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

by Bernard Cornwell

  General von Zieten’s men had been heavily engaged in the fighting at Ligny, where they had lost almost half their strength. Now, in the slanting sun of the evening, von Zieten led around five thousand men towards Wellington’s position. They would have heard the battle long before they saw it, though the pall of powder smoke, lit by the sheet-lightning of gun-flashes, would have been visible above the trees. The first contact came when the leading troops reached the château of Frichermont, a substantial building on the extreme left of Wellington’s position. It had been garrisoned by Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar’s Nassauer troops, the same men who had saved Quatre-Bras with their gallant defence two days before. Saxe-Weimar had been fighting all afternoon, staving off French attacks on Papelotte and La Haie; now suddenly he was attacked from the rear. One of his officers, Captain von Rettburg, recalled how his infantry was driven back ‘by numerous skirmishers followed by infantry columns’:

  Skirmishers even attacked me from the hedges in my rear. When I drove them off I became aware that we were faced by Prussians! They in turn recognised their error which had lasted less than ten minutes but had caused several dead and wounded on both sides.

  What von Rettburg does not say is that it was his bravery that ended the unfortunate clash of allies. He made his way through the musket fire to tell the Prussians their mistake. The Nassauers wore a dark green uniform, which could be mistaken for the dark blue of French coats, and their headgear was French in shape.

  More chaos was to follow. General von Zieten’s men were needed desperately on the ridge. Wellington knew another French assault was likely, and if the Prussians reinforced his left wing he could bring troops from there to strengthen his centre. General von Zieten sent scouts ahead and one of them, a young officer, returned to say that all was lost. He had seen Wellington’s army in full retreat. Just like Marshal Ney he had mistaken the chaos behind Wellington’s line for defeat, thinking it was a panicked attempt to escape when in fact it was just wounded men being taken to the rear, ammunition wagons, servants and stray horses. Shells exploded among them and roundshot, skimming the ridge, threw up gouts of earth where they landed. It looked as if the French were cannonading the panicked mass, adding to the impression of a rout. The Prussian officer could probably see little that happened on the ridge itself, it was so fogged by powder smoke, but through that smoke he would have seen the red flash of French cannons firing and the smaller flicker of muskets, their sudden flames lighting the smoke and fading instantly. Every now and then there was a larger explosion as a shell found an artillery caisson, and the ‘cloud’ of French skirmishers was close to the ridge’s crest, and so were some of the cannon, and behind the skirmishers were prowling cavalry, dimly visible through the smoke. No wonder the young officer believed that the French had captured Wellington’s ridge and that the Duke’s forces were in full retreat. He galloped back to von Zieten and told him it was hopeless, that there was no point in joining Wellington because the Duke was defeated.

  And at that same moment a staff officer arrived from Blücher with new orders. The newcomer, Captain von Scharnhorst, could not find von Zieten, so he galloped to the head of the column and gave them their orders directly: they were to turn round and march south to help Blücher with his stalled attack on Plancenoit. Wellington, it seemed, would not be reinforced; instead the Prussians would fight their separate battle south of Napoleon’s ridge.

  General von Müffling, the liaison officer with Wellington, had been waiting for von Zieten’s arrival. He had expected it much earlier, but now, at last, von Zieten’s Corps was in sight at the extreme left wing of Wellington’s position. Then, to von Müffling’s astonishment, those troops turned and marched away. ‘By this retrograde movement,’ he wrote, ‘the battle might have been lost.’ So von Müffling put spurs to his horse and galloped after the retreating Prussians.

  Meanwhile a furious argument was raging between Lieutenant-Colonel von Reiche, one of von Zieten’s staff officers, and Captain von Scharnhorst. Von Reiche wanted to obey the original orders and go to Wellington’s assistance, despite the report of the Duke’s defeat, but von Scharnhorst insisted that Blücher’s new orders must be obeyed. ‘I pointed out to him’, von Reiche said:

  that everything had been arranged with von Müffling, that Wellington counted on our arrival close to him, but von Scharnhorst did not want to listen to anything. He declared that I would be held responsible if I disobeyed Blücher’s orders. Never had I found myself in such a predicament. On one hand our troops were endangered at Plancenoit, on the other Wellington was relying on our help. I was in despair. General von Ziethen was nowhere to be found.

  The troops had paused while this argument raged, but then General Steinmetz, who commanded the advance guard of von Zieten’s column, came galloping up, angry at the delay, and brusquely told von Reiche that Blücher’s new orders would be obeyed. The column dutifully continued marching eastwards, looking for a smaller lane that led south towards Plancenoit, but just then von Zieten himself appeared and the argument started all over again. Von Zieten listened and then took a brave decision. He would ignore Blücher’s new orders and, believing von Müffling’s assurance that the Duke was not in full retreat, he ordered his troops onto the British–Dutch ridge. The Prussian 1st Corps would join Wellington after all.

  The 1st Corps had its own guns, 6-pounder cannons and 7-pounder howitzers, and they were the first of von Zieten’s weapons to be unleashed on the French. They were presumably firing along the face of the ridge, probably aiming at the gun-flashes lighting the smoke around La Haie Sainte, and fairly soon after opening fire the Prussian guns found themselves being answered with counter-battery fire. Captain Mercer, of the Royal Horse Artillery, tells the story best:

  We had scarcely fired many rounds at the enfilading battery, when a tall man in the black Brunswick uniform came galloping up to me from the rear, exclaiming ‘Ah! Mine Gott! Mine Gott! Vat is it you done, sare? Dat is your friends de Proosiens; ans you kills dem!’

  The Prussian guns had been aiming at Mercer’s battery and caused casualties, and Mercer, despite the Duke’s orders that forbade counter-battery fire, had responded. That mistake too was eventually corrected. Such errors were probably unavoidable: there were too many unfamiliar uniforms in the allied armies and the smoke was casting a gloom over a battlefield lit by the glare of flames. It was past seven in the evening now and the fortunes of war had swung sharply against the Emperor, yet all was not lost.

  Napoleon’s Imperial Guard was working its magic again. Ten battalions had been sufficient to stall the Prussian attack on Plancenoit, and eleven battalions remained in reserve. The French were pushing hard at Wellington’s line, they were close to the ridge top now, especially at the centre above La Haie Sainte. Ney had pleaded for more troops so he could launch a killer blow at Wellington’s centre and Napoleon had refused him, but now, with Prussian numbers increasing, it was time to throw the best troops of France, if not of all Europe, at the Duke’s wounded line.

  John Cross was a Captain in the 52nd, the largest of Wellington’s battalions, so large that it formed two squares instead of one. Cross, a Peninsular veteran, had been badly bruised earlier in the day, but had stayed with his company. The battalion had repeatedly advanced over the crest to push French skirmishers down the forward slope, and as they did it again, firing volleys to drive the voltigeurs back, Cross saw enemy cuirassiers riding through the smoke towards Hougoumont. There was nothing very unusual about that, cavalry had been prowling in the valley ever since their charges had failed to break the allied squares, but now Cross saw one of the cuirassier officers suddenly break away from the rest of the horsemen. The Frenchman galloped full speed ‘towards the 52nd’, Cross remembered, ‘hallooing lustily, “Vive le Roi!” as he approached.’ He held his sword high over his head, but the sword was in its scabbard as a signal that he did not come to fight. He was a Royalist and he came with a warning, that ‘the Imperial Guards were on the march to make a grand at
tack’.

  The Imperial Guards were the undefeated, they were the Immortals.

  And they would finish the battle.

  ‘Wellington at Waterloo’, by Ernest Crofts. Wellington gave the appearance of calm, but men noticed how often he consulted his timepiece and the Duke later remarked that the watch’s hands seemed to have slowed to an imperceptible crawl.

  ‘Attacking the Prussians in Plancenoit in the Battle of Waterloo’, by Adolf Northen. Eventually, von Bülow’s troops drove the French out of Plancenoit. It was gutter fighting, close-quarters carnage with bayonets and musket butts in alleys and cottage gardens. Cannon blasted roundshot and canister down narrow streets fogged by powder smoke and puddled with blood.

  ‘The Kings German Legion defending La Haie Sainte’, by Adolf Northen. The presence of the KGL was a huge nuisance to the French. Any attack on Wellington’s ridge came under flanking fire from their rifles and from the British riflemen in the sandpit just behind the farm and across the road. La Haie Sainte denied the French a chance to attack straight up the centre of Wellington’s ridge.

  ‘The Battle of Waterloo’, by Sir William Allan. Depicting the so-called ‘crisis of the battle’ at around 7:30 p.m. as Napoleon and his staff in the foreground prepare for their final attack, while the battle rages in the background. The painting was purchased from the artist by Wellington and now hangs in Apsley House in London.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained

  IT IS NOW ABOUT seven in the evening, still light though the shadows are lengthening. The weather has cleared, the last showers travelling eastwards to where Marshal Grouchy was fighting the Prussian rearguard at Wavre. The sky over Mont St Jean is ragged with cloud, the sun slanting through the gaps to light the sullen pall of smoke that hangs above the rye, barley and wheat which has been trampled, one British officer said, to the consistency of an Indian rush mat. Thousands of corpses lie in the valley and on the ridge which Wellington’s men have held through eight hours of fighting. It is still not over, but Napoleon knows he has only one chance of victory left. And the Emperor is a gambler, so he rolls the dice. They come up five and three.

  Five battalions of the Middle Guard and three battalions of the Old Guard would march towards the bloodied slope in a last attack on the allied line. Eight battalions. Napoleon had started the day with twenty-one battalions of the Imperial Guard, but he had been forced to send ten of those to hold off the Prussians at Plancenoit. Of the eleven who remained (there was another battalion at Rossomme, guarding the Emperor’s baggage and too far away to be summoned for this last assault) he kept three in reserve. Napoleon gave the order to General Drouot, the commander of the Guard, ‘La Garde au feu!’

  At most the eight battalions contained around 5,000 men, probably slightly fewer. The first infantry attack on Wellington’s line had consisted of 18,000 troops, the second, the assault by Bachelu and Foy, around 8,000. Count d’Erlon’s 18,000 men had come close to success, but the intervention of the British Heavy Cavalry had shattered them. Bachelu and Foy had been defeated with almost contemptuous ease, blasted off the slope by redcoat musketry, so at first sight the attack by the Imperial Guard looks hopeless before it begins, especially as the three battalions of the Old Guard, the grognards, were held in reserve. Those three battalions marched down into the valley and stayed there, ready to follow up the success of the five attack battalions of the Middle Guard. Those five numbered around 3,500 men, perilously few to assault a position defended by the Duke of Wellington, but those 3,500 were all veterans and all fanatical supporters of the Emperor. They had a reputation to keep and they were imbued with enormous confidence. They knew they were only sent into battle when things were desperate and their boast was that they were undefeated, and there were few men who would have denied that Napoleon’s Imperial Guard were perhaps the finest troops in Europe.

  Nor would the Middle Guard attack alone. The remnants of all Napoleon’s infantry were sent forward to press on the allied ridge. True, they were not marched in columns, but sent as a thick skirmish line, and behind them were the survivors of the Emperor’s cavalry. Two batteries of Imperial Guard horse artillery accompanied the eight battalions, and the Grand Battery was firing at the ridge until their own men obscured their targets.

  Napoleon himself led the Guard forward. He rode at their head down from the French ridge to the valley floor where he handed them over to Marshal Ney, who would lead them to the British–Dutch ridge. And off to Napoleon’s right, somewhere beyond the skeins of smoke lying over the corpses of d’Erlon’s men, there were new troops visible on the allied ridge, new troops and new guns, and the Emperor, knowing that the arrival of the Prussians would damage the morale of his men, lied to them. He sent officers to spread the untruth that the newcomers were Grouchy’s men come to assault Wellington’s left wing while the Immortals broke through his centre. One of the officers who was ordered to spread the lie was Colonel Octave Le Vavasseur, an artillery officer and an aide to Marshal Ney. Le Vavasseur wrote in his memoirs:

  I set off at a gallop with my hat raised on the tip of my sabre and rode down the line shouting ‘Vive l’Empereur! Soldats, voilà Grouchy!’ The shout was echoed by a thousand voices. The excitement of the troops reached feverish levels and they were all shouting, ‘En avant! En avant! Vive l’Empereur!’

  The line that Le Vavasseur galloped was virtually the width of the battlefield. Every man who could advance was being urged forward. The infantry who had captured La Haie Sainte went up the ridge, as did the rest of d’Erlon’s Corps. The survivors from General Bachelu’s brigade were attacking close to Hougoumont and there was renewed fighting at the château itself as Foy’s men assaulted the walls. General Reille’s men advanced behind the Guard, and all of them knew this was the supreme effort to win the day. Ney had harangued the troops. Captain Pierre Robinaux, one of the infantrymen besieging Hougoumont, heard the red-haired Marshal yell, ‘Courage! The French army is victorious! The enemy is beaten everywhere!’ and shortly after a staff officer arrived with the Emperor’s announcement that Grouchy’s troops had come to the battlefield. Napoleon was deceiving his men in an effort to raise their morale, and most soldiers believed the report, but a General who encountered Le Vavasseur knew better. ‘Look,’ he said disgustedly, gesturing towards the left wing of Wellington’s ridge, ‘it’s the Prussians.’

  Throwing in the Guard was a gamble, of course, yet Napoleon faced a grim choice. ‘Space’, he once said, ‘I can recover, but time never.’ Blücher’s attack on Plancenoit was being stalled by Lobau’s men and by the ten battalions of the Guard who had gone to Lobau’s help, but Napoleon knew that Prussian numbers would only increase. He knew too that Prussian reinforcements had reached the eastern end of Wellington’s line and it was only a matter of time before those newcomers spread along the width of the ridge. In short, he would soon face two armies that together outnumbered him hugely. But there were still two hours of daylight left, and that was time enough to destroy one of the armies. If the Guard could break through Wellington’s line, if the French could swarm over the ridge and send the British–Dutch reeling back in chaotic defeat, then he could turn on the Prussians, and they, seeing their ally so comprehensively defeated, might retreat. Or just stay where they were till nightfall. Then 19 June could bring a new battle, only this time Grouchy really would return to take part. It was a gamble, but victory on the British-held ridge would tip the odds back in France’s favour. ‘On s’engage,’ Napoleon had once said in one of those statements that made war seem so simple, ‘et alors on voit.’ You engage, then you see what happens! So he would engage and the world would see what happened.

  What was his alternative? If he did not attack then he would be attacked. He was already being assaulted in Plancenoit and if he withdrew his soldiers to the ridge where they had started the day then he could expect a combined assault from the British–Dutch and the Prussians. The sensible course was to
retreat, to take what was left of his army and withdraw across the River Sambre and so live to fight another day, but retreat would be difficult if not impossible. He would have to send thousands of men south along the Charleroi road and hope to hold off the enemy as his troops withdrew, and a few miles along that road was the narrow bridge at Genappe, a bridge just eight feet wide, the only place where all his cannon and ammunition and baggage wagons could cross the smaller River Dyle. Retreat would probably lead to chaos, to confusion and defeat. So attack. Send the Immortals to do what they were so good at doing: winning the Emperor’s battles. ‘Fortune’, the Emperor once said, ‘is a woman, she will change!’ But fortune needed help, and that was why the Imperial Guard existed, to make certain fortune gave the Emperor victory.

  La Garde au feu! En avant! Vive l’Empereur! The drums were beating the pas de charge as the Guard, the unbeaten Guard, marched north along the highway led by 150 bandsmen playing patriotic tunes. The band stopped well short of La Haie Sainte and the Emperor stayed with the musicians as the eight battalions swerved left off the road. They were in the flat valley bed now where five battalions of the Middle Guard formed their attack columns. Roundshot and shell screamed overhead, hammering the British–Dutch ridge. The Guard sent no skirmishers ahead, there were already skirmishers enough on the slope. The Guard would march to the attack and spread into line when they reached the enemy and blast him off the ridge’s top with musketry. Some historians have wondered why Ney led them leftwards instead of marching straight up the highway, but it would have been almost impossible to keep the columns in formation if the Guard had to negotiate the sunken road beside La Haie Sainte, let alone the farm itself and the sandpit beyond and the shattered gun carriages and the hundreds of corpses that lay on the crushed rye. So Ney led them towards the slope where he had charged with the cavalry, and that slope was thick with the dead too, but it was less obstructed, more inviting ground. The Guards wore tall bearskin hats that made them seem huge. They wore blue greatcoats with red epaulettes and those tall bearskin hats were plumed in red. They did not always wear the plumes, which could be stored in a cardboard tube, but they had been told they would parade in full dress uniform in the Grand Place of Brussels, and it seems they wore the plumes to battle that summer evening. The road to Brussels was the open ground that rose to the ridge’s crest, a slope of dead horses and dying men, a road to victory.