Authors: Alessandro Barbero
The Battle (43 page)
N
apoleon had gambled for the last time and lost, and his army was suffering the moral collapse into which he had hoped to plunge the army of Wellington. The panic caused by the spectacle of the Imperial Guard in flight afflicted the entire left wing of the French, from Hougoumont to La Haye Sainte, and to this was added the equally disastrous panic produced on their right wing by the advance of Ziethen's Prussians from Smohain. The discovery that these troops were not, in fact, Grouchy's corps, whose arrival had been falsely proclaimed by the emperor's aides-de-camp, had the effect of a cold shower on the morale of the battle-weary French soldiers. Colonel Levavasseur had barely completed his gallop when the Prussian artillery opened fire with twenty-four guns, raking the flank and even the rear of the French infantry, which had advanced almost to the crest of the ridge. "The enthusiasm," Levavasseur reported, "gave way to a profound silence, to dismay, to anxiety." The colonel quickly galloped over to Marshal Ney, but the latter, who knew very well what was happening, forbade him to go and verify the facts. The incredulous Levavasseur applied to another general, whose name he later chose not to mention, and this man finally admitted the truth: "
Voyez! Ce sont les Prussiens!"
After the battle, many witnesses linked the French army's collapse in morale to the uncertainty that had reigned among the soldiers ever since the beginning of the campaign. According to Captain Duthilt—who was thrown from his horse, wounded in the head by a saber blow, and taken prisoner during the great charge of the British heavy cavalry, then liberated by the countercharge of Jacquinot's lancers, and who later found himself, on foot and covered with blood, in the midst of a crowd of fugitives—the soldiers were upset at the excessive number of senior officers who had betrayed, or who were suspected of being ready to betray, the emperor. The troops had neither confidence in their commanders nor the ability to accept discipline. They were also terrorized by the proclamations of the Allied sovereigns, in which French soldiers taken prisoner were brutally threatened with "the deserts of Siberia or the English and Spanish prison-barges, where they would be lost forever," so that the dread of capture contributed to hastening their disbandment.
Even the Allied soldiers defending the ridge were astounded by the suddenness with which the French began to fall back before the Prussian advance. One of the Gordon Highlanders' skirmishers ran up to Sergeant Robertson and urged him to observe the enemy lines, because "something extraordinary" was going on. By that point, the Gordons had lost so many officers that Robertson, furnished with a telescope, was in command of two companies. Peering through the instrument, he saw what appeared to be men dressed in the same uniform firing on one another. Puzzled, the sergeant could not understand what was happening. Someone suggested that perhaps some sort of mutiny had broken out among the French soldiers; then an aide-de-camp arrived at a gallop, crying out, "The day is our own! The Prussians have arrived!" Robertson's sincere comment no doubt was widely echoed: "Never was reprieve more welcome to a death-doomed criminal."
On the opposite side of the battlefield, the Duke of Wellington and General Adam were discussing the merits of continuing to advance at once against the retreating enemy. Adam, concerned about the disorder in his ranks, requested permission to halt and redress the situation. Wellington reluctantly consented, but after observing the French for a few more seconds, he changed his mind and said, "They won't stand, better attack them!" Then he galloped over to Colborne's position to order him to advance as well. The men of the Fifty-second were in great disorder and also nervous because their flank was completely exposed. When a large and vociferous group of cavalry passed them at short range, the Fifty-second unhesitatingly fired on them, only to discover that they were part of the Twenty-third Light Dragoons sent in pursuit of the enemy. The dragoons' commander was bitterly protesting to Colborne, gesturing at the men and horses of his regiment struck down by the infantry fire ("It's always the case, we always lose more men by our own people than we do by the enemy"), when Wellington rode up and shouted to Colborne, "Never mind,
go
on,
go
on!" Colborne was on foot—his men had managed to kill his horse, too, with their disordered fire—but he did not need to be told twice; with bayonets fixed, the Fifty-second returned to the attack.
The duke had decided that the moment to play all or nothing had come, and he was galloping along the entire arc of his deployment, from Hougoumont to La Haye Sainte and beyond, giving his commanders the order for a general advance. The progress of his ride was marked by the cheers of triumph that rolled like a wave from one end of the front line to the other. Many memoirists assert that in those decisive moments, the duke galloped up to their regiments, sought out their commanders—in general, these were subalterns, the superior officers having been killed or wounded—and personally ordered the advance amid roars of enthusiasm from the troops. In the sunken lane behind La Haye Sante, Kincaid and his men were enveloped in smoke and dust, and he had not the least idea what was happening until "a cheer," which they knew to be British, "commenced far to the right, and made everyone prick up his ears—it was Lord Wellington's long-wished-for orders to advance; it gradually approached, growing louder as it grew near." Instinctively, Kincaid and his men began to move forward with fixed bayonets. When they reached the top of the knoll overlooking the sandpit, they broke through the smoke and were presented with the astonishing spectacle of the entire French army in full flight. Shortly thereafter, the duke appeared before Kincaid and his men; Wellington was greeted with cheers, to which he responded, cool as always, "No cheering, my lads, but forward, and complete your victory!"
Lord Uxbridge, alarmed by the risks inherent in such a disordered advance, advised that the troops should be halted upon reaching the crest of La Belle Alliance, but Wellington impatiently replied, "Oh, damn it! In for a penny, in for a pound is my maxim; and if the troops advance, they shall go as far as they can." In reality, most of the soldiers were so exhausted that they limited their advance to a few hundred yards, assuring themselves that the enemy was in flight before them, and then went into bivouac for the night. The only Allied units that continued to pursue were Adam's brigade, Du Plat's brigade, Detmers's Netherlands brigade, and one of the battalions of Hanoverian
Landwehr
commanded by Colonel Hew Halkett, which moved forward from its position near Hougoumont to cover the exposed left flank of Adam's line.
In the pursuit of the retreating enemy, Wellington also engaged his remaining cavalry, what was left of the brigades of Dornberg, Vandeleur, Trip, and Ghigny along with Vivian's Hussar brigade, the only Allied cavalry force that had not yet exchanged so much as a saber-stroke with the enemy during the whole course of the day. Although in later years General Vivian yielded to the temptation to magnify his role in the battle,
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there's no doubt that the intervention of his force—upward of a thousand fresh sabers—made a decisive contribution to accelerating the dissolution of the French army. Vivian was haunted by the memory of Marengo, where Napoleon's luck had transformed a battle already lost into a victory, and he was determined to avoid a repeat of history. Vivian proposed to lead his brigade into action with the set purpose of causing the enemy as much damage as possible, and he importuned Wellington to give him the order to charge without any further loss of time.
When the duke consented to the charge, Lord Uxbridge decided that he would lead it in person; but at that precise instant, a shell fragment shattered his right knee. Uxbridge exclaimed, "By God! I've lost my leg!" and Wellington coolly replied, "Have you, by God?" The anecdote may be apocryphal, but the code of honor to which these gentlemen adhered prized above all things composure and self-possession in the face of danger. This is confirmed by the observations of Duperier of the Eighteenth Hussars, who was watching the two commanders from not far away; all at once, he saw Lord Uxbridge shake Vivian's hand and guide his horse to the rear at a walk. Duperier suspected that Uxbridge had been wounded, "but he don it so well that nobody saw it." Shortly thereafter, in a house in Waterloo, surgeons amputated Lord Uxbridge's leg, and the earl had it buried with all honors in the garden.
Having taken his leave of the cavalry commanders, Wellington galloped over to Adam's brigade to encourage the foot soldiers to continue their pursuit; like them, the duke was filled with the excitement of victory. There was almost no one left of the numerous and gleaming staff that had accompanied him when the day began, and after Wellington reached the brigade, Major Blair was astonished to discover that there was only one other officer in the duke's retinue. Blair's amazement grew when he addressed this officer, only to hear him reply in French,
"Monsieur, je ne parle pas un seul mot d'Anglais."
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In the meantime, Sir Hussey Vivian led his squadrons down the slope at a trot and engaged the groups of French cavalry that were covering the infantry's retreat. Under normal conditions, the Hussars would have had some difficulty holding their own against cuirassiers and lancers, and here, too, Napoleon's cavalrymen, although weary and demoralized, seem to have shown enough fighting spirit to guarantee their retreat. In a letter to his wife, Captain Taylor of the Tenth Hussars reported, "A cuirassier made a good attack at me, which I caught on my sword, and gave him a back-hander, on which we parted, as I was, saving your presence, running away then, being alone amongst a whole lot of them, though they were so anxious about their own bacon, none but he thought of me." (The captain prudently added, "These anecdotes are only for private friends.") Shakespear, an officer in the same regiment, saw the lancers charge down the hill and, wielding their deadly weapons, force a way for themselves through the ranks of the British cavalry before being forced to fall back by sheer weight of numbers; he later remembered "seeing one of the lancers giving two or three pulls to get his lance out of one of our dragoons he had struck." Vivian himself found his way barred by a cuirassier who had no desire at all to surrender, and the general, with his right arm in a sling, still recovering from a wound received the previous year, was forced to swing his saber with his left hand. With great difficulty, Vivian managed to fend off his attacker until his German orderly arrived and "cut the fellow off his horse." Major Poten of the First KGL Hussars, who had lost his right arm in Spain, had the good luck to encounter an adversary who was a better sport. Despite his disability, the major was riding with his regiment, accompanied by an escort of two noncommissioned officers. In the confusion he got separated from them, and a cuirassier came galloping toward him with lifted saber. Poten showed his empty sleeve, whereupon the cuirassier stopped his whirling arm in midswing, transformed the saber-stroke into a salute, and spurred his horse away.
Pressed hard by Vivian's Hussars and by the other British and Netherlands cavalry brigades following on their heels, some of Napoleon's cavalry lost no time in abandoning the field; at one point, the pursuers found themselves literally riding amid cuirasses, which the cuirassiers had thrown away for the sake of a quicker escape. On the whole, however, the French cavalry retired in a comparatively ordered fashion. Colonel Hew Halkett later recalled, not without amusement, "[The retreating enemy] threatened us in a most
vociferous
manner." Captain Barton of the Twelfth Light Dragoons, at the head of his regiment, rode quite close to the Guard's
grenadiers a cheval,
who, according to Barton, were retreating in "a dense close column, and appeared to take but little notice of our advance, when opposite their flank they fired a few pistol or carbine shots. We were some distance in front of our Brigade, and being too weak to make an impression [on them], they literally walked from the field in a most majestic manner.
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A
mid the growing flood of fugitives, whom the retreat of the cavalry threatened to leave defenseless and exposed to the victors' pursuit, the only effective resistance was mounted by the four Guard infantry battalions, three Old Guard and one Middle Guard, which had constituted the French second line of attack. They were little more than two thousand muskets strong and therefore could have no conceivable hope of standing fast against the flood that was rushing toward them; but retiring step by step, without losing cohesion, and leaving behind them an unbroken trail of dead and wounded, they covered the retreat of the French army south along the main road to Charleroi. Their action was responsible for, among other things, the fact that the army managed to keep all its colors; incredibly, not a single Eagle was lost in the course of the retreat. The Prussian officers who were at that moment capturing Plancenoit were amazed to hear the French shouting not
"Sauve qui peut!"
but
"Sauvons nos
aigles!"
even though they were withdrawing so hastily as to give very much the impression of a rout. On that June evening, the squares of the Old Guard wrote the last chapter in the Napoleonic epic and entered directly into legend.
The British cavalry tried repeatedly to break up the squares but discovered to its cost that their defensive capacity remained undiminished. When Major Howard of the Tenth Hussars received the order to charge a square, he asked the opinion of a colleague, who told him that it would be better to await the arrival of the infantry, because the square looked too solid to charge. Since he had been given an order to charge, the perplexed Howard declared, disobeying it seemed "a ticklish thing," and so he led his squadron forward; but another acquaintance of his, who nodded to him as he passed, observed that he "looked as if his time had come." As foreseen, the square stood fast, and the Hussars dispersed before coming into contact with it. Major Howard, galloping ahead of everybody else, took a ball in the face and fell from his horse right in front of the enemy bayonets; a French soldier stepped out from the ranks and bashed in the major's skull with the butt of his musket.
In other cases, attacks against the Guard squares miscarried before they began. Colonel Muter of the Inniskillings, with one arm in a sling and his helmet disfigured by saber blows, was in command of what was left of the Union Brigade when a young staff officer, the Honorable George Dawson, brother of the disgraced Lord Portarlington, came hurrying up, bearing orders for Muter and his men to join in the charge. Dawson later confessed that he would never forget the looks on their faces when he communicated these orders to them. The remaining dragoons, many of them battered and wounded, wearily hauled themselves back into their saddles and advanced at a walk until they came within musket range of a French square; one of the first balls struck Dawson in the knee and knocked him off his horse. "I think you ha' it nu', sir!" Colonel Muter growled in his broad Scots dialect, and that was the end of the charge.
In general, the accounts left by British officers leave the impression that the Allied pursuers learned almost immediately to stay away from the Guard squares, which were retiring in relatively good order, and turned instead to harrying the more exhausted line infantry units. Under the menace of cavalry, these also tried to form square, but they tended to disband, throw down their weapons, and surrender. Duperier, whose recollections are at least as colorful as his orthography, led his squadrons against "a regiment of infantry of the franch, nothing but Vive le Roy' but it was too late beside our men do not understand franch, so they cut a way all through till we came to the body of reserve when we was saluted with a voly at the length of two sords." At this point, the Hussars turned their horses and started chasing down runaways again; they offered much more
fun
(Duperier's word) and less resistance than the squares of the Imperial Guard.
Wherever the cavalry came, entire units threw down their weapons and clung to one another to avoid being trampled or flung themselves to the ground, out of reach of the sabers, and stayed there until someone took them prisoner. Colonel Murray, commander of the Eighteenth Hussars, described with some amazement the multitudes of surrendering French soldiers: "The sneaking prisoners we had taken holloaed, Vive le roi.' . . . On charging, not only did the infantry throw themselves down, but the cavalry also from off their horses, all roaring
'pardon,'
many of them on their knees." At this point, the fugitives were practically defenseless, and it was solely up to their pursuers whether to take them prisoner or to slaughter them. Murray found himself galloping into the midst of a crowd of French troops, one of whom aimed a bayonet thrust at him; his orderly "was compelled to cut down five or six in rapid succession for the security of his master." When Vandeleur's cavalrymen caught up with General Durutte, who had been cut off from his men in the French flight from Papelotte, one saber blow smashed his right hand, and another split his face open, leaving him disfigured and blind in one eye.
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Captain Tomkinson of the Sixteenth Light Dragoons also recalled "many of their infantry immediately throwing down their arms and crowding together for safety" when he and his men reached them; he saw others "lying together for safety, they were some yards in height, calling out, from the injury of one pressing upon another, and from the horses stamping upon them (on their legs)." Tomkinson pursued a man who had thrown away his musket, picked it up again, and fired it at the dragoons; the man flung himself atop his stacked comrades, and Tomkinson's horse, called "Cyclops" because it had but one eye, inadvertently trampled the pile, provoking howls of pain. Plunging among that terrorized and only partially disarmed throng, however, was a dangerous undertaking; at least one officer of the Sixteenth died in the midst of panic-stricken French troops. Eventually, the dragoons somehow managed to surround them and persuade them to surrender. Another officer, barely nineteen years old, disappeared in the pursuit and was never found again. Tomkinson concluded that the French had probably killed him, his body had lain hidden in a grain field, and the next day the peasants had stripped the corpse, rendering it unrecognizable.
The four Guard squares were able to hold out until nightfall, after which they dissolved into the crowd of fugitives filling the road to France; however, even they left a certain number of prisoners in the hands of their pursuers. A Hanoverian officer, Lieutenant Richers, wrote a graphic account of the attack of his militia battalion, commanded by Hew Halkett, which harried the squares, accelerating their retreat and, in some cases, their disintegration: "The battalion . . . advanced in silence, tense from the large number of both enemy and friendly cannon balls flying over our heads. . . . Once we had gone through the hollow and climbed the ridge on the other side, we saw an enemy column about 300 or 400 paces from us. It was either a regiment or battalion of the Old Guard. . . . Our skirmishers deployed against the Old Guard skirmishers and a firefight began. We were advancing, but the enemy stood where he was. The centre of our skirmish chain inadvertently closed together to allow the following column to pass as it was clear we were only a few moments away from a bayonet charge. Once the advancing battalion reached the skirmish line, its pace accelerated. We moved up, the enemy skirmishers disappeared and the front ranks of the columns fired a volley at us." French fire, even coming from so unfavorable a formation as a square, was always a fearful thing, especially for a unit composed of recruits; "I believe we all hesitated and stood where we were," Richers noted.
Colonel Halkett, who during the course of this brief combat had three horses killed under him, saved the situation by cheering his men and urging them on; the French lost heart when they saw the enemy advancing upon them with leveled bayonets. Richers continued: "They stood for a moment longer, then wavered, turned around and retired a short distance in relatively good order. Their formation then started to break up and finally they fled in total disorder. It seemed as if we were fresher than the tired-out Old Guard because we got closer and closer to them, taking many prisoners from those who could run no further. The wild chase continued forwards towards the enemy. Both sides fired only as much as they could when running. The enemy officers did attempt to rally their men, waving their swords and shouting 'en avant!' However, that was in vain for when an officer managed to gather a few men around him, our pursuit chased them away again."
The most famous of the prisoners captured on this occasion was General Cambronne, commander of the 2/1 st Chasseurs, the same man who had disembarked near Antibes a little more than three months earlier at the head of the thousand grenadiers accompanying the emperor on his flight from Elba. According to the account that appeared in a Paris newspaper a few days after the battle, Cambronne was the French commander who declared, "The Old Guard dies, but it does not surrender!" when summoned to lay down his arms. Much more probably, as his troops were beginning to disband, the exclamation he uttered was
"Merde!"
The general and two of his aides had been riding back and forth outside their square, encouraging the troops; noticing this, Colonel Hew Halkett had called on him to surrender, thereby occasioning his gracious reply. The Hanoverian skirmishers quickly noticed the general's exposure and started firing at the three French officers. Soon Cambronne's horse was hit and fell, dragging down his rider. "I ordered the sharpshooters to dash on," Halkett wrote, "and I made a gallop for the General. When about cutting him down he called out he would surrender, upon which he preceded me to the rear, but I had not gone many paces before my horse got a shot through the body and fell to the ground. In a few seconds I got him on his legs again, and found my friend, Cambronne, had taken French leave in the direction from where he came. I instantly overtook him, laid hold of him by the aiguillette, and brought him in safety and gave him in charge to a sergeant to deliver to the Duke." The colonel did not yet know who his prisoner was and asked him his name in the midst of a crowd of German officers, who had gathered around out of curiosity. The prisoner was wounded, and his face was covered with blood; he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said,
"fe suis le general Cambronne."