Authors: Richard Holmes
The duke put the bulk of his infantry on the ridge’s reverse slope where this was possible, and pushed picked garrisons forward into Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, whose defence he saw as crucial to his success. He was careful to match men to their task, placing Lieutenant Colonel James Macdonell of the Coldstream Guards in command of the garrison of Hougoumont, defended by light companies from the footguards battalions and some German riflemen. Müffling asked him whether he really expected to hold the place with 1,500 men. ‘Ah,’ replied the duke. ‘You don’t know Macdonell. I’ve thrown Macdonell into it.’ La Haye Sainte was held by the rifle-armed men of 2nd Light Battalion KGL, and a sandpit across the road contained some British riflemen of 1/95
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. Wellington was still worried about his right, and sent a substantial force of about 15,000 men to Hal and Tubize, about eight miles west of Hougoumont. They did not fire a shot during the battle of Waterloo.
Wellington offered battle in the expectation of Prussian support, finally confirmed at 3pm on the 17
th
. He knew that a French force (in fact under Grouchy, though he did not know as much) had been sent in pursuit of the Prussians, but had no idea how effective it would be in preventing their junction with him the following day. He spent the night in headquarters, a plain two-storey inn in the main street of Waterloo, now a Wellington museum, spared the miseries of the rain that drenched both armies overnight. Some of his men were lucky enough to find cover, and others rigged shelters made of ‘pitching blankets’, with an arrangement of button-holes and loops that enabled them to be suspended from muskets. Those who could find strong drink did so. Corporal William Wheeler of the 51
st
, who thought that the weather was ‘a prelude to victory’, for it had often rained before battles in Spain, had got hold of plenty of liquor and was ‘wet and comfortable’.
Wellington had never had any time for seconds-in-command, and did not confide in Uxbridge, who would take over from him if he were killed or wounded. Uxbridge, quartered in Waterloo near the duke, walked across to Wellington’s quarters in an effort to find out what his plans were. ‘Who will attack the first tomorrow, I or Bonaparte?’ asked the duke. ‘Bonaparte,’ replied Uxbridge. ‘Well,’ said Wellington, ‘Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects: and as my plans will depend on his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?’ Wellington sensed that this was close to a ritual humiliation, and quickly withdrew the sting: ‘There is one thing certain, Uxbridge, that is, that whatever happens, you and I will do our duty.’
Although this is another shining example of the Wellingtonian aphorism, it underlines the extraordinary fragility of the duke’s style of command. Uxbridge was an experienced and talented officer, and while he lacked Wellington’s spark of genius, he was by no means an unsafe pair of hands. There were many things they might have talked through: the role of the force at Hal and Tubize; arrangements with the Prussians; or the supreme importance of holding Hougoumont. Wellington had evidently made plans long before the first shot was fired at Waterloo, and by not opening his mind to Uxbridge, he was gravely compromising the latter’s ability to take charge of the battle if the worst happened. But, as he had once put it in India, he had always ‘walked by himself,’ and he was not about to change the lonely habit of a lifetime that rainy night in Belgium.
Wellington snatched a little sleep, but was awake between 2am and 3am on the 18 June 1815. He received another dispatch from Blücher, telling him that he would send Bülow’s corps in his direction at daybreak, followed immediately by another corps, with his remaining two preparing to move. The fact that his men were tired and not all had yet joined him prevented him from starting more quickly. This dispatch crossed a message from Müffling to Blücher, reiterating Wellington’s intention to offer battle if the Prussians supported him. Wellington wrote several letters, including those to Sir Charles Stewart and Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster; Lieutenant Drewe of the 27
th
saw him at his window at 7am as the regiment went by, and the duke left for the battlefield on Copenhagen not long afterwards. He wore white breeches, a blue frock-coat, a black cocked hat, and put his short blue cloak on, by his own estimate, fifty times during the day as showers crossed the field. Lieutenant Gronow, who had gone out without official authorisation as Picton’s aide-de-camp but had been advised to rejoin his regiment, which had been knocked about at Quatre Bras, was taking some French prisoners to Waterloo:
We heard the trampling of horses’ feet, and looking round we perceived a large cavalcade of officers coming at full speed. In a moment we recognised the Duke himself at their head. He was accompanied by the Duke of Richmond and his son, Lord William Lennox. The entire staff of the army was close at hand … Felton Harvey, FitzRoy Somerset and Delancey were the last that appeared. They all seemed as gay and unconcerned as if they were riding to meet the hounds in some quiet English country.
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Wellington spent the morning making final checks. He first rode over to his right, where some nervous Nassauers fired on him. He dropped down to Hougoumont, where he had a word about the construction of firesteps inside the orchard walls, and then rode right across to his left about Smohain before returning to the centre, and was there when French guns opened fire at 11.30am.
This burning energy was in clear contrast to Napoleon’s style that day. He had spent the night in a farmhouse on the Brussels road, and then rode forward to the inn ‘La Belle Alliance’, within sight of Wellington’s position. He spent much of the day there, using gallopers to transmit his orders, and entrusting the conduct of the attack to Marshal Ney, deservedly known as ‘bravest of the brave,’ but never one for finesse. Not that there was much subtlety in Napoleon’s plan. He intended to mount a diversionary attack on Hougoumont and then throw his main up the main road against Wellington’s centre, which was to be hammered by his massed 12-pdr guns. Soult had warned him that the British infantry was the very devil if taken head on, but he snapped back: ‘Because you have been beaten by Wellington you consider him a great general. And now I will tell you that he is a bad general, that the English are bad troops, and that this affair is nothing more serious than eating one’s breakfast.’
The attack on Hougoumont was entrusted to Reille’s corps, spearheaded by a division commanded by Napoleon’s younger brother, Prince Jerome. Wellington, on the ridge behind, shifted Bull’s battery of howitzers so that it could drop shells onto the attackers, pulled the Nassauers back from Hougoumont, and moved a steady brigade of KGL just behind the farm complex. The attack was beaten off but renewed, and now included part of Foy’s division. This time the French smashed down the north gate and forced an entry, but Macdonell personally led the rush that closed the gate and killed all who had entered, apart (for there were flashes of decency even at such desperate moments) from a drummer boy. Wellington later maintained that the battle depended on the closing of those gates. He reinforced the garrison as need arose, content that he was applying economy of force, for the battle was sucking in far more Frenchmen than allies. And for the moment, because little was happening elsewhere on the field, he was able to devote himself to the battle for Hougoumont. He kept a pad of reusable sheets of goatskin for scribbling orders that were carried off by aides, and when the buildings caught fire, he sent a note to Macdonell:
I see that the fire has communicated itself from the hay stack to the roof of the Château. You must however still keep your men in those parts to which the fire does not reach. Take care that no Men are lost by the falling in of the Roof or floors. After they will have fallen in, occupy the Ruined Walls inside of the Garden, particularly if it should be possible for the Enemy to pass through the Embers to the Inside of the House.
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Although Hougoumont was attacked repeatedly during the day, it was never taken. Perhaps 10,000 men from both armies fell around it, at least three-quarters of them French. Napoleon had failed to induce Wellington to weaken his centre, and failed to dispose of a position which was to cramp his attacks as the day wore on.
The second phase of the attack began at about 1.30pm, when d’Erlon’s corps attacked astride the
chaussée
. Napoleon’s grand battery, just west of the road, had been firing at Wellington’s line for about two hours, but its effects were mixed because many allied troops were behind the crest of the ridge. However, a good deal of damage was done, some of it reflecting the sheer caprice inherent in war. A single shot took the head off the right-hand man in John Kincaid’s battalion of rifles, just across the road from La Haye Sainte and in theory in front of the target area, while an officer of the Royal Scots Greys, well on the apparently ‘safe’ side of the crest, saw a shell obliterate a party of Highlanders carrying their wounded officer to the rear. Two of d’Erlon’s divisions advanced in unusually configured columns, each composed of a battalion in line with others stacked behind it, in an effort to combine shock with firepower, with a thick cloud of skirmishers in front of them. Wellington had ordered his gunners to reserve their fire for the infantry and not expend ammunition on counter-battery work, and as the infantry came on, they were first raked by roundshot, whole files of men falling down as if tugged by a rope, and then, for the last 300 yards, hit by canister. But they kept going and forced back the first line of defenders, and the Netherlands units fought a good deal better here than anglophone historians often suggest. There was a savage firefight as British battalions came forward over the crest, and Picton, clad in his normal fighting rig of black frock-coat and round hat, was shot through the forehead as he led his men forward, cursing.
Wellington seems to have left Picton not long before and ridden westwards. The Prince of Orange had sent a Hanoverian battalion down to help the defenders of La Haye Sainte, but it was mauled by French cavalry hovering on the left of the main infantry attack. Wellington saw this, and ordered two nearby battalions into square to hold off the cavalry. Uxbridge, on the ridge not far behind, ordered his two cavalry brigades just behind the crest to charge. Lord Edward Somerset’s Household Brigade (Life Guards and Royal Horse Guards) first rode down the French horsemen who had attacked the Hanoverians, and Sir William Ponsonby’s Union Brigade, with its three regiments of heavy cavalry, charged the French infantry. The British horsemen, coming quickly up the reverse slope and over the crest, crashed into their opponents with little warning. One of their adversaries, Captain Duthilt of the 4
th
of the Line, admitted that:
Just as it is difficult for the best cavalry to break into infantry who are formed into squares and who defend themselves with coolness and daring, so it is true that once the ranks have been penetrated, then resistance is useless and nothing remains for the cavalry to do but to slaughter at almost no risk to themselves. This is what happened, in vain our poor fellows stood up and stretched out their arms; they could not reach far enough to bayonet these cavalrymen mounted on powerful horses, and the few shots fired in this chaotic melee were just as fatal to our own men as to the English.
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The two brigades, now somewhat intermingled, cut clean through the French infantry, capturing two eagles in the process. This was in itself no mean feat, for only two had been taken in battle in the Peninsula. Some of the horsemen got as far as the grand battery, sabred the gunners, and then attacked the drivers, who ‘sat on their horses weeping aloud as we went amongst them; they were mere boys, we thought’. By this time, however, they were in disorder, their horses were blown, and the French cavalry counter-attack destroyed both brigades as a fighting force. Although the charge had accomplished its purpose, wrecking Napoleon’s first major infantry attack, the cost was heavy, and needlessly so. Wellington may have remarked sarcastically to Uxbridge: ‘Well, Paget, I hope you are satisfied with your cavalry now.’ Gronow, a well-connected gossip but, as an infantry subaltern with pressing concerns of his own, not privy to the conversation, went further, declaring that: ‘The Duke of Wellington was perfectly furious that this arm had been engaged without his orders and sent them to the rear …’
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Uxbridge was critical of his own performance, admitting later that:
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 2
nd
line, there is no saying what great advantages might not have accrued from it. I am the less pardonable in having deviated from a principle I had laid down for myself …
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Nevertheless, by early afternoon, Wellington had some cause for satisfaction. Hougoumont was holding well, and the threat to his centre had been checked for the time being, enabling him to send reinforcements down to La Haye Sainte and personally check the state of 1/95
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, re-established in the sandpit, and in the process to tick off John Kincaid who, he thought, was deliberately making his horse cavort. He was reasonably confident that the French would not attack west of Hougoumont, but he kept the force at Hal and Tubize in case Napoleon was undertaking some sort of flanking manoeuvre – which, indeed, is precisely what some of his generals had urged him to do that morning. Another infantry attack on La Haye Sainte was beaten off with little difficulty, and while it was in progress, the grand battery was realigned, partly to take account of the damage inflicted by the cavalry.
The next challenge was posed by the French cavalry. Some 7,000 of them came on between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, regiments compressed by the lack of space, but advancing with utter determination. Sergeant Tom Morris of the 73
rd
Regiment was not alone in believing that ‘Their appearance was of such a formidable nature that I thought we did not have the slightest chance against them.’
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Wellington knew that the threat was more apparent than real, provided that his infantry stood fast and his gunners did as they had been told, firing till the last moment and then running into the infantry squares for safety. He told FitzRoy Somerset that ‘Napoleon was guilty of a great fault in not attacking us with infantry at the same time.’
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The cavalry swirled around the squares but failed to break one. Wellington rode from square to square; sometimes he ‘relied on his own dexterity as a horseman and the speed of his horse’ and sometimes he took refuge inside a square as the horsemen surged around it. This was demonstrative leadership of the highest order: the duke’s infantry could see him in their midst, and were not above making sharp observations. ‘I recollect that when his Grace was in our square,’ wrote Gronow, ‘our soldiers were so mortified at seeing the French deliberately walking their horses between our regiment and those regiments to our left and right that they shouted. “Where are our cavalry? Why don’t they come and pitch into those French fellows? …”’
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