The Battle (30 page)

Yet for an infantry square, victory meant only a moment's breathing space before another cavalry squadron appeared, while defeat meant destruction and death. By contrast, a squadron could lose many such games before its offensive capacity would start to be seriously reduced by the weak fire of the squares. But the balance was redressed in favor of the defenders in that the cavalry— considered in purely physical terms, as a striking force—did not have the slightest chance of breaking up a square by dealing out saber-strokes; horses could not be persuaded to plunge into the midst of bayonets. "The horses of the first rank of cuirassiers, in spite of all the efforts of their riders, came to a standstill, shaking and covered with foam, at about twenty yards distance, and generally resisted all attempts to force them to charge the line of serried steel," wrote Ensign Gronow, who spent several hours in the square of the 3/1 st Foot Guards. All in all, the final outcome depended exclusively on the courage of the infantry: If it kept its nerve, nothing could happen to it, while the courage of the cavalry, in and of itself, was not enough to guarantee victory.

Between four and six o'clock in the afternoon, on the slope that descended from the north side of the chemin d'Ohain to Mont-Saint-Jean, countless games of this type were played out, and the British and German infantry—thanks to tough training, the energy of the officers, and the courage of the men—held fast for the duration. Captain von Scriba described how the officers were able to compel their recruits to hold their fire until the cuirassiers were only twenty or thirty paces away; the ensuing volley, though ineffective in terms of accuracy, was enough to disperse them and force them to withdraw. The French quickly regrouped and began to advance again, but this time, when they reached the same distance from the square as before, the foot soldiers, miraculously restrained by their officers, continued holding their fire, unnerving the cuirassiers so thoroughly that they changed direction and rode away harmlessly along the sides of the square.

Sometimes, this psychological game took on comedic rhythms. The Duke of Wellington recalled having seen some squares which "would not throw away their fire till the Cuirassiers charged, and they would not charge until we had thrown away our fire." But variations were introduced into the game. Having realized that the squares' tactic was to hold their fire until the very last moment, the cuirassier commanders started to send individual riders forward. These urged their horses very close to the enemy and took aim with the short carbines they all carried. A cuirassier did this at serious risk to his own skin; had a square responded to his aggression with an exasperated volley, he would surely have been cut down. But that was exactly what the French officers wanted, for it would give their men an opportunity to charge the infantry before they had time to reload their muskets. The British and German officers found it necessary to send some selected marksmen out of the square—with all the risks such exposure entailed—in an attempt to keep the cuirassiers and their carbines at a distance.

Everywhere, the commanders' abilities, as well as their nerves, were stretched to the limit by this type of combat. Not far from La Haye Sainte, a cuirassier squadron charged the square of the Fifth KGL several times. Repulsed every time, the riders took shelter in a fold of the ground while their commanding officer quite coolly remained in the open, riding around the square, on the lookout for the favorable moment to order a fresh attack. Colonel von Ompteda, commander of the Second KGL Brigade, who had taken refuge in this square, asked several of the battalion's elite marksmen to shoot the French officer down, but they all missed him. Finally, after the square had been charged for the fifth time, a rifleman from another regiment, John Milius, who had been wounded in no-man's-land and dragged to the relative safety of the square, offered to try his hand. One of his legs was broken, and he had lost a great deal of blood; but he had himself carried to the front rank, got the French officer in the sights of his Baker rifle, and killed him with one shot.

Though the French cavalry was not making much progress, Wellington's situation was precarious. The enemy had overwhelmed his defensive line, his guns were temporarily lost, and he and all his generals were compelled to seek protection inside the squares, from where it inevitably became more difficult to exercise command. As Wellington remarked a few weeks later in a letter to Lord Beresford, the enemy cavalry were moving among the Allied troops as though they were their own. If at this moment Napoleon had sent forward the infantry of the Imperial Guard, which constituted the principal reserve force still available to him, the line along the ridge could have been definitively occupied and the Allied guns rendered useless, and in all probability the French would have won the Battle of Waterloo.

The emperor has always been criticized for not having used his reserves in support of the cavalry; in the end, it has often been said, this excessive caution cost him the battle. Concern for the Prussian columns that were approaching from the east may have played a part in his failure to act; at that moment, the vanguard of those columns was just beginning to emerge from the Fichermont wood. In light of what happened later, it is also probable that as long as Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte were still putting up resistance, the emperor intended to postpone the final attack; he knew how risky it would be to insert the bulk of his forces into such a narrow space while at their back those two bastions remained in enemy hands. But perhaps an even more convincing reason for his inaction lies in the fact that the fighting around the squares took place on the side of the ridge that Napoleon could not see. Until Marshal Ney or the cavalry commanders communicated with him, the emperor was unable to know what was going on. A few years previously, Napoleon would have jumped on a horse and gone to see for himself; but he was forty-six years old, and he was tired. He remained seated on his camp chair near La Belle Alliance, chewing on straws and waiting for news.

FORTY-SIX

"WHERE ARE THE CAVALRY?"

In more than one instance, these counterattacks were successful, even though the Allied cavalry, both British and German, continued to demonstrate the same dauntless contempt for orders and the same lack of foresight that their colleagues had shown earlier in the battle. At one point in the conflict, General von Dornberg decided to attack a cuirassier regiment with two regiments of his own, the Twenty-third Light Dragoons, a British unit, and the First Light Dragoons of the King's German Legion; his forces, therefore, outnumbered the enemy by two to one. Should the French begin to fall back, Dornberg cautioned his commanders, only one squadron from each regiment was to pursue them; the others were to re-form their ranks and stay under cover. The first squadrons of the French regiment, attacked on both flanks, were indeed put to rout, whereupon Dornberg's entire cavalry, forgetful of his orders, dashed after the fleeing enemy.

But the French colonel, unlike his adversary, was holding some squadrons in reserve, and these broke up the Allied pursuit; immediately thereafter, while the British and German cavalry were remounting the slope in disorder and on blown horses, a fresh cuirassier regiment appeared and blocked their way. Dornberg's squadrons launched a desperate charge; the French came to a halt, drew their swords, and awaited the enemy unmoving. At the moment of impact, the light dragoons realized that their curved sabers were no match for the cuirassiers' long swords, nor could they penetrate the French cuirasses. Seeing that his men were losing heart, General von Dornberg tried to lead some of them against the enemy flank. "At this point, I was pierced through the left side into the lung. Blood started coming out of my mouth, making it difficult for me to speak. I was forced to go to the rear, and I can say nothing more about the action."

Dornberg's depressing account recalls the Duke of Wellington's caustic comments about his cavalry's ability to maneuver, and it was echoed by others. Major von Goeben of the Third KGL Hussars tells how Lord Uxbridge in person ordered two squadrons to attack two regiments of French cavalry that were remounting the slope: "This attack was made, and that part of the enemy force that the two squadrons could reach was brought to a standstill and then violently thrown back. However, since the enemy line was so much stronger, these same squadrons were then outflanked on both sides and suffered a considerable loss in officers, men, and horses." When the German regiment, which had begun the day with at least 500 sabers, re-formed its ranks behind the protection of the squares, no more than 120 men were still in their saddles.

Both the material superiority of the French cuirassiers, with their heavy armor, and the tactical ignorance of too many British and German officers were regularly confirmed in almost all the conflicts. Not content with the previous action, Captain von Kerssenbruch—who had succeeded to the command of the Third Hussars after a cannonball killed their colonel—wished to attack the flanks of several cuirassier squadrons. Kerssenbruch's men, however, quickly got the worst of the encounter, the captain was killed, and the surviving Hussars, together with the cuirassiers pursuing them, ended up among the squares. The Allied infantry fired, persuading the French to fall back, but many of them, carried along by their own momentum, passed beyond the enemy lines. When the Hussars attempted to regroup and re-form their ranks, they discovered that there was a cuirassier in the midst of them; since he refused to surrender, they tried to cut him down with their sabers, but his stout helmet and cuirass resisted many blows, and it was a good while before he finally fell.

This phase of the battle proved to be rather frustrating for many officers of the Allied cavalry. Captain Robbins of the Seventh Hussars, Lord Uxbridge's pampered personal regiment, remembered little else but that he and his men, having dismounted in order to offer a less conspicuous target, had been moved back and forth several times, always under the fire of the enemy artillery. "Much annoyed by shot and shells, and still seeing no Enemy, yet losing many men and horses, we were again moved." Robbins and his men took cover in the sunken lane, but not even this was safe: "Some guns of the Horse Artillery had just been obliged to withdraw, the Enemy's Guns having exactly got their range and doing great execution." The regiment was finally ordered to mount and engage the enemy cavalry, which was advancing near Hougoumont chateau. There was barely time to see that their adversaries were the lancers of the Imperial Guard, deployed in three ranks, moving forward "as steadily as if on a field day," and then the Hussars charged. In this attack, Robbins says, he "was wounded and fell." Thus "obliged to leave the field," he was "unable to give any account" of what happened after that.

Not surprisingly, the Allied cavalry eventually began to lose heart. The few remaining squadrons of the Household Brigade were sent forward in yet another disastrous charge, after which they were obliged to form up in the rear, deploying in one line instead of two, in order to "make an impression." One of a small number of surviving officers confessed, "Fortunately for us, nobody attacked us." Shortly thereafter, Lord Uxbridge rode over to Trip's brigade and ordered it to charge, then unsheathed his saber and set off at a trot. His adjutant, Captain Seymour, hurried after him to point out that no one was following him. Infuriated, Uxbridge turned back, but despite his efforts, he could not persuade the Netherlanders to move.

A little while later, Uxbridge saw the Cumberland Hussars showing clear signs of agitation and beginning to fall back without having received any order to do so. The earl immediately sent Seymour to see what was going on. The Hussars were an all-volunteer German unit, in their first battle. They had remained under the artillery bombardment for a long time, but it had not occurred to their officers—who were as inexperienced as they—that they could reduce casualties by having their troopers dismount. Lieutenant Waymouth of the Second Life Guards remembered seeing them sitting motionless in their saddles at a point in the battle when the entire British cavalry had dismounted and taken shelter under their horses; the captain wondered in amazement what was wrong with the German cavalrymen, allowing themselves to be slaughtered like that. Now, however, the Hussars had had enough; their commander, Colonel von Hake, explained to the incredulous Seymour that since his men were volunteers and their horses were their own property, he didn't think he could compel them to remain in the battle line. The captain ordered them to halt but achieved no result; he spoke of the honor of the regiment, grabbed the bridle of the colonel's horse, told him through his teeth what he thought of him, and finally implored him at least to deploy his men in the rear, out of range of the enemy guns; but nobody listened to Seymour, and the regiment dispersed. A number of officers and men, outraged by the cowardice of their comrades, left their ranks and attached themselves to other regiments; the rest abandoned the field and galloped all the way back to Brussels.

After the battle, this episode was much publicized, and Colonel von Hake had to go in front of a court-martial, which expelled him from the army with ignominy. Yet at this point in the battle, not even the British cavalry felt like fighting anymore. Lord Uxbridge's exhortations met the same obstinate reluctance everywhere, and in the end his chagrin was so great that he declared himself ashamed to be an Englishman. The infantry packed into their squares probably had never felt any great love for the cavalry, and they expressed the same opinions as the earl. In the square in which the Duke of Wellington himself had taken refuge, the men were so exasperated at the sight of the cuirassiers, calmly riding past them a short distance away, that someone began to shout, "Where are the cavalry? Why don't they come and pitch into those French fellows?"

In the end, the principal function that Wellington's cavalry was able to carry out during the attacks of the French cuirassiers was to take up position behind the squares, particularly those composed of recruits, and prevent the soldiers— using the flat of their swords, if necessary—from being seized by panic and running away. Deployed in a double line, their horses' muzzles almost touching the backs of the foot soldiers in the rearmost rank, the cavalry regiments occupied so much space that it was physically impossible for the infantry to creep away, even though many soldiers, especially those in the most vulnerable positions, were sorely tempted to try. Sergeant Cotton of the Seventh Hussars remembered, "At times it was quite amusing to see some of the foreign troops cut away from the angles of their squares, and our staff-officers galloping after them to intercept their flight. It was surprising to see how readily they returned to their squares."