Flashman's Waterloo

by Robert Brightwell

  It was a race and if either Ney or the emperor had shown any haste, it was a pursuit that the British should have lost. But while Ney sat indolent, the emperor also showed no hurry to close with the enemy. I heard later that he had been waiting for Ney to attack first. In the end, Napoleon sent his own horsemen forward. For a while it looked that the mounted British troops were willing to contest the field with them, but as the French came closer it became clear that the men in red were heavily outnumbered. So it was that the last British troops at Quatre Bras turned and, at the gallop, headed north over the fields.

  The rest of Ney’s force was already pushing forward to occupy the crossroads and I went with them. There was a nauseating sweet odour as we got closer. The cut-grass smell coming from the flattened crops was mixed with the stench of decay. Corpses were already bloating in the hot sun and many had been eviscerated by cannonball or sabre, with their guts spilling out and attracting swarms of flies. Near the fortress-like farm that had been fought over for much of the previous day, the bodies had been stacked in piles. A couple of trenches showed where grave-digging had been interrupted by the need to retreat.

  At the crossroads there were plenty more signs that the British had left in a hurry; the place was littered with abandoned supplies. In the largest farmhouse I found a beef stew still cooking on the stove. Several infantrymen were already gathered around the bubbling pot and they glared angrily at this unfamiliar colonel intruding on their prize. My rumbling stomach reminded me that I had not eaten anything since a hunk of break that morning. They were not my men and I doubted if they would easily obey an order to give me some of their captured food. But then I remembered something that might help.

  “I have some mushrooms,” I offered. “If you let me add them to the pot, can I share it with you? I am starving.” They nodded their consent and so I went over to the pot and dropped in the field mushrooms I had found early that morning. Another man was stirring the pot with a wooden spoon and they disappeared into a rich sauce, which, from the smell, had been enhanced with wine too.

  I settled down on a wooden bench in a corner of the room, glad of the shade on this hot day. It was strange, I thought, if I had come across these men during the battle and ordered them to advance, then they would probably have obeyed without question. But in all armies there were unwritten rules on the subject of captured bounty. Most soldiers dreamed of finding wealth in the aftermath of a battle and it was generally understood that what they found they kept. I remembered an arrogant young lieutenant in the British army in Spain. He had been foolish enough to confiscate a jewel he had seen one of his men find. Several officers warned him to return it, but he thought his rank would protect him. If I recall correctly his uncle was the regimental colonel. It was no great surprise when he was found shot and bayoneted to death after the next battle, particularly as he had been shot from behind. It paid to tread carefully when sharing any spoils of war.

  The men I was with had lost one of their squad the previous day. Another had a bandaged arm, but was determined to continue the campaign. They were tough veterans who had more than a few battles between them. The wooden table in the room was marked with fresh bloodstains and seemed to have been used for amputations. There was a recent saw mark on one edge and they joked about how long the surgeon had sawed at a limb before he had realised he was cutting wood. The courtyard outside was filling up with people and several more put their heads around the door, but apart from one who was known to them, they were sent away. Then the self-appointed cook announced the food was ready. By then I was almost drooling with hunger and we all stood around the table as the big cauldron was carried to it. The men stood with plates and bowls from their packs and I was given a cracked pottery dish. Ten pairs of eyes watched the ladle dip in the stew and then as we licked our lips in anticipation, another voice called out from the door.

  “Put that down, this building is to be used by the emperor!”

  I turned in disbelief to find a stern-faced man glaring at us. He wore a uniform that was more gold braid than cloth and instead of a sword at his hip, he held a ceremonial staff.

  “You cannot be serious,” I protested. “We have not eaten all day. Surely you can wait a moment.”

  “You are to leave at once; the emperor will be here any minute.” There was a growl of resentment from several of the men and they might have resisted yet had not one of them ducked their head to look out of the broken window.

  “The emperor is riding into the courtyard,” he whispered. At that the men reluctantly picked up their packs and then the cook went to lift up the cauldron too so that he could take it with him.

  “Leave that,” snapped the courtier. “You will have to find something else to eat.” Feeling robbed and cheated, we stepped outside, blinking in the bright sunlight. A line of less gaudy courtiers was unloading a cart with chests carrying the imperial monogram. One was open with silver cutlery on show. I assumed that if anyone was now to eat our stew it would not be out of a cracked pottery bowl.

  The emperor was on the far side of the courtyard and he looked furious. It was certainly not the moment to protest over a stolen dinner and I ducked into the thickest part of the crowd to keep out of his sight. I was just leaving the farm when I saw more horses pushing the other way. Marshal Ney had arrived.

  “So you are finally here,” Napoleon shouted at him as everyone else fell silent. “Twice I sent you message to attack this crossroads and yet you did nothing. You have let the British escape when we could have had them trapped.”

  Ney looked furious at this public reprimand. He took a deep breath to calm his temper before replying. “Perhaps if Your Majesty had believed my earlier despatch…”

  “You have cost me France!” the emperor screamed at him. “Do you understand that? If the British get away unbeaten, then you will have cost me France.”

  “They will not get far,” replied the marshal before wheeling his horse around and galloping from the farm. It was an extraordinary exchange. Looking back I think that Napoleon was remembering that he would probably need to beat a British army to force a change of government in London. Only that would stop the subsidies of gold that kept other allied armies in the field. But back then it looked as though he had every chance of getting that victory. The British army was strung out along at least two roads heading north towards Brussels. They were outnumbered and out-gunned, with many of their regiments having taken heavy casualties at Quatre Bras. Only an act of God could save them… and that is exactly what they got.

  Ney had immediately organised his cavalry and horse artillery for the pursuit and now galloped off after the British, leaving the rest of his force to follow on behind. His mood was as black as the towering clouds that were gradually covering the sky. Being the sensible staff officer that I am, with no wish to bear the brunt of his anger, I chose to make myself scarce. I rode with some infantry officers near the back of the column, safely away from any risk of action. After an hour’s march we heard what could have been the sound of cannonades, but they could also have been thunder. Certainly a storm was coming, for my horse nearly bolted after a particularly loud crash of thunder right above us. A sergeant just managed to grab its bridle in time and held on until the noise had passed.

  “That sergeant is a good man,” said the colonel of the regiment as I resumed my place alongside him. He looked up at the sky, “We will see rain in a minute, I think.” He turned to one of his officers, “Get the men to fire off any loaded weapons. We don’t want them clogged with wet powder.” The words were barely out of his mouth before the first raindrops fell. Orders were shouted down the line and there was a roll of shots as muskets were discharged. I put my hand in my jacket pocket for my pistol, which I remembered loading as a precaution the day before. I quickly cocked it and fired it harmlessly into the fields. It was only then that I noticed some strange bright yellow staining on my hand.

  “Good grief, look at that,” I exclaimed rubbing at the marks. They would
not come off and when I smelt my hand there was the distinctive smell of ink.

  “How extraordinary,” commented the colonel. “Is it a type of jaundice, do you think?”

  “No, I feel fine, it does not hurt, but something seems to have stained my fingers.” I put my hand back in my pocket and felt something lodged in the corner. Pulling it out I saw it was one of the mushrooms I had picked earlier, only this one was broken and bruised, with livid yellow marks where it had been damaged.

  “I wouldn’t eat that, sir.” It was the sergeant who was now walking alongside my horse and gazing up at what I was holding. “They are poisonous,” he added.

  “Poisonous!” I exclaimed. “But they looked just like field mushrooms when I picked them. Dammit, I nearly ate a stew full of them.”

  “They won’t kill you, sir. Some can eat them without harm, but most people will get a nasty ache in the guts for a day or so.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant, that is useful to know,” I replied tossing the thing away. I thought back to my lucky escape from the effect of the mushroom and remembered the gaudy chamberlain. If there was any justice the arrogant bastard would have helped himself to a large bowlful and would now be suffering the consequences. Then another thought occurred. Could the emperor have eaten any of the stew? Surely he must have cooks with him to prepare his food. But then I remembered that he had galloped past about half an hour after I saw him in Quatre Bras, at the head of some of his Guard cavalry. He had been keen to join the pursuit and so perhaps he had eaten some food that was already prepared. I could vouch that it certainly smelt good enough.

  Any further speculation was interrupted by the rain, which swiftly came down in torrents. It was like an Indian monsoon and within moments we were all soaked through to the skin. I had rarely known rain like it in Europe. We were marching on the fields to keep the roads clear for carts and soon the men were sinking down to their ankles in oozing mud. The pace of the march slowed to a crawl. At least at the rear of the column we were not expected to fight as well, although the rain would have soon put muskets and cannon out of action. I moved back to the easier road surface and wove the horse between the carts and guns advancing north. In the dips there were often small streams of water washing across the road, bringing mud and silt that the drivers had to push their vehicles through. On either side the soldiers trudged on, going increasingly further from the carriageway to seek ground that had not been churned up by the thousands of men and animals that had gone before. Others marched in bare feet; having tired of pulling their boots out of the mud, they now had them tied around their necks.

  It was a miserable progression, but while they marched with their heads down against the wind and the rain, morale stayed surprisingly high. There were always volunteers to help push a cart out of the mud and I even passed one group defiantly singing.

  “It must be worse for the British,” called out one soldier who caught my eye.

  “Why is that?” I asked.

  “’Cos they know we are going to beat them when this rain stops,” he replied grinning. I doubted that there was a man in the army right then who would disagree with him, and that included me. For even if it rained all day and the emperor’s guts were now churning, I still would not have taken odds of a ten to one then on a British victory.

  We stopped at a place called Genappe. Rumour had it that the British had formed a rear-guard on a ridge up ahead to cover their retreat to Brussels. Some officers were standing in a barn, gathered around a soggy map that they had spread out over the top of a barrel. They showed me where the British line was forming, near a place called Mont St Jean. Knowing Wellington’s partiality for fighting from ridges, I asked if there was a chance that he would make a stand there.

  “He would be a fool if he did,” said an opinionated major. “Look here, all the land on the western side of the road behind the British line is forest. It is woodland all the way to Brussels. There would be no way that he could organise a fighting retreat through the trees. If they are making a stand there they would have to win or that would be the end of them.” He glanced around to ensure that we all looked impressed at his clarity of judgement. “No, you mark my words, tomorrow they will be on the march again, through this place.” He pointed to the next town down the road. “What’s it called? The map is smudged.”

  “Waterloo,” replied another of the onlookers.

  Map of Waterloo Battlefield

  Chapter 34 – Sunday 18th June

  In Shakespeare’s Henry V he wrote that all those abed will count themselves ashamed that they missed the battle of Agincourt. In my time those that weren’t there said much the same about Waterloo. But Shakespeare was a knave and a liar and I will offer odds that most of those at Agincourt would have taken the warm bed instead if it had been offered. I know I would have traded my place at Waterloo for the meanest cot and the forty thousand killed or wounded that day would have done the same. But the world might be a very different place now if I had.

  It was the battle to end all battles and it ended an era. I doubt we will see its like again, I certainly hope not. As you will see, it was also, as Wellington claimed, a ‘damn close thing’. There has been much debate about whether Wellington really won it or whether Napoleon threw away the chance of victory. For my money, a chap you almost certainly will not have heard of saved the allied line at the critical moment, but we will come to that presently.

  Unlike the dawn of many battles I have fought, when I awoke in that barn in Genappe on the morning of the 18th, I was not expecting to fight at all. I was just grateful to have found a space that was relatively dry to sleep in. Most of Reille’s corps had camped around Genappe and only a fortunate few had found a roof over their heads. I slept with the other officers in the upper hayloft of the barn, while the men were packed into the floor below. The door was constantly opening, creating a draught as others tried to find shelter and with so many wet men huddled together it soon became humid, not that anyone would have thought of going outside.

  We had heard cannon fire the previous evening, which mixed in with the thunder. But as darkness fell, the only rumbles we heard were generated by the heavens rather than man. The tempest had continued throughout the night, with flashes of lightning and wind howling through cracks in the barn timbers, while the rain drummed on the roof. A superstitious man claimed that such a gale must foretell a great battle. He got quite carried away, comparing Napoleon to Moses freeing the Israelites from the Egyptians. If he thought he would awe his audience he was destined to be disappointed, for most had little time for religion. There were shouts of derision, until one voice called out from the darkness.

  “No, no the lieutenant is right, it will be just like Moses.” The man, who evidently knew what the British called the French, chuckled before adding, “In the morning the allies are going to get a plague of frogs!”

  While we were cold, wet and hungry, there was no lack of confidence in that barn. We had heard that Marshal Grouchy and thirty thousand French had been sent off to pursue the beaten Prussians. Some thought that they would head east, back home to lick their wounds and recover, but a few thought that those still able to fight would try to rendezvous with the retreating British in Brussels. They would have to be quick as the city was only a day’s march away. I could not see how Wellington could organise an effective defence with the French snapping at his heels all the way. Another unseen voice in the dark called out that he planned to spend the next night in a comfortable dry bed in Brussels. He thought he would share it with a pretty English girl seeking protection from his marauding countrymen. From the ribald comments that followed, many were thinking along similar lines. The man lying next to me offered to take me to the best brothel in the city as soon as it had been captured.

  I lay there wondering how the British were feeling at that moment. They were on the retreat, camping on an exposed ridge in this same storm. With thirty thousand French off with Grouchy, I guessed that the armies were roughly the same s
ize now, but the French had far more cannon and the best gunners to use them. The British still had some peninsular veterans, but I suspected not enough. At Quatre Bras I had seen the Dutch troops giving ground against French attacks, while some British regiments such as the one destroyed by Kellermann’s cuirassiers, were woefully inexperienced. I reluctantly concluded that the next day the British would be beaten again, either on the ridge or in Brussels. Colonel Moreau would have to serve a while longer before he could get home.

  It stopped raining just before the men were ordered to stand to at dawn. The tightly packed bodies in the barn got to their feet and staggered out, their joints stiff and their clothes steaming. Once I got outside myself I realised how fortunate we had been, for all around men sat or stood shivering with the cold. Here and there fires burned, but they gave off more smoke than heat. We had orders to march at five, for the emperor wanted to be ready to fight at nine if the British were still there. With much grumbling about fighting on an empty stomach, the men fell into ranks and started to trudge north. We had only marched two miles when were given orders to halt. The attack had been postponed and the men were allowed to cook and eat.

  Within minutes fires were being built and animals butchered. There would not be time to cook large joints of meat and so most men had small lumps held in the flames on the end of ramrods. Often they had a shirt wrapped around the other end to stop their hand burning before the morsel was cooked, which served to help dry the shirt as well. Other bushes and trees that had not been ravaged for firewood were adorned with coats, shirts and other clothes, all flapping in a light wind as they dried.

  I was not missing out on food this time and was soon gnawing down on some tough meat and some even tougher biscuits, but it was a most welcome feast. Gallopers were riding up and down the road with messages and from them we learned that the British were still on the ridge. The news that there was to be a battle rippled through the men. While they cheered at the prospect of driving off another would-be invader of France, I struggled to rid myself of a vision of routed redcoats being chased through the forest behind the ridge they had chosen to defend. I wanted desperately to believe that they stood a chance of holding out, but I could not see how.