The Battle

by Alessandro Barbero

  Soon enemy skirmishers returned to the attack, either troops from Bachelu’s columns, which since Adam’s withdrawal had enough space to deploy and advance, or the first squads of tirailleurs sent ahead as cover by the Imperial Guard. Adam tried to counter them by sending forward the skirmishers from his battalions, but almost immediately a few squadrons of French cuirassiers started moving up the slope, and the skirmishers had to make a hasty return to their ranks. Morale was already rather shaky in the batteries deployed behind Hougoumont, and when the French cavalry advanced yet again, panic spread among the gunners; following orders, many of them abandoned their pieces and ran to take refuge with the infantry, but in more than one case, officers and men did not have the heart to abandon the guns and hauled them away, retiring amid growing confusion all the way to the Nivelles road.

  Amazingly, Kellermann’s exhausted regiments were still capable of making an advance, which they did en masse in the Hougoumont sector, and to such effect that Frazer thought the final French attack was made by cavalry, with the infantry of the Imperial Guard playing only a supporting role. But the cuirassiers’ strength had been too eroded for them to go far, and once again their charge dwindled into futility when they got among the abandoned British guns. Lord Saltoun saw a unit of cuirassiers hesitate before the square of the 3/1st Foot Guards: “Refusing us, [they] passed between us and the inward rear angle of the orchard, receiving our fire; did not charge between us and the 52nd, where the Rifles were, but rode along the front of the 52nd with a view of turning their right flank, and were completely destroyed by the fire of that Regiment.” The Twenty-third Light Dragoons went forward to drive off the survivors, and General Adam, who had ridden forward to observe the enemy advance, was nearly swept along in the dragoons’ charge, only just managing to return to his men. His servant brought him a fresh horse; immediately after mounting it, Adam was wounded in the leg by a musket ball, but he was able to stay in the saddle until the battle was over. This was not the moment to leave the field, because the Imperial Guard was moving forward to deal the decisive blow.

  SIXTY

  THE IMPERIAL GUARD’S ADVANCE

  In spite of the thick smoke enveloping the battlefield, the Imperial Guard’s aspect was so recognizable, and the advance of its columns across the plateau between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte so solemn and imposing, amid the obsessive beating of drums and repeated cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” from thousands of hoarse throats, that at least the mounted Allied officers on the crest could tell what was about to happen. During the French cavalry charges, the Allied infantry, formed up in squares, had remained on the reverse slope of the ridge; now it was brought forward to prevent the enemy from reaching the guns, and to add its musketry to the fire of the Allied artillery. Maitland, who commanded one of the most exposed sectors of the front, received a visit from Wellington, who ordered him to deploy his men in line, but once again in the more robust four-deep formation instead of the customary two-deep line, because, according to Maitland, “His Grace expect[ed] that the French Cavalry would take part in the affair.” Maitland obeyed, bringing his men forward all the way to the sunken lane and then ordering them to lie down in order to reduce the effects of the ongoing bombardment. “The formation of the Brigade was scarcely completed before the advance of the Enemy became apparent,” Maitland noted.

  Wellington galloped off in the direction of Hougoumont. Stopping at the first artillery battery he met on his way—a battery with only five guns left—he asked a young officer, Lieutenant Sharpin, the name of the battery commander. Sharpin replied that the commander was Captain Bolton, but he had just been killed, and the command had passed to Captain Napier. “His Grace then said,” according to Sharpin, “‘Tell him to keep a look to his left, for the French will soon be with him,’ and then he rode off.” Sharpin had just conveyed Wellington’s warning to Captain Napier when, the lieutenant wrote, “we saw the French bonnets just above the high corn, and within forty or fifty yards of our Guns.”

  Even though they were deployed in a four-deep line, Wellington’s infantry occupied a much greater space than when they were in square, which allowed him to leave the more shaken battalions in the rear and send forward only the most reliable units to meet the attack. Once the three brigades of Adam, Maitland, and Halkett, entirely composed of British infantry, were deployed in line, they covered almost the entire width of the front against which the Imperial Guard was advancing, and Wellington counted on their firepower to repulse the attack. Calculating how many men might have made up the three brigades at that moment is difficult, but at the end of the battle, Adam still had around two thousand in line, Maitland a little more than a thousand, and Halkett perhaps five or six hundred. This suggests that before their combat with the Imperial Guard, their ranks contained at least four thousand men. In turn, then, the three brigades, deployed in a four-deep line, would have presented to the enemy a front of a thousand men, which perfectly corresponds (taking into account the broad intervals between one battalion and another) to the width of the attack front, which was a thousand yards.

  Behind this robust red line, Wellington still had considerable reserves available, although they were composed entirely of those foreign troops toward whom the British officers felt so ill-disposed. Behind Adam’s brigade, the squares of Brunswick light infantry had suffered heavy casualties from the artillery bombardment and in addition had been obliged to detach several contingents to the defense of Hougoumont; nevertheless, the Brunswickers still had nearly two thousand muskets, and their officers’ professionalism had demonstrated that the men, though inexperienced, would not run away. Behind Maitland’s Foot Guards, Chassé’s Third Netherlands Division had been in place for some time, after having spent the morning stationed well to the rear, near the little town of Braine-l’Alleud, barring the way to a possible attempt to outflank the Allies on the right. The fifty-year-old Chassé, a former Napoleonic officer, a veteran of Spain, and a baron of the empire, had been wounded the previous year while fighting for Napoleon against the Prussians; his division, 6,500 muskets strong, half of them troops of the line, formed the principal reserve at Wellington’s disposal in the center of his deployment. Farther left, toward La Haye Sainte, stood the remaining men of the three Brunswick line infantry battalions, massed around their yellow-and-blue banners, and Kruse’s three Nassau battalions.

  In the rear of all this infantry, Wellington had also massed cavalry reserves superior in number to all those that Napoleon could still muster. Vivian’s brigade, with more than a thousand sabers, was the only cavalry formation on the battlefield whose troops were still fresh. Vandeleur’s brigade was in fair condition, and those of Grant, Dornberg, Trip, and Ghigny, although somewhat damaged, still included several combat-ready squadrons. The cavalry force, several thousand strong, was moved forward to just behind the Allied infantry with the purpose of compelling the foot soldiers, one way or another, to hold their positions. The adjutant of the Eighteenth Hussars, Duperier, an officer promoted from the ranks, had watched some Belgian officers beating their troops to hold them in line. During the attack of the Imperial Guard, Duperier’s regiment was brought so far forward that the horses’ muzzles were almost touching the backs of the infantry troops, and according to his memoirs, which make up in vivaciousness for what they lack in polished prose, he decided to emulate “the Belgum officers”: “every one that faced about I laid my sword across his shoulders and told him that if he did not go back I would run him through, and that had the desired effect for they all stood it.”

  Many students of the battle maintain that the Imperial Guard’s attack represented an almost desperate gamble on Napoleon’s part, and from today’s perspective this analysis is understandable. Yet, considering that the emperor was gambling on the relative moral capacity of the two armies necessarily changes that perspective. From a purely material point of view, the six thousand men of the Old Guard and Middle Guard would never have been able to prevail over the forces arrayed
against them; in terms of morale, however, the balance was different. The British and German infantry had been tested almost to the limits of their endurance, they had taken frightful losses, and the fame of the Imperial Guard was rooted in the consciousness of every soldier, down to the least militiaman. When that mass of veterans attacked, the men deployed to face them might well have disbanded, and such disorder could have spread to Wellington’s entire army.

  This faith in the psychological effect also explains the caution with which Napoleon organized the final attack, as if he thought that the mere sight of the Imperial Guard would determine the collapse of its adversaries and that therefore it was unnecessary to engage the Guard in its entirety or to run useless risks. The two battalions of the oldest regiment, the First Grenadiers, remained in the vicinity of La Belle Alliance, as though to guarantee a last stand in case things should turn bad. Of the nine battalions ordered to attack, only five advanced in the first line until they reached La Haye Sainte. The other four battalions constituted a kind of second line, following the first five at a distance of two or three hundred yards. Finally—and most unusually—these battalions went forward neither in column nor in line, but in square.

  In truth the accounts of the British officers who faced the Guard’s advance invariably speak of columns, but from their viewpoint, and in the smoke that enveloped the entire battlefield, they could not distinguish one formation from another. French eyewitness accounts, on the other hand, spoke of squares, and these are the accounts we must trust. Despite its origins as a static formation, the square was capable of movement, and highly trained troops such as the Imperial Guard could certainly advance in square better and more quickly than any others. The decision to attack in this formation was made by the Guard’s generals and, probably, Napoleon himself, as an immediate reaction to what had happened to d’Erlon’s columns a few hours before; should the British cavalry try another sudden charge down the slope, they would find themselves confronting the Imperial Guard, already formed in square, and they would pay a heavy price.

  And thus they advanced: the Middle Guard in front, five battalions, followed at some distance by another Middle Guard battalion and three battalions of the Old Guard, all with drummers beating out the charge. The men advanced in cadenced steps as officers checked the alignment of their ranks. They were accompanied by thirteen generals33 and preceded by a multitude of tirailleurs. But in spite of the impressiveness of the French advance, we must not forget that, in this whole assault force, only the Old Guard battalions that formed the second line were really up to the old standards of the Imperial Guard. The battalions of the Middle Guard had been established only after Napoleon’s return from Elba, when men were transferred from line regiments to form the new Guard units. Every regiment had been required to furnish thirty men, tall and robust, with good records and at least four years’ service, not the most stringent requirements. The lack of a shared regimental experience was underlined even in the troops’ appearance: Because of insufficient time and funds, the regiments of the Middle Guard had been provided only in part with regulation uniforms, so that many men did not wear the standard bearskin, covering their heads instead with shakos, two-cornered hats, and even woolen berets; their coats were of a variety of colors instead of the official dark blue. All things considered, these were good but not superb units, a fact that has not been stressed enough in accounts of this last offensive.

  SIXTY - ONE

  THE ATTACK OF THE IMPERIAL GUARD GRENADIERS

  The first two battalions on the right were the 1/3rd Grenadiers and the Fourth Grenadiers, and they were also the first to come into contact with the defenders. In front of these thousand men, who tended to appear as a single column to the smoke-blinded observers, the remnants of Halkett’s brigade were deployed; a little farther back stood the Brunswick line infantry brigade and Kruse’s regiment, the only German units involved in defending the Imperial Guard’s attack. Halkett’s men were formed in lines four ranks deep, not only for fear of cavalry but also because this was the easiest formation to change into from square. (“In our condition at that time,” Macready observed, “no power on earth could have formed a line of any kind out of us but that of a line four deep.”) The German infantry, on the other hand, was probably still in square, the sole formation that could guarantee a minimum of solidity to the extremely young recruits that made up these battalions.

  All day long, two batteries, those of Lloyd and Cleeve, had been stationed in front of Halkett’s brigade, but by this time, out of twelve guns and more than six hundred gunners, not a single one remained in line. Cleeve’s battery had run out of ammunition and cleared off to the rear sometime before; Lloyd’s, which had stubbornly remained in position, occasionally sending an officer with an empty wagon to fetch a fresh supply of ammunition, was so badly shot up that the survivors could do nothing but run away when the first tirailleurs appeared in front of the guns. Major Lloyd, who had spent the entire day exposing himself to danger with a courage that verged on madness, remained a little too far behind his men; a French officer caught up with him and cut him down with his saber. After the battle, the major was found still alive and brought to a hospital, but he died a few weeks later.

  When the defenders saw the French grenadiers bearing down on them, they opened fire; and, instead of continuing their advance with fixed bayonets, the masses of the attackers, who had just emerged from the smoke, stopped and began to fire back. There followed a confused combat, in which no one had any clear idea what was happening, and in which apparently more or less all the units involved, on one side as well as the other, sooner or later lost enthusiasm for the fight and fell back before their officers could regain control over them. The British and German infantry had moved forward in anticipation of the attack and occupied a very advanced position, well beyond the chemin d’Ohain; but it was not long before Kruse’s men and then the Brunswickers, finding themselves exposed to enemy fire, fell back in search of some protection and perhaps would have retreated still farther had the cavalry deployed in their rear not compelled them to halt. Sir Colin Halkett’s men, the majority of whom were recruits, had already looked death in the face two days previously at Quatre Bras and by this point had lost almost all of their officers; finding themselves alone, even though their well-aimed fire had brought the Imperial Guard’s advance to a full stop, they too began to disband.

  Wellington, who at the moment was a little farther down the line, behind Maitland’s brigade, noticed the confusion and gave an order addressed to no one in particular: “See what’s wrong there.” Major Kelly, who had been detached to Halkett’s brigade staff, galloped over in search of the general, found him, and was in the act of posing the duke’s inquiry when, to his horror, he saw a musket ball strike Sir Colin in the face, passing through one cheek and exiting from the other side. In those days, bullets traveled at such low velocity that the general did not even fall from his horse, but Kelly nevertheless had to escort him to the rear; his brigade, or what remained of it, was left without a commander. Colonel Elphinstone, commander of the Thirty-third Foot and one of the least esteemed officers in the entire army, rode up to Kelly to ask him if he had any orders for him; none, Kelly replied, except “inquiring into the cause of the confusion.” According to Kelly, the colonel answered that the situation could be explained by the fact that “they were much pressed, and the men exhausted.”

  Since Elphinstone was the most senior surviving officer, he had to take command of the brigade, a responsibility that he would have gladly done without. Bewildered, he asked Kelly, “What is to be done? What would you do?” The major, evidently exasperated, was suggesting that Elphinstone get his men under as much cover as possible, reorder their ranks, and have them lie on the ground, when two sergeants from the Seventy-third ran up to him and reported that all their officers had been killed or wounded, and they had no one to command them. Since this was Kelly’s own regiment, he followed the men back to the position to survey the situa
tion, and once he was among the men, he could not do otherwise than take command. The nearby regiments had already sent their colors to safety in the rear, and the major decided that the same should be done with the colors of the Seventy-third, “which had been completely riddled, and almost separated from the staff,” Tom Morris noted. The two banners were removed from their standards and wrapped around the torso of a sergeant, who was ordered to leave at once for Brussels.

  Although, for the moment, the Guard columns had halted their advance and were hidden in smoke, Major Kelly evidently had little hope that he and his men could hold out much longer. There was no remaining officer in the brigade superior in rank to the inept Elphinstone,34 but Kelly probably ordered the surviving troops to take advantage of a moment when the enemy fire became less intense and fall back to the hedge bordering the sunken lane, where they could find some protection. Years later, Macready still shuddered at the thought that someone in command had been capable of giving such an order without taking into account its effect on morale. As soon as the Seventy-third began to retreat, the French redoubled their fire, accompanying it with roars of enthusiasm; the British wounded clung to their comrades, begging them not to abandon them; someone gave in to panic; and in a moment the withdrawal turned into a rout. Reduced to a crowd of runaways, Halkett’s brigade fled well past the hedge, and it was only with difficulty that the surviving officers, by dint of a great deal of pulling and shouting, were able to bring their men to a halt. “I cannot conceive what the enemy was about during our confusion,” Macready remarked acidly. “Fifty cuirassiers would have annihilated our brigade.”