The Battle (35 page)

FIFTY-THREE

THE LAST EFFORT TO

TAKE HOUGOUMONT

The attack against Hougoumont had been sustained by the
tirailleurs
of Prince Jerome's division, and then by those of General Foy, all afternoon long. These two commanders have been accused of prolonging a hopeless attack, thus wasting their troops without any positive result, and of acting without specific orders. In reality, Napoleon could see perfectly well what was happening at Hougoumont, just as Foy, with the aid of a spyglass, could see him so clearly that he could distinguish his every gesture. ("I saw him walking back and forth, wearing his gray overcoat, and often bending down to the little table where the map was spread out.") The prosecution of the assault on Hougoumont was an integral part of Napoleon's strategy, and that afternoon the emperor in person sent a specific order to the generals charged with conducting the attacks: Even if they had not yet used their artillery against the chateau because it was almost invisible amid the thick vegetation, they were to assemble their howitzers and fire incendiary shells at the buildings so as to set them on fire.

Having received the emperor's order, Reille transmitted it to his battery commanders, who opened fire on the chateau with such precision that a fire began to burn inside Hougoumont almost immediately, starting first in a pile of straw in the yard, then spreading to the barn roof and from there to the roof of the main house. The garrison had to detach more and more men in an attempt to contain the blaze and save the wounded; a number, however, were burned alive, along with the officers' horses, which were being kept in the barn. Seeing the flames rising from the chateau, Wellington hurriedly wrote an order to the commanding officer of the garrison, whose name he did not know, notifying him that he had to hold his position at whatever cost; he was to evacuate burning structures, but as soon as their roofs fell in, his men were to reoccupy the ruins. Little by little, the soldiers abandoned the most threatened buildings, returning as soon as the fire finished consuming them; within a short time, almost the whole chateau was reduced to a charred ruin, above which hung an immense cloud of black smoke. Only the chapel was spared by the blaze, a fact that did not fail to impress the soldiers, since it seemed that the crucifix hanging above the entrance had kept the flames at bay.

Along the walls of the chateau and in the orchard, which was by then razed to the ground, the French infantry continued to close in. Several times, the defenders had to evacuate the orchard and take shelter in the nearby hollow way, but the sustained fusillade from the garden wall again and again prevented the enemy from advancing. When fire began to consume the buildings, Foy's grenadiers moved forward once more, and under cover of flames and smoke they managed to penetrate into the farmyard through a small side door. Firing from the windows of the main house, the defenders held the French in check until the Guards Division could mount a counterattack and drive off the invaders. The woodland and the pastures attached to Hougoumont were all so thoroughly in French hands that their artillery batteries had advanced all the way to the hedges, and the French guns, posted just a few hundred yards away from their targets, were holding the Allied squares under fire on the high ground behind the chateau.

The charges of the cuirassiers carried them deep into the Allied lines and caused disorder even in the rear of Wellington's position. Along the road to Braine l'Alleud, several hundred yards beyond Hougoumont, Du Plat's brigade was still deployed in reserve, occupying the same positions it had held since morning, when, he reported, "there appeared suddenly on our left flank a regiment of enemy cavalry." The cavalry attacked a British square deployed a little to Du Plat's left; the French were repulsed, but the German officers could not help concluding from this action that "the enemy appeared to be getting the upper hand." If the French, by dint of gaining ground, had succeeded in isolating the perimeter of Hougoumont, the defense would have been pushed dangerously close to collapse, as it would no longer have been possible to send companies of skirmishers and carts of ammunition into the chateau to sustain the defenders' fire. For precisely this reason, Colonel Du Plat received orders to move his troops as far forward as possible, that is, as far as the hollow way, which had become the garrison's vital artery. Lieutenant Hesse of the Second KGL had been relieved to see the cuirassiers falling back, but "soon after that an adjutant rode along the front and shouted 'advance if you please!'"

Du Plat's four battalions literally had to fight their way to their new positions close to the hedgerows of Hougoumont. Still in column, the battalions had almost reached the chemin d'Ohain and were mounting the slope when, Hesse reported, "a column of enemy cuirassiers surprised us." The four light companies, which had been detached from the battalions and were hastening ahead to enter the grounds of the chateau, were attacked in their turn. "We still had plenty of ammunition and produced an almighty fire aimed at the cavalry, whereupon the same turned around." Resuming their advance, the Germans had barely arrived at the top of the slope when a regiment of cavalry in rapid retreat passed through their ranks at a gallop, pursued by French cavalry. Captain Sympher, commander of a KGL horse artillery battery that was accompanying the brigade's advance, "made a few lucky shots causing gaps so that the cavalry turned back." When they finally drew close to the chateau, Du Plat's men found themselves confronting Foy's
tirailleurs,
who were stationed behind the enclosure; but the Germans were forced to remain in square in order to fight off the cuirassiers, who continued to make threatening advances. As soon as the cavalry withdrew, the French skirmishers behind the hedge subjected the legionaries to a deadly accurate fire.

The accounts left by Du Plat's officers provide poignant testimony to the largely unsung ordeal of the German veterans, who were worn down by slow attrition during the course of the afternoon, all the while holding their positions and preventing the enemy from reaching the hollow way and isolating the defenders of Hougoumont. Their tenacity is all the more worthy of note in that they fought within a blinding cloud of smoke, in irregular formations that one of their officers described as "disbanded battalion squares," and without any orders from above, because "the Brigadier was already killed and each battalion had to help itself." Colonel Du Plat had been mortally wounded in the beginning of this confused and bloody action, and Captain Cordemann of the Third KGL confirmed that the combat was conducted without any superior officer's direction, "partly because it was not audible as a result of the uninterrupted thunder of the cannon and various other noises, making it incomprehensible, and partly because the battalion often did not know who the actual commanding officer was. The captains made every effort under these circumstances to inform the people of dangers and of enemy attacks, and to maintain order." When enemy cavalry prepared to charge, "we reminded the people again how they were to comport themselves: thereupon, the soldiers on their own loaded a second round and fired on the charging enemy at about 50-60 paces, independently, like hunters, so effectively that the same retreated with great loss." On the whole the men of the King's German Legion held their positions, preventing the enemy infantry from gaining ground and repulsing one cavalry charge after another; but after a while the legionaries' numbers were so diminished that two of their battalions had to be combined to form a single square, and all of the KGL officers' horses had been shot down by the
tirailleurs.

Despite this support, there were moments when enemy pressure became so intense—the rear entrance to the chateau was among the favored targets—that the garrison inside Hougoumont was in serious danger of being cut off. The indefatigable Captain Seymour was charged with finding some ammunition and getting it hauled into the courtyard at Hougoumont, where the defenders' cartridge supply was starting to run low. Having encountered a soldier from the ammunition train driving a full munitions wagon, Seymour explained to him what he needed; the man whipped his horses and descended straight down the hill toward Hougoumont's front gate. He became the target of a fire so heavy that Seymour could not but admire his courage, though the captain thought there was little chance that the man's horses would get to the chateau alive; nevertheless, the wagon reached the gate, and the defenders received the ammunition they so desperately needed.

In the Hougoumont sector, the French charges, mostly carried out by the Imperial Guard cavalry, were regularly coordinated with the action of the infantry troops occupying the pastures and part of the orchard. At first, the British cavalry enthusiastically rushed into a countercharge, hoping to hurl back the pointed thrusts of the enemy; but they paid a heavy price for their zeal. More than once the troops of a British regiment, descending the slope at a trot, unexpectedly found themselves under fire from the
tirailleurs
hidden in the tall grain and were obliged to return in great haste to their starting positions in order to avoid being trapped and cut off by the enemy closing in behind them; in other instances, the retreating French cavalry drew their pursuers into range of Reille's infantry squares, with consequences invariably disastrous for the British. Lieutenant Lane of the Fifteenth Hussars described how two squadrons of his regiment charged the
grenadiers a cheval
of the Imperial Guard, who, however, refused the combat. "Our next attack (in line without reserve) was [on] a square of French Infantry, and our horses were within a few feet of the Square. We did not succeed in breaking it, and, of course, suffered most severely. At the close of the Battle, the two Squadrons were dreadfully cut up."

Soon after, General Adam was ordered to send his regiments forward to relieve Du Plat's exhausted battalions. Their positions—near the northeast corner of the Hougoumont orchard—were taken by a Scottish light infantry regiment, the Seventy-first, formed in square and supported by two companies of the 3/95th Rifles. A thick line of gray-coated French skirmishers suddenly appeared out of the smoke right in front of the Scots. The French, too, were caught by surprise, but they opened fire on the Seventy-first at once; rather than respond to the enemy fire, the Scottish veterans coolly began to maneuver, redeploying into line. An officer of the Rifles observed, "the French and 71st were closer than I ever before saw any regular formed adverse bodies, and much nearer than troops usually engage."

Seeing that the British infantry was in square in a very advanced position on the flank of Hougoumont, Reille had decided to attack in force. He employed for this purpose not only Foy's division but also Bachelu's, the last of his three divisions, which added three thousand muskets to the attack. Though these troops had spent the day until then in formation with their weapons on their shoulders ("Rumor had it that we had been forgotten," said Major Trefcon, the division chief of staff), Bachelu's men had suffered such terrible losses two days earlier at Quatre Bras, and this day had remained so long under enemy artillery fire, that their offensive spirit had been extinguished. For a moment, it seemed as though the French infantry, advancing in column behind a thick screen of
tirailleurs,
would succeed in coming into physical contact with the enemy; as they were moving into musket range, Foy, who was one of the most popular generals in the French army, clapped his adjutant, Major Lemonnier-Delafosse, on the back and said, "Tomorrow you'll be in Brussels, and promoted colonel by the Emperor!"

But Adam's brigade contained 2,500 men, all light infantry, a third of them armed with Baker rifles, and they quickly redeployed into the four-deep line formation adopted everywhere on the field that day by the British infantry; their fire—aided by that of the guns posted behind them—stopped the French attack at once. A shell fragment wounded General Bachelu in the head and killed his horse, and another fragment from the same shell wounded General Campi, the commander of one of Bachelu's brigades. General Foy took a bullet in the shoulder while trying to stop his men from running away, and shortly thereafter, the attackers returned in haste to the low-lying ground from which they had set out. Major Lemonnier-Delafosse had fallen from a fatally wounded horse; as he rose to his feet, he saw half a loaf of bread attached to a dead soldier's knapsack: "I seized the bread and devoured it. 'Devoured' is the right word; for two days I had nourished myself on nothing but beer."