War Stories

by Lamar Underwood

  On the 18th of June, 1815, he relied all the more on his artillery, because he had numbers on his side. Wellington had only one hundred and fifty-nine guns; Napoleon had two hundred and forty.

  Suppose the soil dry, and the artillery capable of moving, the action would have begun at six o’clock in the morning. The battle would have been won and ended at two o’clock, three hours before the change of fortune in favour of the Prussians. How much blame attaches to Napoleon for the loss of this battle? Is the shipwreck due to the pilot?

  Was it the evident physical decline of Napoleon that complicated this epoch by an inward diminution of force? Had the twenty years of war worn out the blade as it had worn the scabbard, the soul as well as the body? Did the veteran make himself disastrously felt in the leader? In a word, was this genius, as many historians of note have thought, eclipsed? Did he go into a frenzy in order to disguise his weakened powers from himself? Did he begin to waver under the delusion of a breath of adventure? Had he become—a grave matter in a general—unconscious of peril? Is there an age, in this class of material great men, who may be called the giants of action, when genius becomes short-sighted? Old age has no hold on ideal genius; for the Dantes and Michael Angelos to grow old is to grow in greatness; is it declension for the Hannibals and the Bonapartes? Had Napoleon lost the direct sense of victory? Had he reached the point where he could no longer recognize the rock, could no longer divine the snare, no longer discern the crumbling edge of the abyss? Had he lost his power of scenting out catastrophes? He who had in former days known all the roads to victory, and who, from the summit of his chariot of lightning, pointed them out with a sovereign finger, had he now reached that state of sinister amazement when he could lead his tumultuous legions harnessed to it, to the precipice? Was he seized at the age of forty-six with a supreme madness? Was that titanic charioteer of destiny now only a Phaëton?

  We do not believe it.

  His plan of battle was, by the confession of all, a masterpiece. To go straight to the centre of the Allies’ lines, to make a breach in the enemy, to cut them in two, to drive the British half back on Halle, and the Prussian half on Tingres, to make two shattered fragments of Wellington and Blücher, to carry Mont-Saint-Jean, to seize Brussels, to hurl the German into the Rhine, and the Englishman into the sea. All this was contained in that battle, for Napoleon. Afterwards people would see.

  Of course, we do not here pretend to furnish a history of the battle of Waterloo; one of the scenes of the foundation of the drama which we are relating is connected with this battle, but this history is not our subject; this history, moreover, has been finished, and finished in a masterly manner, from one point of view by Napoleon, from another by Charras.

  For our part, we leave the historians to contend; we are but a distant witness, a passer-by along the plain, a seeker bending over that soil all made of human flesh, perhaps taking appearances for realities; we have no right to oppose, in the name of science, a collection of facts which contain illusions, no doubt; we possess neither military practice nor strategic ability which authorize a system; in our opinion, a chain of accidents dominated the two captains at Waterloo; and when it becomes a question of destiny, that mysterious culprit, we judge like the people.

  Those who wish to gain a clear idea of the battle of Waterloo have only to place, mentally, on the ground, a capital A. The left leg of the A is the road to Nivelles, the right one is the road to Genappe, the tie of the A is the hollow road to Ohain from Braine-l’Alleud. The top of the A is Mont-Saint-Jean, where Wellington is; the lower left tip is Hougomont, where Reille is stationed with Jérôme Bonaparte; the right tip is the Belle Alliance, where Napoleon is. At the centre of this point is the precise point where the final word of the battle was pronounced. It was there that the lion has been placed, the involuntary symbol of the supreme heroism of the Imperial Guard.

  The triangle comprised in the top of the A, between the two limbs and the tie, is the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean. The dispute over this plateau was the whole battle. The wings of the two armies extended to the right and left of the two roads to Genappe and Nivelles; d’Erlon facing Picton, Reille facing Hill.

  Behind the point of the A, behind the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, is the forest of Soignes.

  As for the plain itself, imagine a vast undulating sweep of ground; each ascent commands the next rise, and all the undulations mount towards Mont-Saint-Jean, and there end in the forest.

  Two hostile troops on a field of battle are two wrestlers. It is a question of seizing the opponent round the waist. The one tries to throw the other. They cling at everything; a bush is a point of support; an angle of the wall offers them a rest to the shoulder; for the lack of a hovel under whose cover they can draw up, a regiment yields its ground; an unevenness in the ground, a chance turn in the landscape, a cross-path encountered at the right moment, a grove, a ravine, can stay the heel of that colossus which is called an army, and prevent its retreat. He who leaves the field is beaten; hence the necessity devolving on the responsible leader of examining the smallest clump of trees and of studying deeply the slightest rise in the ground.

  The two generals had attentively studied the plain of Mont-Saint-Jean, which is known as the plain of Waterloo. In the preceding year, Wellington, with the sagacity of foresight, had examined it as the future seat of a great battle. Upon this spot, and for this duel, on the 18th of June, Wellington had the good post, Napoleon the bad post. The English army was above, the French army below.

  It is almost superfluous here to sketch the appearance of Napoleon on horseback, telescope in hand, upon the heights of Rossomme, at daybreak, on June 18, 1815. All the world has seen him before we can show him. The calm profile under the little three-cornered hat of the school of Brienne, the green uniform, the white facings concealing the star of the Legion of Honour, his great coat hiding his epaulets, the corner of red ribbon peeping from beneath his vest, his leather breeches, the white horse with the saddle-cloth of purple velvet bearing on the corners crowned N’s and eagles, Hessian boots over silk stockings, silver spurs, the sword of Marengo,—that whole appearance of the last of the Cæsars is present to all imagination, saluted with acclamations by some, severely regarded by others.

  That figure stood for a long time wholly in the light; this arose from a certain legendary dimness evolved by the majority of heroes, and which always veils the truth of a longer or shorter time; but to-day history and daylight have arrived.

  That illumination called history is pitiless; it possesses this peculiar and divine quality, that, pure light as it is, and precisely because it is wholly light, it often casts a shadow in places that had been luminous; from the same man it constructs two different phantoms, and the one attacks the other and executes justice on it, and the shadows of the despot contend with the brilliancy of the leader. Hence arises a truer measure in the definitive judgments of nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander, Rome enchained diminishes Cæsar, Jerusalem murdered diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. It is a misfortune for a man to leave behind him the night which bears his form.

  All the world knows the first phase of this battle; an opening which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both armies, but still more so for the English than for the French.

  It had rained all night, the ground was saturated, the water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain as if in tubs; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages was buried up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping with liquid mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports on the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction of Papelotte would have been impossible.

  The battle began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand, like a pistol, aiming it now at one point, now at another, of the
battle; and it had been his wish to wait until the horse batteries could move and gallop freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was no longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was fired, the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and saw that it was twenty-five minutes to twelve.

  The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting on Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling Quiot’s brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which leaned on Papelotte.

  The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was to attract Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would have succeeded if the four companies of the English Guards and the brave Belgians of Perponcher’s division had not held the position firmly, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, could confine himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four more companies of Guards and one battalion of Brunswickers.

  The attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated, in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road to Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force Mont-Saint-Jean, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont; thence on Braine-l’Alleud, thence on Halle; nothing easier. With the exception of a few incidents this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken; La Haie Sainte was carried.

  A detail is to be noted. There were in the English infantry, particularly in Kempt’s brigade, a great many young soldiers. These recruits were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry; their inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers: the soldier skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own general. These recruits displayed some of the French ingenuity and fury. These novices had dash. This displeased Wellington.

  After the taking of La Haie Sainte the battle wavered.

  There is in this day an obscure interval, from mid-day to four o’clock; the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in the midst, a dizzy mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, flaming colbacks, floating sabretaches, crossbelts, cartridge boxes for grenades, hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos garlanded with gold lace, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great, white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass hands and red horse-tails, the Highlanders with their bare knees and plaids, the great white gaiters of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic lines—what a canvas for a Salvator Rosa requires, but Gribeauval would not have liked it.

  A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. Quid obscurum, quid divinum. Each historian traces, to some extent, the particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an incalculable ebb and flow. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point of the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers than one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen. The line of battle floats and undulates like a thread, the trails of blood gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the battalions are like smoke. There was something there; search for it. It has disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a battle? An oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute, not a day. To depict a battle, there is required one of those powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o’clock. Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is true. That is what confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, that there is a certain moment when the battle degenerates into a combat, becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats, which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, “belong rather to the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army.” The historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He cannot do more than catch the principal outlines of the struggle, and it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be, to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a battle.

  This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly applicable to Waterloo.

  Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a decided point.

  About four o’clock the condition of the English army was serious. The Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing, Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, wild and intrepid, shouted to the Dutch Belgians: “Nassau! Brunswick! Don’t yield an inch!” Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington; Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the English general, Picton, with a bullet through the head. The battle had, for Wellington, two bases of action, Hougomont and La Haie Sainte; Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La Haie Sainte was taken. Of the German battalion which defended it, only forty-two men survived; all the officers, except five, were either dead or taken prisoners. Three thousand combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by his companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy. Barny had been dislodged. Alten sabred. Many flags had been lost, one from Alten’s division, and one from the battalion of Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scots Greys no longer existed; Ponsonby’s great dragoons had been cut to pieces. That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the earth,—Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, pierced by seven lance thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions, the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.

  Hougomont attacked, La Haie Sainte taken, there now existed but one rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle Braine; he summoned Chassé, who was at Braine l’Alleud.

  The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it the slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout stone dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, standing at the crossroads—a pile of the sixteenth century, and so robust that the cannonballs rebounded from it without injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges here and there, formed embrasures in the hawthorn trees, thrust the throat of a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs. There artillery was ambushed in the brushwood. This Punic task, incontestably authorized by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo, who had been despatched by the Emperor at nine o’clock in the morning to reconnoitre the enemy’s batteries, had discovered nothing of it, and had returned and reported to Napoleon that there were no obstacles e
xcept the two barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to Genappe. It was at the season when the grain is tall: on the edge of the plateau a battalion of Kempt’s brigade, the 95th, armed with carbines, was concealed in the tall wheat.

  Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was in a good position. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes, then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither without dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there. The artillery would have been lost among the marshes. The retreat, according to many a man versed in the art of war,—though it is disputed by others,—would have been a disorganized flight.

  To this centre, Wellington added one of Chassé’s brigades taken from the right wing, and one of Wincke’s brigades taken from the left wing, plus Clinton’s division. To his English, to the regiments of Halkett, to the brigades of Mitchell, to the guards of Maitland, he gave as reinforcements and aids, the infantry of Brunswick, Nassau’s contingent, Kielmansegg’s Hanoverians, and Ompteda’s Germans. He had thus twenty-six battalions under his hand. The right wing, as Charras says, was thrown back on the centre. An enormous battery was masked by sacks of earth at the spot where there now stands what is called the “Museum of Waterloo.” Besides this, Wellington had, behind a rise in the ground, Somerset’s Dragoon Guards, fourteen hundred horse strong. It was the remaining half of the justly celebrated English cavalry. Ponsonby destroyed, Somerset remained.

  The battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was ranged behind a very low wall, backed up with a coating of bags of sand and a wide slope of earth. This work was not finished; there had been no time to make a palisade for it.