An Infamous Army (Alastair-Audley Tetralogy 4)

Those of the batteries on the Allied front which were still in action met the advance with a fire which threw the leading ranks into considerable disorder. Many of the British batteries, however, were useless. Some had been abandoned owing to the lack of ammunition; several guns stood with muzzles bent down, or touch-holes melted from the excessive heat; and more than one troop, its gunners either killed or too exhausted to run the guns up after each recoil, had its guns in a confused heap, the trails crossing each other almost on top of the limbers and the ammunition wagons. Ross’s, Sinclair’s, and Sandham’s were all silent, Lloyd’s battery was still firing from in front of Halkett’s brigade; so was Napier, commanding Bolton’s, in front of Maitland; and a Dutch battery of eight guns, belonging to Detmer’s brigade, brought up by Chassé in second line, had been sent forward to a position immediately to the east of the Brunswick squares, and was pouring in a rapid and well-directed fire upon the Grenadiers and the men on Donzelot’s left flank.

As the Brunswickers and Halkett’s men momentarily repulsed the two leading columns, which, on their march over the uneven ground, had become merged into one unwieldy mass, the Grenadiers and the Chasseurs on the French left advanced up the slope to where Maitland’s Guards lay silently awaiting them. The drummers were beating the pas de charge, shouts of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and ‘En avant à la baïonette!’ filled the air. The Duke, who had galloped down the line from his position by the Brunswick troops, was standing with Maitland on the left flank of the brigade, not far from General Adam, whose brigade lay to the right of the Guards. Adam had ridden up to watch the advance, and the Duke, observing through his glass the French falling back before Halkett’s men exclaimed: ‘By God, Adam, I believe we shall beat them yet!’

At ninety paces, the brass 8-pounders between the advancing battalions opened fire upon Maitland’s brigade. They were answered by Krahmer de Bichin’s Dutch battery, but though the grape shot tore through the ranks of the Guards the Duke withheld the order to open musketry fire. Not a man in the British line was visible to the advancing columns until they halted twenty paces from the crest to deploy.

‘Now, Maitland! Now’s your time!’ the Duke said at last, and called out in his deep, ringing voice: ‘Stand up, Guards!’

The Guards leaped to their feet. The crest, which had seemed deserted, was suddenly alive with men, scarlet coats standing in line four-deep, with muskets at the present. Almost at the point of crossing bayonets they fired volley after volley into the Grenadiers. The Grenadiers, in column, had only two hundred muskets able to fire against the fifteen hundred of Halkett’s and Maitland’s brigades, deployed in line before them. They tried to deploy, but were thrown into confusion by a fire no infantry could withstand.

On Maitland’s left, General Chassé had brought up Detmer’s brigade of Dutch-Belgians in perfect order. When the word to charge was given, and the sound of the three British cheers was heard as the Guards surged forward, the Dutch came up at the double, and, with a roar of ‘Oranje boven!’ drove the French from the crest in their front.

The Guards, scattering the Grenadiers before them, advanced until their flank was threatened by the second attacking column of Chasseurs. The recall was sounded, and the order given to face-about and retire. In the din of clashing arms, crackling musketry, groans, cheers, and trumpet calls, the order was misunderstood. As the Guards regained the crest, an alarm of cavalry was raised. Someone shrieked: ‘Square, square, form square!’ and the two battalions, trying to obey the order, became intermingled. A dangerous confusion seemed about to spread panic through the ranks, but it was checked in a very few moments. The order to ‘Halt!—Front!—Form up!’ rang out; the Guards obeyed as one man, formed again four-deep, and told off in companies of forty.

In the immediate rear of Maitland’s and Halkett’s brigades, D’Aubremé’s Dutch-Belgians, formed in three squares, appalled by the slaughter in their front,

began to retreat precipitately upon Vandeleur’s squadrons. The dragoons closed their ranks until their horses stood shoulder to shoulder; Vandeleur galloped forward to try to stem the rout; and an aide-de-camp went flying to the Duke on a foaming horse, gasping out that the Dutch would not stand, and could not be held.

‘That’s all right,’ answered his lordship coolly. ‘Tell them the French are retiring!’

Meanwhile, to the right, where Adam’s brigade held the ground above Hougoumont, Sir John Colborne, without waiting for orders, had acted on his own brilliant judgment. As the columns advanced upon Maitland, he moved the 52nd Regiment down to the north-east angle of Hougoumont, and right-shouldered it forward, until it stood in line four-deep parallel to the left flank of the second column of Chasseurs.

Adam, seeing this deliberate movement, galloped up, calling out: ‘Colborne! Colborne! What are you meaning to do?’

‘To make that column feel our fire,’ replied Sir John laconically.

Adam took one look at the Chasseurs, another at the purposeful face beside him, and said: ‘Move on, then! The 71st shall follow you,’ and rode off to bring up the Highlanders.

The Chasseur column, advancing steadily, was met by a frontal fire of over eighteen hundred muskets from the 95th Rifles and the 71st Highlanders, and as it staggered, the Fighting 52nd, the men in third and fourth line loading and passing muskets forward to the first two lines, riddled its flank. It broke, and fell into hideous disorder, almost decimated by a fire it could not, from its clumsy formation, return. A cry of horror arose, taken up by battalion after battalion down the French lines: ‘La Guarde recule!’

Before the column could deploy, Sir John Colborne swept forward in a charge that carried all before it. The officer carrying the Colour was killed, and a hundred and fifty men on the right wing, but the advance was maintained, right across the ground in front of the Allied line, the Imperial Guard being driven towards the chaussée in inextricable confusion. The 2nd and 3rd battalions of the Rifles, with the 71st Highlanders, followed the 52nd in support; the Imperial Guard, helpless under the musketry fire, cast into terrible disorder through their inability to deploy, lost all semblance of formation, and retreated pêle-mêle to the chaussée, till the ground in front of the Allied position was one seething mass of struggling, fighting, fleeing infantry.

Hew Halkett brought up his Hanoverians into the interval between Hougoumont and the hollow road; the 52nd advanced across the uneven plain until checked by encountering some squadrons of Dörnberg’s 23rd Light Dragoons, whom, in the dusk, they mistook for French cavalry and fired upon.

The Duke, who had watched the advance from the high ground beside Maitland, galloped up to the rear of the 52nd, where Sir John, having ordered his adjutant to stop the firing, was exchanging his wounded horse for a fresh one.

‘It is our own cavalry which has caused this firing!’ Colborne told him.

‘Never mind! Go on, Colborne, go on!’ replied the Duke, and galloped back to the crest of the position, and stood there, silhouetted against the glowing sky on his hollow-backed charger. He raised his cocked hat high in the air, and swept it forward, towards the enemy’s position, in the long-looked-for signal for a General Advance. A cheer broke out on the right, as the Guards charged down the slope. The crippled forces east of the chaussée, away down to their left, heard it growing louder as it swelled all along the line towards them, took it up by instinct, and charged forward out of the intolerable smoke surrounding them, on to a plain strewn with dead and dying, lit by the last rays of a red sun, and covered with men flying in confusion towards the ridge of La Belle Alliance.

Cries of: ‘Nous sommes trahis!’ mingled with the dismayed shouts of ‘La Garde recule!’ Donzelot’s division was carried away in the rush of Grenadiers and Chasseurs; the retreat had become a rout. Ney, on foot, one epaulette torn off, his hat gone, a broken sword in his hand, was fighting like a madman, crying: ‘Come and see how a Marshal of France dies!’ and, to D’Erlon, borne towards him in the press: ‘If we get out of this alive, D’Erlon, we shall both be hanged!’

Far in advance of the charging Allied line, Colborne, having crossed the ground between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, had reached the chaussée, and passed it, left-shouldering his regiment forward to ascend the slope towards La Belle Alliance.

To the right, Vivian had advanced his brigade, placing himself at the head of the 18th Hussars. ‘Eighteenth! You will, I know, follow me!’ he said, and was answered by one of his sergeant-majors: ‘Ay, General! to hell, if you’ll lead us!’

Taking up his position on the flank of the leading half-squadron, holding his reins in his injured right hand, which, though it seemed reposed in a sling, was just capable of grasping them, he led the whole brigade forward at the trot. As the hussars cleared the front on Maitland’s right, the Guards and Vandeleur’s light dragoons cheered them on, and they charged down on to the plain, sweeping the French up in their advance past the eastern hedge of Hougoumont towards the chaussée at La Belle Alliance.

Through the dense smoke laying over the ground the Duke galloped down the line. When the Riflemen saw him, they sent up a cheer, but he called out: ‘No cheering, my lads, but forward and complete your victory!’ and rode on, through the smother, out into the sea of dead, to where Adam’s brigade was halted on the ridge of La Belle Alliance, a little way from where some French battalions had managed to re-form.

The Duke, learning from Adam that the brigade had been halted for the purpose of closing the files in, scrutinised the French battalions closely for a moment, and then said decidedly: ‘They won’t stand: better attack them!’

Baron Müffling, looking along the line from his position on the left flank, saw the General Advance through the lifting smoke. Kielmansegg’s, Ompteda’s and Pack’s shattered brigades remained where they stood all day, but everywhere else the regiments charged forward, leaving behind them an unbroken red line of their own dead, marking the position where, for over eight hours of cannonading, of cavalry charges, and of massed infantry attacks the British and German troops had held their ground.

From Papelotte to Hougoumont the hillocky plain in front was covered with dead and wounded. Near the riddled walls of La Haye Sainte the cuirassiers lay in mounds of men and horses. The corn which had waved shoulder-high in the morning was everywhere trodden down into clay. On the rising ground of La Belle Alliance the Old Guard was making its last stand, fighting off the fugitives, who, trying to find shelter in its squares, threatened to overwhelm them. These three squares, with one formed by Reille, south of Hougoumont, were the only French troops still standing firm in the middle of the rout. With the cessation of artillery fire by the hollow road the smoke was clearing away, but over the ruins of Hougoumont it still rose in a slow, black column. Those of the batteries which had been able to follow the advance were firing into the mass of French on the southern ridge; musketry crackled as the Old Guard, with Napoleon and his staff in the middle of their squares, retreated step by step, fighting a heroic rearguard action against Adam’s brigade and Hew Halkett’s Hanoverians. Where Vivian, with Vandeleur in support, was sweeping the ground east and south of Hougoumont, fierce cavalry skirmishing was in progress, and the Middle Guard was trying to re-form its squares to hold the hussars at bay.

Müffling, detaching a battery from Ziethen’s Corps, led it at a gallop to the centre of the Allied position. He met the Duke by La Haye Sainte. His lordship called triumphantly to him from a distance: ‘Well! You see Macdonnell has held Hougoumont!’

Müffling, who found himself unable to think of what the Guards at Hougoumont must have endured without a lump’s coming into his throat, knew the Duke well enough to realise that his brief sentence was his lordship’s way of expressing his admiration, and nodded.