The Fields of Death (95 page)
Read The Fields of Death Online
Authors: Simon Scarrow
‘Tell Ney we must have the farm if we are to win the battle. He must take it at any cost.’ He pointed to the stretch of ridge behind La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont. The slope there seemed more gentle than where d’Erlon had made his advance. It was also less muddy, and would not be such a hindrance to any attack on the ridge. ‘That is where we must strike next. Tell Ney to use every available gun to pound the allied centre before he sends in an attack.’
Soult nodded and made a quick note. As he wrote, a courier galloped up to the inn and dismounted from his exhausted horse. Spotting Soult he hurried over and handed him a despatch. Soult quickly finished his order to Ney and read the report. Then, with a grim expression, he approached Napoleon and spoke softly so that the other officers would not overhear.
‘A message from Grouchy, sire.’
‘Well?’
‘He is still advancing on Wavre. He will not be able to reach us until late this evening.’
Napoleon pursed his lips. ‘Then we must forget about Grouchy.’
‘And what of the Prussians, sire?’
‘We must delay them. Send Marbot’s hussars towards Lasne, and alert General Lobau to have his corps ready to move to guard our right flank.’
Soult finished his notes and strode across to the officers sitting at the table set up outside the inn to have the orders copied into a fair hand and sent off. Meanwhile Napoleon’s attention fixed on La Haye Sante. It was far smaller than Hougoumont and there would be fewer men defending it. Ney should be able to take it with ease.
Chapter 62
There was a brief lull across most of the battlefield while as many French guns as possible were positioned between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte. All the time, the assault on both continued. Napoleon could see his men right against the walls of the latter, snatching at the muzzles of any muskets that appeared through the loopholes and trying to wrench the weapons from the hands of the defenders. The door of the barn was missing and a ferocious mêlée was being fought out at the entrance. As they pressed forward in a desperate bid to overwhelm the defenders, more of the enemy fired down on the French from the wall beside the barn. Some even hurled bricks on to the heads of the men below.
Once again the attack failed and the French fell back, passing through the shattered trees of the orchard out of range. As soon as they had retired to a safe distance a battery of howitzers resumed their bombardment of the farm and the shells burst over the tiled roofs with a flash and puff of white, or landed before exploding and briefly illuminating the interior of the farm’s walled yard in a lurid red glow.
To Napoleon’s left there was a rumble of hooves and he turned to see the cavalry reserves moving forward to form up behind the line of guns being trained on the ridge. Regiment after regiment of cuirassiers, lancers and dragoons came forward until the floor of the shallow valley was a mass of horsemen, sitting silently in their saddles as they awaited the order to attack. Ney took his place at their head and raised his feathered hat to signal the guns to open fire. With a staggered roar the bombardment began. Each gun spat flame and smoke as it jumped back a short distance with the recoil.
Wellington’s gun crews stood to, but did not return fire, and Napoleon realised that they must be conserving their ammunition for the French cavalry, when they began their advance. Napoleon saw one of the British gun carriages above Hougoumont disintegrate as it was struck by roundshot. Splinters exploded in all directions, felling the crew. The axle collapsed and the barrel canted up at an angle towards the sky. All along the ridge columns of earth tore into the air, but the lines of soldiers still stationed on the forward slope and the ridge itself stood their ground as roundshot, canister and shell decimated their ranks.
‘They cannot take such punishment for long,’ Soult commented.
Napoleon nodded. But even as he took grim satisfaction from the destruction being dealt out by the French guns, he was aware that time was slipping away. Every minute brought the Prussians closer to his right flank. The battle could still be won, he calculated, but the odds were no more than sixty to forty in his favour. Victory depended on breaking the centre of the allied line. Napoleon reached down and took out his fob watch, and glanced at the hands. Wellington’s soldiers, scraped together from the forces of Europe’s minor powers, had defied Napoleon for over four hours.
‘Their nerve will break at any moment, Soult. I am certain of it.’ Napoleon gestured towards the waiting cavalry. ‘And then nothing will stand between Ney and the streets of Brussels.’
The elm tree, 4.00 p.m.
Even though Arthur had given the order for the battalions on the ridge to lie down the casualties were still fearful. Heavy shot, angled low, smashed through the prone figures, leaving bloody smears and tangled bodies to mark their passage, and there was no shelter from the shells that regularly exploded overhead, sending fragments of iron slashing through the men below.
‘We endured nothing like this in Spain, your grace,’ said Somerset as they watched the bombardment to their right. Even though the French guns were targeting the stretch of the ridge between the two strongpoints of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, occasional shot smacked into the slope or whirred through the air close to Arthur and his small party of staff officers. Once there was a dull roar behind them, and Arthur turned to see a column of smoke swirling into the sky from the shattered remains of a handful of ammunition wagons, now ablaze as several dazed figures around the wreckage rose to their feet and staggered away from the flames. Scores more men and horses lay on the ground, unmoving.
‘Lucky shot with a howitzer,’ one of Arthur’s aides muttered.
‘Lucky?’ Somerset snorted.
The officers turned their attention back to the furious bombardment. It seemed to Arthur as if it had reached a climax. He turned to look at the men of the nearest regiment, one of those composed of new recruits fresh from their training battalion in England. There was no mistaking the fear in their expressions. Arthur knew that they had to be moved back, before their spirit failed.
‘Somerset, pass the word. The centre of the line will retire a hundred paces.’
‘A hundred paces? Yes, your grace.’
The aide spurred his horse away and conveyed the order to every unit defending the ground under fire from the French guns. One by one the battalions stood up and formed ranks before turning about and pacing back down the reverse slope, out of sight of the French gunners. Within quarter of an hour the only men still visible to the enemy were the gun crews. Some of the batteries, overcome by the exasperation of enduring losses without responding, ignored Wellington’s order not to engage in counter-battery fire and had started to blaze away.
There was no time to ride over to the gunners and berate them, as at that moment Arthur realised that the enemy bombardment was slackening. The last few guns fired and then the French crews reloaded their guns and closed up to them to create as much space between each gun as possible. The reason for this was at once obvious to Arthur, who spurred his horse forward, down the reverse slope towards the infantry regiments sheltering there.
‘Prepare to receive cavalry! Infantry will form square!’
The order was relayed from battalion to battalion and each of the lines of infantry steadily manoeuvred into blocks, three ranks deep. The front rank knelt, each man resting the butt of his musket against a boot so that the bayonets angled out to present a bristling line of steel points on each face of the formation. Soon the reverse slope was covered in a patchwork of red rectangles, loosely staggered like elongated squares of a chessboard. Arthur and his staff took their place in the middle of a battalion close to the ridge, and waited. Above them the British artillery fired away at the advancing cavalry as long as they dared, then abandoned their guns and rushed for the shelter of the nearest square, throwing themselves flat beneath the outstretched bayonets. A handful of crews had the presence of mind to remove a wheel from their guns and run it down the slope with them, leaving their gun immobilised.
‘Here they come,’ Somerset muttered as the ground shook beneath the impact of four thousand cavalry ascending the forward slope. The sharp notes of bugles sounded an increase in pace and then the first of the enemy appeared on the ridge, wearing the crested helmets of dragoons. They came on, sweeping past the abandoned guns, their front extending for a thousand yards, charging towards the squares in a deadly wave of gleaming swords and deadly lance points.
‘Hold your ground!’ the colonel of the battalion bellowed to his men. ‘For England!’
Arthur watched a squadron of cuirassiers swing towards the square, their gleaming breastplates shimmering as their mounts stretched their necks and galloped down the gentle slope.
‘Fire!’ the colonel shouted and the view of the enemy was obliterated by smoke. Arthur heard the thud of the bullets impacting on horseflesh, and the clatter as they struck the cuirassiers’ breastplates. The smoke eddied away revealing horses and men strewn across the flattened crops.
‘Fire at will!’ the colonel ordered.
On all sides now the first volleys blazed out and enemy cavalry tumbled to the ground. Then they were in amongst the squares, flowing between the rows of bayonets, like a wave crashing against rocks and forced to channel its flow between immovable obstacles. The most fearless of the cavalry steered their mounts up to the lines of bayonets and then attempted to lean out and slash their blades down at one of the kneeling men. But, almost to a man, they were shot out of their saddles before they could strike.
As Arthur watched he nodded with satisfaction. His men were holding firm, and as long as they did, the French cavalry would be sacrificed to no purpose. The only anxiety Arthur had was that while his infantry was preoccupied, Bonaparte might be ordering up infantry and artillery to support the attack. If that happened then there was little that could be done to save the allied army. Threatened by cavalry they would be forced to remain in square, and thus provide perfect targets for the enemy’s cannon.
His train of thought was broken as one of his aides was thrown to the side by the impact of a bullet. With a groan the young officer fell from his saddle.
‘Get him to the dressing station!’ Somerset ordered a passing drummer boy, and the wounded officer was dragged away, towards the colours where the other members of the battalion’s band were treating the injured.
Some of the Frenchmen had realised the futility of trying to break into the squares and had sheathed their blades and taken out their horse pistols to fire at the infantry who had defied their initial charge. The last of the volleys had been fired and now the air was filled with a constant crackle as individual soldiers reloaded and fired. The smoke hanging over the squares was soon as dense as the thickest London fog and the enemy horsemen were little more than shadows. The bloom of muzzle flashes lit up the smoke all around, and above the sound of gunfire Arthur could hear the desperate cries of officers of both sides encouraging their men, as well as the cries of the wounded and the terrified whinnies of crippled horses.
For fully twenty minutes the enemy cavalry attempted to break into the squares, but each time one of Wellington’s men fell the body was dragged inside the square and the gap closed up and the formation remained as impregnable as before. Then Arthur was aware that the fire was fading away, and a voice cried out,‘They’re going! The Frogs are on the run, boys!’
A cheer went up, and spread from square to square. Arthur gestured to his staff to follow and trotted out of the square that had sheltered him, the infantry moving aside to let him by. He cupped a hand to his mouth and called out, ‘Gunners to your pieces!’
Passing out of the smoke, he rode forward a short distance to gauge the situation. A handful of the enemy were still retreating over the ridge, and those who had lost their mounts struggled across the churned field, hampered by their heavy boots and cumbersome breastplates. Hundreds more were sprawled on the ground with their mounts, many writhing feebly as they groaned. The artillery crews paid them no attention as they dashed forward and manned the waiting guns. Not one of the guns appeared to have been spiked, Arthur noticed in surprise. A foolish oversight on the part of the enemy, and one for which they would pay dearly. He headed across the slope to join the battery of Captain Sandham. His nine-pounders and howitzer were in action as Arthur rode up and acknowledged his salute.
‘Pound ’em, Sandham.’
‘I will, your grace,’ the captain grinned.
Two hundred yards away, the French officers were struggling to rally their troops and Arthur recognised Marshal Ney wildly haranguing the men before him. Suddenly the marshal’s horse lurched as a roundshot smashed into its neck. The animal collapsed beneath Ney, but as Arthur watched he calmly rose from his saddle and strode a few paces to the nearest horse, took its reins and ordered the rider to get down. Once in the saddle of his new mount Ney continued his impassioned address.
‘They’re coming again!’ Mercer yelled.
‘Get back to the squares,’ Arthur ordered. ‘You too, Somerset.’
Sandham’s crews fired their last rounds and made off. Arthur waited a moment longer, then reached for his telescope and trained it on smoke rising up from a village away to the east, no more than two miles from where he stood. There was fighting there, and there could be only one explanation for it - the first of the Prussians had reached the battlefield. A French bugle sounded the advance and Arthur snapped his telescope shut and turned Copenhagen back towards the squares dimly visible in the slowly dissipating smoke.
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