It was a formidable array, terrifying to inexperienced troops, but regarded by the staff officers who watched its assembly with a good deal of criticism.
"Good God, this is too premature!" Lord Fitzroy exclaimed. "They cannot mean to attack unshaken infantry with cavalry alone!"
"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 squares, 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 Dornberg's and Grant's brigades. A demonstration by some French lancers by the Nivells road had succeeded in drawing off two of Grant's regiments and one of Dornberg'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 Dornberg'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 shod 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.