Within a few hundred yards of the inn is a memorial “to the last combatants of the Grand Army.” It is by far the most artistic and apposite of the several monuments on the field. With shattered wings the French eagle guards the tattered standard of “The Immortals” on the ground where the last square of Napoleon’s famous Guard was cut down. “It was a fatality,” said the fallen Emperor of the West, “for in spite of all, I should have won that battle.”
Having glanced at the chief objects of interest on the field of Waterloo, we must now turn our attention to the leading features of the fight. It is not proposed to enter into minute details, or to discuss the many vexed points which have been raised from time to time. Sir Harry Smith, who took part in the battle, issued a word of warning years ago, which we shall endeavour to bear in mind. “Every moment was a crisis,” he said, “and the controversialists had better have left the discussion on the battle-field.”
The morning of Sunday, the 18th June 1815, was dismal, foggy, and wet. No “Sun of Austerlitz” pierced the low clouds that scudded across the sky. The state of the weather being then, as now, a universal topic of conversation and record, we have abundant documentary evidence on the subject. After this uninteresting, but not unimportant, fact, our witnesses, to a large extent, break down. It would be much easier to detail what we do not know about the battle of Waterloo than to put down in black and white what may be regarded as indisputable truth. For instance, there is an amazing disparity between the times at which eye-witnesses assert the first cannon was fired. The Duke says eleven o’clock, Napoleon two hours later. Alava mentions half-past eleven, Ney one o’clock. Lord Hill, who used a stop-watch, avers with some semblance of authority, 11.50 a.m. The Emperor certainly delayed giving battle. Soult issued an order between 4 and 5 a.m. for the army to be “ready to attack at 9 a.m.” At 11 o’clock Napoleon stated that the soldiers were to be “in battle array, about an hour after noon.” Scores of volumes and thousands of pages have been devoted to the subject of the conflict which concluded Napoleon’s military career. It seems fairly reasonable to suppose that after the lapse of one hundred years any further research, although it may throw valuable sidelights on the battle, will not solve the problem. We have the Duke’s assurance that “it is impossible to say when each important occurrence took place, nor in what order.” To a would-be narrator he wrote, “I recommend you to leave the battle of Waterloo as it is,” to another, “the Duke entertains no hopes of ever seeing an account of all its details which shall be true,” and again, “I am really disgusted with and ashamed of all that I have seen of the battle of Waterloo.” That being so, it is not purposed to view it from a critical standpoint, but merely to detail the leading events of the day as these are generally accepted.
The ridge on which Napoleon posted his forces in three lines, with a reserve of 11,000 troops behind the centre, was opposite Mont St Jean, with the farm of La Belle Alliance, on the high road from Charleroi to Brussels, in the centre. The number of troops at his immediate disposal was 74,000, and they occupied a front of about two miles. The spectacle as the French troops deployed “was magnificent,” Napoleon afterwards averred, not without a touch of imagination, “and the enemy, who was so placed as to behold it down to the last man, must have been struck by it: the army must have seemed to him double in number what it really was.”
Just before the conflict began there was scarcely a mile between the French and Wellington’s 67,000 troops, who were posted across the high roads leading respectively from Charleroi and Nivelles to Brussels, just in front of Mont St Jean, where they cross. His right extended to Merbe Braine, and his left, which he considered was protected by the advancing Prussians, was to the westward of the high road. The army was drawn up in two lines, the second of which was composed entirely of cavalry under Lord Uxbridge. To the left Wellington held the villages of La Haye, Papelotte, and Smohain; Hougoumont was before his right, La Haye Sainte in front of the centre, and all were occupied by his troops. His reserves, numbering about 17,000, were unseen by the enemy owing to the formation of the ground, and were posted behind his centre and right. At the rear was the forest of Soignes, through which he could retreat if necessary. At Hal, nine miles away, the corps of Prince Frederick of Orange and two brigades of Colville’s division, some 14,000 men in all, were stationed. They took no part in the battle. Their presence at so great a distance was due to the somewhat unnecessary anxiety of Wellington, as after events proved, regarding the right flank. The Allies’ guns numbered 156, those of the French 246.
Wellington displayed extraordinary activity, and commanded in person. Napoleon relied on his subordinates far more than was usual with him, and seemed to take little direct interest in the fighting. He sat in a chair; his antagonist rode about throughout the day. “It is hardly possible,” says Lord William Lennox, one of his aides-de-camp, “to describe the calm manner in which the hero gave his orders and watched the movements and attacks of the enemy. In the midst of danger, bullets whistling close about him, round shot ploughed the ground he occupied, and men and horses falling on every side, he sat upon his favourite charger, Copenhagen, as collectedly as if he had been reviewing the Household Troops in Hyde Park.”
Although it would be foolish to endeavour to accurately divide the battle in different parts as one would do a sum, for the simple reason that fighting was going on all the time and the entire armies of the combatants were not used in any given moment, there were five more or less distinct attacks made by the French which may be useful as keys, viz.: (1) the diversion against Hougoumont, which opened the battle; (2) the attack against Wellington’s left-centre; (3) the cavalry attack on the right-centre; (4) a second attempt with infantry and cavalry having a similar object, and an infantry attack against the enemy’s left; (5) the charge of the Imperial Guard.
The Desperate Stand of the Guards at Hougoumont
R. Caton Woodville