The Battle

by Alessandro Barbero

  Along the walls of the château and in the orchard, which was by then razed to the ground, the French infantry continued to close in. Several times, the defenders had to evacuate the orchard and take shelter in the nearby hollow way, but the sustained fusillade from the garden wall again and again prevented the enemy from advancing. When fire began to consume the buildings, Foy’s grenadiers moved forward once more, and under cover of flames and smoke they managed to penetrate into the farmyard through a small side door. Firing from the windows of the main house, the defenders held the French in check until the Guards Division could mount a counterattack and drive off the invaders. The woodland and the pastures attached to Hougoumont were all so thoroughly in French hands that their artillery batteries had advanced all the way to the hedges, and the French guns, posted just a few hundred yards away from their targets, were holding the Allied squares under fire on the high ground behind the château.

  The charges of the cuirassiers carried them deep into the Allied lines and caused disorder even in the rear of Wellington’s position. Along the road to Braine l’Alleud, several hundred yards beyond Hougoumont, Du Plat’s brigade was still deployed in reserve, occupying the same positions it had held since morning, when, he reported, “there appeared suddenly on our left flank a regiment of enemy cavalry.” The cavalry attacked a British square deployed a little to Du Plat’s left; the French were repulsed, but the German officers could not help concluding from this action that “the enemy appeared to be getting the upper hand.” If the French, by dint of gaining ground, had succeeded in isolating the perimeter of Hougoumont, the defense would have been pushed dangerously close to collapse, as it would no longer have been possible to send companies of skirmishers and carts of ammunition into the château to sustain the defenders’ fire. For precisely this reason, Colonel Du Plat received orders to move his troops as far forward as possible, that is, as far as the hollow way, which had become the garrison’s vital artery. Lieutenant Hesse of the Second KGL had been relieved to see the cuirassiers falling back, but “soon after that an adjutant rode along the front and shouted ‘advance if you please!’”

  Du Plat’s four battalions literally had to fight their way to their new positions close to the hedgerows of Hougoumont. Still in column, the battalions had almost reached the chemin d’Ohain and were mounting the slope when, Hesse reported, “a column of enemy cuirassiers surprised us.” The four light companies, which had been detached from the battalions and were hastening ahead to enter the grounds of the château, were attacked in their turn. “We still had plenty of ammunition and produced an almighty fire aimed at the cavalry, whereupon the same turned around.” Resuming their advance, the Germans had barely arrived at the top of the slope when a regiment of cavalry in rapid retreat passed through their ranks at a gallop, pursued by French cavalry. Captain Sympher, commander of a KGL horse artillery battery that was accompanying the brigade’s advance, “made a few lucky shots causing gaps so that the cavalry turned back.” When they finally drew close to the château, Du Plat’s men found themselves confronting Foy’s tirailleurs, who were stationed behind the enclosure; but the Germans were forced to remain in square in order to fight off the cuirassiers, who continued to make threatening advances. As soon as the cavalry withdrew, the French skirmishers behind the hedge subjected the legionaries to a deadly accurate fire.

  The accounts left by Du Plat’s officers provide poignant testimony to the largely unsung ordeal of the German veterans, who were worn down by slow attrition during the course of the afternoon, all the while holding their positions and preventing the enemy from reaching the hollow way and isolating the defenders of Hougoumont. Their tenacity is all the more worthy of note in that they fought within a blinding cloud of smoke, in irregular formations that one of their officers described as “disbanded battalion squares,” and without any orders from above, because “the Brigadier was already killed and each battalion had to help itself.” Colonel Du Plat had been mortally wounded in the beginning of this confused and bloody action, and Captain Cordemann of the Third KGL confirmed that the combat was conducted without any superior officer’s direction, “partly because it was not audible as a result of the uninterrupted thunder of the cannon and various other noises, making it incomprehensible, and partly because the battalion often did not know who the actual commanding officer was. The captains made every effort under these circumstances to inform the people of dangers and of enemy attacks, and to maintain order.” When enemy cavalry prepared to charge, “we reminded the people again how they were to comport themselves: thereupon, the soldiers on their own loaded a second round and fired on the charging enemy at about 50–60 paces, independently, like hunters, so effectively that the same retreated with great loss.” On the whole the men of the King’s German Legion held their positions, preventing the enemy infantry from gaining ground and repulsing one cavalry charge after another; but after a while the legionaries’ numbers were so diminished that two of their battalions had to be combined to form a single square, and all of the KGL officers’ horses had been shot down by the tirailleurs.

  Despite this support, there were moments when enemy pressure became so intense—the rear entrance to the château was among the favored targets—that the garrison inside Hougoumont was in serious danger of being cut off. The indefatigable Captain Seymour was charged with finding some ammunition and getting it hauled into the courtyard at Hougoumont, where the defenders’ cartridge supply was starting to run low. Having encountered a soldier from the ammunition train driving a full munitions wagon, Seymour explained to him what he needed; the man whipped his horses and descended straight down the hill toward Hougoumont’s front gate. He became the target of a fire so heavy that Seymour could not but admire his courage, though the captain thought there was little chance that the man’s horses would get to the château alive; nevertheless, the wagon reached the gate, and the defenders received the ammunition they so desperately needed.

  In the Hougoumont sector, the French charges, mostly carried out by the Imperial Guard cavalry, were regularly coordinated with the action of the infantry troops occupying the pastures and part of the orchard. At first, the British cavalry enthusiastically rushed into a countercharge, hoping to hurl back the pointed thrusts of the enemy; but they paid a heavy price for their zeal. More than once the troops of a British regiment, descending the slope at a trot, unexpectedly found themselves under fire from the tirailleurs hidden in the tall grain and were obliged to return in great haste to their starting positions in order to avoid being trapped and cut off by the enemy closing in behind them; in other instances, the retreating French cavalry drew their pursuers into range of Reille’s infantry squares, with consequences invariably disastrous for the British. Lieutenant Lane of the Fifteenth Hussars described how two squadrons of his regiment charged the grenadiers à cheval of the Imperial Guard, who, however, refused the combat. “Our next attack (in line without reserve) was [on] a square of French Infantry, and our horses were within a few feet of the Square. We did not succeed in breaking it, and, of course, suffered most severely. At the close of the Battle, the two Squadrons were dreadfully cut up.”

  Soon after, General Adam was ordered to send his regiments forward to relieve Du Plat’s exhausted battalions. Their positions—near the northeast corner of the Hougoumont orchard—were taken by a Scottish light infantry regiment, the Seventy-first, formed in square and supported by two companies of the 3/95th Rifles. A thick line of gray-coated French skirmishers suddenly appeared out of the smoke right in front of the Scots. The French, too, were caught by surprise, but they opened fire on the Seventy-first at once; rather than respond to the enemy fire, the Scottish veterans coolly began to maneuver, redeploying into line. An officer of the Rifles observed, “the French and 71st were closer than I ever before saw any regular formed adverse bodies, and much nearer than troops usually engage.”

  Seeing that the British infantry was in square in a very advanced position on the flank of Ho
ugoumont, Reille had decided to attack in force. He employed for this purpose not only Foy’s division but also Bachelu’s, the last of his three divisions, which added three thousand muskets to the attack. Though these troops had spent the day until then in formation with their weapons on their shoulders (“Rumor had it that we had been forgotten,” said Major Trefcon, the division chief of staff), Bachelu’s men had suffered such terrible losses two days earlier at Quatre Bras, and this day had remained so long under enemy artillery fire, that their offensive spirit had been extinguished. For a moment, it seemed as though the French infantry, advancing in column behind a thick screen of tirailleurs, would succeed in coming into physical contact with the enemy; as they were moving into musket range, Foy, who was one of the most popular generals in the French army, clapped his adjutant, Major Lemonnier-Delafosse, on the back and said, “Tomorrow you’ll be in Brussels, and promoted colonel by the Emperor!”

  But Adam’s brigade contained 2,500 men, all light infantry, a third of them armed with Baker rifles, and they quickly redeployed into the four-deep line formation adopted everywhere on the field that day by the British infantry; their fire—aided by that of the guns posted behind them—stopped the French attack at once. A shell fragment wounded General Bachelu in the head and killed his horse, and another fragment from the same shell wounded General Campi, the commander of one of Bachelu’s brigades. General Foy took a bullet in the shoulder while trying to stop his men from running away, and shortly thereafter, the attackers returned in haste to the low-lying ground from which they had set out. Major Lemonnier-Delafosse had fallen from a fatally wounded horse; as he rose to his feet, he saw half a loaf of bread attached to a dead soldier’s knapsack: “I seized the bread and devoured it. ‘Devoured’ is the right word; for two days I had nourished myself on nothing but beer.”

  Hardly had the French infantry disappeared back into the smoke when the Scotsmen of the Seventy-first saw cavalry bearing down upon them; they barely managed to form square in time, and General Adam himself was obliged to take refuge in their midst. After the cavalry, impotent against a square, beat a retreat, the Scots officers realized that the enemy tirailleurs were still stationed in the vicinity and had the Seventy-first under fire. The regiment accomplished a miracle: It advanced in line, driving the enemy before it, sent its skirmishers forward to occupy part of the orchard, and then quickly formed square again as soon as the enemy cavalry showed itself. Less experienced soldiers—the Brunswickers, for example—would never have been able to maneuver like this, in the face of the enemy and under fire; the troops of the Seventy-first, a veteran light infantry regiment, completed the maneuver and stood firm. Due in large part to this regiment’s steadfastness, the French, despite the incessant charges of the Guard cavalry and the repeated attempts of Reille’s infantry, never succeeded in isolating the perimeter of Hougoumont. More or less at this point in the struggle, General Adam heard Wellington mutter, almost to himself, “I believe we shall beat them after all.”

  This was not the only case in which the British infantry showed itself capable of changing coolly from line into square and of advancing or retreating as needed, still keeping square. Lord Saltoun, who had returned to the high ground with the survivors of his light company, watched the 3/1st Foot Guards maneuver to escape the combined action of the cavalry and the tirailleurs. “During the Cavalry attacks on the centre a great number of the Enemy’s sharpshooters had crept up the slope of the hill, and galled the 3rd Battalion, who were in square, very severely…. The Third Battalion, who suffered severely from this fire, wheeled up into line and drove them down the hill and advanced to a point … and there reformed square.”

  Historians have often stated, that the French attack against Hougoumont was a gigantic waste, in which a small number of defenders kept engaged and eventually defeated an immensely superior enemy host. However, from Napoleon’s point of view, the offensive against the perimeter wall of the Hougoumont château represented only one aspect of a much broader maneuver, whose objective was to drive in Wellington’s entire right wing, and the duke, knowing what was at stake, responded in kind. While the Hougoumont defenders never had, at any given moment, more than two thousand muskets within the perimeter of the château, the total number of soldiers in all the battalions that were committed to this action was much higher. Early in the day, the position was defended by Major von Büsgen’s 1/2nd Nassau, reinforced by a few companies of Hanoverian Jäger; almost immediately, the Germans were joined by the two Guards battalions of Sir John Byng’s brigade; during the course of the action, Du Plat’s brigade and the Brunswick light infantry brigade sent all their companies into the château; and at the end of the day, these troops were in such bad shape that Wellington found it necessary to reinforce them with the last reserve he had available in that sector, the Hanoverian Landwehr brigade commanded by Colonel Hew Halkett, Sir Colin Halkett’s brother. Since this officer outranked the various lieutenant-colonels of the Guards Division who were present at the scene, he assumed command of the château late in the afternoon, posting a battalion in the orchard, two in the hollow way, and one outside the grounds but near the wall.

  Reille’s corps exerted pressure not only on the troops inside the perimeter of the château but also on all the Allied infantry deployed in that sector, keeping them constantly engaged until the very last phase of the battle. Clearly, the disproportion of the forces involved in the struggle for Hougoumont is nothing but a legend of historiography. In the course of the day, the French employed the three divisions of II Corps in this sector, for a total of thirty-three battalions and some fourteen thousand muskets. Against them, Wellington committed the brigades of Byng, Du Plat, Adam, and Hew Halkett, five Brunswick battalions, one from Nassau, three companies of Hanoverian Jäger, and two companies from Maitland’s brigade, amounting to twenty-one battalions—six British and fifteen German—and a total of twelve thousand muskets. Moreover, during the afternoon various artillery batteries that were in action around La Haye Sainte, including those of Rogers and Sinclair, were ordered to redeploy in the Hougoumont sector, a sign that the château continued to be of such concern to Wellington that for its sake he weakened his center, not without unfortunate consequences. Therefore, the downside for Napoleon did not consist in the fact that Hougoumont had kept a disproportionately high number of his troops engaged against a paltry enemy force, but rather in the fact that the château, in the end, did not fall.

  The buildings were the key, and there the garrison stood firm, even though at certain moments they felt isolated and almost abandoned. At one point, Lieutenant Colonel Hepburn, who was inside the château, found himself commanding Byng’s entire brigade, the general having been obliged to take over command of the Guards Division after General Cooke was wounded. Nevertheless, Hepburn later admitted, “I knew nothing of what was passing elsewhere.” According to Major von Büsgen, who commanded the Nassauers, “Neither when I was detached to Hougoumont, nor during the combat, did anyone tell me from whom I was supposed to take orders. Given the intensity of the fighting and the limited field of vision, which was obstructed by trees, hedges, and walls, I was unable to see anything that was happening beyond them.” But in the midst of the smoking ruins, among heaps of charred rubble where the ground underfoot was still burning hot, in the boggy mud of the hollow way, and amid the disfigured remains of the orchard’s apple trees, the defenders of the château stood fast to the end, while along the south wall every attempt on the part of the tirailleurs to penetrate the enclosure resulted in fresh piles of corpses. Napoleon’s final attack would not pass through Hougoumont.

  FIFTY - FOUR

  THE CAPTURE OF LA HAYE SAINTE

  The success the emperor needed to continue his offensive came on the other side of the battlefield. While Reille’s skirmishers were being held in check before the walls of Hougoumont, d’Erlon’s finally succeeded in capturing La Haye Sainte. Hougoumont was a much more substantial complex, and even after a significant porti
on of the buildings burned down, it could still shelter a garrison of two thousand soldiers; within the perimeter of La Haye Sainte, Major von Baring did not have and perhaps could not have had more than a few hundred.

  Moreover, Wellington had massed his men in such numbers behind Hougoumont that the French cavalry charges never were able to cut off the garrison from the bulk of the Allied army, even though the château was far from the duke’s main line; all afternoon, reinforcements and ammunition carts continued to enter the farmyard through the north gate. By contrast, behind La Haye Sainte, where the bombardment of the Grande Batterie was most intense, Wellington’s line had grown so thin that the combined pressure of the cavalry charges and the swarm of skirmishers sent forward by Donzelot continually brought the garrison to the verge of isolation. As long as the Allied cavalry conserved enough forces to be able to launch occasional countercharges, the situation remained fairly fluid, and the German battalions of Ompteda and Kielmansegge carried out counterattacks from time to time, sending reinforcements into the farm. But as the interventions of the Allied cavalry grew less frequent, Ompteda’s and Kielmansegge’s troops were reduced to playing a purely passive role, formed in square on the ridge behind La Haye Sainte and trying to stand fast. From the late afternoon on, Baring and his men, besieged inside La Haye Sainte, received no more orders or reinforcements; the Baker rifle ammunition, which the major had most insistently requested, never came.

  Baring was reflecting on this state of affairs, which to him seemed inexplicable—given that he had already sent three officers, one by one, to renew the request—when he perceived that the French outside the farm, exasperated by the defenders’ resistance, had finally decided to resort to the method already used by their comrades at Hougoumont: They were setting the place on fire. The barn, which was the most exposed of the buildings, started burning at once and disappeared from sight in a cloud of dense black smoke. Fortunately, La Haye Sainte was well supplied with water, and the defenders, using the field kettles that formed part of the Nassauers’ gear, managed to put out the blaze; but the barn, whose door had been missing from the start, became harder and harder to defend, despite the tenacity of the Germans. Baring saw Private Lindau, his head swathed in a bloody bandage, take shelter behind the small back door of the barn and from there keep the main entrance under fire, preventing the French from bursting in. The major’s admiration was all the greater because he knew the man had in his pocket a bag stuffed with gold coins looted from a French officer who had been struck from his horse shortly before, and thus Lindau was risking not only his skin but his booty. Struck by so much selflessness, and seeing that the soldier’s bandage was not stopping his bleeding, the major ordered him to leave his position and have his wound seen to, but Lindau refused to go, muttering, “He would be a scoundrel that deserted you, so long as his head is on his shoulders.” “This brave fellow was afterwards taken, and lost his treasure,” Baring noted sympathetically.