Nivelle. 19 June 1815.
The great action of yesterday was the severest contest either Frenchmen or Englishmen ever witnessed—it was the most obstinate struggle of two brave and rival Nations each firm in its cause—The gallantry of the French could only be exceeded by the resolution and intrepidity of John Bull. It raged from 11 till 9 and was once nearly lost. The Duke seconded by his Troops repaired every momentary disaster.
Buonaparte placed himself at the head of his guards and led them on. The 1st Guards defeated them and put them to the rout and then the dismay became general—The Guards and generally the Infantry were the mainstay of the Action. Our Brigade had the defence of a Post which if lost, lost all. Our Light Company under Colonel Macdonnell were there, the Coldstreams then went down and we held it to the last, tho’ the Houses were in Flames. The loss has been immense—The French are totally defeated.
There never was a more severe Battle than that of the 18th. I enclose a little Sketch of it. The dotted Line from Braine la Leud to above La Haye is the brow of the Hills occupied by the Duke of Wellington. The Troops had bivouaced just in the rear. The other dotted line near La Belle Alliance marks the brow of the Hills from where the French attack was made. There are two small Hedges in the Rear of this one. The Attack on Hougomont was very severe from a little before 12 to half past one. Bonaparte then moved a strong Force (continuing however his first Attack for several hours) to attack the left of the Centre where Picton and Ponsonby were killed. He drove our people from the Hedges a short distance but they soon returned and drove him considerably beyond those Hedges. In the Evening he collected a very great force near La Haye Sainte and attacked the Right of the Centre. This was done repeatedly by Infantry and Cavalry but though they frequently got through the Line they could never drive them from their position. The British Artillery was a little in front. The Duke several times left the Guns taking away the Horses and Ammunition, but his Fire was too heavy for the Enemy to bring up Horses to take them off and he as often regained them. At about 7 o’clock the French were heartily sick of it and retired rapidly. The Duke immediately changed his Defensive operations to that of Attack and at the same time Bulow brought up about 30,000 fresh Troops on the right flank of the Enemy near the Village of La Haye. Blucher was also near at hand.
The Rout at this time was complete. The Pursuit was rapid and I really believe that the following morning the French Army had not 50 Guns out of 300 and no Baggage of any sort.
The latter part of this Account I take from others and from seeing the Field of Battle two days afterwards. The first and second attacks I was present at.
The Returns are arrived of Killed and Wounded. The British and Hanoverians lost on the 16th, 17th and 18th 845 Officers and 13,000 Men. The French lost much more. The Method in which the Duke received the united Charges of Cavalry and attacks of Infantry is not common. He formed two Regiments in Squares and united them by a Regt. in Line four deep making a Sort of Curtain between two Bastions. [unsigned.]
§ iii
After Lord Whitworth’s term of office had come to an end he and the duchess returned to live at Knole, and to make such improvements there as were agreeable to the taste of the early nineteenth century. Such were the Gothic windows of the Orangery, which replaced the Tudor ones and were inscribed with the date 1823, and further changes were projected, such as a design which was to sweep away the symmetry of the lawns on the garden front and bring a curving path up to the house. This scheme, however, was never carried out. The bowling-green still rises, square and formal, backed by the two great tulip trees and the more distant woods of the park. The long perspective of the herbaceous borders was left undisturbed. The apple-trees in the little square orchards, that bear their blossom and their fruit from year to year with such countrified simplicity in the heart of all that magnificence, were not uprooted. Consequently the garden, save for one small section where the paths curve in meaningless scollops among the rhododendrons, remains to-day very much as Anne Clifford knew it. It has, of course, matured. The white rose which was planted under James I’s room has climbed until it now reaches beyond his windows on the first floor; the great lime has drooped its branches until they have layered themselves in the ground of their own accord and grown up again with fresh roots into three complete circles all sprung from the parent tree, a cloister of limes, which in summer murmurs like one enormous bee-hive; the magnolia outside the Poets’ Parlour has grown nearly to the roof, and bears its mass of flame-shaped blossoms like a giant candelabrum; the beech hedge is twenty feet high; four centuries have winnowed the faultless turf. In spring the wisteria drips its fountains over the top of the wall into the park. The soil is rich and deep and old. The garden has been a garden for four hundred years.
And here, save for a few very brief notes to bring the history of the house down to the present day, these sketches must cease. The duchess Arabella Diana dying in 1825, her estate devolved upon her two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Elizabeth, my great-grandmother, who married John West, Lord de la Warr, and who died in 1870, left Buckhurst to her elder sons and Knole to her younger sons, one of whom was my grandfather. He was, as I remember him, a queer and silent old man. He knew nothing whatever about the works of art in the house; he spent hours gazing at the flowers, followed about the garden by two grave demoiselle cranes; he turned his back on all visitors, but sized them up after they had gone in one shrewd and sarcastic phrase; he bore a really remarkable resemblance to the portraits of the old Lord Treasurer, and he seemed to me, with his taciturnity and the never-mentioned background of his own not unromantic past, to stand conformably at the end of the long line of his ancestors. He and I, who so often shared the house alone between us, were companions in a shy and undemonstrative way. Although he had nothing to say to his unfortunate guests, he could understand a child. He told me that there were underground caves in the Wilderness, and I believed him to the extent of digging pits among the laurels in the hope of chancing upon the entrance; he made over a tall tree to me for my own, and I mounted a wooden cannon among its branches to keep away intruders. When I was away, which was seldom, he would write me harlequin letters in different coloured chalks. When I was at home he would put after dinner a plate of fruit for my breakfast into a drawer of his writing-table labelled with my name, and this he never once failed to do, even though there might have been thirty people to dinner in the Great Hall, who watched, no doubt with great surprise, the old man who had been so rude to his neighbours at dinner going unconcernedly round with a plate, picking out the reddest cherries, the bluest grapes, and the ripest peach.