Waterloo: The True Story of Four Days, Three Armies and Three Battles

by Bernard Cornwell

  But the fight at La Haie Sainte is not the crucial battle. The Germans inside are besieged, but the French, though they surround the farm, have no means of escalading the walls or forcing the stout gates. The barn doors are missing, but the Legion has barricaded the entrance and keep the French at bay. On the other flank the defenders of Papelotte are driven out by sheer weight of numbers, but again that is not crucial. Victory will come only if the columns reach the crest and pierce the Duke’s line.

  The guns of the Grand Battery have stopped firing and their huge clouds of gun smoke slowly drift eastwards to clear the view across the valley. And the French see victory. They see the mass of blue uniforms reach the crest. Behind them are great swathes of bloodied rye and innumerable bodies, some dead, some crippled, some crawling back towards the silent guns, but the Eagles are flying high on the British ridge. A French staff officer glanced at Napoleon to see his reaction. ‘Satisfaction could be seen written on his face, all was going well and there is no doubt that at that moment he thought his battle was won.’ Marshal Soult believed the same thing and, while watching the slowly unfolding events on the valley’s far side, even found time to write a swift letter to a friend in Paris saying that the battle was going excellently and promised a fine hope of victory.

  But Soult had fought the Duke of Wellington before and he should have known better.

  * * *

  Young Louis Canler survived the crossing of the valley. He had seen men killed and maimed, but he was untouched. The climb to the crest was difficult because the soil was so wet and the trampled rye stalks so tangling, and as he neared the hedge which marked the summit the strap of his right gaiter broke. The gaiters helped keep his shoes on and now his right foot came out of his shoe. He bent down to pull the shoe out of the mud and at that moment a musket ball slammed through his shako, making a hole through the metal plate stamped with his regiment’s number. The ball grazed his scalp and blew out of the back of the shako. If his shoe had not been stuck in mud he would have been dead.

  That musket ball probably came from a soldier in Bylandt’s Brigade, the Dutch troops who were posted behind the hedges. Or possibly it was fired by any of the Dutch–British skirmishers who had retreated to the crest where the hedges lined the sunken road. The French had halted momentarily, not out of fear of what waited beyond the hedges, but because the time had come to deploy into line. The column had done its job of getting a mass of men across the valley, but now it was firepower that would win the day, and that needed a line formation.

  That sounds like a disciplined manoeuvre, going from column to line, but in truth it was frenetic. The French were suddenly aware that troops waited beyond the crest; those troops were standing now. Musketry came from the Dutch battalions who were lining the hedge. The leading French battalions returned the fire. Captain Duthilt, who was three hundred yards east of young Canler, says they ‘rushed’ on the enemy. ‘We chased them with the bayonet,’ he says, ‘and crossed the hedges … we were on the plateau and shouted victory.’

  The shout was premature, even though the French assault had driven off most of Bylandt’s Brigade. Those Dutch soldiers had been placed further forward than the rest of the defenders, they had lined the hedges and suffered more from the cannonade. They exchanged volley fire with the French for a moment, then broke, fled and were jeered by the redcoats as they ran. One Dutch battalion stayed to fight it out, and most of the fugitives were rallied in the rear and went back to the crest when the action was over. The Brigade was largely made up of inexperienced soldiers who had fought bravely at Quatre-Bras, but the long cannonade and the assault of the vast French columns broke their nerve. That was one effect of columns. They might have limited firepower, but their very size made them terrifying to inexperienced soldiers.

  Yet behind the crest were some very experienced soldiers, men who had fought French columns before, men in red coats led by the irascible Welshman, General Picton. Captain Mercer had met Picton the evening before, but had not recognized him:

  He was dressed in a shabby old drab greatcoat and a rusty round hat. I took him at the time for some amateur from Brussels (of whom we had heard there were several hovering about) and thinking many of his questions rather impertinent was somewhat short in answering him, and he soon left us. Imagine my astonishment on learning soon after that this was Sir Thomas Picton!

  Picton had exchanged the rusty round hat for a top hat. He was on horseback, watching the French who had managed to get past the hedges and roadway. It was now that Picton ordered his redcoats forward. They were in line, of course, and overlapped the disordered French columns. Lieutenant James Kerr-Ross of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders describes advancing to the crest of the ridge where:

  we encountered a strong column of French infantry forming on the top of our position, whose leading files gave us their fire which our men did not return, but advanced steadily to the attack, and when we got within a very short distance of the enemy (at perhaps not thirty yards) they broke up and ran back in great confusion. Our fire was now very destructive.

  That was classic British infantry work: not to waste inaccurate musket fire at long range, but get close and stay steady and then let the practised volley fire do its deadly work. Picton saw the French recoil and recognized the chance. ‘Charge!’ he shouted. ‘Charge, Hurrah!’ and was immediately killed by a musket ball that pierced his forehead. His presentiment beside the Welsh grave had been sadly accurate.

  Yet so had his final impetus. The redcoats went forward with fixed bayonets and the French were checked, though not before there was some hand-to-hand fighting. One of the British battalions was the 32nd, from Cornwall. It was closest to the crossroads, just north of La Haie Sainte, and the French closed on the battalion. One of the colour bearers was a lieutenant who was suddenly confronted by a French officer who:

  seized the staff, I still retaining a grasp of the silk (the colours were nearly new). At the same moment he attempted to draw his sabre, but had not accomplished it when the covering Colour-Sergeant, named Switzer, thrust his pike into his breast, and the right rank and file of the division, named Lacy, fired into him. He fell dead at my feet.

  The Colour-Sergeants were there to do just that, protect the colours, and they were armed with a weapon that would not have been out of place at Agincourt, a spontoon, a nine-foot spear with a cross-piece to prevent the blade penetrating an enemy’s body too far. This was not mercy, but practicality. One British officer at Waterloo watched an enemy lancer trying to pull his weapon from the body of a British dragoon and the man needed several hard tugs to free the blade and was vulnerable while he did that. The cross-piece was meant to prevent the blade being trapped by a corpse.

  Lieutenant Scheltens was in the Dutch–Belgian battalion that did not flee with the rest of Bylandt’s Brigade. ‘Our battalion opened fire as soon as our skirmishers had come in,’ and that must have been perilously close to the ridge top because:

  Captain Henri l’Olivier, who commanded our grenadier company, was struck on the arm by a musket ball of which the wadding, or cartridge paper, remained smoking in the sleeve of his tunic.

  There was fighting all along the ridge top now. Some redcoat battalions, just like Lieutenant Scheltens’s men, were giving volley fire at a murderously close range. The volleys rippled along the battalions, a company firing, then reloading and waiting their turn. The French had not deployed properly. They were meant to widen into a line that would overlap their opponents, but the volleys whipped in from the flanks and drove men back. Other redcoats were using bayonets, stabbing the 17-inch blades at undisciplined Frenchmen. Men were screaming, shouting, the drums still beating, trumpets blaring, muskets hammering as thousands of men contested the ridge top. The redcoats had the momentary advantage, and Captain Duthilt thought that was caused by his men’s enthusiasm, which had:

  caused our ranks to fall into confusion and in our turn we were assailed with the bayonet by new enemies. The struggle recommenced and a
dreadful mêlée followed. In this bloody confusion the officers did their duty by trying to restore some order … for troops in disorder can do nothing.

  Duthilt was faced by the 92nd, who were using their bayonets to drive the French back while off to their right Captain Johnny Kincaid had been forced out of his sandpit and had retreated to the ridge top by the crossroads, where his riflemen were firing at the nearest column. Sir James Kempt had taken over command from Picton and he shouted to Kincaid, wanting an assurance ‘that I would never quit that spot’. Kincaid gave his word to the general, then immediately regretted it because:

  glancing my eye to the right, I saw the next field covered with the cuirassiers, some of whom were making directly for the gap in the hedge where I was standing.

  French cavalry threatened, French infantry was on the ridge’s crest and Marshal Soult was surely justified in thinking that victory was imminent. Duthilt’s men might have been in disorder, but there were more battalions stacked behind his and sheer weight of numbers would push the redcoats back. And those redcoats were in line, and infantry in line was red meat to cavalrymen, as the cuirassiers had already proved on the Hanoverians whose slaughtered bodies lay thick close to La Haie Sainte. The British battalions would have to form square and, while that would protect them from cavalry, it would make them horribly vulnerable to French infantry volleys. Scissors, paper, stone.

  And then the cavalry charged.

  Only it was the British cavalry.

  * * *

  Baron Simon Bernard was an aide to the Emperor. A clever man in his mid-thirties, he was an engineer by training and a soldier by choice. He had distinguished himself at the battle of Leipzig, but after Napoleon’s first abdication he had sworn his loyalty to King Louis XVIII and been promoted to General. Napoleon’s return from Elba had prompted another change of allegiance and General Bernard was once again an aide to the Emperor.

  Now, as the sounds of battle rose to a crescendo, he rode eastwards with a light cavalry regiment. The day’s small wind was out of the west, so the noise of cannon and the crackling of muskets – some men said it sounded like dry thorns burning – was carried to the horsemen as they probed the tangled countryside east of the battlefield.

  After a while General Bernard dismounted. The cavalry stayed hidden in woodland as he went further east on foot. Among Bernard’s many skills was map-making, so he knew how to read countryside and he kept himself concealed by low ground, by hedgerows and trees. After a while he reached the edge of the Lasne defile and crouched there. The river beneath him was swollen by the rains, but he was more interested in the soldiers he could see crowding the defile’s far side. He used his spyglass.

  He had hoped to see blue uniforms, and he did. He knew the Prussians were advancing through this difficult countryside, but he had still hoped to see evidence of Grouchy’s men on the river’s far side, but instead he saw that the coats were the darker blue of Prussian infantry. The troops across the defile also wore rolled-up blankets slung over their left shoulders, and no army except the Prussian did that. The good news was that the river’s defile had steep, high banks that were slippery with mud. There was no easy road for the Prussian artillery, just an obstacle that would give the enemy engineers a nightmare. There was time, then, but not much.

  He went back to his horse and rode to give Napoleon the news.

  General Bernard was to survive the day unscathed, but his change of allegiance from Louis XVIII to the Emperor meant he would be banished from France, so eventually he emigrated to the United States, where his engineer training was put to good use. He built Fort Monroe in Virginia and helped design the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

  But for now he has to tell the Emperor that the Prussians are desperately close to the French right flank, which means the British–Dutch must be broken, or else it will become a battle of three armies.

  And on the crest of the British ridge the Eagles are flying high.

  * * *

  Perhaps the most famous painting of Waterloo is Lady Butler’s magnificent picture showing the charge of the Royal Scots Greys. The painting is called Scotland Forever! and now hangs in Leeds Art Gallery, but the picture, splendid though it is, is entirely misleading. It was painted sixty-six years after the battle and Lady Butler used her husband’s army connections to arrange for the regiment to charge at her while she sat at her easel. The big grey horses are at full gallop, led by an officer brandishing his sword, and the mass of men come straight towards the eye. It is the enemy’s view, and it is terrifying.

  So was the real charge, but where Lady Butler shows the horsemen galloping on flat ground, the British heavy cavalry had to negotiate the sunken road, the hedges and the redcoats before they could close with the enemy. Four regiments made the charge. No one seems certain who ordered the counter-attack by the heavy cavalry, it was either Wellington or, more likely, Lord Uxbridge, but the timing was perfect. The Household Brigade attacked down the main road, and then, going from west to east, the Royals, the Inniskilling Dragoons and on the left flank the Royal Scots Greys. The English, the Irish and the Scots. They were all heavy horsemen, mounted on big horses and carrying the brutal Heavy Cavalry Pattern sword, a straight-bladed weapon that could thrust or hack. Light cavalry carried the sabre, a slashing weapon, but heavy cavalry were the shock troops of a battlefield, using weight, reach and strength to break the enemy. One thousand three hundred such cavalrymen went into the fight. They came in two lines from behind the redcoats, who had to move hurriedly aside to let the horsemen through and some redcoats were trampled, while others grabbed hold of stirrups and went with the cavalry, and they charged the whole width of the ridge, the westernmost on the highway, and so along to the crest above Papelotte. The shock, the surprise, was total.

  John Dickson, who remembered watching Napoleon’s army parade in the early morning shafts of sunlight, was a Corporal in the Royal Scots Greys. His regiment, all mounted on white (i.e. grey) horses, was behind the 92nd, those Scots who had fought so hard at Quatre-Bras. He heard Sir Denis Pack, the brigade commander, appeal to the 92nd, ‘You must advance! All in front of you have given way!’ He meant the battalions of Bylandt’s Brigade who had fled, and so the Highlanders fixed bayonets and advanced through the beech and holly hedge, crossed the road and delivered a volley at twenty paces into the French, and it was just then that Dickson heard the order, ‘Now then, Scots Greys, charge!’

  At once a great cheer rose from our ranks … I dug my spurs into my brave old Rattler and we were off like the wind … after rearing for a moment, she sprang forward, uttering loud neighings and snortings and leapt over the holly hedge at a terrific speed. It was a grand sight to see the long line of giant grey horses dashing along with flowing manes and heads down, tearing up the turf about them as they went. The men in their red coats and tall bear-skins were cheering loudly, and the trumpeters were sounding the ‘charge’. Beyond the first hedge the road was sunk between high, sloping banks, and it was a difficult feat to descend without falling; but there were very few accidents … All of us were greatly excited and began crying ‘Hurrah! Ninety-Second! Scotland for ever!’ as we crossed the road … we heard the Highland pipers playing … and I clearly saw my old friend Pipe-Major Cameron standing apart on a hillock coolly playing ‘Johnny Cope, are you wauking yet?’ in all the din … I rode in the second rank. As we tightened our grip to descend the hillside among the corn, we could make out the feather bonnets of the Highlanders, and heard the officers crying out to them to wheel back by sections. A moment more and we were among them. Poor fellows! Some of them had not time to get clear of us, and were knocked down … They were all Gordons, and as we passed through them they shouted, ‘Go at them, the Greys! Scotland for ever!’ My blood thrilled at this, and I clutched my sabre tighter. Many of the Highlanders grasped our stirrups, and in the fiercest excitement dashed with us into the fight. The French were uttering loud, discordant yells. Just then I saw the first Frenchman. A young officer of Fusiliers
made a slash at me with his sword, but I parried it and broke his arm; the next second we were in the thick of them. We could not see five yards ahead for the smoke … The French were fighting like tigers … as we were sweeping down a steep slope on the top of them, they had to give way. Then those in front began to cry out for ‘quarter’ throwing down their muskets and taking off their belts. The Gordons at this rushed in and drove the French to the rear. I was now in the front rank, for many of ours had fallen.

  The Royal Scots Greys charged at the eastern end of the ridge. The French had advanced their great columns in echelon from the west, so the division attacked by Dickson and his comrades had still not reached the summit, nor would they now because the big horses were cutting bloody channels into the French ranks and putting them to rout. Young Louis Canler was in the column closest to the Brussels highway, the column which had led the echelon attack. He had suffered the bombardment of the allied guns as his battalion crossed the valley and seen the drummer keep beating his drum despite losing his right arm. His column did reach the summit of the ridge, and the men thought that was enough to give them victory, but no sooner had they reached the sunken road than they were attacked by the Royals, an English heavy cavalry regiment. Canler comments that there was no time to form square and so his unit was broken.

  And that was the great disadvantage of the formation the French had chosen to use. A column made of successive battalions in line looked magnificent and, given the chance, might have spread into a formidable line to give devastating volley fire, but it would take a battalion in a three-rank line a lot of time to form square, and they would be hampered by the battalions in front and behind while they did. There was neither space nor time to form square. Major Frederick Clarke, who charged with the Scots Greys, reckons the enemy was trying to form square, but ‘the first and nearest square had not time to complete their formation, and the Greys charged through it.’ So the British heavy cavalry drove into the panicking columns and Canler tells what happened: