The battles of the world

by J. Douglas Borthwick

“The Imperial Guard was divided into two columns, which, advancing from different parts of the field, were to converge to the decisive point on the British right centre, about midway between La Haye Sainte and the nearest enclosures of Hougoumont. Reille commanded the first column, which was supported by all the infantry and cavalry which remained of his corps on either flank, and advanced up the hill in a slanting direction, beside the orchard of Hougoumont. The second was headed by Ney in person, and moving down the chaussée of Charleroi to the bottom of the slope, it then inclined to the left, and leaving La Haye Sainte to the right, mounted the slope, also in a slanting direction, converging towards the same point whither the other column was directing its steps. Napoleon went with this column as far as the place where it left the hollow of the high road, and spoke a few words—the last he ever addressed to his soldiers—to each battalion in passing. The men moved on with shouts of Vive l’Empereur! so loud as to be heard along the whole British line, above the roar of artillery, and it was universally thought the Emperor himself was heading the attack. But, meanwhile, Wellington had not been idle. Sir Frederick Adam’s brigade, consisting of the 52nd, 71st, and 95th, and General Maitland’s brigade of Guards, which had been drawn from Hougoumont, with Chasse’s Dutch troops, yet fresh, were ordered to bring up their right shoulders, and wheel inward, with their guns in front, towards the edge of the ridge; and the whole batteries in that quarter inclined to the left, so as to expose the advancing columns coming up to a concentric fire on either flank: the central point, where the attack seemed likely to fall, was strengthened by nine heavy guns; the troops at that point were drawn up four deep, in the form of an interior angle: the Guards forming one side, the 73rd and 30th the other;—while the light cavalry of Vivian and Vandeleur was brought up behind the line, at the back of La Haye Sainte, and stationed close in the rear, so as to be ready to make the most of any advantage which might occur.

It was a quarter past seven when the first column of the Old Guard, under Reille, advanced to the attack; but the effect of the artillery on its flank was such, that the cavalry were quickly dispersed: and the French battalions uncovered, showed their long flank to Adam’s guns, which opened on them a fire so terrible, that the head of the column, constantly pushed on by the mass in the rear, never advanced, but melted away as it came into the scene of carnage. Shortly after, Ney’s column approached with an intrepid step; the veterans of Wagram and Austerlitz were there; no force on earth seemed capable of resisting them; they had decided every former battle. Drouot was beside the Marshal, who repeatedly said to him they were about to gain a glorious victory. General Friant was killed by Ney’s side: the Marshal’s own horse was shot under him; but bravely advancing on foot, with his drawn sabre in his hand, he sought death from the enemy’s volleys. The impulse of this massy column was at first irresistible; the guns were forced back, and the Imperial Guard came up to within forty paces of the English Foot Guards, and the 73rd and 30th regiments. These men were lying down, four deep, in a small ditch behind the rough road, which there goes along the summit of the ridge. “Up Guards, and at them!” cried the Duke, who had repaired to the spot; and the whole, on both sides of the angle into which the French were advancing, springing up, moved forward a few paces, and poured in a volley so close and well directed, that nearly the whole first two ranks of the French fell at once. Gradually advancing, they now pushed the immense column, yet bravely combatting, down the slope; and Wellington, at that decisive instant, ordered Vivian’s brigade to charge the retiring body on one flank, while Adam’s foot advanced against it on the other. The effect of this triple attack, at once in front and on both flanks, was decisive: the 52nd and 71st, swiftly converging inward, threw in so terrible a volley on their left flank, that the Imperial Guard swerved in disorder to the right; and at that very instant the 10th, 18th, and 21st dragoons, under Vivian, bore down with irresistible fury, and piercing right through the body, threw it into irrevocable confusion. The cry, “Tout est perdu—la Garde recule!” arose in the French ranks, and the enormous mass, driven headlong down the hill, overwhelmed everything which came in its way, and spread disorder through the whole French centre.”

DESCRIPTION OF WATERLOO FROM THE TWELVE BATTLES.

“We have seen the three several stages by which the Duke of Wellington had conducted the British army to that elevated position in which the peace of 1814 left it. We have seen how it had, first, on the broad fields of Castile, boldly encountered a French army of twice its strength, and had sent it back in defeat. Next, at Salamanca, meeting an army of equal force, it had scattered it by an assault of a single hour, annihilating at a blow one-half of its strength. And lastly, falling upon the intrusive King himself in his final position of retreat and defence at Vittoria, it had driven his entire array, like a flock of frightened sheep, over the Pyrenees. After those triumphs, by which a whole realm of great extent had been delivered from its invaders, there seemed scarcely any way by which the fame and honour of the British army and its illustrious Commander could be enhanced, except by an event not to be anticipated—an encounter with the great conqueror of modern times, now an exile at Elba; and a triumph over him.

This event, however unlikely it might seem, was reserved for England’s soldiers and her General; and it occurred in less than a year after the apparent restoration of peace. Napoleon suddenly left his island-home, reappeared in France, gathered his soldiers round him, and re-entered Paris as once more its Emperor. Naturally enough, the Sovereigns who had compelled his retirement, scarcely nine months before, resolved to maintain their position; and they covenanted with each other to place armies amounting to 600,000 men on the soil of France in the course of July, 1815. The British portion of this force was collecting together in the months of May and June, under the Duke’s command; when Napoleon determined not to wait for the attack, but to carry the war into the allied territories; and, accordingly, in the second week in June he entered Belgium. Before he had proceeded twenty miles he encountered both the English and the Prussian armies, and on the fourth day, at a distance of about thirty miles from the French frontier, was fought the great and decisive battle of Waterloo.

This momentous contest will require of us a more lengthened description than we have given of any of the great battles; both because it was an event of the highest possible importance to the fate of England, of Europe, and of the world; and also because it was, so to speak, a succession of battles fought on one field, and on the same day. In a former case we have seen “an army of forty thousand men defeated in forty minutes;” but here the deadly strife occupied nearly ten hours. The French opened the attack at eleven in the morning, and at nine o’clock at night the last of their battalions had not yet quitted the field. In the course of these ten hours four or five desperate and prolonged contests had taken place; each of which might have been justly called a battle. It will be impossible, therefore, to give any fair or complete idea of this long continued struggle, without occupying much greater space than is required for an ordinary battle.

It is also a history which is thickly strewn with controversies. The defeated General himself was the first to open this wordy strife. The loss of the fight of Waterloo was a fact to which he never could be reconciled. That battle hurled him, finally, from the throne on which he had for the second time seated himself, and sent him to wear out the few remaining years of his life on the rock of St. Helena. In that retirement he occupied himself, for the most part, in a series of efforts to resuscitate his extinguished “glory.”[16] In these attempts he was hampered by no moral scruples; for, as Emerson has remarked, “this, the highest-placed individual in the world, had not the merit of common truth and honesty; he would steal, slander, assassinate, as his interest indicated.” Any reasonable man, therefore, will read his “Historical Memoir,” book ix, written at St. Helena, and published in London in 1820, with that caution which is so plainly called for when a document is confessedly an exparte statement, and written by one who is known to be of unscrupulous character.

Yet that document has been received in many quarters with a credulity which is somewhat surprising. It is true that this credulity may be accounted for in the case of the French historians—who, obliged to confess that their defeat at Waterloo was “horrible”—a “massacre”—a “deluge of blood”—are glad to have supplied to them, under Napoleon’s own hand, the apology that he was overmatched and greatly outnumbered; and that yet, after all, he would have proved victorious if one of his Generals had not disobeyed his commands.

The latter of these two pleas has been generally rejected by English writers—utterly denied as its truth has been by the party so accused. But, strangely enough, although there was every probability that Napoleon’s account of his own strength, and of that of his opponent, would be wholly untrustworthy—several of our best English writers have given entire credence of his statement of the real amount of his army; even while those statements are clearly refuted by abundant testimonies of many Frenchmen. And this point is not an immaterial one. For if we could admit the truth of Napoleon’s final conclusion, that “On that day 69,000 French beat 120,000 men, and the victory was only torn from them between eight and nine o’clock at night by the increase of the allies to 150,000 men”[17]—what merit could we assign to the British soldiers, or to their great commander, for such a victory? But, in sober verity, of all the falsehoods deliberately put forth by Napoleon in the course of his life, this, probably, is nearly the greatest.

Let us, however, now endeavour to arrange our narrative in its proper order. The army which was assembling in Belgium under the Duke’s command, had reached, in the beginning of June, the respectable amount of almost 100,000 men. It contained, however, far more Belgians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers, and Dutchmen, than British troops, and far more new levies, landwehr, and militia, than of experienced soldiers. The English regiments which had followed the Duke through all the fields of Spain had been sent to America, and were now on the Atlantic, on their return home. He had some of the Guards, and a few other regiments of some standing; but the largest portion of the British troops which had yet reached Belgium were second battalions—new recruits drafted from the militia—and the same observation would apply to the Hanoverians and other auxiliaries.