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 filed the intervals between them.
The Duke, who seemed to be everywhere at once, generally riding far ahead of the cortege 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 Chasse up from Braine 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 past 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.