Authors: Richard Holmes
The attacks went on all afternoon. As the cavalry drifted back, the squares were raked by artillery fire, and this was the cruellest tribulation of Wellington’s infantry that day. Tom Morris recalled that the horsemen attacking his square brought up some French gunners who turned an abandoned British piece onto them ‘and fired into us with grape-shot, which proved very destructive, making complete lanes through us …’ As the afternoon wore on things grew steadily worse:
Our situation, now, was truly awful; our men were falling by dozens from enemy fire. About this time also a large shell fell just in front of us, and while the fuze was burning out we were wondering how many of us it would destroy. When it burst, about seventeen men were killed or wounded.
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‘At four o’clock,’ remembered Lieutenant Gronow,
our square was a perfect hospital, being full of dead, dying and mutilated soldiers. The charges of cavalry were in appearance very formidable, but in reality a great relief, as the artillery could no longer fire on us: the very earth shook with the enormous mass of men and horses. I shall never forget the strange noise our bullets made against the breastplates of Kellermann’s and Mihaud’s cuirassiers … who attacked us with great fury. I can only compare it, with a somewhat homely simile, to the noise of a violent hail-storm beating on panes of glass.
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The duke was inside the square at about this time, and Gronow thought him ‘perfectly composed; but he looked very thoughtful and pale’. He asked an aide-de-camp what time it was, and when the aide replied twenty minutes past four, the duke, perhaps deliberately projecting a confidence he had good reason not to feel, said: ‘The battle is mine, and if the Prussians arrive soon there will be an end of the war.’
Then, at about 4.30pm, Wellington heard cannon-fire from beyond his left flank, indicating that the Prussians were on their way, although he was not to know that Napoleon, desperate to finish Wellington before they could intervene, had sent Lobau’s corps (over 10,000 men and 28 guns) to delay them. His line was still intact, but it was now badly battered, and he was concerned for the area north-east of Hougoumont, telling FitzRoy Somerset ‘I’ll be d—d if we shan’t lose this ground if we don’t take care.’
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He moved Adam’s brigade of British infantry up from reserve to secure it. A French combined arms attack, launched at perhaps 6pm, at last took La Haye Sainte, which was overwhelmed at around 6.30pm, only forty-three of its garrison escaping. Thick clouds of French infantry now pressed forward against Wellington’s main line, in such numbers that Wellington’s own skirmishers could not hold them. Wellington, just above Hougoumont at the time, sent 3/1
st
Guards and Adam’s brigade to drive away the
tirailleurs
with volleys and controlled charges, and the position was again re-established in Wellington’s right centre.
Around the crossroads, where the Brussels road breasts the ridge and an elm tree stood, marking the duke’s position for part of the day, the situation was more perilous. The lie of the land meant that it was harder to shelter infantry behind the crest, and the damage done by French guns was truly appalling. The 27
th
, its position now marked by a dignified memorial just north-east of the crossroads, lost 400 men before it fired a shot, and when the survivors moved off at the end of the day the battalion’s square was marked by the position of its dead. Major General Colin Halkett sent a message begging for relief, and ‘asked 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.”’
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Lieutenant General Sir Charles Alten, whose division held this sector, had been wounded, and one of his brigade commanders, Colonel Baron Ompteda, had been killed when the Prince of Orange launched him in a fruitless counter-attack on La Haye Sainte. Major General Count Kielmansegge, the senior surviving brigade commander, took over, and one of the divisional staff reported to Wellington that a gap was opening in his centre.
This very startling information he received with a degree of coolness, and replied to it in an instant with such precision and energy, as to prove the most complete self-possession. He left the impression that he was perfectly calm during every phase, however serious, of the action. He felt confident of being able to guide the storm which raged around him: and from the determined manner in which he now spoke, it was evident that he had resolved to defend to the last extremity every inch of the position which he then held. His Grace’s answer to my representation was, ‘I shall order the Brunswick troops in reserve behind Maitland [’s Guards Brigade] to the spot, and other troops besides. Go you and get all the German troops of the division to the spot that you can, and all the guns that you can find.
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Major General Sir Hussey Vivian’s cavalry brigade was ordered across from the east – Vivian recalled that the Prussians had ‘by that time formed to my left’ – to help cover the centre. He arrived to find ‘the ground actually covered with dead and dying, cannon shots and shells flying thicker than I ever heard musketry before, and our troops – some of them – giving way’.
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Wellington himself galloped across to the threatened sector, rallied the Brunswickers as they recoiled from the horror confronting them, and steadied his whole line north of La Haye Sainte. The Prince of Orange, leading a counter-attack further to the west, was knocked from his horse by a musket-ball, and carried to the rear: the Lion Mound, which so disfigures the battlefield, marks the spot where he was hit. However, by around 7pm, the line in Wellington’s centre was re-established.
The Prussians had been delayed by roads turned into quagmires by the appalling weather. Blücher pushed his men on with shouts of ‘Forward, boys! … I have given my word to Wellington and you would not have me break it.’ Part of his army struck the French towards the end of the afternoon, and became locked in battle with the troops sent by Napoleon to shore up his right flank while he dealt with Wellington. Zieten’s corps, however, made straight for Wellington. The duke had sent Muffling across to his left to stage-manage the junction of the two armies. This proved a wise decision because an inexperienced aide-de-camp told Ziethen that the British were falling back, and Müffling was quickly able to put things right. It would still take time for the Prussians to make their full weight felt, but Wellington faced the crisis of the battle knowing help was close at hand. He was by now almost alone, for his staff had been plucked away all day. Lieutenant Colonel Gordon lost his leg to a roundshot, and at about 3pm Sir William De Lancey was hit. Some said that he was fastening the duke’s cloak to the front of his saddle, but Wellington thought that he was:
speaking to me when he was struck. We were on a point of land that overlooked the plain. I had just been warned off by some soldiers … when a ball came bounding along
en ricochet
as it is called, and striking him on the back, sent him many yards over the head of his horse. He fell on his face, and bounded upwards, and fell again. All the staff dismounted and ran to him, and when I came up he said, “Pray tell them to leave me and let me die in peace.” I had him conveyed to the rear …
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At about 7pm FitzRoy Somerset, riding alongside the duke, was hit in the right arm by a musket-ball fired from La Haye Sainte, and walked off to a field hospital where Dr John Gunning took off his arm above the elbow. Somewhat later, a grapeshot passed over Wellington’s horse and hit Uxbridge in the knee. Uxbridge knew what this meant, and exclaimed: ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!’ ‘By God, sir,’ replied Wellington, ‘so you have.’
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Uxbridge’s leg was, however, still intact when Napoleon launched his last attack, sending five battalions of the Middle Guard, backed by three of the Old, against Wellington’s right centre. Wellington was just behind Maitland’s brigade, now lying down just behind the ridge, when one of the columns approached. He shouted: ‘Now, Maitland! Now is your time!’ And then, unable to resist the temptation, he gave the fire order himself: ‘Up Guards! Make ready! Fire!’ Halkett’s weak brigade joined in the firefight from the east, and Adam’s fresher men played their part from the west. Colonel Sir John Colborne, acting on his own initiative, took 1/52
nd
out of the line and engaged the French from the flank. No troops, even veterans of the Imperial Guard, could stand such punishment, and the French broke and fell back. Still the crisis was not past, for Halkett’s men also broke in the face of renewed artillery fire when they advanced to follow up the retreating guardsmen.
Wellington now threw the last ounce of himself into the battle, though his surviving staff begged him to take care. ‘So I will,’ he said, ‘directly I see those fellows driven off.’ Illuminated by a shaft of sunlight that broke through the clouds, he gestured with his hat to order a general advance. He yelled: ‘Go on, Colborne! Go on. They won’t stand. Don’t give them time to rally.’ John Kincaid, down by the sandpit with the 95
th
, heard a cheer spreading from the right, and: ‘Lord Wellington galloped up on the instant, and the men began to cheer him, but he called out “No cheering, my lads, but forward, to complete your victory.”’
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He sent Vivian’s cavalry forward, and then went on himself, despite warnings from an aide that ‘we are getting into enclosed ground, and your life is too valuable to be thrown away’. ‘Never mind,’ he replied. ‘Let them fire away. The battle’s gained: My life’s of no consequence now.’
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At about 9pm, he met Blücher at
La Belle Alliance
, and they embraced on horseback. But the allies were still divided by language. ‘Mein lieber kamarad,’ said the old Prussian, ‘quelle affaire’.
Blücher agreed that his army would carry on with the pursuit, and the duke rode back along the Brussels road to his headquarters in Waterloo, looking ‘sombre and dejected … The few individuals who attended him wore, too, rather the aspect of a little funeral train rather than that of victors in one of the most important battles ever fought.’
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After dismounting, he made the mistake of giving Copenhagen a pat, but the noble steed, who had had a day of it himself, lashed out and narrowly missed his master. He called on the wounded Gordon. ‘Thank God you are safe,’ whispered Gordon. ‘I have no doubt, Gordon, that you will do well,’ said the duke, and had him moved to his own bed. He ate supper at a table laid for too many who would never dine again, looking up anxiously every time the door opened. He drank a single glass of wine, toasting ‘the Memory of the Peninsular War’. Then ‘he held up both his hands in an imploring attitude’, and said ‘The hand of almighty God has been upon me this day’, lay down on a pallet on the floor, and was asleep in an instant.
He was still asleep when Dr John Hume came in with the preliminary casualty list.
As I entered, he sat up, his face covered with the dust and sweat of the previous day, and extended his hand to me, which I took and held in mine, whilst I told him of Gordon’s death, and of such of the casualties as had come to my knowledge. He was much affected. I felt the tears dropping fast upon my hand. And looking towards him, saw them chasing one another in furrows over his dusty cheeks. He brushed them away suddenly with his left hand, and said to me in a voice tremulous with emotion, “Well, thank God, I don’t know what it is to lose a battle; but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many of one’s friends.”’
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He rose at once, and began his formal dispatch to Earl Bathurst, which was speedily to arouse criticism because it was less generous with its praise than many wished. It did, however, ‘attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance’ he received from the Prussians, affirming that their attack ‘was a most decisive one’.
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When, in later life, Wellington was asked if there was anything he could have done better, he replied: ‘Yes, I should have given more praise.’
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Yet it was his suggestion that all ranks who fought in the battle should be given a medal, and the Waterloo medal was to become the first generally issued to the British army.
I re-read Wellington’s dispatch in the lee of the farm buildings at La Haye Sainte, and was struck, once again, by the sheer scale of Wellington’s achievement. To write, largely from memory, a detailed account of the events of 15–18 June, with only a few hours’ sleep and so many of his friends killed or wounded, was a prodigious accomplishment. He rode back to Brussels, where he wrote notes to the Earl of Aberdeen, commiserating on the death of his brother and adding, with his eye for detail, that Gordon had ‘a black horse, given to him, I believe, by Lord Ashburnham, which I will keep till I hear from you what you wish should be done with it’. Another letter informed the Duke of Beaufort that his brother FitzRoy had lost his arm, but with luck would survive ‘to join me again; and that he will long live to be, as he is likely to become, an honour to his country, as he is a satisfaction to his family and friends’.
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Then he saw Creevey through his open window, and called him in. ‘It has been a damned serious business,’ he affirmed. ‘Blücher and I have lost 30,000 [actually nearer 23,000] men. It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.’ He used much the same words in a letter to Richard:
It was the most desperate business I was ever in. I never took so much trouble about any battle, and was never so near being beat. Our loss is immense, particularly in that best of all Instruments, British Infantry. I never saw the Infantry behave so well.
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