Waterloo (23 page)

The gardener’s house, where the gardener and his daughter had hidden in the cellar for the whole day, was still standing. The south gate under it had been destroyed by the French light guns, as had much of the south wall. James left the yard through the arch of the gate.

The wood was no longer a wood. Such trees as were still standing had not a leaf upon them. Every trunk was black and every branch broken. He walked around the garden wall. Unlike the woods and the farm it had stood up to the assault remarkably well. The loopholes were there of course, in places there were gaping holes and barely a brick was unmarked by bullet or shot, yet it stood. Outside the wall the dead were being cleared and taken to what would be their grave near the wood. A large figure was pushing a handcart on which three bodies had been loaded.

‘Corporal Graham,’ called out Macdonell. ‘How is your brother?’

Graham put down the cart. ‘He lives, Colonel, but his leg has gone. The surgeon took it last night.’

‘Were you with him?’

‘I was, sir. He is in the farm at Mont St Jean. Many of the wounded are there. A young lady named Daisy held his hand while the surgeon worked. She helped him bear it. Joseph says he will live.’

‘Then I am sure he will.’

In the garden, piles of bodies had been heaped against the south wall. In the middle of what had been a parterre a fire had been lit. Five men sat around it, using upturned French cuirasses as seats and another as a cooking pot. One of them was Harry Wyndham.

‘Breakfast, Harry?’ asked James. Whatever was in the cuirass flooded his mouth with saliva.

The men jumped up. ‘Pigeon,’ replied Harry. ‘They obligingly arrived this morning from the wood. Nests blown to bits, I daresay. Would you care for a mouthful? I am sure we would not mind.’ The soldiers shook their heads.

‘Thank you, Harry, I would. And you have found new uses for French armour.’

Harry skewered a piece of pigeon on a bayonet and passed it to James. James took a bite and raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was good.

‘I found an unwanted bottle of claret. Just the thing for pigeon stew,’ said Harry. ‘We’ve grim work before us and we need a good breakfast.’ The four privates grunted their
agreement. ‘It was hard fighting, James. The roll was difficult last night. It was dark and I may have missed some, but we lost at least five hundred. More in the orchard.’

‘Have you stood on the ridge?’

‘Not yet.’

‘There might be fifty times that and as many French.’

‘Good God. So many?’

‘I fear so.’

For some moments, Harry was lost in thought. Abruptly, he stood up. ‘But we held Hougoumont.’

Macdonell too rose. ‘Seeing it now in ruins, it is hard to believe, but we did.’

James Macdonell

There are various spellings of ‘Macdonell’. Wellington, bizarrely, refers to him on at least one occasion, as ‘Macdonald’. I have used the spelling Macdonell himself used when signing the regimental order book on the morning of 16 October.

He was awarded, among other honours, a knighthood and the Order of the Bath for his gallant service at Waterloo and, not surprisingly, went on to a distinguished career in the army, becoming commander of the Brigade of Guards in Canada and being appointed a general in 1854. He died in 1857, aged 76.

‘The Bravest Man at Waterloo’

There is more than one version of the story but the likeliest seems to be this. In August 1815, the rector of Framlingham, in Suffolk, one John Norcross, late of Pembroke College,
Cambridge, offered an annuity of £10 to the man nominated by the Duke of Wellington as the most deserving of it for his gallantry at Waterloo. Wellington demurred and suggested that the choice should be made by Major General Sir John Byng. Perhaps advised by James Macdonell, Byng jointly nominated James Graham, who had been promoted to sergeant and had already been awarded a special gallantry medal and Joseph Lester, his boxing opponent. (Sergeant Ralph Fraser, the man who pulled the French colonel off his horse and rode it triumphantly through the north gates, was another to receive the medal. The unlucky colonel was named Cubières.) They received the annuity for two years but when the rector was declared bankrupt, it ceased.

The rector’s fortunes must have recovered because when he died twenty-two years later, his estate was sufficient for him to leave £500 (about £23,000 in today’s money) to the man nominated by Wellington as ‘the bravest man in England’. This time, Wellington agreed and nominated James Macdonell. More than once, Wellington, who was not given to extending praise, expressed the view that the outcome of Waterloo turned on the successful defence of Hougoumont and, in particular, on ‘the closing of the gates’. He was referring to the heroic closing of the north gates when the attackers might easily have overrun the enclosure and opened the south gates, allowing their waiting comrades to pour in. He wrote, ‘
The success of the Battle of Waterloo turned on the closing of the gates at Hougoumont. The gates were closed in the most courageous manner at the very nick of time by the efforts of Sir J. Macdonell. I cannot help thinking Sir
James is the man to whom you should give £500.’
Macdonell accepted the award only on condition that it be shared with James Graham. Every British soldier who fought at Waterloo was awarded The Waterloo Medal.

Not only was Macdonell a man of great personal courage, renowned for always being in the thickest of the fighting, he was also an exceptional leader of men. In scorching heat, his light companies marched twenty-seven miles from Enghien to Quatre Bras, were thrown straight into the battle there, spent a wet, miserable night in the open, conducted a fighting retreat for the twelve miles back to Mont St Jean, were sent down to Hougoumont without food or water, spent another wet night there, and, finally, fought for over eight hours in its successful defence. James Macdonell led them through all of this.

Casualties

Estimates naturally vary but the consensus seems to be that at Quatre Bras the Allies lost nearly 5,000 killed and injured and the French about 1,000 less.

At Waterloo, on a single day, some 15,000 Allied, 7,000 Prussian and 25,000 French troops died or were injured. It took weeks to bury and burn the dead.

Hougoumont

In the story James Macdonell wonders whether Wellington really expects the Guards to hold Hougoumont or whether they are
merely intended to draw French troops away from Napoleon’s centre. General Müffling certainly did not think Hougoumont could be held and said so. Wellington took pleasure, after the battle, in pointing out his mistake.

It seems likely that Wellington hoped the Guards would hold the chateau and farm all day but, if not, that they would do so for long enough to be a serious thorn in Napoleon’s side. Napoleon, on the other hand, hoped that Wellington would have to reinforce the Hougoumont garrison, thereby weakening his own centre. In fact, the relatively few reinforcements Wellington sent came from his right wing and did not weaken his centre.

The French may have committed as many as 14,000 men at different times to the attacks on Hougoumont, the Allies perhaps 3,500 (including Hanoverians, Brunswickers and Nassauers) to repulsing them, so Napoleon’s plan did not work. French casualties in and around Hougoumont of 5,000 were more than three times those of the Allies.

Hougoumont is often described as ‘a battle within a battle’. In some ways, it was. Macdonell and his Guards could not have known much of the progress of the battle raging in the valley and on the ridge beyond the orchard other than what little could be seen from the tower before it was destroyed. The whole battlefield would have been shrouded in smoke, information coming down the hollow lane would have been sketchy and unreliable and it would not have been easy to distinguish between the report of an Allied cannon and a French one. Fighting in a vacuum cannot have made the Guards’ task any easier.

The chateau and farm were situated about equidistant from Wellington’s right wing and Napoleon’s left. If Hougoumont had fallen, the French would have been able to use it as a springboard from which to attack the Anglo-Dutch forces on the slope behind it, which would have forced Wellington to reinforce his right wing, thereby weakening his centre.

That is why Wellington reckoned that Hougoumont held the key to the battle and why he chose James Macdonell to command the garrison there.

Fact and Fiction

On 17th August 1815, Wellington wrote, ‘
It is impossible to say when each occurrence took place, nor in what order.
’

Hougoumont was attacked at least five times during the day, and the orchard more often. Within the framework of the battle, I have simply tried to give the reader an idea of what it must have been like for both attackers and defenders – unceasing, terrifying hell – rather than try to recreate the exact sequence of events.

The incident of Lord Saltoun leaving the orchard and meeting Wellington on the way up to the ridge is well recorded, but odd. The explanation I have suggested is my own invention, but seems to me to be plausible. In the notorious ‘fog of war’, such things can happen.

The name of the giant, axe-wielding French sous-lieutenant was, appropriately,
Le Gros
. He was known to his comrades as
L’Enfonceur
– ‘The Smasher’. The drummer boy’s name is not
known, or even whether he survived. I have chosen to believe that he did, and that he managed to run back to the French lines at the time of the general retreat.

Stories of the gardener, Monsieur van Cutsem, and his daughter vary. At least one contemporary account denies their existence altogether. Some histories suggest that van Cutsem took an active part in the battle, others that his presence came as a shock to all when the fighting was at last over. I have chosen the latter. The brave Mrs Osborne, happily, survived.

The gallant button salesman who carried a vital message down from Wellington to General Kempt disappeared after the battle. It was only some years later that, by chance, Wellington learnt of his whereabouts and was able to reward him for his service.

There is a painting by W. Wollen, entitled by the artist – I respectfully suggest, mistakenly –
The First Shot at the Battle of Waterloo
. It looks to me much more like the French cavalry officer at Quatre Bras who was so furious at his horse being shot from under him that he brandished his sabre at the Guards in the wood who had done such an unchivalrous thing. The officer did not survive. I mention this as an example of how stories of Waterloo so easily changed with the telling and became confused. There are many other such examples.

Wellington’s remark, ‘Ah, but you do not know Macdonell’, is well documented but did not, as I have suggested, take place at the house in Waterloo. It was more probably said to General Müffling when they rode down on the morning of the battle to inspect Hougoumont.

Of the hundreds of other incidents, such as the carving of Christ on the cross which, apart from his feet, survived the fire, the bloody water and the obliging pigeons, that occurred at Quatre Bras and Waterloo, I have selected a few, sometimes with a little licence, that fitted my story.

For excellent histories and accounts of this period, the humble novelist is spoilt for choice. I would mention, in particular, Alessandro Barbero’s
The Battle
, Mike Robinson’s
The Battle of Quatre Bras 1815,
and
Hougoumont
by Julian Paget and Derek Saunders. All these I found invaluable, as were Gareth Glover’s comprehensive
Waterloo Archive
series, Private Matthew Clay’s personal account of the battles, first published in 1853, and Sergeant Major Cotton’s
A Voice from Waterloo,
published in 1849.

My grateful thanks are also due to:

Rhydian Vaughan of Battlefield Tours,
www.battlefieldtours.co.uk
, who expertly guided us around the battlefields and acted as unofficial researcher and corrector of errors.

Colonel Simon Vandeleur, Regimental Adjutant Coldstream Guards at Wellington Barracks, for kindly allowing me access to the regimental archives.

Robert Cazenove, Regimental Archivist, Coldstream Guards for his help with uniforms, musical instruments and proper forms of address.

My agent David Headley, of DHH Literary Agents, for his encouragement and support and Susie Dunlop of Allison & Busby for hers.

And to all others who were kind enough to read my drafts and offer advice.

We hope you enjoyed this book.
Do you want to know about our other great reads,
download free extracts and enter competitions?
If so, visit our website
www.allisonandbusby.com.
Sign up to our monthly newsletter (
www.allisonandbusby.com/newsletter
) for exclusive content  and offers, news of our brand new releases, upcoming events
with your favourite authors and much more.
And why not click to follow us on
Facebook
(AllisonandBusbyBooks)
and
Twitter
(@AllisonandBusby)?
We’d love to hear from you!