The War of Wars (124 page)

At around 12.30 Napoleon’s main battery on a hill just in front of La Belle Alliance opened up, with its seventy-five guns, followed by a major infantry attack of 16,000 men under d’Erlon. The British counter-attacked with infantry volleys and a cavalry charge which, however, was badly mauled. Both sides disengaged with some 10,000 losses between them after just half an hour. General Picton was killed and Sir William Ponsonby cut up with lances. Uxbridge admitted that mistakes had been made in the charge.

Napoleon could now observe Prussian troops approaching from the east, although he misinformed his troops that these were French reinforcements so as not to discourage them. Of Grouchy there was nothing to be seen. He ordered another full-scale attack on La Haye Sainte to break the British centre before the Prussians arrived. Ney, receiving the order, inexplicably commanded his cavalry forward in a massed attack on the narrow ground between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. It seems that Ney had mistaken a redeployment of the British line by Wellington as the beginning of a retreat.

The British were incredulous: an attack by massed cavalry without infantry support against British lines, particularly uphill, was unheard of. Ney admittedly had little sight of the main British lines over the brow of the hill. As the cavalry charged up, packed tightly together, the British formed impregnable squares and the horses shied away while the soldiers’ volleys simply mowed them down.

Uxbridge’s cavalry counter-charged from their own position behind the infantry, driving the broken lines of French cavalry back. But the latter reformed and charged again and again – a total of twelve times in all, each time breaking ranks as they swarmed around the impregnable squares, each time being driven back by British gunfire and cavalry counter-charges: it was magnificently brave, but utterly foolhardy. Still the British were hard pressed. A British lieutenant wrote that the charges of cavalry were ‘in appearance very formidable, but in reality a great relief, as the artillery could no longer fire on us: the very earth shook with the enormous mass of men and horses. I shall never forget
the strange noise our bullets made against the breastplates of Kellermann’s and Mihaud’s cuirassiers . . . who attacked us with great fury. I can only compare it, with a somewhat homely simile, to the noise of a violent hail-storm beating on panes of glass.’

Wellington looked ‘perfectly composed but . . . very thoughtful and pale,’ taking refuge in a square whenever attacked. The Duke was wondering what was holding up Blücher’s Prussians, for without them he might still lose the battle and he was desperately hard-pressed. He did not know the difficulty of the terrain they were crossing, nor that Napoleon had sent 16,000 men to intercept them.

What indeed had happened to the Prussians? The first corps, that of Bülow, was the freshest, but also the farthest from the battlefield and it was delayed by marching through, instead of around the town of Wavre, where there was a narrow bridge, and a fire broke out nearby, causing them to pause. A second corps under General Pirch followed him and a third under General von Ziethen set out to the north to join Wellington’s left wing which he had deliberately left lightly defended because he was expecting the Prussians there, and it had a steep slope running down to three small villages. The distance to be covered was some ten miles.

Astonishingly the two first corps were assigned to attack Plancenoit, a heavily entrenched village behind French lines: it took the Prussians no less than five hours to dislodge the French from the village. Ziethen’s was the weakest Prussian corps, having lost nearly half of its whole strength at Ligny, some 225 officers and 12,500 men, and it did not start on its march until 2 p.m.

Bülow’s attack was intercepted by Lobau, whose force was driven back after an hour and a half to Plancenoit. However the Young Guard reinforced him and drove Bülow back. Thus some 14,000 key troops on Napoleon’s right flank were diverted from the main battle. However, the Prussians then renewed the attack, and Napoleon was forced to divert two battalions of his Old and Middle Guard to regain the village.

On the main battlefield, the intensity of French artillery fire was making inroads into the British. At around 5 p.m. Ney ordered seven infantry
columns forward to seize the key British position of La Haye Sainte, which was in fact largely defended by Hanoverians. There the defenders held out valiantly but, owing to a serious British oversight, had not been re-supplied with ammunition and now had no choice but to give up before an overwhelming French assault, only some forty members of the 360 strong garrison escaping the carnage on the farm. This threatened to blast a path right through the centre of the allied lines.

At that moment the twenty-year-old Prince of Orange gave orders for the body of Hanoverians still holding the line to attack the French infantry: as these were overwhelmingly superior and supported by cavalry, this was madness; but the order was insistently repeated, and gallantly Christian von Ompteda led the attack: his men were wiped out, and a gaping hole opened in the allied line.

Wellington ordered a few Brunswickers to plug the gap left by von Ompteda, but the battle seemed all but over. Against the massed French infantry attacks the British line was barely holding. He desperately sent an emissary to the nearest Prussian commander, General von Ziethen: but he refused to come to Wellington’s aid and instead marched to reinforce the Prussians at Plancenoit. Wellington had made the mistake of dispersing his forces along too broad a front, and had insufficient men to redeploy towards the disintegrating centre.

What he did not know was that Ney, fighting furiously with his usual courage at the head of his men at La Haye Sainte, also had no more reinforcements. Napoleon angrily informed his couriers that he could spare no more. In fact he had fourteen regiments of the crack Imperial Guard, which he was anxious to keep in reserve at all costs. Napoleon now roused himself from his vantage point on a hill at Rossome like some tired old general and moved forward a few hundred yards to the inn at La Belle Alliance itself.

There he could see little of the fighting through the dense columns of black smoke clouding the valley. Instead he could see to Plancenoit, where he feared the Prussians were outflanking the French right and threatening to cut his communications and getaway route to Paris. He was furious with Ney for having attacked frontally without specific orders and thus endangeirng the battle. He had little idea that Ney was on the verge of victory.

He decided to send two further battalions of the precious Imperial Guard in reserve towards Plancenoit and retain three on the plateau where he was standing. Thus the Prussian diversion in fact kept seven of Napoleon’s most elite forces from reinforcing Ney at exactly the moment when he could have broken through; a further seven were in reserve below him.

An extraordinary altercation was taking place to the east where General von Reiche, chief of staff to General von Ziethen, was suddenly intercepted by a staff officer from Blücher, ordering Ziethen to go to the aid of Bülow at Plancenoit as ‘things were beginning to go badly there’. Muffling, the Prussian liaison officer with Wellington, rode up and desperately urged him to send the corps to Wellington’s aid instead or the day would be lost. Reiche was undecided until Ziethen himself rode up and decided to disobey Blücher’s order and go to Wellington’s assistance.

The Prussians moved forward and supported Wellington’s weak left flank, but were only minimally involved in the battle, just one brigade being engaged and only one of their officers being killed and eight wounded. Napoleon spotted Ziethen’s corps and told his men that they were in fact General Grouchy’s army, come to the battle at last: it was a bare-faced lie, but understandable in the circumstances. Cries of ‘
Vive l’Empereur!
’ broke out. Ney shouted, ‘Courage, France is victorious.’

Napoleon decided at last to send the Imperial Guard into the battle: it was half past seven and the sun was beginning to descend through the thick smoke. A French victory seemed all but inevitable. To the intense joy of the French, it was observed that Napoleon himself was leading the Imperial Guard into battle. This turned to dismay when, supported by some of his generals but not by others, he veered aside and sought the shelter of a small quarry on the side of the road. His brother Jérôme exclaimed, ‘Can it be possible that he will not seek death here? He will never find a more glorious grave!’

The exhausted and valiant Ney took command again – but instead of moving the Imperial Guard up the narrow road towards Ziethen’s approaching Prussians, preferred the more open ground to the left, the scene of so many cavalry charges, but deep in mud and exposed to
enemy artillery fire. Ney’s horse was shot from under him for the fifth time that day: still he picked himself up and urged his men on.

Wellington, exposed on his horse on the ridge, observed the move and ordered reinforcements from his infantry behind the ridge under General Maitland in his five-deep squares, supported by artillery. The British waited behind the brow of the hill, holding their fire until the French reached it, before Wellington screamed in his high-pitched voice: ‘Now, Maitland, now is your turn. Up guards, make ready, fire!’

The French front line recoiled in astonishment. A second British line commanded by Sir John Colborne marched in perfect order around the flank of the French: under two fires, the ‘immortals’ – the Imperial Guard fresh to the battle and jealously husbanded by Napoleon – wavered. The Prussians later claimed, as Muffling wrote, that the presence of Ziethen’s corps was the critical factor: yet, as noted, only one brigade of this actually took part in the fighting, and the sixteen guns of the Prussians were only employed for half an hour, half of them being small 8-pounders, while one battery quickly ceased firing when it threatened British forces. Moreover, the Prussian guns and brigades were too far to the right of the French to have much impact.

The French cavalry below now counter-charged against the British who for a moment were held in check. The French retreat stopped, and they reformed momentarily with fresh regiments coming up from behind. Wellington (who had just seen his second-in-command Uxbridge shot in the knee, prompting the famous exchange ‘By God, Sir, I’ve lost my leg.’ ‘By God, Sir, you have.’) yelled at Colborne: ‘Don’t give them time to rally.’ Colborne’s 53rd charged. But the Imperial Guard was probably also influenced by the sight of the disciplined Prussians to their right, through the smoke of battle in the dying rays of the sun.

The Guard retreated once more. This caused panic through the French infantry behind them. ‘The cry “ ‘the Guard retreats’ ” reverberated like the collapse of the Grande Armée. Everyone felt that everything was finished. The soldiers on la Haye Sainte . . . saw the Guard give way. They also abandoned the conquered terrain and descended to the foot of the hill. The movement of retreat spread to the whole line-of-battle from left to right. At the same time [the extreme French right] was attacked . . . by the heads of Prussian columns coming down the d’Ohain path. The cry went up, “sauve qui peut. We are betrayed.” ’ They were betrayed in that the approaching troops were now seen not to be Grouchy’s, as Napoleon had claimed, but Prussians. It was hopeless to fight on. The Prussian arrival had much more of a psychological than a military effect upon the French.

As the French line wavered Wellington raised his hat and waved in a prearranged signal and his reserve army charged forward in the centre,
with the few Prussians advancing on the right down that bloody, muddy slope with its tangle of men and limbs. Wellington himself charged forward as the British cheered but he upbraided them: ‘No cheering, my lads, but forward and complete your victory.’ The wounded Uxbridge shouted: ‘Don’t expose yourself so,’ but Wellington took no notice, in marked contrast to Napoleon’s earlier behaviour.

To the south-east, Büllow’s troops were still fighting to take Plancenoit. As the British surged forward into the valley, at long last Pirch’s corps arrived to reinforce Bülow, and the village was captured. Muffling wrote: ‘The enemy was dislodged from Plancenoit; cannon and prisoners were taken, and the remainder got into the same confusion with the same mass, which, near La Maison du Roi, was just rolling along the high road. Had it been possible to take the village an hour sooner, the enemy could not have retreated on the high road to Gemappe.’ Napoleon had been right to be concerned at this flanking movement: he and his army would have been surrounded had it worked. The British cavalry officers Vivian and Vandeleur led the British charge, and attacked the French as they retreated from Plancenoit, also routing the remainder of the French cavalry and capturing their guns.

As the main body of French soldiers streamed before the British attack across the valley of death, a squad of fresh Imperial Guards formed around their Emperor to protect him – their prime purpose – and retired in good order fighting bravely. With Blücher’s forces on the left joining in the general British charge on the right, the French retreat turned into a rout and Wellington called off his exhausted men.

Although the Prussians have frequently tried to claim all the credit for the rout, it is clear that this was caused almost entirely by the British, joined by Ziethen’s limited force – and then by the main Prussian force only after the capture of Plancenoit. The battle was won. After it Wellington rode to meet Blücher at La Belle Alliance, where the gruff old Prussian soldier told him in his halting French, ‘
Belle affaire
’, and Wellington greeted him with exhausted and relieved cordiality.

Wellington rode back in the moonlight across the killing ground accompanied by the screams and moans of the wounded and the
looting and stripping of bodies and slaughter of the wounded by the inevitable ghouls and vultures of war. It was an eerie, spectral and dreadful scene. Wellington was utterly drained and depressed. Reaching the inn at Waterloo, he remarked: ‘Well, thank God, I don’t know what it is to lose a battle; but certainly nothing can be more painful than to gain one with the loss of so many of one’s friends.’ He made his most celebrated observation: ‘Next to a battle lost, there is nothing so dreadful as a battle won.’