Authors: Alessandro Barbero
The Battle (42 page)
W
hile this confused fighting was taking place not far from La Haye Sainte, the two battalions of the Third Chasseurs a pied, also in square, were advancing up the slope toward the positions held by Maitland's brigade. This
chasseur
regiment, too, was newly formed; like other Middle Guard regiments, it had filled out its ranks by absorbing many men of the Young Guard, and its battle dress was rather irregular. The coming encounter—in which for the first time during the Napoleonic Wars the French Guards were about to confront the British Guards—could seem today to have been an equal contest: a thousand muskets in the two French squares against a little more than a thousand in the two British battalions, although the formation used by the British allowed for much more effective fire. But before the infantry came within musket range, the artillery on both sides was unsparingly engaged in an attempt to weaken the enemy. Several artillery sections of two pieces each advanced together with the Guard squares, halted to fire a few shots, and then advanced even farther as soon as it was possible to do so. Maitland's men were all lying facedown among the remains of a wheat field, under cover of the sunken lane, which was particularly deep in this part of the field and bordered on one side by an embankment; a soldier who was there later remarked, "Without the protection of this bank every creature must have perished."
Only after the French guns, together with a number of
tirailleurs
advancing under their cover, drew to within relatively close range of Maitland's brigade did its losses begin to rise alarmingly; but by that point, the Third Chasseurs had already suffered even heavier casualties. The British artillery, which had several functioning batteries still in operation throughout this sector, rained canister on the French; one British officer compared the effect to that of a hailstorm battering down the standing grain. Another, who was farther away, viewed the squares as dark masses moving forward; every time the cannonballs struck down entire ranks of men, "long lanes of light are seen through the black body." When the
chasseurs
reached the top of the position, they did exactly what the grenadiers had done a little to their right: instead of continuing to advance with bayonets fixed, they stopped and started firing. Some British officers had the impression that only the first ranks fired, while the others tried to change from square to line.
It's difficult to say whether this refusal to drive the bayonet attack home reflected the already none-too-high morale of the Middle Guard or rather a conscious decision on the part of its generals, confident in the tremendous firepower they knew their men were capable of developing. At any rate, Maitland, who was with Wellington, did not consider the Guard's tactic a good idea: "With what view the Enemy halted in a situation so perilous, and in a position so comparatively helpless, he was not given time to evince." Maitland's men sprang to their feet in four-deep ranks—according to legend, the order to do so was given by Wellington himself ("Up, Guards, and at them!")—and opened fire at such short range, perhaps not more than fifty or sixty yards, that the effect was devastating. "Those who from a distance and more on the flank could see the affair, tell us that the effect of our fire seemed to force the head of the Columns bodily back," wrote an officer of the First Foot Guards.
Whether the cause was the sudden appearance of Maitland's men or the efficacy of their fire, the Third Chasseurs immediately began to crumble. General Michel, who commanded the division of
chasseurs a pied,
was killed in the midst of his men; the commander of the regiment, Colonel Malet (a veteran who had been a drummer boy at the time of the revolution and was among those who followed the emperor to Elba), was likewise killed, as was one of his two battalion commanders, while the other one, the "indestructible" Major Angelet, was wounded for the twelfth time in his career. Some of the surviving officers continued trying to change formation and deploy the regiment in line in order to respond to the enemy fire more effectively, but this attempt to maneuver ended by creating chaos among the ranks of the
chasseurs.
Seeing that their attackers were breaking up, Maitland's brigade advanced with fixed bayonets (according to legend, Wellington personally ordered this advance, too: "Now, Maitland, now is your time!"); to their great relief and no little amazement, the British realized that the Imperial Guard was not going to stand and wait for them to arrive. The French retreated, at first in disorder and then in a precipitous flight down the slope.
Maitland's men had already advanced some distance in pursuit of the routed enemy when the fifth and last battalion in the first line of attack, the Fourth Chasseurs, advanced and threatened their flank. Maitland's first idea was to have his entire line face right, but in the smoke, and with French artillery pounding the ridge, his order was not understood—nor, perhaps, could it have been. Among the soldiers, who were expecting to be charged any minute by enemy cavalry, another order began to spread spontaneously, passed on from one man to the next: "Form square!" And as these contradictory orders followed one another, the brigade began to disband. Only with some effort did the officers got their men back in line and bring them rather hastily to their starting point, closely pursued by the French square as it mounted the slope, hard on their heels.
Two days earlier, at Ligny, the Fourth Chasseurs had suffered such heavy losses that its two battalions had been combined into one, albeit a very strong one with more than eight hundred muskets. All the Allied artillery posted in that sector was firing at them as their square came on, moving as though through a thunderstorm while their rolling drums obsessively beat the
pas de charge.
The officers of Bolton's battery watched the Fourth advance under fire, "the Column waving, at each successive discharge, like standing corn blown by the wind." When they reached the crest of the ridge, the French officers, like their colleagues, attempted to deploy their men into line, but by then Maitland's infantry had returned to their former position along the sunken lane, and their fire, combined with that of the Allied guns, was so destructive that the maneuver failed and the square was transformed into a disordered mass. Nevertheless, according to Lieutenant Sharpin, the French remained there for ten minutes, responding to the British fire as best they could, and making repeated efforts to advance.
While this combat was going on, General Adam, having ascertained that all the enemy columns were attacking the brigades to his left, decided that it was useless to remain where he was, and that, moreover, his troops had enough room to advance and counterattack. In the beginning, his advance was bitterly contested by the multitude of enemy skirmishers who had moved out ahead of their squares. The struggle was long and confused; Lord Hill, the II Corps commander, was in this sector of the field, observing the advance of Adam's brigade, when he was caught in crossfire by
tirailleurs.
His horse was killed under him, and Hill was so badly hurt in the fall that for half an hour his aides believed him dead. Adam's brigade was composed entirely of light infantry, including two battalions of the Ninety-fifth, armed with Baker rifles; under their pressure, the French skirmishers eventually were forced to abandon the field, leaving the flank of the advancing square exposed.
At this point, Sir John Colborne and his regiment, the Fifty-second, appeared. It was the strongest in the brigade, with around a thousand muskets, and it was also one of the best-trained light infantry regiments in the whole army. Colonel Colborne himself was an exceptional commander, adored by his men; according to Harry Smith, who had served under him in Spain, he inspired his men with "the most implicit confidence. He had more knowledge of ground, better understood the posting of picquets, consequently required fewer men on duty, knew better what the enemy were going to do, and more quickly anticipated his design than any officer; with that coolness and animation, under fire, no matter how hot, which marks a good huntsman when he finds his fox in his best country"
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Colborne's only defect was that sometimes, in battle, he tended to make excessively reckless decisions; his rashness had brought him grief once already, at La Albuera, in 1811. Provisionally in command of a brigade, he moved his troops forward during a thunderstorm that reduced visibility almost to zero; the Polish lancers made a flanking attack on the brigade and literally swept it away within a few minutes. After that, for understandable reasons, Colborne had never again been entrusted with a brigade, and so, more than four years after Albuera, and despite the fact that he enjoyed universal esteem, Sir John was still only a regimental commander. Nonetheless, when he saw the last French column advancing to his left, he once again made a sudden decision to trust to his instincts: He ordered his regiment to wheel to the left, thus forming a right angle with the rest of the brigade, and prepare to fall upon the flank of the enemy troops, who were moving past at that moment. It was a dangerous maneuver—it would have been sheer madness had any enemy cavalry still been in the area— but potentially decisive. Colborne's direct superior, General Adam, who was not fond of individual initiative, galloped up to Sir John and asked him what he planned to do. "Make that Column feel our fire," Colborne replied. The temptation was too great, and Adam yielded; he gave the colonel permission to advance, galloped over to the next regiment, and ordered its commander to follow the Fifty-second.
When the first skirmishers sent forward by Colborne got within range of the enemy and opened fire, the colonel had the impression that part of the French column halted and redeployed in line to face his troops; he was quite surprised by the rapidity of the maneuver and the intensity of the enemy fire. However, the
chasseurs
of the Imperial Guard were advancing in square, and therefore the entire flank of their formation was already prepared to open fire as soon as the enemy attacked on that side. "The Enemy was pressing on with shouts, which rose above the noise of the firing," remembered another British officer, likewise astounded, at a remove of so many years, by the unexpected effectiveness of the fire coming from that moving column. Colborne—who had become a colonel at thirty-six without ever buying a commission, having been promoted solely on the basis of merit— must have feared, for a moment, that he had once again thrown away his career.
In fact, as soon as the Fifty-second's whole line got within musket range, the volume of fire it developed was superior to anything the French were capable of; in addition, the square of the Fourth Chasseurs was receiving frontal fire from Maitland's brigade and the Allied artillery. More than two thousand muskets and at least fifteen guns were firing point-blank on the last Guard column in its densest formation. The square halted its advance and kept up an answering fire for a brief while, but the
chasseurs'
losses quickly became intolerable; the commander of the regiment fell wounded, and the battalion commander was killed. After only a few minutes, Colborne saw that the square was starting to break up, and once again seizing the decisive moment, he ordered a bayonet charge. The Fourth Chasseurs instantly collapsed, and the survivors fled down the slope in a rout.
When it was evident to all, in spite of the smoke obscuring the battlefield, that the attack of the Guard had failed, someone—at least according to legend—began to shout,
"La Garde recule!"
Despite the efforts of the French generals to keep their soldiers in formation, panic spread like lightning among them. Marshal Ney, who had already had four or five horses killed under him, shouted to d'Erlon that they must stand fast at all costs, "because if we don't die here, the emigres will hang us."
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