The Battle (24 page)

THIRTY-EIGHT

THE CHARGE OF

THE UNION BRIGADE

Once through the infantry, it was not necessary for the Union Brigade's squadrons to get across the chemin d'Ohain and reorder their line before charging, because the French were mostly past the sunken lane when the British troopers suddenly appeared out of the smoke, whirling their sabers above their heads. Assaulted frontally and without warning by about a thousand cavalry, the divisions of Quiot and Marcognet disbanded rapidly. Lord Uxbridge later wrote, "My impression is that the French were completely surprised by the first Cavalry attack. It (our Cavalry) had been rather hidden by rising ground immediately before their position. I think the left wing of our Infantry was partially retiring, when I determined upon the movement, and then these 19 Squadrons pouncing down hill upon them so astonished them that no very good resistance was made, and surely such havoc was rarely made in so few minutes."

Sir William Ponsonby's aide-de-camp, De Lacy Evans, was so struck by the speed of the catastrophe that he concluded that the French columns must have been composed of inexperienced recruits. "The Enemy's Column, near which I was, on arriving at the crest of the position seemed very helpless, had very little fire to give from its front or flanks, was incapable of deploying, must have already lost many of its Officers in coming up, was fired into, close, with impunity, by stragglers of our Infantry who remained behind. As we approached at a moderate pace
20
the front and flanks began to turn their backs inwards; the rear of the Columns had already begun to run away."

In truth, however, d'Erlon's was a solid infantry, with a large proportion of veterans, enthusiastically devoted to the emperor. The first of the two regiments of Bourgeois's brigade, the 105th Ligne, was in fact noted for its fanaticism: On the march to the Belgian border, the men of the 105th had assaulted and demolished a newly constructed house decorated with paintings of the Bourbon lilies, and the local authorities had been obliged to arrest the unfortunate owner in order to calm the soldiers' fury. But in these circumstances—faced with a massed cavalry charge, deployed in a formation unsuited to such an attack, and having just emerged from a debilitating firefight—any infantry would have been routed.

The first regiment of the Union Brigade, the Royals, fell on the 105th Ligne, which had got through the hedge and were pushing back the Belgians of the Seventh. Each of the three squadrons of the British regiment spanned some fifty yards, and thus they attacked the French line, no more than eighty yards long, in both front and flank. When the French realized their danger, the cavalry was less than a hundred yards (and therefore only a few seconds) from impact; Captain Clark, who commanded the central squadron of the charging cavalry, saw the enemy give signs of panic but nevertheless fire a volley that brought down some twenty dragoons. This feat, performed under such extreme conditions, offers a final confirmation of the effectiveness of the French musketry. Then, since there was no time to do anything else, the infantry took to their heels, seeking the safety of the hedge and the sunken lane. An instant later, the dragoons were upon them, sabering their victims without pity, even though at that point many of the French had thrown down their weapons and were trying to surrender. According to Clark's account, the whole French column got "into one dense mass, the men between the advancing and retiring parts getting so jammed together that the men could not bring down their arms, or use them effectively, and we had nothing to do but to continue to press them down the slope."

The captain had been in the melee for some minutes when he saw the officer who bore the Eagle of the 105th Ligne trying to carry it to the rear and safety. The loss of an Eagle was considered a disaster for an imperial regiment, and capturing one was the fervent desire of all who fought against Napoleon. Captain Clark immediately ordered his squadron, "Right shoulders forward, attack the Colour," and spurred his horse in that direction. Upon reaching the French officer, who was turned the other way, Clark ran him through with his sword. When the man fell, the captain reached for the flag, but his fingers only grazed the fringe, and he gave a frenzied cry: "Secure the Colour, secure the Colour, it belongs to me." One of his men, Corporal Styles, seized it before it fell and turned it over to Clark. In the excitement of the moment, the captain tried to break the Eagle off its pole so he could put the trophy inside his coat, but the corporal said to him, "Pray, sir, do not break it," and the captain, regaining some of his composure, agreed to desist, saying, "Very well, carry it to the rear as fast as you can, it belongs to me."

The Royals' charge sealed the destruction of Bourgeois's brigade. At the end of the day, the 105th Ligne would mourn the loss of twelve officers killed and twenty wounded out of a total of about forty; Colonel Genty, who commanded the 105th, was wounded and taken prisoner, and both battalion commanders were killed. The Twenty-eighth Ligne, which was slightly behind the 105th, fared little better. Having avoided capture by the skin of his teeth, Corporal Canler was limping to the rear, stopping every now and then to rifle the pockets of some dead officer, without making any distinctions between Britons and French. As he made his way, Canler came upon his colonel, who was galloping back and forth and shouting, "To me, 28th! To me!" in hope of gathering together a few of his men. His efforts, however, were unsuccessful; no one, not even the corporal, paid him any attention. A little later, while wandering "somewhat randomly" with a couple of comrades, Canler encountered a general, who stopped them and asked where they thought they were going. To avoid trouble, the men declared that they were trying to rejoin their unit, but the general shook his head. "It's useless," he told them. "Your regiment is scattered." Unlike the losses suffered by the 105th, those of the Twenty-eighth comprised more fugitives than dead and wounded, but in any case, Bourgeois's brigade was hors de combat.

In the center, the Inniskillings obtained a rather less triumphant success, because their charge was directed against the other brigade of Quiot's division, the one commanded by Colonel Charlet, which had stayed back in support. This meant that the Inniskillings had to cross the sunken lane and then go partway down the slope before they made contact with the French, who thus had more time to prepare some resistance or to run away. In fact Charlet's two regiments, the Fifty-fourth and the Fifty-fifth Ligne, made little attempt to resist, and the Inniskillings, howling their wild Irish "Hurrah!" routed them. Though heavy, the losses in Charlet's regiments did not compare to those in Bourgeois's, which were literally cut to pieces by the British sabers.

The combat included dramatic moments for soldiers on both sides. Muter, the Inniskillings' colonel, saw "an Infantry French soldier on his knees, deliberately taking aim at the Adjutant of the Inniskillings, who was close to me, in the
midst
of one of the French Columns, and sending his bullet through his head." The Inniskillings took fewer prisoners than the other regiments in the Union Brigade, and it was the only one of the three that did not capture an Eagle from the French. Writing many years later, Colonel Muter still couldn't get over this failure, and his chagrin was increased by the legend that was repeated around the regimental table, namely that a trooper of the Inniskillings had indeed seized an Eagle, but then naively allowed himself to be tricked out of it by a corporal from another regiment.
²¹

The most dramatic charge of all was that of the Scots Grays. Mounted on their powerful gray steeds, made to appear even more impressive by their bearskin caps, the Scottish dragoons bore down upon the men of Grenier's brigade, who were crossing the sunken lane. For a moment, the French infantry, and particularly its leading regiment, the Forty-fifth Ligne, seemed able to repulse the attack with the massed fire of its muskets, and the Grays' advance—made at a moderate trot because of the nature of the terrain—gave some companies enough time to fire more than one volley. Lieutenant Wyndham remembered noticing "the extraordinary manner in which the bullets struck our swords as we ascended," saw several of his men shot from their horses, got through the hedge, and shortly thereafter was wounded himself. Another officer turned to Captain Cheney and blurted out, "How many minutes have we yet to live, Cheney?" The captain coldly replied, "Two or three at the very utmost, most probably not one."

The majority of the French troops, however, found that the cavalry was upon them before they saw it coming, as Captain Martin of the Forty-fifth Ligne related: "A hollow road, lined with hedges, was the only obstacle still separating us from them. Our soldiers didn't wait for the order to cross it; they hurled themselves at it, jumping over the hedge and breaking ranks in order to rush upon the enemy. Fatal recklessness! We struggled to bring them back into order. We brought them to a halt in order to rally them. . . . Just as I finished pushing a soldier back into his rank, I saw him fall at my feet, struck down by a saber blow, and I quickly turned around. The British cavalry were charging us on all sides and cutting us to pieces. To avoid the same fate, I could only rush into the midst of the crowd. We found ourselves defenseless, exposed to a ferocious enemy. They even cut down the boys who served as our pipers and drummers." Actually, though, many French troops were able to surrender, throwing their muskets to the ground and unfastening their crossbelts—or perhaps the Grays' blades were not as sharp as they once were. At the battle's end, Grenier's brigade counted only three officers killed and fifty-nine wounded, an exceptional disproportion. An officer of the Gordons, from his position on the high ground, watched the Scots Grays as they "actually walked over this Column," and this is probably the most objective description of what happened; in the end, therefore, the death toll wasn't extremely high—partly because of the smoke, which covered everything in an instant—but Grenier's brigade was nonetheless crushed.

In this case as in the case of Bourgeois's brigade, the lead regiment, which had led the victorious attack, which had been the most exposed, and which had suffered the most casualties, was the regiment most thoroughly routed when the turning point came; moreover, it suffered the shame of losing its regimental Eagle. Sergeant Ewart of the Scots Grays, a giant well over six feet tall, had just decapitated a French officer with a saber blow and was looking about him in search of other victims when he saw the Eagle of the Forty-fifth Ligne swaying over the heads of the fleeing French infantry. Ewart spurred his horse, caught up with the standard-bearer, exchanged a few saber strokes with him, and finally, having split his opponent's head open, triumphantly took possession of his war trophy. This was the second Eagle captured during the Battle of Waterloo, and it would be the last: a testament to the obstinacy with which the French, even in the moment of final defeat, continued to defend their "Cuckoos."

Immediately after overwhelming Grenier's brigade, the Grays attacked the first regiment of Nogues's brigade, the Twenty-first Ligne. Since it was still some three to four hundred yards from the sunken lane, the Twenty-first had time to observe what was happening and quickly form square. As the British dragoons drew near in what was by then almost complete disorder, they came under fire from the square, which struck down a great many horses and men. Lieutenant Wyndham, despite having received one wound, continued to charge together with his men; he was wounded again, this time in the foot, and compelled to leave the battlefield. But the impetus of the oncoming British dragoons was so great—as was, in all probability, the terror of the French recruits, given what was happening all around them—that the square broke up as the cavalry advanced, and the Twenty-first was overwhelmed. Its colonel, a veteran of the revolutionary wars named, ironically enough, Carre ("Square"), was wounded and captured; a great many of his soldiers threw away their muskets and fell on their knees, begging for mercy. One of the Grays remembered that the French "cried out 'Prisoners!' and threw down their arms, and stripped themselves of their belts and ran to our rear. Ay, they ran like hares!"