Far stronger was the château of Hougoumont, which had been built with a view to defence. The outbuildings were now loopholed, and scaffolds were erected to enable our men to fire over the garden walls which commanded the orchard. The defence was intrusted to the light companies of the second battalions of Coldstreams and Foot Guards (now the Grenadier Guards); while the wood in front was held by Nassauers and Hanoverians. Chassé's Dutch-Belgians were posted at the village of Braine la Leud to give further security to Wellington's right.[507] Napoleon's intention was to pierce the allied centre behind La Haye Sainte, where their lines were thin. But he did not know that behind the crest ran a sunken cross-road, which afforded excellent cover, and that the ground, sloping away towards Wellington's rear, screened his second line and reserves.
It was this peculiarity of the ground, so different from that of the exposed slope behind Ligny, that helped the great master of defensive tactics secretly to meet and promptly to foil every onset of his mighty antagonist.
While under-estimating the strength of Wellington's position Napoleon over-rated his numbers. As we have seen, he remarked that the allies exceeded the French by more than a fourth. Now, as his own numbers were fully 74,000, he credited the allies with upwards of 92,000. In reality, they were not more than 67,000, as Wellington had left 17,000 at Hal; but if this powerful detachment had been included, Napoleon's estimate would not have been far wrong. At St. Helena he gave out that his despatch of cavalry towards Hal had induced Wellington to weaken his army to this extent; but Houssaye has shown that the statement is an entire fabrication. The Emperor certainly believed that all Wellington's troops were close at hand.[508]
The Duke, on his side, would doubtless have retreated had he known that the Prussian advance would be as slow as it was. His composite forces, in which five languages were spoken, were unfit for a long contest with Napoleon's army. The Dutch-Belgian troops, numbering 17,000, were known to be half-hearted; the 2,800 Nassauers, who had served under Soult in 1813, were not above suspicion; the 11,000 Hanoverians and 5,900 Brunswickers were certain to do their best, but they were mostly raw troops. In fact, Wellington could thoroughly rely only on his 23,990 British troops and the 5,800 men of the King's German Legion; and among our men there was a large proportion of recruits or drafts from militia battalions. Events were to prove that this motley gathering could hold its own while at rest; but during the subsequent march to Paris Wellington passed the scathing judgment that, with the exception of his Peninsular men, it was "the worst equipped army, with the worst staff, ever brought together."[509] This was after he had lost De Lancey, Picton, Ponsonby, and many other able officers; but on the morning of the 18th there was no lack of skill in the placing of the troops, witness General Kennedy's arrangement of Alten's division so that it might readily fall into the "chequer" pattern, which proved so effective against the French horsemen.
Napoleon's confidence seemed to be well founded: he had 246 cannon against the allies' 156, and his preponderance in cavalry of the line was equally great. Above all, there were the 13,000 footmen of the Imperial Guard, flanked by 3,000 cavaliers. The effective strength of the two armies has been reckoned by Kennedy as in the proportion of four to seven. Why, then, did he not attack at once? There were two good reasons: first that his men had scattered widely overnight in search of food and shelter, and now assembled very slowly on the plateau; second, that the rain did not abate until 8 a.m., and even then slight drizzles came on, leaving the ground totally unfit for the movements of horse and artillery. Leaving the troops time to form and the ground to improve, the Emperor consulted his charts and took a brief snatch of sleep. He then rode to the front; and, as the gray-coated figure passed along those imposing lines, the enthusiasm found vent in one rolling roar of "Vive l'Empereur," which was wafted threateningly to the thinner array of the allies. There the leader received no whole-hearted acclaim save from the men who knew him; but among these there was no misgiving. "If," wrote Major Simmons of the 95th, "you could have seen the proud and fierce appearance of the British at that tremendous moment, there was not one eye but gleamed with joy."[510]
The first shots were fired at 11.50 to cover the assault on the wood of Hougoumont by Prince Jerome Bonaparte's division of Reille's corps. The Nassauers and Hanoverians briskly replied, and Cleeve's German battery opened fire with such effect that the leading column fell back. Again the assailants came on in greater force under shelter of a tremendous cannonade: this time they gained a lodgment, and step by step drove the defenders back through the copse. Though checked for a time by the Guards, they mastered the wood south of the house by about one o'clock. There they should have stopped. Napoleon's orders were for them to gain a hold only on the wood and throw out a good line of skirmishers: all that he wanted on this side was to prevent any turning movement from Wellington's advanced outposts. Reille also sent orders not to attack the château; but the Prince and his men rushed on at those massive walls, only to meet with a bloody repulse. A second attack fared no better; and though some 12,000 of Reille's men finally attacked the mansion on three sides, yet our Guards, when reinforced, beat off every onset of wellnigh ten times their numbers.
For some time the Emperor paid little heed to this waste of energy; at 2 p.m. he recalled Jerome to his side. He now saw the need of husbanding his resources; for a disaster had overtaken the French right centre. He had fixed one o'clock for a great attack on La Haye Sainte by D'Erlon's corps of nearly 20,000 men. But a delay occurred owing to a cause that we must now describe.
Before his great battery of eighty guns belched forth at the centre and blotted out the view, he swept the horizon with his glass, and discerned on the skirts of the St. Lambert wood, six miles away, a dark object. Was it a spinney, or a body of troops? His staff officers could not agree; but his experienced eye detected a military formation. Thereupon some of the staff asserted that they must be Blücher's men, others that they were Grouchy's. Here he could scarcely be in a doubt. Not long after 10 a.m. he received from Grouchy a despatch, dated from Gembloux at 3 a.m., reporting that the Prussians were retiring in force on Brussels to concentrate or to join Wellington, and that he (Grouchy) was on the point of starting for Sart-à-Walhain and Wavre. He said nothing as to preventing any flank march that the enemy might make from Wavre with a view to joining their allies straightway. Therefore he was not to be looked for on this side of Wavre, and those troops must consequently be Prussians.[511]
All doubts were removed when a Prussian hussar officer, captured by Marbot's vedettes near Lasne, was brought to Napoleon. He bore a letter from Bülow to Müffling, stating that the former was on the march to attack the French right wing. In reply to Napoleon's questions the captain stated that Bülow's whole corps was in motion, but wisely said nothing about the other two corps that were following. Such as it was, the news in no way alarmed the Emperor. As Bülow was about to march against the French flank, Grouchy must march on his flank and take his corps en flagrant délit. That is the purport of the postscript added to a rather belated reply that was about to be sent off to Grouchy at 1 p.m. It did not reach him till 5 p.m., too late to influence the result, even had he desisted from his attack on Wavre, which he did not.[512]
We return to the Emperor's actions at half-past one. Domont's and Subervie's light horsemen were sent out towards Frischermont to observe the Prussians; the great battery of eighty guns, placed on the intermediate rise, now opened fire; and under cover of its deadly blasts D'Erlon's four divisions dipped down into the valley. They were ranged in closely packed battalions spread out in a front of some two hundred men, a formation that Napoleon had not suggested, but did not countermand. The left column, that of Alix, was supported by cavalry on its flank. Part of this division gained the orchard of La Haye Sainte, and attacked the farm buildings on all sides. From his position hard by a great elm above the farm, Wellington had marked this onset, and now sent down a Hanoverian battalion to succour their compatriots; but in the cutting of the main road it was charged and routed by Milhaud's cuirassiers, who pursued them up the slope until the rally sounded. Farther to the east, the French seemed still surer of victory. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgians, some 3,000 strong, after suffering heavily in their cruelly exposed position, wavered at the approach of Donzelot's column, and finally broke into utter rout, pelted in their flight with undeserved gibes from the British in their rear. These consisted of Picton's division, the heroes of Quatre Bras. Here they had as yet sustained little loss, thanks to the shelter of the hollow cross-road and a hedge.