The battles of the British Army

by Robert Melvin Blackwood

But, unhappily, these furious and continued charges were not always inefficient. On the right, and in the act of forming square, the 42nd were attacked by the lancers. The sudden rush, and the difficulty of forming in corn reaching to the shoulder, gave a temporary success to the assailants. Two companies, excluded from the square, were ridden over and cut down. The colonel was killed, half the regiment disabled, but the remainder formed and repulsed the charge, while those detached in the mêlée fought back to back with desperate coolness, until the withering fusilade of their companions dispersed the cavalry, and enabled them to rejoin their ranks.

The remaining regiments of the Highland brigade were hotly pressed by the enemy; they had not a moment’s respite; for no sooner were the lancers and cuirassiers driven back, than the French batteries opened with a torrent of grape upon the harassed squares, which threatened to overwhelm them. Numbers of officers and men were already stretched upon the field, while the French, reinforced by fresh columns, redoubled their exertions, while the brave and devoted handful of British troops seemed destined to cover with their bodies that ground their gallantry scorned to surrender. Wellington, as he witnessed the slaughter of his best troops, is said to have been deeply affected; and repeated references to his watch, showed how anxiously he waited for reinforcements.

The Bois de Bossu had continued to be the scene of a severe and fluctuating combat. The 95th had driven the French out, but under a heavy cannonade, and supported by a cavalry movement, the rifles were overpowered by numbers and forced to retire, fighting inch by inch, and contesting every tree. Ney established himself at last within the wood, and ordered up a considerable addition to the light troops, who had already occupied this important point of the position.

The contest was at its height. The incessant assaults of the enemy were wasting the British regiments, but, with the exception of the Bois de Bossu, not an inch of ground was lost. The men were falling in hundreds, death was busy everywhere, but not a cheek blanched, and not a foot receded! The courage of these undaunted soldiers needed no incitement, but, on the contrary, the efforts of their officers were constantly required to restrain the burning ardour that would, if unrepressed, have led to ruinous results. Maddened to see their ranks thinned by renewed assaults which they were merely suffered to repel, they panted for the hour of action. The hot blood of Erin was boiling for revenge, and even the cool endurance of the Scotch began to yield, and a murmur was sometimes heard of, “Why are we not led forward?”

And yet, though forward movements were denied them, the assailants paid dearly for this waste of British blood. For a long hour the 92nd had been exposed to a destructive fire from the French artillery that occasioned a fearful loss. A regiment of Brunswick cavalry had attempted to repel a charge of cuirassiers, and repulsed with loss, were driven back upon the Highlanders in great disorder. The hussars galloped down a road on which part of the regiment was obliqued—the remainder lining the ditch in front. The rear of the Brunswickers intermingled with the headmost of the French horsemen, and for a while the 92nd could not relieve them with their musketry. At last the pursuers and pursued rode rapidly past the right flank of the Highlanders, and permitted them to deliver their volley. The word “Fire!” was scarcely given, when the close and converged discharge of both wings fell with terrible effect upon the advanced squadron. The cuirassiers were literally cut down by that withering discharge, and the road choked up with men and horses rolling in dying agony, while the shattered remnant of what but a few moments before had been a splendid regiment, retreated in desperate confusion to avoid a repetition of that murderous fusilade.

At this period of the battle, the guards, after a march of seven-and-twenty miles, arrived from Enghein, from whence they had moved at three in the morning. Exhausted by heat and fatigue, they halted at Nivelles, lighted fires, and prepared to cook their dinners. But the increasing roar of cannon announced that the duke was seriously engaged, and a staff officer brought orders to hurry on. The bivouac was instantly broken up, the kettles packed, the rations abandoned, and the wearied troops cheerfully resumed their march.

The path to the field of battle could not be mistaken; the roar of cannon was succeeded by the roll of musketry, which at every step became more clearly audible; and waggons, heaped with wounded British and Brunswickers interspersed, told that the work of death was going on.

The Guards, indeed, came up at a fortunate crisis. The Bois de Bossu was won, and the tirailleurs of the enemy, debouching from its cover, were about to deploy upon the roads that it commanded, and would thus intercept the duke’s communication with the Prussians. The fifth division, sadly reduced, could hardly hold their ground, any offensive movement was impracticable, and the French tirailleurs were actually issuing from the wood, but on perceiving the advancing columns, they halted. The first brigade of Guards, having loaded and fixed bayonets, were ordered to advance, and, wearied as they were with a fifteen hours’ march, they cheered, and pushed forward. In vain the thick trees impeded them, and although every bush and coppice was held and disputed by the enemy, the tirailleurs were driven in on every side. Taking advantage of a rivulet which crossed the wood, the enemy attempted to form and arrest the progress of the Guards. That stand was momentary; they were forced from their position, and the wood once more was carried by the British.

Their success was, however, limited to its occupation; the broken ground and close timber prevented the battalion from forming; and when it emerged, and of course in considerable disorder, from its cover, the masses of cavalry drawn up in the open ground charged and forced it back. At last, after many daring attempts to debouch and form, the first brigade fell back upon the third battalion, which, by flanking the wood, had been enabled to form square, and repulse the cavalry, and there the brigade halted. Evening was now closing in, the attacks of the enemy became fewer and feebler, a brigade of heavy cavalry with horse artillery came up, and, worn out by the sanguinary struggle of six long hours, the assailants ceased their attack, and the fifth and third divisions took a position for the night upon the ground their unbounded heroism had held through this long and bloody day.

Thus terminated the fight of Quatre Bras, and a more glorious victory was never won by British bravery. Night closed the battle, and when the limited number of the allied troops actually engaged is considered, this sanguinary conflict will stand almost without a parallel. At the opening of the action at half-past two, the Duke’s force could not have exceeded sixteen thousand, his whole army consisting of some Brunswick hussars, supported by a few Belgian and Hanoverian guns, and the great distance of their cantonments from the field of battle prevented the British cavalry and horse artillery arriving until late in the evening. Vivian’s brigade (1st Hanoverian, and 10th and 18th hussars) came up at seven o’clock, but the rest only reached Quatre Bras at the close of the action, having made a forced march from behind the Dender, over bad roads for more than forty miles. Ney, by his own account, commenced the battle with the second corps and Excelman’s cavalry, the former numbering thirty thousand strong in artillery, and its cavalry, that of the second corps included, amounting to three thousand six hundred.