‘Perhaps Ney’s gone mad,’ suggested Canning hopefully. ‘What the devil has he done with his infantry columns?’
‘I fancy the Prussians must be at something on the left,’ said the Duke, overhearing this interchange.
‘I shall believe in the Prussians when I see them,’ remarked Canning to Colonel Audley.
There was no opportunity for further speculation. Orders were sent to the brigade to prepare to withstand cavalry attacks; aides-de-camp dashed off through the hail of shot; and the troops lying on the ground beside their arms were quickly formed into two lines of square, placed chequer-wise behind the crest of the position. In support, all the available cavalry was mustered; the two British heavy brigades, now reduced to a few squadrons, under the command of Lord Edward Somerset; Trip’s carabiniers; seven squadrons of Van Merlen’s light cavalry; a regiment of Brunswick Hussars; Colonel Arendtschildt’s brigade of the legion; and a part of Dörnberg’s and Grant’s brigades. A demonstration by some French lancers by the Nivelles road had succeeded in drawing off two of Grant’s regiments and one of Dörnberg’s, so that of Grant’s brigade only the 7th Hussars, who had suffered great loss at Genappe, on the previous day, were left to meet the attack of French cavalry; and of Dörnberg’s only the 1st and 2nd Light Dragoons of the legion. In all, it was a meagre force to throw against the forty-three squadrons assembling between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, and the want of the two British brigades guarding the left flank of the line until the Prussians should arrive to relieve them began to be acutely felt.
The Brunswickers, who had been brought up to fill the gap on Maitland’s right, were raw troops, and the Duke wisely strengthened them by sending for a regiment from Colonel Mitchell’s brigade, posted west of the Nivelles road, and stationing it between their two squares. Light troops were ordered to fall back upon the squares immediately in their rear, irrespective of nation or brigade; the artillery was instructed to keep up a steady fire upon the advancing cavalry until the last possible moment, and then to run for safety to the infantry squares; guns were double-loaded with shot and canister; and the squares formed four deep, the front ranks kneeling, so that each square presented four faces bristling with bayonets.
The French artillery fire ceased as the squadrons began to advance, at a slow trot. Owing to the Duke’s having withdrawn his right centre slightly down the reverse slope of the position to protect it from the cannonading, the French, advancing to the crest, saw no infantry opposing them. They were met by a devastating fire of artillery, but though their front ranks were disordered by the gaps torn in the lines, they pushed on intrepidly. As the leading squadrons breasted the rise, the trumpets sounded the Charge, and the cuirassiers, cheering, and shouting ‘En avant!’ spurred forward, and saw ahead of them, not an army in retreat, as they had been led to suppose, but motionless squares, awaiting their charge in grim British silence.
The British gunners, remaining at their posts until almost surrounded by the surge of horsemen, were firing at point-blank range. As the cuirassiers charged up to the batteries, the terrible case shot brought them down in tangled heaps of men and horses together. When the muzzles of their guns almost touched the leading squadrons, the artillery men, some detaching the wheels from their guns and bowling them along with them, rushed to the nearest squares and flung themselves down under the bayonets.
In a cacophony of shouts, trumpets calls, and the discharge of carbines, the cuirassiers charged down upon the silent squares. When they came to within thirty paces, the order to fire upon them was given, and a storm of bullets rattled against the steel breastplates, for all the world like hailstones on a glass roof. Those in the rear ranks of the squares were employed in reloading the muskets, and the repeated volleys caused the advancing columns to split, and to swerve off to right and left, only to receive a still more devastating flank of fire from the sides of the squares. In a very few moments all order was lost, the cuirassiers jostling one another in the spaces between the squares, some riding against the red walls to discharge their carbines and pistols into the set faces upturned behind the gleaming chevaux de frise of bayonets; other trotting round and round in an attempt to find a weak spot to break through.
No sooner had the cuirassiers passed the first line of squares then the artillerymen dashed back to their guns, to meet with renewed fire the second columns of lancers and chasseurs, ascending the southern slope in support of the cuirassiers. The same tactics were repeated, with the same results. The squadrons, already thrown in to some disorder by the charges of case shot exploding among them, obliqued before the frontal fire of the squares. Soon the whole plateau was covered with horsemen: lancers, chasseurs and cuirassiers, mixed in inextricable confusion, spreading right up to the second line of squares. Man after man fell in the British ranks, but the gaps were always filled, and the squares remained unbroken. Skirmishers, taking cover behind the carcasses of dead horses, kept up a steady fire on the congested mass of the enemy. Wounded and dead sprawled beneath the hooves; and unhorsed cuirassiers cast off their encumbering breastplates to struggle back through the press to the safety of their own lines. When the confusion was at its height, the Allied cavalry charged up from the rear and drove the French from the plateau.
They retired, leaving the ground littered with horses, men, piles of cuirasses, and accoutrements; but no sooner had the last of them disappeared over the crest than the punishing cannonade burst forth again, while Ney re-formed his muddled squadrons in the valley.
The attack, though it had not broken the squares, had considerably weakened them. The Duke, riding down the line, heartening the troops with the sight of his well-known figure and the sound of his loud, cheerful voice, sent aides-de-camp galloping off to bring up Clinton’s division, in reserve on the west of the Nivelles road.
This consisted of General Adam’s British Light Brigade, comprising the 1st battalion of Sir John Colborne’s Fighting 52nd, the 71st Highland Regiment, and two battalions of the 95th Rifles; Colonel Du Plat’s brigade of the legion; and Hew Halkett’s Hanoverian Landwehr battalions.
Colonel Audley was one of those sent on this
errand, and galloping through the hail of shot, reached the comparative quiet of the ground west of the Nivelles road, to find Lord Hill awaiting the expected instructions to send reinforcements from his corps into the front line. The Colonel, parched with thirst, coughing from the smoke of the shells, his wounded thigh throbbing, and his horse blown, sketched a salute, and thrust the Duke’s message into his hand.
‘Having a hot time of it in the centre, aren’t you?’ said Hill. He cast a glance at the Colonel’s face, and added in his kindly way. ‘You look as though a drink would do you good. Hurt?’
‘No sir!’ gasped the Colonel, trying to get the smoke out of his lungs. ‘But we must have reinforcements before they come on again!’
‘Oh yes! you shall have them!’ Hill nodded to his younger brother and aide-de-camp. ‘Give Audley some of that wine of yours, Clement.’
Audley, gratefully accepting a long-necked bottle, drank deeply, and sat recovering his breath while Lord Hill issued his instructions. It was his task to lead Adam’s brigade to a strategic but dangerous position between the north-east angle of Hougoumont and the point on the higher ground behind the hollow road where the Brunswick troops stood huddled in two squares, with one British between. The boys, for they were little more, in their sombre uniforms and death’s-head badges, were shaking, kept together only by the exertions of their officers, and the moral support afforded by the sight of the seasoned British regiment separating their squares.
Hew Halkett was brought up in support of the Brunswickers on Maitland’s right; Du Plat was formed on the slope behind Hougoumont; and Adam’s brigade, forming line four deep, came up to fill the interval between the Brunswickers and Hougoumont. The brigade was met by the Duke in person, who pointed to the cloud of skirmishers assailing the left flank of the Guards defending the orchard, and briefly ordered them to: ‘Drive those fellows away!’
The artillery fire, which was mowing the ranks down, ceased, and the men, lying on the ground, were again ordered to form squares. The cavalry came riding over the crest as before, but this time it was seen that a considerable portion of their force was kept in compact order, and took no part in the attempt to break through the infantry squares. These horsemen were evidently formed to attack the Allied cavalry, but no sooner had the previous confusion of squadrons splitting and obliquing to right and left been repeated than the Allied cavalry, not waiting to be attacked, advanced to meet them and again drove them over the crest and down the slope.
The same tactics were repeated time after time, but with the same lack of success. The men forming the squares grew to welcome the cavalry attacks as a relief from the terrible cannonading that filled the intervals between them.
The Duke, who seemed to be everywhere at once, generally riding far ahead of the cortège that still galloped devotedly after him, was pale and abstracted, but gave no other sign of anxiety than the frequent sliding in and out of its socket of his telescope. If he saw a square wavering, he threw himself into it, regardless of all entreaties not to risk his life, and rallied it by the very fact of his presence.
‘Never mind! We’ll win this battle yet!’ he said, and his men believed him, and breathed more freely when they caught a glimpse of that low cocked hat and the cold eyes and bony nose beneath it. They did not love him, for he did not love them, but there was not a man serving under him who had not complete confidence in him.
‘Hard pounding, this, gentlemen,’ he said, when the cannonade was at its fiercest. ‘Let’s see who will pound the longest.’
When the foreign diplomats remonstrated with him, he said bluntly: ‘My Army and I know each other exactly, gentlemen. The men will do for me what they will do for no one else.’
Lord Uxbridge led two squadrons of the Household Brigade against a large body of cavalry advancing to attack the squares, and although he could not drive it back, he managed to hold it in check. Major Lloyd fell, mortally wounded, beside his battery. Sometimes the cuirassiers succeeded in cutting men off from the angles of the squares, but before they could escape to the rear, staff officers galloped after them and got them back to their positions. At times, the squares, growing smaller as the men fell in them, were lost to sight in the sea of horsemen all round them.
Between four and five o’clock, convinced at last that no flanking attack was contemplated on his right, the Duke sent to order Baron Chassé up from Braine-l’Alleud.
Staff officers were looking anxious; artillerymen, seeing little but masses of enemy cavalry swarming all over the position, waited in momentary expectation of receiving the order to retreat. The heat on the plateau was fast becoming unbearable. Reserves brought up from the rear felt themselves to be marching into a gigantic oven, and young soldiers, hearing for the first time the peculiar hum that filled the air, stared about them fearfully through the smoke, flinching as the shots hissed pass their heads, and asked nervously: ‘What makes that humming noise like bees?’
Colonel Audley, riding back from an errand to the right wing, had his second horse killed under him close to a troop of horse artillery, drawn up in the interval between two Brunswick squares, in a slight hollow below the brow of the position, north of Hougoumont. He sprang clear, but heard a voice call out: ‘Hi! Don’t mask my guns! Anything I can do for you, sir?’
‘You can give me a horse!’ replied the Colonel, trying to recover his breath. He looked into a lean, humorous face, shaded by the jut of a black, crested helmet, and asked: ‘Who are you?’