Before daylight a sharp fire took place between the picquets, owing to a patrol of cavalry having by some mistake got between the advanced sentries. At dawn on the 17th a company of the Battalion was sent forward to occupy the farm-yard of Gemioncourt at Quatre Bras, and they detached a picquet of two officers and twenty men to the front. These were placed, some in a ditch and some behind a wall, with orders not to fire; and the French, finding their fire not returned, by degrees ceased firing. The men now cooked; those in rear cooking for those in front.
The retreat of the Prussians having rendered a similar movement on our part necessary, the troops at Quatre Bras began a retrograde movement on the morning of the 17th. The 1st Battalion received orders to cover the retreat, and was the last infantry that fell back. Before the picquet retreated Sergeant Fairfoot, a brave Peninsular man, who had been wounded in the breach at Badajos, was struck by a musket ball, which fractured his right fore-arm. Yet with amazing bravery, before going to the rear, he took a shot with his rifle (rested on the shoulder of the officer of the picquet), at the French, firing from his left shoulder and with his left arm.
The Battalion had now fallen back, and, the French advancing, this picquet retreated also; and came up with the Battalion at Genappe, where it was halted in column at the entrance to the town. The Duke and his Staff were on the rising ground near; the Duke watching intently through his telescope the advance of the enemy. At this moment rain began to fall heavily, and the men were ordered to shelter themselves in the houses on each side of the village street; but they had not been long in them when some shots which were heard between the enemy’s advancing and our retreating cavalry, soon produced the order to ‘fall in;’ and passing with the cavalry through Genappe, they reformed column on some high ground at the end of that village. While they were so posted they had the satisfaction of witnessing that charge of the Life Guards down from that height, which rolled up the French Lancers, and jammed them up with the cuirassiers in the narrow street of Genappe. The retreat continued, through incessant torrents of rain, which made the ground and the trampled corn so difficult to move over, that the Riflemen did not reach the position of Waterloo till a couple of hours before dark. There they bivouacked, with the right wing of the Battalion resting on the Charleroi road, behind La Haye Sainte, and near a small cottage where Sir Andrew Barnard had established his quarters, and where he dispensed the provisions he had received from Brussels to many of his officers.
The enemy coming up on the opposite heights opened a cannonade, but without effect, at least on the Battalion; and at nightfall they discontinued it.
While the Battalion lay by their arms, the rain still fell in torrents; there was a thunderstorm in the evening; and through the night it rained heavily; but towards morning dwindled to a thin small rain, and finally ceased before daybreak.
The morning of the 18th dawned heavily; the heavy moisture of the night rose from the heated ground in mist and haze; which, as the sun gained power, ascended and left the ground and prospect clear, yet kept the day cloudy.
At daylight the men sprang to their feet, and took their arms; cleaning them and their accoutrements, moistened and rusted by so many hours of wet.
This done, the Battalion took up its position.
The road from Brussels, passing through the forest of Soignies and the village of Waterloo, reaches the hamlet of Mont St. Jean, where it bifurcates: the one to the right leading to Nivelles, while that which goes straight on leads through Genappe to Charleroi. Nearly three-quarters of a mile from this fork the Charleroi road is crossed at right angles by a cross-country road, leading on the left to Wavre, on the right to Braine-la-Leud. About a quarter of a mile from this cross, and on the right-hand side of the road to Charleroi, is the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, with a garden or orchard running along the road. On the opposite side of the road was a knoll with a sandpit at its base, and behind this sandpit was a strong hedge running parallel to the Wavre road for about 140 yards. In the sandpit were placed two companies of the 1st Battalion under Brevet Major Leach; another company, William Johnston’s, lined the hedge; and the remaining three companies lined the Wavre road from its junction with that leading to Charleroi.
As the Battalion formed column to move up to this position, a shot from one of the enemy’s guns struck a rear-rank man of the rear company. He was the first man of the Battalion who fell at Waterloo.