascribe his calm to having been tested or to hard-earned fatalism.
Before noon Wellington again visited Hougoumont, with
the liaison for the Prussian army, General Muffling. David
thought he overheard Muffling telling the duke that the place,
forward of its own army’s lines, could not be held.
When the duke then looked directly at David, he promptly
responded, unaware that he spoke in French, “It can be held,
Your Grace”
“We are no longer in Paris, Trent,” Wellington noted in
some amusement. “You might speak English-if you wish to
preserve a whole skin today.”
David could laugh along with the other officers. Wellington
had always preferred relaxed high spirits about him. And his
French was excellent; he and David had habitually conversed
in the language during the fall and winter in Paris.
One of the other officers asked why Bonaparte had not yet
attacked.
“I shouldn’t question it, Colonel,” Wellington responded.
“He might take as long as he wishes this morning. All the better
for us” And every man there knew their commander referred
to the need to have Blucher’s Prussian army, still away to the
east, join them.
“Trent,” Wellington said as he left, “take yourself up to the
brigade on the ridge. I’m asking Saltoun and his First Foot to
do the same. You shall know soon enough if we must reinforce
this place.”
Even as David promptly set off to pull Incendio from the
stable in the south offices, he fought his frustration. To spend
all night helping to fortify the farm-only to hand it over to the
Nassauers! But he knew he might as easily have been directed
to the other end of the allied line. As he followed shortly after
the duke’s own departure through the north gate, he advised
two privates attending it to shut it behind him.
“But, sir, we was told to keep it open for supplies and such,”
one of them responded.
“Surely you can tell the difference, man? Open it as needed.
There’s little call to give the French a hearty welcome.”
“Aye, Major.”
David galloped out under the elms and up the rain-soaked
slope to the other Coldstream companies. Less than half an hour after he’d transferred to the main position, French guns
opened engagement, booming across the valley with a terrific
roar. The allied artillery answered in turn. At least five batteries of French guns could be seen to the south of Hougoumont,
yet they were set to firing upon the allied line instead of the
farm. The woods just beyond the farm were alive with the
blasts of musketry, where the Nassauers would be fighting to
retain their forward position against astonishing numbers of
French infantry. With his telescope David could see, even amid
all the gunpowder smoke, the German troops break the cover
of the woods and flee to the orchard and farmyards. But as
soon as the French attempted to follow suit and break the cover
of the trees, they became targets along the south side grassy
lane, taking devastating fire from the south gate and muskets positioned along the garden wall. Though some French managed
to reach the large orchard on the east, they were soon driven
back. Thus David watched an initial assault upon Hougoumont
end, with its defenses of the previous night having held.
Wellington need not risk drawing backup forces from the center
of the allied line-yet.
The noise from the guns and the responding fire was deafening. Positioned as they were in reserve behind Hougoumont,
David and the First and Coldstream regiments were somewhat
protected by the farm and trees. But men fell from artillery
strikes nonetheless, as they were standing on the forward slope
of the ridge and could not break rank.
David was next aware of a clash to the west of the farm,
where the French must have made a move to outflank it. The
light company of Coldstream infantry, who had retained the
kitchen garden to the west of the barn since the previous
night, were now being pushed back to the north gate. Overwhelmed by their attackers, the British troops fled inside to
the courtyard, only to be closely followed by the French.
“Blast!” David fumed aloud. “Close that bloody gate!”
About thirty French troops had spilled into the courtyard. More French were massed on the west side of the farm, attempting to outflank the allied position. The British guns behind them were trained to the west but could do nothing about
the gate itself without risking hitting the defenders. The gates
began to close, even as David and the colonel of his regiment,
Colonel Woodford, raced down with their companies to clear
the French threatening the north side of the farm. With a furious will and effort to repulse them, they drove the French
away from the gate area, completely around the west side of
the barn, and back into the woods.
David reentered the farm with the reinforcing companies of
British infantry and helped disperse them throughout the
buildings and garden. Already there were wounded men inside
the stables and barn, but they could not be removed while further assaults were expected. The day was growing hot. David
made certain the wounded were receiving water and downed
a cup himself. He learned that Colonel McDonnell, whom
Wellington had placed in command at Hougoumont, had personally helped close the north gate amid that last intrusion.
Behind the gate and cowsheds the inner courtyard was now
covered in the bodies of the blue-coated Frenchmen who had
dared to enter the farm. Only one French uniform remained
upright, that of a young drummer boy, the only one spared. He
looked shocked.
“Would you speak with him, Major?” a beefy sergeant
asked. “He doesn’t speak English.”
David nodded and introduced himself to the lad, who could
hardly be treated as a prisoner. Nor could he be considered a
combatant, for he had lost even his drum. He said his name
was Guillaume.
“Ah, another ‘Billie,”’ David muttered aloud. “And more
trouble.” He had to fight a sudden flood of memory.
He handed the boy the carefully preserved lumps of sugar
that were Incendio’s treat after every battle. At first the boy
eyed the sweet suspiciously. He tentatively licked one lump. But he was soon relishing it. As David led him to the south
courtyard, thinking to lodge him with the gardener, who had,
inconceivably, wished to stay with his young daughter at the
farm, David asked distractedly about the boy’s home in
France. But his mind was on the battle still raging about them;
he knew there was worse to come.
“I shall come back for you,” he told the boy, who, despite
stroking Incendio’s black muzzle with care and apparent
calm, looked permanently wide-eyed. The youth had already
seen more of war that morning than most men saw in a lifetime.
David reentered the formal garden. As he approached the
eastern wall, fronting the orchard, the guards defending it
started firing. The French, having hacked through part of the
hedge, were attempting to invade the orchard.
Seeing that the French aimed to bypass the farm through
the orchard, David sent men to reinforce the wall at the southeast corner, where the brick wall met the hedge. From behind
Hougoumont, Lord Saltoun’s First Foot guardsmen swept in
to confront the French in the orchard, the Guards fighting
their way forward beneath the apple trees, compelling the
French to return to the woods, to which they now laid claim.
As he turned back to the chateau buildings, David stepped
upon one flimsy firing platform and quickly popped up to
look over at the grassy strip beyond the wall. The lane was
strewn with the dead, even as close as the wall itself, where
some, attempting to scale the brick, had been bayoneted.
Three assaults, David thought, moving briskly back to the
south gate, and still we hold.
Behind him, at the center of the allied line, the noise from
artillery, firing guns, and the screams and yells of men
amounted to a roar. Little more than a thousand yards separated Hougoumont from the next farm, La Haye Sainte. That
farm was just forward of the allied center, where Wellington
kept watch with his staff. David knew that if the thousand yards of fields between them looked anything like the greenway south of Hougoumont, this gentle valley would soon be
covered in corpses rather than crops.
From the south-facing offices, a cry went up that the French
had brought forward a heavy gun, a howitzer, right to the edge
of the wood. It was remarkable that the French had not attempted to bring up such a gun before now; a howitzer’s high
trajectory might reach them, where cannon fire could not. A
company of Guards rushed at the threat, but they were forced
back into the orchard. Emboldened, the French renewed their
attacks upon the garden, where the Nassauers and British infantry were compelled to fight like skirmishers in close combat
over the wall. But steady musket fire kept the French howitzer
from being manned.
There was little need for orders under the circumstances.
Though there was much confusion, all the men had something
tangible to defend, at all costs and at any point. They were not
to fall back. When, in the offices above the south gate, a guardsman slumped to the floor beside him, wounded by a ball shot
through a window, David grabbed the man’s gun and headed
out again to the garden wall. At an open loophole he fired at
movement in the woods across the lane. The musket volley
along the wall was so unrelentingly intense that the French
howitzer had to be pulled back.
David passed the musket on to a young soldier whose own
weapon had jammed. Word passed along the length of the
wall that Lord Saltoun’s Guards had again moved to clear the
orchard. In the smoke and press of men, one could see little
beyond forty or fifty feet, so David had to believe, or hope,
that the relayed message was accurate. In the next lull, at
midafternoon-with the orchard again reclaimed, Saltoun’s
forces drawn back to the allied line, and not an inch of the
garden or courtyards lost-David set men to work removing
the wounded to the interiors of the buildings.
He thought the French, even to pause so long, must have thought they’d successfully killed every one of them. But the
interlude was not to last. One of the men David had sent to the
end of the garden, to report on the state of the orchard, returned to say that it was still theirs, but that new columns of
French infantry had been sighted marching across the field of
battle, from the French center, heading for Hougoumont. Fortunately, the British guns on the ridge behind them easily fired
on this new threat as it dared to cross so boldly in the open, in
front of the allied position, and no French infantry reached the
orchard to eject the newly resident Third regiment of foot.
Even as David heard this heartening report, a shell or some
flaming debris landed atop the roof of the thatched barn, serving then like a match to ignite the surrounding buildings, which
erupted into a blaze. The west stable, the small chapel, and even
the tile-roofed chateau itself were soon engulfed. David anticipated more such missiles. Though none followed, the effect of
the one was pervasive and deadly.
Confronting the triple tasks of avoiding further risks from
the fires, maintaining the farm’s defenses, and removing the
wounded men he had earlier placed inside the now-crumbling
buildings, David worked quickly and desperately to save as
many as he could. What was supposed to have been best
shielded and safest had become a death trap. He and a team of
others pulled several wounded from the large cart house just
before the roof fell in, entombing those remaining. With faces
blackened by soot and gunpowder and streaked with sweat,
every man in the place still defended the torched ruins. Despite
the consuming flames and ovenlike heat of the afternoon, despite the suffocating smoke, not a man left his post at the outer
walls or inside the tottering buildings. The French might have
destroyed the place, David thought grimly, but they would not
possess the charred remains.
Even as Hougoumont burned, at midafternoon a brave
Royal wagon train driver raced down to the north gate, bringing them more ammunition from up at the line. Though the driver lost his horses to furious French fire, he supplied the
soldiers with the musket balls that had flown so unremittingly. They were, David thought, the only currency between
Hougoumont’s contenders.