The Age of Elegance (33 page)

action, he gave battle on the open plain where the full strength of the Prussian and British armies could later be brought to bear on Napoleon.

Until then, however, Wellington knew that his role must be strictly defensive. At least half the foreign troops under his command could not be trusted to manoeuvre. Kincaid drew the picture of a detachment of them at Quatre-Bras, behaving for all the world like Mathews', the comedian's, ludicrous sketch of the American Militia; whenever, after a careful explanation of their role, they were given the word to march, they had started blazing away at the British skirmishers ahead—"we were at last," Kincaid wrote, "obliged to be satisfied with whatever advantages their appearance would give, as even that was of some consequence where troops were so scarce." Later in the day, he admitted, when they got used to the sensation of being fired at, they behaved quite well. Many, however, having fought for Napoleon when Belgium, Holland and Western Germany formed part of his empire, had little stomach for fighting against him. Many more were boys and raw landwehr, though, in the case of the Brunswickers, with good officers and N.C.O.s. Few were adequately equipped or trained.
¹
Of the 42,000 foreign troops in Wellington's army only the 5500 men of the veteran King's German Legion—an integral part of the British army—could be described as first-line troops.

Wellington was, therefore, forced to do as he had done in early Peninsular days; to stiffen his foreign formations with redcoats. In the teeth of opposition, particularly from the King of the Netherlands, he had tried to make his force as international in organisation as possible; to this end he habitually wore the national cockades of all the Allies in his hat and forbade the playing of "Rule Britannia" at regimental concerts. As at Talavera, the most immobile troops of all he stationed among buildings and behind walls. Fortunately one of the features of his position was the presence of villages and farms on either flank of his two-and-a-half-mile front—Smohain, Papelotte, La Haye and Frischermont to the east, and Merbe Braine and Braine l'Alleud to the west. In these he p
laced some rather uncertain Nas
sauers—who, however, defended them bravely—Chasse's Belgian division and the youthful Brunswickers who had suffered so severely

¹
Lynedoch, 764; Ellesmere, 216-18; Fortescue, 238, 243-7; Gomm, 363-4; Basil Jackson, 10; Kincaid, 325. 329; Mercer, I, 93-4. 197-8, 281.

at Quatre-Bras. They thus served—an old device of Wellington's— both as flank guards and reserves.

The backbone of his polyglot, and what he afterwards described as "infamous army"
¹
was its 21,000 British regulars—of whom more than 2000 had arrived from Ostend only that morning—and their comrades of the King's German Legion. Yet of this vital 26,500—a smaller force than any he had commanded since his first Portuguese campaign—only about half had been under fire. Several of its units were weak second-line battalions, scarcely out of the goose-step. Even most of the eighteen infantry battalions that had fought in Spain had been brought up to strength by recruiting from the plough before they left England. Probably not more than 12,000 had served in the incomparable army that had marched from the Douro to Toulouse.

Compared with his Peninsular army, Wellington's force was relatively stronger in cavalry than infantry. Its 7000 British and King's German Legion cavalry, though far outnumbered by Napoleon's cuirassiers and lancers, made an imposing spectacle, superbly uniformed and caparisoned—the Prince Regent saw to that —and mounted on the finest horses in the world. They could ride across country like a field of high-metalled foxhunters, for they came from a land where horsemanship was a passion. At a review they left Blucher speechless with admiration. "It did one's heart good," wrote a Rifleman, watching them on the retreat from Quatre-Bras, "to see how cordially the Lifeguards went at their work; they had no idea of anything but straightforward fighting and sent their opponents flying in all directions." Their chief, the Earl of Uxbridge, was the Lord Paget who had commanded Moore's cavalry so brilliantly during the Corunna campaign, but whose service in the Peninsula had been cut short by an elopement with the wife of Wellington's brother. Apart from his amatory exploits,
²
he was an excellent officer, quiet and incisive, though, like his command, rather too dashing.

What the British cavalry lacked, except for the King's German Legion and a few fine Peninsular regiments like the 23 rd Light Dragoons, was experience of war and, in their high-spirited younger

¹
Stanhope, 221.

2
When someone mentioned to Wellington that Lord Uxbridge had the reputation of running away with everybody he could, he replied, "I'll take good care he don't run away with me." In this anecdote, Fraser adds, he was compelled to soften "the vigorous vernacular of the Duke." Fraser, 186. See also Frazer, 520.

officers, discipline. Too many of the latter held their commissions, not because they wanted to be professional soldiers, but because a few years in a crack cavalry mess was a mark of social distinction. Their courage and dash was indisputable; their self-control and staying power less certain.
¹
The troopers, magnificent fighting material, were what the officers—so much less experienced and realist than their humbler infantry colleagues—made or failed to make of them. The same witness of the Life Guards' charge during, the retreat noticed with amusement that, whenever one of them got a roll in the mud, he went off to the rear as no longer fit to appear on parade.
²

In artillery, though he only acknowledged it sparingly, Wellington was brilliantly served. Its mounted branch was magnificently horsed,
³
and, Horse and Field Artillery alike, officers and men were animated by the highest professional spirit. Only 96 of the 156 guns opposed to Napoleon's 266 pieces were British or King's German Legion, but they were probably better handled than any guns even on a battlefield where one of the commanders was the master gunner of all time. They were lighter metalled than the French guns, many of which were the dreaded twelve-pounders. Yet, thanks to the foresight of Sir Augustus Frazer, three of the seven mounted batteries had recently substituted nine-pounders for the normal six-pounders. There were also some howitzers.

In the last resort, as Wellington well knew, everything depended on his British infantry. There were far too few of them; as he carefully sent them off after Quatre-Bras before the rest of his troops, he remarked, "Well, there is the last of the infantry gone, and I don't care now." A few weeks before, Creevey, encountering him in a Brussels square, had asked whether he and
Blücher
could do the business. "It all depends upon that article there," the Duke had replied pointing at a private of one of the line regiments who was gaping at the statues, "give me enough of it, and I am sure."
⁴

He, therefore, placed his thirty-five under-strength British and

¹
"The real truth was that our cavalry never had much to do before this sanguinary battle; and the officers were, and always have been, very inferior to that of the infantry, being generally composed of country gentlemen's sons from the hunting counties of England. Such persons have no particular inclination for fighting but enter the Army as a genteel business, the oldest son being the squire, the second the parson, the next the dragoon."
Hamilton of
Dalzell
MS., p. 80. See Kincaid, 161; Stanley, 105; Tomkinson, 296, 318.

²
"I thought at first that they had all been wounded, but on finding how the case stood, I could not help telling them that theirs was now the better situation to verify the old proverb, "The uglier, the better the soldier.' " Kincaid, 334-

³
"Mein Gott," said Blucher, after inspecting Mercer's battery, "dere is not von 'orse in diss batterie wich is not goot for Veldt Marshal." Mercer, I, 217.

⁴
Creevey Papers,
I, 228. See also Becke, 149.

King's German Legion infantry battalions where he thought the danger was greatest, but left no part of the battlefield without them. He had received in the small hours of the morning, before retiring to sleep,
Blücher
's assurance that he would join him in the course of the day with not less than two corps—a force as large as his own. His anxiety was, therefore, for his right rather than his left. Believing it to be to Napoleon's interest to shift the battle away from the Prussians' impending flank march, he expected him to incline to the west, possibly even striking as far as the Mons-Brussels road to seize the Belgian capital in his rear and break his communications with England. For this reason he had retained at Hal and Tubize, some ten or twelve miles to the west, 15,000 Dutch and Hanoverian and 3000 British troops to guard the Mons-Brussels road, protect the capital and keep open his lines to Ostend, where more veterans from America were expected. In the event of the battle shifting to the west this force might have an important effect, either against an offensive or in pursuit of a French retreat towards Maubeuge or Lille.
¹

There was a more immediate reason why Wellington felt anxious about his right. The unobtrusive but fine defensive position he had chosen had one flaw—a narrow, winding, shallow depression which, passing under the walls of a country house called Hougoumont in the plain below the ridge, afforded an approach by which a column could climb round the west shoulder of the plateau out of direct gunfire and debouch on to the reverse slope where his army was drawn up. For this reason he placed near the danger spot on the right of his front line the First or Guards Division and behind it, in reserve and
en potence,
Clinton's fine 2nd Division which, with its two brigades of veteran British and King's German Legion infantry, was the nearest he possessed to his old Peninsular Light Division—a force which could manoeuvre quickly. Beyond it he stationed at Merbe Braine and Braine l'Alleud his less mobile reserve of Brunswickers and Chasse's Belgians. In addition, since the winding hollow which his experienced eye had perceived could be commanded by musketry fire from Hougoumont, he adopted the unorthodox expedient of fortifying and garrisoning an outpost nearly a quarter of a mile in advance of his main position on the ridge. With its chateau, barns,

¹
As a similar Spanish force at Alba, had it only retained its position, would have converted his victory at Salamanca into a virtual annihilation of Marmont's army. See Ellesmere, 105, 183; Fortescue, X, 351, 355; Frazer, 267, 270; Greville (suppl.), I, 82-3; Tomkinson, 297.

orchards, gardens, park and woods, the estate of Hougoumont formed a 500 yards square whose wooded southern border extended almost to the ridge occupied by the French. Without its possession Napoleon could neither move a column up the hollow nor, unless he divided his army in the presence of his enemy's best troops, envelop the Allied right. Wellington, therefore, placed seven hundred Hanoverians and Nassauers in the Hougoumont woods, and four light companies of the Guards, detached from the Guards' Division on the ridge behind, to hold the house, gardens and orchard and command the sunken way. To the west, defending the avenue to the house from the Nivelles road, he stationed Mitchell's British brigade with some light cavalry in rear. Thus garrisoned, the Hougoumont estate outflanked from the west the plain between the rival armies; if it could be held till the Prussians arrived, Napoleon's position would become untenable. In the meantime it would gravely delay and impede his attack.

Having secured his right, Wellington strengthened the remaining two miles of his front in his usual way by placing his formations, except for the guns and skirmishers, on the reverse slope of the ridge. They were thus out of sight, though not out of range, of the enemy's cannon. They were deployed in broken and staggered lines and so disposed as to present single rather than double targets for the enemy's round-shot. The artillery, save for the reserve batteries, Wellington placed along the summit of the ridge, with orders to reserve its fire for the enemies' columns. The skirmishers and riflemen were stationed on the forward or southern slope, concealed, as were all his troops, in the corn which, almost shoulder-high, covered the entire battlefield. By this arrangement the French masses would have to advance through three successive zones of fire—the rifle fire of picked marksmen, the round-shot and grape of the guns, and, as they came over the crest, the musketry volleys of deployed and, till then, invisible infantry.

Apart from Hougoumont on the west, Smohain, Papelotte and La Haye on the east, and the little farm of Mont St. Jean just behind the British lines, there were no buildings on the open ground Wellington had chosen for battle except the farm of La Haye Sainte. This lay a hundred yards or so down the slope on the southern side of the ridge, abutting on to the straight-paved
chaussee
from Charleroi to Brussels which, ascending the hill here through a cutting, intersected it and the British line at right angles. Here, in the centre of his line of skirmishers, Wellington placed a battalion of the King's German Legion under Major Baring. Behind it and at the top of the ridge the Charleroi-Brussels road was crossed at right angles by a sunken lane which following the crest from west
to east joined, north of Hougou
mont, another highway that fanned out of the Brussels road at Mont St. Jean and ran through a cutting south-westwards towards Nivelles. This road, like the orchards and woods of Hougoumont, had the effect of constricting the frontage on which the French could assail Wellington's right.

It was generally believed by the British—though not by Wellington, who knew his adversary's overweening confidence and impatience—that there would be no attack that day.
¹
But in the course of the morning, it became clear that the enemy advance-guard, which had bivouacked during the night on a parallel ridge three-quarters of a mile to the south, was being joined by the entire French army. Presently the sun came out, and watchers could see the long lines of massed troops, with their glittering helmets, cuirasses and arms, forming a magnificent spectacle, on the ridge of La Belle Alliance—named after the solitary, red-tiled public house of that name. At one time there was a burst of cheering as a grey figure on a white horse, accompanied by a cavalcade, rode down the lines. For the French were not only intending to attack, but in their resolve to conquer, were partaking of a sacrament. Napoleon might not have France, or even all his anxious generals behind him, but there was no question of the devotion of his fighting men. Between him and his old
moustaches
was a bond to be found in no other army on earth. For all his grandiloquent pretensions, he and they were familiars. Cam Hobhouse, watching him review the Imperial Guard just before the campaign began, was amazed at the way he mingled with his troops, leaving the saluting base and marching in time beside each column; once he went up to a grenadier and affectionately pulled his nose. He might be prodigal of his men's lives, but, unlike Wellington, who was not, he valued his command of their hearts. It was the foundation of his fortunes. At that moment as he rode along the lines amid shouts of"
Vive VEmpereur!,
⁹⁹
Leipzig, the Retreat from Moscow and the Abdication were as though they had never been.

¹
H. M. C. Bathurst; Bessborough, 242; Frazer, 546; Kincaid, 338; Smith, I, 268; Gronow, L 68-9; Leeke, 187; Gomm, 363-4;
Hamilton ofDalzell
MS., 49-50; Jackson, 7-8.