The Guards gave him a cheer, and went in at the charge. They drove the French before them at the point of the bayonet, sweeping them away from the chateau walls; and Woodford managed to reinforce the garrison through a side door leading into the alley. The light companies reoccupied the ground they had lost, and Jerome drew off to re-form his mutilated battalions.
Several officers of the staff corps had galloped up with messages for the Duke from time to time; of his personal staff, Lord Arthur Hill and young Cathcar; were both mounted on troopers, their horses having been shot under them; and Colonel Audley has suffered a contusion on his right arm from a glancing musketball. Fremantle, returning from the left wing, found him trying to tie his handkerchief round the flesh wound with one hand and his teeth, and pushed up to him, saying: "Here, let me do that!"
"Any news of Blucher?" asked Audley.
"Not so much as a sniff of those damned Prussians! My God, you've got a pretty shambles here! What's been going on?"
"We all but lost Hougoumont, that's all. Bull's had to retire. He's been enfiladed by a troop of horse artillery belonging to the lancers over there." He jerked his head towards the Nivelle's road. "Jerome's bringing up reserve after reserve. Looks as though he means to take Hougoumont or perish in the attempt. Anything happening anywhere else?"
"Not yet, but we'll be in for it soon, or I'm a Dutchman. Never saw so many guns massed in my life at the batteries they're bringing up in the centre. There you are - all right and tight!"
It was now nearly one o'clock, and for an hour and a half the most bitter struggle had been raging for the possession of Hougoumont. The Duke, who seemed to have been everywhere at once, cantered back to the centre of the position, to where an elm tree stood on the highest point of the ground, to the west of the Charleroi chaussee. He had no sooner arrived there than an artillery officer came up to him in a great state of excitement, stating that he could clearly perceive Bonaparte and all his staff before the farm of La Belle Alliance, and had no doubt of being able to direct his guns on to them.
This suggestion was met by a frosty stare, and a hasty: "No, no, I won't have it! It is not the business of general officers to be firing upon each other!"
"Just retire quietly," said Gordon, in the chagrined officer's ear. "Forget that you were born. You had better not have been, you know."
Colonel Fremantle's description of the guns being assembled upon the opposite ridge had not been exaggerated. During the struggle about Hougoumont, battery after battery had been brought up on the French side, covering the whole of the Allied centre, from Colin Halkett's brigade on the right of Alten's division to Prince Bernhard's Nassauers at Papelotte. Nearly eighty guns had been massed upon the ridge, and at one o'clock the most infernal cannonade broke out. Shells screamed through the air, ploughing long furrows in the ground as they fell, blowing the legs off horses, exploding in the Allied lines, and scattering limbs and brains over men crouching behind the meagre shelter of the quick-set hedges. The infantry set its teeth and endured. Young soldiers, determined not to lag behind their elders in courage, gulped and smiled waveringly as the blood of fallen comrades spattered in their faces; veterans declared that this was nothing, and went on grimly cracking their jokes. On the high ground under the elm tree balls hummed and whistled round the Duke and his brilliant staff, until he said in his cool way: "Better separate, gentlemen: we are a little too thick here."