British Regiments at the Front, The Story of Their Battle Honours

by Reginald Hodder

Colonel Cameron with difficulty curbed his eagerness to let his men go, but the Duke, who foresaw a prolonged struggle, refused to allow it. He was, as usual, waiting for the right moment. When that moment came, and the order was given, Cameron leapt the ditch, at the head of his men, with old General Barnes at his side, crying, "Come on, my old 92nd!" Then, to the shrill piping of the pibrochs, the intrepid Gordons leapt from the ditch and fell upon the enemy with an impetus that was irresistible. The bayonet did its terrible work, and the opposing column fell back in confusion.

Meanwhile other sections advanced upon the hedged garden, the house, and the field hedge, suffering heavily from these points. It was in this advance that the staff of the colour was split into six pieces by three bullets, and the staff of the king's colour by one. It was here, too, that Cameron himself was wounded. Being shot in the groin, he lost control of his horse, which galloped away with him, and finally stopped suddenly before his own groom, who was holding a second horse. There Cameron, in a fainting condition, was thrown out of the saddle violently on to the road.

Colonel Cameron died of his wound late that night, but not before he had learnt that the British arms had conquered—a fact which forms the theme of Sir Walter Scott's immortal verse:

And Sunart rough, and wild Ardgour, And Morven long shall tell, And proud Ben Nevis hear with awe, How, upon bloody Quatre-Bras, Brave Cameron heard the wild hurrah Of conquest as he fell.

Meanwhile, the Gordons had fully avenged their leader's death. With repeated rushes upon the roadside house, they did deadly work with the bayonet, and, amid the hail of bullets from superior forces of the enemy, they still continued their fierce onslaughts under conditions that would have demoralized soldiers less cool and experienced.

In the midst of the appalling fire, they separated and formed up in three parts, one part moving to the right of the house and garden, another part to the left, while a third prepared to assault the garden itself. At a given moment, when the whole battalion was ready, the order to charge was given. Then, with a resounding cheer, they rushed forward, "the bagpipes screaming out the notes of the 'Cameron's Gathering,' as they levelled their bayonets, and charged with the elastic step learnt on the hillside."

The enemy stood firm for a little while against the oncoming array of determined men; then they broke and fled, showing their backs as targets for the Highlanders, who scattered the passage of their retreat thickly with their dead bodies. In this action many prisoners were taken.

The British troops, though in the minority in guns, as well as men, stood like a rock against the searching assaults of the enemy. Ebb and flow was the order of battle, until at last the flow of our indomitable troops gained ground, and the enemy finally ebbed away.

Our last victory in that furious battle was gained foot by foot, and when, in the end, the day was won, and the stars looked down upon 10,000 slain, the piper of the Gordon Highlanders took his stand in front of the village of Quatre Bras to call the Highlanders in. "Loud and long blew Cameron," says one who heard that call of the highland mountain and the glen, "but his efforts could not gather above half of those whom his music had cheered on their march to the battlefield."

Our Gordons had been through the thick of the fight; at the close of the day they were terribly hungry, and with the cool sang-froid which is the necessary complement to the bravery of such men, they took their supper cooked and served in the cuirasses which had shone in the enemy's forefront of battle some hours before.