Quatre-Bras, impetuously ordered him to advance at once. Ompteda looked at him for one moment; then he turned and gave the command to deploy the 5th Line battalion of the legion. Placing himself at its head, he led it against the French skirmishers, and drove them back. The cuirassiers in support charged down upon him; he fell, and half his men with him, cut to pieces by the cavalry. Arendtschildt, watching from the high ground to the north, flung his hussars into the fray again. They fell upon the cuirassiers in flank and drove them back, enabling the shattered remnant of the 5th Line battalion to reach the main position. Fresh French cavalry advanced and drove the hussars back, but the riflemen, on the knoll above the sandpit across the road, who had been impatiently awaiting their opportunity, no sooner saw the ground cleared of Ompteda's infantry than they poured in such an accurate fire that the French cavalry was thrown into confusion, and the German hussars drew off in good order.
The cavalry attacks on the right had almost ceased; the Duke sent to withdraw Adam's brigade from its exposed position on to the high ground on Maitland's right; and despatched Colonel Fremantle to the left wing, where the Prussians were beginning to come up, with a request for reinforcements of three thousand infantry to strengthen the line. The Colonel returned with a message from General Bulow and Ziethen that their whole Army was coming up, and they could make no detachment. He was delayed on his way back by finding Prince Bernhard's Nassauers, who had behaved with the greatest gallantry all day, being put to rout by a Prussian battery of eight guns which was busily employed in firing on them in the mistaken belief that they were French troops.
'A pretty way to behave after taking the whole day to come up!' he told Lord Fitzroy wrathfully. 'The Prince rallied his fellows a quarter of a mile behind the line, but I had to gallop all the way back to Ziethen to get him to send orders to stop his damned battery!'
'How long before Ziethen can bring his whole force up?' Fitzroy demanded. 'Things are looking pretty black.'
'God knows! Muffling is doing all he can to hasten them, but there's only some advance cavalry arrived so far. They say they had the greatest difficulty to get here, owing to the state of the roads. Wouldn't have come at all if it hadn't been for old Blucher cheering them on. If it weren't so damned serious it would be comical! No sooner did Ziethen's advance guard get within reach of us than they heard we were being forced to retreat, and promptly turned tail and made off. You can imagine old Müffling's wrath! He went after them like one of Whinyates' rockets, and ordered them up at once. The main part of the Prussian Army is already engaged round Plancenoit, if Ziethen is to be believed. If they really are attacking Boney on his right flank, it would account for Ney not bringing infantry up against us. Ten to one, Boney's had to employ most of it against Billow.'
Uxbridge, seeing the Household Cavalry drawn up in a thin, extended line behind Ompteda's and Kielmansegg's brigades, sent Seymour to tell Lord Edward to withdraw his men to a less exposed position. Seymour came back with a grim answer from Lord Edward, still holding his ground: 'If I were to move, the Dutch in support of me would move off immediately.'
The fire had been extinguished at La Haye Sainte, but the garrison had fired its last cartridge, and was forced, after holding it in the teeth of the French columns all day, to abandon the post. Fighting a hand-to-hand rearguard action against the French breaking in through every entrance, Major Baring got out of the farm, and back to the lines, with forty-two men left of the original four hundred who had occupied the farm.
La Haye Sainte had fallen, and the effects of its loss were at once felt. Quiot, occupying it in force, brought up his guns and opened a crippling fire upon the Allied centre. To the east the smoke hung so thickly that, although not a hundred yards between them, the men of the 95th, reduced to a single line of skirmishers, could only see by the flash of their pieces where the French gunners were situated. Their senior officers had all been carried off the field, and the command of the battalion had fallen upon a captain. Behind the riflemen, Sir John Lambert was standing staunchly in support, in the angle of the chaussee and the hollow road, with three regiments, two living and one lying dead in square. On the west of the chaussee, the shot and the shells from the French batteries were tearing great rents in already depleted ranks. Alten had fallen; and Ompteda was dead. Staff officers from the various brigades galloped up from all sides to beg the Duke for orders. 'There are no orders,' he said. 'My only plan is to stand my ground here to the last man.'
Though his staff fell about him, he continued to ride up and down his lines, rallying failing troops, restraining men who, maddened by the rain of deadly shot, could hardly be kept from launching themselves through the smoke in a desperate charge against their persecutors. 'Wait a little longer, my lads: you shall have at them presently,' he promised.
'By God, I thought I had heard enough of this man, but he far surpasses my expectations!' Uxbridge exclaimed. 'It is not a man, but a god!'
De Lancey, the quartermaster-general, was struck by a spent cannonball at the Duke's side, and fell, imploring those who hurried to him not to move him, for he was done for. Behind the crumbling ranks of Alten's division was only the extenuated line of Lord Edward's cavalry. The Duke brought up the only remaining Brunswickers in person, and formed them to fill the gap. They marched up bravely, but the sight of the horrors all around them, and the dropping of men in their own ranks, shook them. They broke, and fell back, but shouting to his aide-de-camp to rally them, the Duke spurred after them, rounding them up, heartening them by word and gesture. Gordon and Audley raced after him, and the terrified soldiers were re-formed and led up again.
Uxbridge rode off like the wind, to bring up the cavalry from the left wing. He met Sir Hussey Vivian advancing to the centre of his own initiative, learned from him that the Prussians were at last arriving in force, and despatched a message to Vaneleur to move to the centre in Vivian's wake.
A staff officer met Vivian's brigade on its way to the centre, and exchanged his own wounded hunter for a trooper belonging to the 18th Hussars. 'The Duke has won the battle if only we could get the damned Dutch to advance!' he told one of the officers.
The brigade, coming up behind the infantry lines from their comparatively quiet position on the left flank, could see no sign of victory in the desolation which surrounded them. Dead and dying men lay all over the ground; mutilated horses wandered about in aimless circles; cannonballs were tossing up the trampled earth in great gashes; and a pall of smoke hung over all. Vivian led the brigade over the chaussee, and saw Lord Edward Somerset, in a Life Guardsman's helmet, with a bare couple of squadrons drawn up west of the road. He called out: 'Lord Edward, where is your brigade?'
'Here,' replied Lord Edward.
Audley, engaged in rallying the Brunswickers, heard Gordon's voice raised above the whistle and hum of shot: 'For God's sake, my Lord, don't expose yourself! This is no work for you!'
The next instant Audley saw him fall, but he could neither desert his post to go to him nor discover whether he were dead or alive. Gordon was carried off; Brunswickers, their panic checked, saw Vivian's hussar brigade in support of them, and stood their ground; the Duke rode off to another part of the line.
Colonel Audley, his senses deadened to the iron rain about him, struggled after, saw Lord March, dismounted and kneeling on the ground, supporting a wounded man in his arms, and shouted to him: 'March! March! Is Gordon alive?'
'Oh, my God, not Gordon too?' March cried out in an anguished tone.
The Colonel pushed up to him, saw that the man in his arms was Canning, and almost flung himself out of the saddle.
A musketball had struck Canning in the stomach; he was dying fast, and in agony that made it difficult for him to speak. Some men of the 73rd Regiment had raised him to a sitting position with their knapsacks. He gasped out: 'The Duke - is he safe?'
'Yes, yes, untouched!'
A ghastly smile flickered over Canning's mouth; he tried to clasp Audley's hand; turned his head a little on March's shoulder; managed to speak their names; and so died.
An agitated officer from Ghigny's brigade came riding up while March still held Canning's body in his arms. 'Milord, mon Capitaine, je vous en prie! C'est Son Altesse lui meme qui est en ce moment blesse! Il faut venir tout de suite!'
March, lost in grief, seemed not to hear him. Colonel Audley, hardly less distressed, laid a hand on his shoulder. 'He's gone, March. Lay him down. Slender Billy's hurt.'
March raised his head, dashing the tears from his eyes. 'What's that?' he glanced up at the Dutchman standing over them. The message was repeated: the Prince had been hit in the shoulder while leading some of General Kruse's Nassauers to the charge, and had fallen so heavily from his horse that the sense seemed to have been knocked out of him. March laid Canning's body down, and got up. 'I'll come at once. Where is he?'
