The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

by Edward Farr; E. H. Nolan

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO.

Napoleon saw the storm arising, and prepared to ward off its fury. France became an immense camp. Armies were dispatched towards Belgium, Lorraine, Franche Comte, the Alps, and the Pyrenees. The head-quarters of the grand army were at Laon, from whence communications were preserved with Valenciennes, Mauberge, Lisle, and the armies assembled on the Moselle. Napoleon joined that section of the army destined to enter Belgium, his design being to “measure himself with Wellington.” The army raised for this project consisted of about 125,000 men and three hundred and fifty pieces of cannon. Against this force Wellington could only oppose 76,000 men, not one half of which were British, and but some eighty-four pieces of cannon. The duke’s headquarters were at Brussels; and on his left, in and around Namur, lay Marshal Blucher, with about 80,000 men and two hundred cannon. Napoleon commenced operations by crossing the Sombre and taking Charleroi, which was garrisoned by Prussians. This accomplished, Napoleon hastened towards Brussels, resolving to strike a signal blow against the British. The Duke of Wellington was at a ball when intelligence arrived of this movement; and he gave orders for every man to repair to his post. At first the English took up their position at Quatre Bras; but tidings having arrived that Napoleon had again defeated the Prussians at Ligny, the Duke fell back with his army to the position of Waterloo. It was at the dawn of the 18th of June that Napoleon discerned the British on the heights of Waterloo; and in the exuberance of his joy he exclaimed, “Ah! I have these English!” The position taken up by the duke was in front of the village of Waterloo, and crossed the high roads from Charleroi and Nivelles. It had its right thrown back to a ravine near Merke-Braine, and its left extended to a height above the hamlet of Ter la Haye; in front of the right centre the troops occupied the house and gardens of Hougomont, which covered the return of that flank; and in front of the left centre they occupied the farm of La Haye Sainte. By his left the duke communicated with Blucher at Havre, who promised to support him with one or more corps if necessary. In the rear of the British centre was the farm of Monte St. Jean, and a little further behind a village of the same name. While stationed at Quatre Bras a partial engagement had taken place between the two armies—Ney commanding the French—and Wellington had lost 2.380 in wounded, and three hundred and fifty in killed: his force united in the position at Waterloo, therefore, was not 73,000 men, 21,000 of whom were Belgian and Nassau troops, mostly of an inferior quality. Napoleon had lost many in his conflicts with the Prussians at Charleroi and Ligny, and with the British at Quatre Bras. He had also despatched 32,000 men, under Grouchy, to follow the Prussians, and to prevent their joining the English, so that his army was reduced to about 78,000 men when the battle of Waterloo commenced. But his troops were veterans almost to a man, and there were at least 100,000 soldiers of the same quality behind them in France. He collected his army on a range of heights in front of the British position, and not above a mile from it. His right was in advance of Planchenois, and his left rested on the Genappe road, while his rear was skirted by thick woods. On the morning of the 18th, when Napoleon mounted his horse to survey Wellington’s position, he could see but few troops, and he was induced to fancy that the British general had made a retreat. “Wellington never exhibits his troops,” said General Foy; “but if he is yonder, I must warn your majesty that the English infantry in close fighting are very demons.” Soult added his warning to that of Foy; but, nevertheless, Napoleon commenced the battle confident of victory. It was shortly after ten o’clock on the Sabbath-day—a day sacred to devotion and rest—that a stir was observed along the French lines, and especially near the farm of Rossome, where Napoleon stood with his celebrated old guard. The post of Hougoumont, on the right of Wellington’s centre, was first attacked, which post was occupied by General Byng’s brigade of guards: but the attack was vain; the post was maintained, notwithstanding the desperate and repeated efforts of large bodies of the enemy to obtain possession. This first attack was accompanied by a heavy cannonade on the whole line of the British; which was answered from Wellington’s cannon, and which committed a fearful havoc among the French columns, which successively attacked the post of Hougoumont. The object of Wellington was to maintain his positions till the arrival of some Prussian corps; and the object of Napoleon was to crush him before Blucher could send a single battalion to his support. Hence it was that he repeated his attacks with heavy columns of infantry, with a numerous and brilliant cavalry, and with his formidable artillery. But from every charge his columns returned shattered and thinned. Scarcely a gleam of success dawned upon Napoleon during the whole day. In one of their attacks, indeed, the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte was carried by the French; but it was not till the German legion which defended it had perished to a man. Thus affairs stood when Napoleon ordered his cavalry to charge the British infantry in squadrons and in masses—to charge home, and to find a passage through their glittering bayonets. Their efforts were determined, but they all proved fruitless; the British infantry formed in squares, and the best of his horsemen bit the dust. Still Napoleon’s cry was “Forward!” thus goading them on to destruction. Their overthrow was hastened by a charge of British cavalry, which had hitherto been very little more than a spectator of the battle. Seizing the moment favourable for the charge, Wellington called up Lord Ernest Somerset’s brigade of heavy cavalry, consisting of the life-guards, the royal horse-guards, and the first dragoon-guards, and directed them to charge the already crippled cavalry of Napoleon. These regiments proved irresistible; horses and men fell on every hand; and the French cuirassiers, whose breastplates had glittered in so many battles and victories, were completely destroyed. When Lord Ernest Somerset’s brigade returned from their charge, they brought with them about two thousand prisoners, and an imperial eagle. By this time, about seven o’clock in the evening, every part of the French army, except the guards, who had been kept as a reserve had been engaged, repulsed, and beaten. The British loss in killed and wounded had also been immense; but they had not lost a single position, and they were yet full of heart and confidence in their leader. It was evident, indeed, that even if no Prussians should arrive Napoleon would be defeated. At this critical moment, however, a numerous body of men was seen in the distance; and anxiety was depicted in the faces of both Napoleon and Wellington. Napoleon hoped it might be Grouchy, and Wellington hoped it might be Blucher. Onwards the moving mass came, and it proved to be the Prussians under Blucher: he had left a body of men to confront Grouchy, and hastened to support Wellington, As soon as the French generals discovered who the new comers were, they advised Napoleon to retreat; but although his defeat was now morally certain, his cry was still, “Forward!” Calling forward his guard, he bade them make a desperate effort on the British left centre, near the farm of La Haye Sainte. This guard advanced in two massy columns, leaving four battalions of the old guard in reserve, near to the spot where Napoleon sat on his horse, rigid as a statue, watching their motions. They moved on resolutely under a destructive fire from the British position; and when within fifty yards from the British line they attempted to deploy. The close fire upon them, however, was too terrible to admit of this movement; their flanks were enclosed by some of our guards; they got mixed together in a mass; and in that mass they were broken and slaughtered, or compelled to hasten down the hill in irretrievable confusion. The grand army of Napoleon never again stood to face its enemies; it was in fact destroyed, for “all the rest of the work was headlong, unresisted pursuit, slaughter of fugitives who had entirely lost their military formation, and capture of prisoners, artillery, and spoils.” As the imperial guards reeled from the British position, and just as Blucher joined in person with a corps of his army to the left of the British line, Wellington moved forward his whole line of infantry, supported by the cavalry and artillery, and swept all before him. At every point the attack succeeded. The French fled in the utmost confusion; Napoleon himself setting them the example; and one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon, with all their ammunition, fell into the hands of the conquerors. Wellington and Marshal Blucher met at a farm-house, called Maison Rouge; and here the duke gave orders for his troops to halt, and left the task of pursuit to the Prussians. Blucher declared that he would follow up the French with his last horse and his last man; and he instantly started off with two Prussian corps in pursuit of them. The fugitives dispersed all over the country; but the Prussians did fearful execution upon them, knocking them down in heaps like cattle: at one place eight hundred of them were thus dispatched. Many of the French ran across fields and into woods, where numbers were afterwards found dead or grievously wounded. As for the high-road it resembled the seashore after some fearful shipwreck—cannon, caissons, carriages, baggage, arms, and wreck of every kind were picked up by the pursuers. One of the first hauls, indeed, which Blucher made, was sixty pieces of cannon belonging to the imperial guard; and with these were captured carriages, baggage, &c., belonging to Napoleon himself. The retreat, in a word, was most disastrous; the French did not cease flying until they had passed all their frontier fortresses; and then they dispersed all over the country, selling their arms and their horses, and running to their homes. In the battle and in the retreat the French had lost thirty thousand men in killed and wounded; and, what was more fatal to them, by this event their spirits were broken, and they could not again take the field. The loss on the part of the allies was also immense; the British and the Hanoverians alone having 2,432 killed, and 9,528 wounded, in which number there were more than six hundred officers. Among the slain were Generals Picton, Sir William Ponsonby, Lieutenant-colonel the Honourable Sir Alexander Gordon, and Colonel de Lancy, Wellington’s quarter-master general. Among the wounded, the Earl of Uxbridge, General Cooke, General Halkett, General Barnes, General Baron Allen, Lieutenant-colonel Lord Fitzroy Somerset, and the Prince of Orange. Of Wellington’s staff, indeed, there was scarcely an officer who did not receive a wound. Such was the battle of Waterloo: the victory was gained at a great price; but by it this long and terrible war, which had desolated hearths and firesides and the fair face of nature for many a long year, was finished. So fearful was the scene after the battle that the Duke of Wellington, forgetting the exultation of victory, exclaimed, as he viewed it in the bright moonlight night which succeeded, “My heart is almost broken by the terrible loss I have sustained of my old friends and companions, and my poor soldiers.” Such a sentiment does honour to humanity.

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