by Iain Gale
Destruction cowers, to mark what deeds are done;
For on this morn three potent nations meet,
To shed before his shrine the blood he deems most sweet.
FIFTEEN
Chantelet farm, 9 p.m. Ney
Gently, and with infinite patience, he picked the lumps of crusted mud from the tall collar of the thick blue coat, taking care to ensure that not an inch of the elaborately embroidered gold oak leaves or heavy bullion epaulettes should be obscured. He would be on show tomorrow. With the Emperor. Before the entire army.
Rollin had offered to help, but Ney preferred to clean his uniform himself. Took him back to the old days. To Sergeant-Major Michel Ney, 5th Hussars. Cleaning the mud from his boots after Jemappes, before the French army’s triumphal entry into Brussels. November 1792. Curious, he thought, that so soon now he would be reliving that day. Leading another victorious army into that city.
Memories flooded his mind. Forgotten faces. Names of men. Names of horses, curiously. The smell of stables. The warm breath of the horses as you rubbed them down. The feel of the leather harness. Touching his sword belt, he tried to recapture it. Not the same. Never the same. We’re all changed now.
He went back to working on the coat. It was all he could do now. Except eat and sleep, perhaps. And wait. He had personally seen to it that the last of the army was in its prescribed position. Had posted Reille’s corps on the left wing, d’Erlon’s on the right and, astride the great chaussée that ran up through the French lines, Lobau’s corps and the Garde. One on either side of the road. Barely a mile away from Wellington. Certainly, after the confusion and bitterness of that morning he had no desire to spend this evening with the Emperor, even had he been given the invitation. Prince Jerome, Reille, Bachelu, Piré had taken rooms at Genappe, in the inn which on the previous evening had been occupied by the British staff. Jerome. Reille would keep him in check. He was brave enough for sure. Quatre-Bras had shown that. But Ney still worried about how he would react in the heat of what promised to be an altogether grander affair. Wondered too whether he might use his position as the Emperor’s brother. Pull rank he didn’t have. They would have to wait and see. Such thoughts did not make for sociability. Besides, Jerome was piss-poor company. Ney had preferred to look elsewhere for his lodging and had been fortunate to find a comfortable billet in this modest farm. Chantelet, they called it. It was exactly parallel with the Emperor’s headquarters at the neighbouring farmhouse of Le Caillou, but separated by a distance of perhaps 1,200 metres and a small wood. He was also a good 2 kilometres back from the front line and away too from the generals in their mess at the village of Plancenoit, across a small stream to the north.
He guessed at the subject of their present conversation. The pursuit had been shambolic. The mud had done for them. The English cavalry had played hide-and-seek through the villages and the fields. And their horse artillery. How did they move their guns like that? So damned fast. Like birds of prey wheeling in the sky and then diving on their quarry before rising again, instantly out of reach.
It had not been made any easier of course, he thought, by that idiot Marbot mistaking the red-coated Garde lancers covering his flank for English cavalry. That had been a bloody, unnecessary mistake. Two troopers killed by their own side, two more and a sous-lieutenant wounded and three Hussars rendered hors de combat. But it was the sort of thing that happened when soldiers were nervous. And Ney knew that if the Emperor and his generals were nervous, the condition would run like plague through the army.
Of course the English must be pursued, but the Emperor’s hysteria had put everyone on edge. Himself included. Now the army was boiling over with impatience to be at the enemy.
Thank God he’d found this place. Quiet and solitary. Away from the line. Just himself, the two aides and the fat cook and simple servant that the ever-resourceful Rollin had ‘requisitioned’ from the Emperor’s own service léger. Smiling, Ney wondered whether they had yet been missed. Doubted it. Napoleon had other things on his mind.
He looked down to where, on the table, beside the white and gold cross of his Légion d’Honneur, he had placed the miniature portrait of Aglaé that he kept tucked inside his coat as he had through a dozen campaigns. She gazed up at him, her soft brown almond-shaped eyes catching his breath as if she had been there in person. Once more, my love, he told her, silently. Once more for France and for my Emperor. Then you and our darling boys shall have me entirely to yourselves.
He began again to hum the little piece of Mozart that always came into his mind with thoughts of his wife. From the small kitchen to the rear of the farmhouse came the smell of roasting mutton. For a moment it seemed a strangely domestic scene.
Rollin entered. ‘Dinner, sire? We have a roast sheep.’
‘Delicious. And I presume you have found some wine? You’ll join me, Rollin? And find Heymes.’
Ney stood up, hung his cleaned coat on a hook on the wall, picked up a log and flung it on the fire. He paused in front of it to rub his hands together before sitting down in his shirtsleeves at the simple, scrubbed table. From a door opposite the kitchen the two aides appeared together, grinning, each holding two bottles of red wine.
‘Liberating our host’s cellars again, Heymes? Remember Friedland?’
‘Oh yes, sir. What a night.’
‘Yes, what a night. And what a victory.’
‘It was magnificent. You were magnificent.’
Ney smiled at the compliment. Finished pouring himself a glass of wine. Took a swig and swallowed, loudly.
‘Heymes. You don’t think that I acted wrongly today? I was justified, wasn’t I? I mean, how the devil could the Emperor have expected me to attack the entire Allied army?’
The food had arrived on the table. He hacked off a slice of the joint, cut it in two and stuffed half into his mouth. He did not need a reply. Had really asked the question of himself. Knew the answer. Nothing had been the same since he had rejoined the army four days ago. The Emperor he knew now was a changed man. All that had happened just compounded the worries he had felt since that night at Avesnes. Tomorrow, he thought, would come a chance to prove himself again. To win back the Emperor’s confidence. Tomorrow, another chance to push for one last time at the boundaries of glory. Heymes was speaking.
‘What? I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.’
The aide smiled. ‘I was merely saying, sire, that no one can blame you for what you did or did not do. You did more than any man could. I’m quite sure that the Emperor is aware of that. He cannot expect the impossible.’
‘Quite so.’
Ney pushed his chair away from the table. Stood up. ‘Sorry. I need a breath of air. Excuse me, gentlemen.’
Not bothering to put on his coat, Ney threw his cloak over his billowing shirt and walked out into the rain. Close to the farm was a chapel. Its beautiful ornate façade seemed curiously out of place in this setting, directly opposite the gates of the simple, whitewashed farm.
From beyond the wood came the dull noise of the army. Somewhere behind those trees were 70,000 men. And beyond them, he presumed, unless Wellington had cut and run, 70,000 more wearing different-coloured coats and speaking a different language. Different languages. English, Scots, Irish, Germans, Dutch and French-speaking Belgians. Near on 150,000 men, waiting to kill or be killed. Surely, Wellington would leave now. Would not be foolish enough to take on the Emperor without the Prussians. Their numbers were roughly equal. But the army encamped on the opposite ridge was a rag-bag. So very different from the men who had driven them from Spain.
Perhaps there would be no battle tomorrow. Perhaps the British would retreat to the coast. Would give up Brussels.
The Emperor would triumph again. There would be no more death. Ney sat down on the damp stone steps of the little chapel, rested his head in his palms and placed his elbows on his knees. No more war? Was that really what he wanted? Perhaps. Would he miss it? Almost certainly. Might there really not be a battle tomor
row? If there was, then surely it would be the greatest of battles. Did he, Michel Ney, the ‘Bravest of the Brave’, really want to miss that? The Emperor pitted against the finest that Britain had to send against him? The arrogant Irishman who had defeated Ney himself. Would he fight? They would only know in the morning. Ney got up. Pulled his cloak a little tighter. Shivered
He spoke softly. To himself. Barely audible. ‘Oh my darling. Darling Aglaé. What fate has brought me to this place? This is not like any other battle. Surely this is not how it all begins? Alone here in the rain. Where is the Emperor? Where is the glory?’
The sharp sound of heavy boots made him stop. Heymes. ‘Sire? Come in out of the rain.’
‘Of course. Sorry. I was thinking. Do you think that Wellington will stand?’
‘Without doubt, sire. He needs this battle as much as we do.’
‘Yes. Of course. But what Wellington needs and what he decides are not always one and the same. I don’t know, Heymes. I’m not so sure.’
Silence. Both men knew what he meant. No one could be sure of anything any more. Wellington. The weather. Their army. Their Emperor.
‘Come in, sire. You’re tired. Have another glass of wine with us.’
‘Yes … Yes. More wine. Good idea. We’ll know in the morning. Eh, Heymes? Tomorrow will tell.’
DAY FOUR
Sunday 18 June 1815
SIXTEEN
Mont St Jean, 8.15 a.m. De Lancey
The mist, which had filled the valley for much of the night, had lifted now and the field was newly revealed to him. Holding the precious map in his hands, De Lancey sat, legs pulled up before him, his back against an old elm tree which grew a few yards in front of the crossroads. Above his head a solitary songbird was chattering in its branches. He was sitting almost directly at the centre of a long ridge which ran for three miles in a nearly straight line, from east to west. Along its length stretched the entire Allied army. Sixty-eight thousand men with twenty thousand horses and eight score of cannon. The smoke from their campfires spiralled into the leaden sky and De Lancey smiled as he recognized the familiar rattle and hum of an awakening army. As bugle calls and drumbeats summoned regiments and squadrons and troops, all about him the men stood to and blew on cold fingers.
To the right of where he sat, the ground sloped away gently to end in a flat-bottomed valley. To his left, though, he noted again that the contours were more complex. There were dips and gulleys here and there where it occurred to De Lancey that a man on a horse, perhaps a squadron or even an entire regiment of cavalry, could hide quite easily. Here in the centre, where the roads met, the Brussels highway was enclosed by a cutting, some ten or twelve feet deep. The road to Nivelles that ran off to his right was similarly sunken for a good hundred yards with what was in effect a natural defensive trench. To his left further cover was provided along the ridge by two holly hedges which flanked the road to the village of Ohain.
He looked to his front, across the apple trees and blue-tiled rooftops of a little walled farm, to the other side of the valley, where perhaps 1,000 yards away there rose a similar ridge. Originally Wellington had been of a mind to place his force along this line. But the two of them had concluded that their present position would be on the whole more advantageous. Now that opposite slope was filled with the French. Scores of them. Although there were not as many as he had supposed he might see. Indeed they appeared still to be arriving on the field, a steady flow up the road from the direction of Genappe. Napoleon seemed to be in no rush to meet his nemesis. Still De Lancey reckoned, there must be some 20,000 infantry and cavalry already assembled. The guns, also still being moved into position, were harder to count. It was a splendid sight. At once both impressive and intimidating. Raising his spyglass, he was able to discern among the dark blue masses a few of the more distinctive uniforms. The green of the mounted chasseurs, familiar from Spain, picked out with primrose yellow, bright pink and scarlet. The fluttering red and white pennants and glittering golden helmets that betrayed the presence of lancers and, even under this dull heaven, the momentary sparkle of light reflected from the breastplates of thousands of armoured cuirassiers.
He had risen at six in the billet he shared with Wellington in the village of Waterloo, two miles to the north, and had ridden here with the Peer and a few of the staff: Gordon, Somerset, Hervey and the foreign attachés including Müffling and Miguel d’Alava, all eager to reconnoitre the chosen ground in daylight. Passing the farm of Mont St Jean, slightly to the rear of the position, De Lancey had noticed that the surgeons had already transformed it into an aid post and were busy sharpening the tools of their grisly trade on grindstones set up in the courtyard by the cavalry blacksmiths.
After fifteen days of downpours the fields had been churned to mud by thousands of wagons and horses. Even the recently cobbled main road was sticky with the stuff. Although the rain had now stopped, the sky was again threatening and the air unseasonably cool.
He had sat in this spot since his arrival. In the same place that he had occupied for two hours the previous evening. It was a rare vantage point from which to weigh up the strength of the Allied position. And its weaknesses. And he thought now that at last he might have a notion of where Napoleon would make his push. There were two clear options.
The Allies were well protected on their left flank – to the east – by the marshy ground around the river Dyle and by a complex system of enclosed fields and copses that must be impenetrable to cavalry and horse artillery.
It occurred to him that in fact any attack across this country was going to be a feat of superhuman strength. For in the fields around him, apart from a few laid to clover, the rye and wheat grew full in ear, standing as high as a man above ponds, puddles and mud. To his right and just out of sight lay the château of Hougoumont, walled, wooded and secure. Beyond it, though, was open country. Napoleon might try there. For, apart from the château, their right flank was ‘in the air’. Horribly exposed. If the French managed to manoeuvre men around the west side of Hougoumont and follow up with cavalry then they would simply roll up the Allied line. De Lancey knew this to be in Wellington’s mind. Hadn’t the Peer left a precious 15,000 men, a fifth of his force, over on the right at the village of Hal, ready to counter-attack just such a flanking march? This too surely was the reason why the bulk of their army was massed not in a central reserve, but towards their right. Yes. That was certainly their weakest point.
But in the course of the last few hours De Lancey had also become increasingly nervous of another target. Another Achilles’ heel. Directly in front of him lay the farm of La Haye Sainte. A determined French assault might carry the farmhouse, and once they had that, once they were able to call up artillery and launch assaults from behind the cover of the buildings, another push would surely carry the day.
Right and centre. Their defence must somehow concentrate on both these areas. He wondered how the Peer would play that one. Doubtless he had already formed a plan in his mind. Of course he wouldn’t tell them what it might be. That was not his way. And besides, as far as De Lancey could see, he had no real plan save to stand and fight, until Blücher arrived. Or until the French pushed him off his ridge.
De Lancey stood up. Shook his cramped legs back to life. Brushed the mud and the moss from his coat and turned towards the rear. Behind and below him, on the reverse slope, beyond the green-jacketed light infantry of the German Legion, stood thousands of dismounted cavalry. The red-coated heavy dragoons of the Household Brigade with the navy of the Blues and in the far distance the distinctive dark blue and silver helmets of the Belgian carabiniers. While officers and men went in search of what little breakfast was to be had, the sharp clang of metal on metal revealed that the farriers were busy replacing shoes cast on the previous day’s retreat. The horses stood tied together in long lines, and behind them De Lancey could see the laden artillery trains and the supply wagons piled with such an assortment of baggage that they looked for all the world like a band
of gypsies. Around them, chatting, laughing, washing, some half-naked, he could make out in their hundreds the camp followers, the women who followed their husbands and lovers to the field of battle just as they had in Spain and down through the generations before them through Flanders and across the German plains. There were children too. Soldiers’ children who played incongruously between the cannon wheels and danced their rhymes round piles of muskets and barrels of powder. Closer to him stood other horses, the finer-boned, well-groomed mounts of the infantry’s field officers, tethered to bayonets dug deep into the muddy ground. Their masters were gathered in groups about them, discussing the coming day and more trivial affairs. The matter of a wager. An unpaid mess bill. A woman. A wound. Some had found the necessaries for shaving and were dressing themselves for the French. Others clearly did not feel inclined to bother. De Lancey himself had attended to his own toilette before leaving the inn at Waterloo and thought that he now cut a not unreasonable dash. Not that it mattered one jot to the Peer. Providing his men could fight, Wellington was content. Word was that Sir Thomas Picton had arrived on the field in the same drab civilian clothes and top hat that he had worn to leave Brussels and that he was wielding an umbrella. Some said too, though, that he had been wounded at Quatre-Bras and kept the coat on principally lest he betray his hurt and be banished from the battle. It would certainly have been in character, thought De Lancey.
From all about him now came the pop of muskets discharging into the air as the infantry began to clear their barrels ready for the day’s sport. The rain had continued throughout the night, ceasing only at around five o’clock, and a cold pan and damp powder would be of no use on this day of killing.
