It consisted of four regiments; namely, the third battalion of the 1st Royal Scots, the 42nd or Royal Highlanders, the 2nd battalion of the 44th or East Essex regiment, and the 92nd or Gordon Highlanders, with whom, I trust, the reader is tolerably well acquainted. The fighting at Quatre Bras on the 16th had considerably thinned their ranks, but they yet mustered five hundred bayonets.
Aides-de-camp, general and other staff-officers, were seen galloping on the spur over banks and ditches, through copse-wood and corn fields, bearing orders, instructions, and hasty despatches to those commanding corps and brigades; the cavalry looked to their girths and bridles, the infantry to their locks and pouches; the artillery-guns, tumbrils, and caissons were dragged at full gallop among ripe fields of wheat and barley, through hedges and slough ditches, with matches smoking, the gunners on the boxes, the drivers on the saddle, rammers and sponges rattling and clanking, and the cavalry escort galloping in front and rear. Bustle and noise, but with perfect steadiness and coolness, prevailed, as the army of Lord Wellington formed in position on that memorable field, and awaited the approach of their enemy, who came on flushed with the success of the recent battle of Ligny.
"There goes Buonaparte!" cried Ronald to his friend Louis Lisle, who at that moment came up to him.
"There goes Napoleon! the Emperor and all his staff!" burst from many a tongue.
The whole attention of the British line was attracted by the appearance of Buonaparte, who rode along the ridge occupied by the French army. He wore his great-coat unbuttoned, and thrown back to display his epaulets and green uniform, and had on his head the little cocked hat by which all statues of him are so well known. A staff, brilliant and numerous, composed of officers wearing a hundred different uniforms, followed him, but at the distance of seventy or eighty paces, riding like a confused mob of cavalry. He passed rapidly along the French line towards La Belle Alliance; but the fire of a few twelve-pound field-pieces, which had been brought to bear upon his person, compelled him to retire to the rear.
The right of the allied army rested on Braine la Leude, the left on the farm of Ter la Haye, and the centre on Mont St. Jean, thus extending along a ridge from which the ground descended gently to a sort of vale; on the other side of which, at the distance of about twelve hundred yards from the allies, the long-extended lines of the French army were formed in battle array, with eagles glittering, colours waving, and bayonets gleaming above the dark battalions of infantry.
The celebrated château of Hougoumont was in front of the right centre of the allies; the woods, the orchard, and the house were full of troops. Arms glanced at every window, bayonets bristled everywhere around it, and the tall grenadier-caps of the Coldstream Guards, and the schakoes of the Belgians and Brunswickers, were visible above the green hedges of the garden, and the parapet walls which enclosed the park and orchard. The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, on the Charleroi road at the foot of the eminence, had also been converted into a garrison, loop-holed and barricaded, with brass-muzzled field-pieces peeping through the honey-suckle and the rails of the garden around it.
All around the spot where these dire preparations had been made the land was in a beautiful state of cultivation, and the bright yellow corn waved ripe in every field; but the passage of cavalry, brigades of artillery, and sometimes dense masses of infantry in close column of companies or sub-divisions of five-and-twenty men abreast, the continual deploying on point and pivot as new alignements were taken up, made sad havoc among the hopes of the husbandman and farmer.
The Belgian and Hanoverian battalions were checkered as equally as possible with the British, and thus many different uniforms varied the long perspective of the allied line; while the French army presented one long array of dark uniforms, blue, green, or the grey great-coat, an upper garment worn almost invariably, in all weathers, by the French troops when on service.
Near a tree, which grew on a bank above the Charleroi road, and which formed, or denoted, the very centre of the British position, Lord Wellington could be seen sitting motionless on horseback, observing, with his acute and practised eye, the motions of his mighty antagonist. His cavalry were, generally, posted in rear of the right, the centre, and left of the position, the artillery behind a hedge on a ridge which rises near Ter la Haye; and this screen of foliage concealed them from the enemy, who commenced the battle about half-past eleven o'clock.