Waterloo: June 18, 1815: The Battle for Modern Europe

even disordered the formation of the advancing squadrons; but it could never have led to a disaster of any importance or magnitude.¹³

British cavalry brigades, such as Lord Edward Somerset’s, managed to negotiate this so-called ‘Ravine of Death’ without ill-effect, and Shaw Kennedy, who was just above La Haye Sainte, recorded how ‘the ground between them and us [the 3rd Division] presented no natural obstacles whatever’.¹⁴ Nor were Ney, Milhaud, Dubois or any of the other generals who led the charge subsequently criticised for launching an attack into an impassable hollow or ravine. In his report to Soult, Milhaud made no mention of the ravine, and we ought to accept it as, in Thomas Carlyle’s words, ‘the largest … piece of blague manufactured for some centuries by any man or nation’. In fact the legend of the chemin creux was simply created out of wounded Bonapartist pride, like so many other ex post facto explanations for the defeat, ranging from Bourmont’s treachery, via the weather, to imperial haemorrhoids. (There is a memorial at Waterloo to Hugo, who argued that Napoleon had been defeated by God, not by the Duke of Wellington.)

By 6.30 p.m. the cavalry charges had ceased. The number of French cavalry losses has not been established. Ney’s error had been to try to squeeze 10,000 cavalrymen with forty horse artillery guns into a narrow space of 1,100 yards to attack over 13,000 infantry in squares who were protected by 7,000 horsemen and seventy-five guns and howitzers. With the very difficult nature of the terrain, sucking large numbers of French cavalry into its folds and dips, in truth there was no need for an Act of God.

During Ney’s cavalry assaults on the British squares, across to the east, the Prussians were advancing in force, and by 5.30 p.m. von Bulow’s front two brigades (the 15th and 16th) were heavily engaged in trying to capture the chateau of Frischermont from General Lobau, whom Napoleon had ordered to hold up the Prussians for as long as possible while he tried to break Wellington’s line. Von Gneisenau adopted a manoeuvre for arriving on the battlefield that passed the rear corps to the east through the others, which rested by the roadside. This meant that although the advance was slightly slowed when they did hit the battlefield there were no gaps in the Prussian line.

Von Bulow’s entire corps numbered around 30,000 men against 10,000 under Lobau’s command (of whom only 7,000 were infantry), but Lobau was a tough and resourceful general who had proved himself redoubtable in rearguard actions before, notably at the battle of Essling. His infantrymen were the 5th Line Regiment, the same men who were sent to arrest Napoleon near Grenoble when he returned from Elba, but who had acclaimed him instead.

Sheer weight of numbers began to tell, however, as brigade after brigade issued forth out of the Bois de Paris, and Lobau was forced out of Frischermont and back to the village of Plancenoit. Later he was forced out of that too, and his force was particularly vulnerable once it was out in the open, particularly to von Bulow’s plentiful infantry, cavalry and artillery. Seeing the danger of being cut off from his line of retreat, Napoleon ordered Duhesme to recapture Plancenoit with the Young Guard Division, which he managed to do by about 6.45 p.m.

The arrival of the Prussians on the battlefield in large numbers emboldened and encouraged Wellington’s army as much as it demoralised Napoleon’s. When at 4.30 p.m. two Prussian aides de camp passed in front of the British line in search of Wellington they were heartily cheered on their way by the Anglo-Allied soldiers. Fourteen thousand of Napoleon’s reserve had to be drawn off to try to contain the Prussians, severely limiting his options and weakening his assault in the centre. As the two Prussian corps of von Pirch and von Zieten marched in from the east at about 6.30 p.m., Wellington at last saw the prospect of winning the upper hand.

Zieten’s arrival on Wellington’s left flank permitted a useful realignment when the 4th Brigade, commanded by Major-General Sir John Vandeleur (the 11th, 12th and 16th Light Dragoons), and the 6th Brigade under Major- General Sir Hussey Vivian (the 1st Hussars KGL, 10th and 18th Hussars), plus Sir Robert Gardiner’s Horse Artillery Group, moved from the far left of the Anglo-Allied line to the centre, on von Muffling’s advice. Looking through his telescope from his vantage point at Papelotte the Prussian liaison officer had seen both Zieten’s proximity to Wellington’s left and an ominous massing of the French infantry reserve around La Belle Alliance, presaging another huge assault on the Anglo-Allied centre and right-centre.

Vandeleur, Vivian and Gardiner arrived just in time. Captain (later Colonel) Tomkinson of the 16th Light Dragoons recalled how: ‘In passing along the line it appeared to have been much cut up, and the troops, which in part held their position, were but few, and had suffered greatly. From marching under the shelter of the hill we could not distinctly see: yet I conceived from all I could learn that many points in the position were but feebly guarded.’¹⁵ Some historians believe that without the moral and material support that Wellington was afforded by this strengthening of his centre, the fourth phase of the battle might have gone badly awry.

Meanwhile, over at Wavre, seven miles to the east of the slopes of Mont St Jean, Lieutenant-General von Thielmann was finding himself hard-pressed by Grouchy’s much larger force. He sent Gneisenau a warning of defeat if he was not sent reinforcements. ‘Let Thielmann defend himself as best he can,’ was Gneisenau’s typically blunt answer to the aide de camp who brought the message. ‘It matters little if he is crushed at Wavre, so long as we gain the victory here.’ Not only was Grouchy’s help far too little far too late, but the Prussian high command was clear-headed enough not to allow it to draw men away from the crucial area of decision — at Waterloo.

For it was there, sometime between 6 and 6.30 p.m., that the French at last won their first concrete success, when, having completely run out of ammunition, Major Georg Baring’s force finally had to evacuate the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte.

4

The Fourth Phase

ALTHOUGH THE DEFENCE of La Haye Sainte had been heroic, Major Baring’s increasingly desperate requests for ammunition had not been heeded. Wellington freely admitted after the battle that it had been a terrible error not to have cut holes in the wall at the back of the farmhouse, through which extra supplies could have been passed. The farmhouse had been periodically reinforced during lulls in Ney’s six-hour siege, including by the 5th Line Battalion, KGL and some 200 Nassauers, but no one seems to have done anything about the need for extra shot and powder.

Since the Germans used rifles rather than muskets, they could not be supplied with the same ammunition as the rest of the army, and there are reports of their supply wagon having been overturned on the Brussels road. Whatever the explanation, by five o’clock the situation was worrying, and by six o’clock it was desperate. Approximately 400 men of the 2nd Light Battalion, KGL, reinforced by up to 800 men later on, had held out superbly, but that could not go on indefinitely.

The French, led by Marshal Ney in person, commanding those parts of d’Erlon’s corps that had not been lost or demoralised earlier in the battle, had set the roof of the farmhouse on fire. By this stage the nine companies inside La Haye Sainte only had an average of between three and four rounds of ammunition left per man. Each had started the battle with sixty rounds, which Captain Becke considered ‘an inadequate amount, considering the nature of the fighting and the importance of the post’.¹ Yet the arguments made by several historians that ammunition should have been stored inside the farmhouse do not address the problem of the burning roof, and therefore the possibility of a catastrophic explosion in the courtyard.

The struggle for La Haye Sainte was described by Charles O’Neil:

The combat now raged with unabated fury. Every inch of ground was disputed by both sides, and neither gave way until every means of resistance was exhausted. The field of battle was heaped with the dead; and yet the attacks grew more impetuous, and the resistance more obstinate.²

What almost all the authoritative early accounts on Waterloo and the eyewitnesses do agree upon — including Captain Becke, Henri Houssaye, Major Baring, Sir James Shaw Kennedy, Sergeant-Major Cotton, Captain Siborne, Colonel Chesney and Ney’s aide Colonel Heymes — is that La Haye Sainte fell to the French sometime between 6 and 6.30 p.m. The King’s German Legion were forced out of their citadel, by then collapsing in flames, at terrible cost. Of Major Baring’s original 400 defenders only forty-two were still fully operational by the end of the battle, the others all being killed, wounded or captured, an appalling attrition rate. Unlike the 95th Rifles just outside the farmhouse, there had not been a single deserter.³

For all his shortcomings earlier on in the battle — indeed during the campaign — Marshal Ney now took speedy advantage of the fall of this strategically vital farmhouse in the centre of the battle field, commanding the road from Charleroi to Brussels. This was the most dangerous moment in the entire battle for Wellington, affording