The Battle (22 page)

THIRTY-SIX

THE INTERVENTION OF

THE BRITISH CAVALRY

The Earl of Uxbridge, too, was a recent arrival in that part of the field, having come from inspecting the cavalry deployed behind Hougoumont—another indication that the British generals were concentrating all their attention on their right flank. The insertion of cavalry into a battle required, above all, firsthand observation and a sense of timing, and the prompt decision of an officer in the field could count for more than the judgment of his commander in chief. Knowing this, Wellington had explicitly authorized Uxbridge, as commander of the cavalry, to employ it without waiting for instructions or permission. Shortly after his arrival on the high ground above La Haye Sainte, west of the Brussels road, Uxbridge saw Crabbe's cuirassiers advance close to the Allied squares. Avoiding a direct clash with them, the French turned, went back down the slope, and set about sabering Sir Hew Ross's gunners. Without any more reflection than was absolutely necessary, the commander of the Allied cavalry decided that his men must charge and throw back the enemy; since the strongest of his ten brigades was close at hand, deployed behind Ompteda's and Kielmansegge's squares, Uxbridge galloped over to its commander, Lord Edward Somerset, whose men made up the Household Brigade, so called because it was constituted of Guards regiments. Uxbridge ordered Somerset to wheel his troops into line and prepare to charge.

It is not clear how aware Uxbridge was that the greater danger was looming farther to the east, on the other side of the main road, where the advancing French infantry had already occupied the chemin d'Ohain. The earl must have had the feeling that he was ordering a potentially decisive charge, and that it would have to be carried out in force without any economizing of his resources. Therefore, he spurred his horse across the cobblestone road and up to where a second brigade of heavy cavalry was deployed in reserve behind Picton's infantry. Because of its three dragoon regiments, this cavalry force was known as the Union Brigade: One regiment was English (the First Dragoons or Royals), one Scottish (the Second Dragoons or Scots Grays), and one Irish (the Sixth Dragoons or Inniskillings). Lord Uxbridge rode up to the brigade commander, Sir William Ponsonby, and ordered him to prepare his troops to charge; then the earl rode back to the Household Brigade, determined—like the Hussar he had been and still remained, despite his forty-seven years—to lead the attack of the Guards cavalry himself.

The two brigades of heavy cavalry that were about to go into action constituted a powerful striking force. Their horses, whose tails were docked in accordance with British practice, were probably the best in the world at a time when all the continental armies were feeling the effect of the dreadful equine destruction occasioned by the wars of the last three years, beginning with the Russian campaign. Prussia, for example, where horse-breeding had never been very good in the first place, had come out of the defeat of 1806 impoverished and had sharply scaled back its expenditures on heavy cavalry; there was none at all attached to the army that had been entrusted to Blucher's command. All the Prussian cavalry present at Waterloo was mounted and equipped according to the more modest light cavalry standards. Even the French cuirassiers were no longer mounted on the powerful animals that would have been required to maximize their force of impact, but rather on beasts of generally mediocre quality; furthermore, many French regiments at Waterloo were considerably under-strength, precisely because of the scarcity of adequate mounts. By contrast, Great Britain had always possessed excellent horses, along with the financial means to obtain more of them wherever they might be found. Captain Tomkinson of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons observed that during the Waterloo campaign the horses in his regiment—which were newly arrived from England, and at a time of year when horses normally reach peak physical condition—were in excellent form, and this must have held true to an even greater degree for the animals in the service of the heavy cavalry.

Although the British cavalry enjoyed the advantage of magnificent material, its technical capabilities were rather less striking. Lieutenant Waymouth of the Second Life Guards, who took part in the great charge of Somerset's brigade, thought the swords issued to his men greatly inferior to those of the French cuirassiers, because the British weapon was a full six inches shorter; another officer described the sword used by the British cavalry as a "lumbering, clumsy, ill-contrived machine. It is too heavy, too short, and too broad." But the major problem was the way of wielding this sword, as prescribed by British regulations, with the elbow bent and the point upraised. It was "the custom of our Service," remarked Waymouth, "to carry the swords in a very bad position whilst charging, the French carrying theirs in a manner much less fatiguing, and also much better for attack or defence." The fact is that the French cavalry had perfected its technique by dint of the experience gained in years and years of uninterrupted campaigning; the British cavalry was almost completely lacking in such experience.

To the defect of inexperience, the British officers added an educational background and a value system in which competence and professionalism did not receive pride of place. The most extreme case of contempt for danger coupled with irresponsibility was probably that of Colonel Lord Portarlington, commander of the Twenty-third Light Dragoons. The evening before the battle of Waterloo, Portarlington left his command without permission and went to Brussels; when he returned to the field late the following morning, he arrived too late to rejoin his regiment. Desperate, and realizing too late that he'd thrown away his honor, the colonel attached himself to another regiment, fought in its ranks the whole day, and had his horse killed under him; despite his efforts, however, his absence from the regiment he was supposed to command was unpardonable, and Portarlington was obliged to resign his commission.
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A marginal case, without a doubt; but let us consider another one. Major Thornhill of the Seventh Hussars, Lord Uxbridge's old regiment, was chosen by the earl as one of his first aides-de-camp. Thornhill recalled that when he delivered Uxbridge's order to charge to one of the regiments of the Household Brigade, the Royal Horse Guards or "Blues," the commander of the regiment, Sir Robert Hill, "most kindly and courteously" invited him "to join them in the charge." The major accepted the invitation without a second thought and accompanied the Blues as they charged down the slope; his horse was killed, and the fall stunned him so badly that he was unable to remember what happened afterward. Apparently, it had not occurred to him for an instant that, as Lord Uxbridge's aide-de-camp, he should return at once to his commander, nor does the evidence suggest that it occurred to Sir Robert Hill, either. The concept of professionalism as we understand it today was as yet practically unknown, particularly among British cavalry officers; in its place was the code of honor, and that was deemed sufficient.

This handicap became more glaring in direct proportion to the number of units engaged, since it was precisely in the coordination of units and in the prudent management of reserves that the officers' lack of training made itself felt. "Our officers of cavalry have acquired a trick of galloping at every thing," Wellington complained. "They never consider the situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy, and never keep back or provide for a reserve." As for skill in maneuver, the British cavalry was so inferior to the enemy that whatever physical advantage the British enjoyed was canceled out; in the duke's view, though one British cavalry squadron could hold its own against two French squadrons, it was best for the British to avoid encounters when the opposing forces consisted of four squadrons each. The enemy was of the same opinion; though expressing due respect for the magnificent horses of the British and the fearlessness of their officers, General Foy maintained that for all practical purposes, the French cavalry was superior to theirs. As we shall see, the final outcome of the great charge ordered by Uxbridge did nothing to refute these judgments, even though the action was, on the whole, an astonishing success and in all probability saved Wellington from defeat.

Taken together, the two cavalry brigades that Uxbridge was preparing to set in motion counted around two thousand sabers. This figure is lower than the one attested to by the rolls, but based on the accounts of officers who took part in the battle the number of men actually present was much inferior to the number that appeared on paper. Moreover, in the case of the cavalry, the measure of forces actually available was not provided by the number of men but by the number of horses, which was usually even lower. On the rolls, the Sixteenth Light Dragoons numbered 31 officers and 402 men, but Captain Tomkinson affirmed that the regiment landed in the Netherlands with 330 horses, of which only 320 remained on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo; this means that no more than three-quarters of the men can have really taken part in the fighting. In April, when the first units had just begun to disembark in Belgium, the minister had informed Wellington that, after the reductions in strength decided at the end of the preceding war, the cavalry regiments could not allow themselves more than 360 horses each, and they would not have been able to increase that figure in such a short time. Therefore, every British cavalry brigade should be estimated as having contained about a thousand sabers at the most, even though the rolls yield numbers a good 20 or 30 percent higher.

Be that as it may, two thousand sabers added up to a considerable force, capable in some circumstances of deciding the outcome of a battle. Somerset's and Ponsonby's brigades comprised nineteen squadrons in all, of which no more than three were held in reserve, a decision that violated every rule of prudence. The squadron was, for all intents and purposes, the cavalry's principal tactical unit, and each included more than a hundred horses; when it was in line and waiting for the order to charge, it occupied a front of at least fifty yards. If collisions and injuries were to be avoided, horses could hardly be kept shoulder to shoulder at a trot, and so this front was destined to widen considerably when the riders spurred their mounts forward. For entire squadrons as for individual cavalrymen, a certain amount of space was indispensable. Taking these distances into account, we can conclude that the charge of the two brigades covered a front at least a mile wide; and given that the width of the entire battlefield was not above two and a half miles, such a charge must have made a huge impact.

And so the British dragoons, who until that moment had been stretched out on the ground among their horses to reduce the damage from the cannonballs that fell among them from time to time, climbed into their saddles at the bugle call. Following the familiar orders of their officers, they lined up two ranks deep by platoons, one squadron after another, noisily drew their swords from their scabbards, and set off at a walk, advancing toward the smoke and the firing. Their state of mind must have resembled that described by all those who have lived through such an experience: the exciting sensation that now the game is on, it's do or die, joined with the feeling of power and almost of invincibility that a rider feels when he's in the saddle and his mount begins to pick up speed. Lord Uxbridge, in his Hussar's uniform, rode ahead of the Household Brigade. Only much later did it occur to him that perhaps, as commander in chief of the Allied cavalry, he would have done better to remain behind and oversee the handling of his reserves.

On the other side of the main road, Sir William Ponsonby was preparing to order the Union Brigade to move out, and meanwhile he was thinking about his beautiful charger, a magnificent animal too expensive for Ponsonby to risk getting him killed, considering that the War Ministry would reimburse him only twenty pounds sterling, the standard price, which represented barely a fraction of the horse's real value. Sir William had been concerned about this matter for some days; only the night before last, he'd tried to purchase another horse, but he and the owner—an infantry colonel wounded at Quatre Bras—had been unable to agree on the price. The prospect of risking his precious purebred was troubling Ponsonby more than ever, so he decided to take his servant's horse, a hack of little value, and send its rider to the rear. While absorbed in these cogitations, he perhaps forgot to notify the colonel of the Scots Grays that his regiment was to remain in reserve, in accordance with the dispositions made that morning; or perhaps the idea of not taking part in the grand charge was simply too much for this colonel and his officers. In any case, when Sir William gave the sign, the Grays spurred their mounts ahead with the others, and the Union Brigade advanced in a single line, without leaving so much as a squadron in reserve.