Hilaire Belloc - Premium Collection: Historical Works, Writings on Economy, Essays & Fiction. Hilaire Belloc
the early morning of the Saturday Bulow’s 32,000 fell back along a line parallel to the general retirement, and all that day they were making their way by the cross-country route through Welhain and Corroy to Dion Le Mont.
This task was accomplished through pouring rain, by unpaved lanes and through intolerable mud, over a distance of close on seventeen miles for the hardest pushed of the troops, and not less than thirteen for those whom the accident of position had most spared.
The greater part of the Fourth Corps had spent the first night in the open; all of it had spent the second night upon the drenched ground. Upon the third day, the Sunday of Waterloo, this force, though it lies furthest from the field of Waterloo of all the Prussian forces, is picked out to march first to the aid of Wellington, because it as yet has had no fighting and is supposed to be “fresh.” On the daybreak, therefore, after bivouacking in that dreadful weather, Bulow’s force is again upon the move. It does not get through Wavre until something like eight o’clock, and the abominable conditions of the march may be guessed from the fact that its centre did not reach St. Lambert until one o’clock, nor did the last brigade pass through that spot until three o’clock. Down the steep ravine of the Lasne and up on the westward side of it was so hard a business that, as we have seen, the brigades did not begin to debouch from the woods at the summit until after four o’clock. It was not until after five o’clock that the last brigade, the 14th, had come up in line with the rest upon the field of Waterloo, having moved, under such abominable conditions of slow, drenched marching, another fifteen miles.
In about forty-eight hours, therefore, this magnificent piece of work had been accomplished. It was a total movement of over fifty miles for the average of the corps—certainly more than sixty for those who had marched furthest—broken only by two short nights, and those nights spent in the open, one under drenching rain. The whole thing was accomplished without appreciable loss of men, guns, or baggage, and at the end of it these men put up a fight which was the chief factor in deciding Waterloo.
Such was the supreme effort of the Fourth Prussian Army Corps which decided Waterloo.
There are not many examples of endurance so tenacious and organisation so excellent in the moving so large a body under such conditions in the whole history of war.
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When the Fourth Prussian Corps debouched from the Wood of Fischermont and began its two-mile approach towards his flank, Napoleon, who had already had it watched by a body of cavalry, ordered Lobau with the Sixth French Army Corps, or rather with what he had kept with him of the Sixth Army Corps, to go forward and check it.
It could only be a question of delay. Lobau had but 10,000 against the 30,000 which Bulow could ultimately bring against him when all his brigades had come up; but delay was the essential of the moment to Napoleon. To ward off the advancing Prussian pressure just so long as would permit him to carry the Mont St. Jean was his most desperate need. Lobau met the enemy, three to two, in the hollow of Plancenoit,24 was turned by such superior numbers, and driven from the village.
All this while, during the Prussian success which brought that enemy’s reinforcement nearer and nearer to the rear of the French army and to the Emperor’s own standpoint, the wasted though magnificent action of the French cavalry was continuing against Wellington’s right centre, west of the Brussels road. Kellerman had charged for the third time; the plateau was occupied, the British guns abandoned, the squares formed. For the third time that furious seething of horse against foot was seen from the distant height of the Belle Alliance. For the third time the sight carried with it a deceptive appearance of victory. For the third time the cavalry charge broke back again, spent, into the valley below. Ney, wild as he had been wild at Quatre Bras, failing in judgment as he had failed then, shouted for the last reserve of horse, and forgot to call for that 6000 untouched infantry, the bulk of Reille’s Second Corps, which watched from the height of the French ridge the futile efforts of their mounted comrades.
Folly as it was to have charged unbroken infantry with horse alone, the charges had been so repeated and so tenacious that, immediately supported by infantry, they might have succeeded. If those 6000 men of Reille’s, the mass of the Second Army Corps, which stood to arms unused upon the ridge to the west of the Brussels road, had been ordered to follow hard upon the last cavalry charge, Napoleon might yet have snatched victory from such a desperate double strain as no general yet in military history has escaped. He might conceivably have broken Wellington’s line before that gathering flood of Prussians to the right and behind him should have completed his destruction.
But the moment was missed. Reille’s infantry was not ordered forward until the defending line had had ample time to prepare its defence; until the English gunners were back again at their pieces, and the English squares once more deployed and holding the whole line of their height.
It is easy to note such errors as we measure hours and distances upon a map. It is a wonderment to some that such capital errors appear at all in the history of armies. Those who have experience of active service will tell us what the intoxication of the cavalry charges meant, of what blood Ney’s brain was full, and why that order for the infantry came too late. Of the 6000 infantry which attempted so belated a charge, a quarter was broken before the British line was reached, and that assault, in its turn, failed.
At this point in the battle, somewhat after six o’clock, two successes on the part of the French gave them an opportunity for their last disastrous effort, and introduced the close of the tragedy.
The first was the capture of La Haye Sainte, the second was the recapture of Plancenoit.
La Haye Sainte, standing still untaken before the very front of Wellington’s line, must be captured if yet a further effort was to be attempted by Napoleon. Major Baring had held it with his small body of Germans all day long. Twice had he thrust back a general assault, and throughout more than five hours he had resisted partial and equally unsuccessful attacks. Now Ney, ordered to carry it at whatever cost, brought up against it a division, and more than a division. The French climbed upon their heaped dead, broke the doors, shot from the walls, and, at the end of the butchery, Baring with forty-two men—all that was left him out of nine companies—cut his way back through to the main line, and the farm was taken. Hougomont, on the left, round which so meaningless a struggle had raged all day long, was never wholly cleared of its defenders, but the main body of it was in flames, and with the capture of La Haye Sainte the whole front was free for a final attack at the moment which Napoleon should decide.
Meanwhile, at Plancenoit, further French reinforcements had recaptured the village and again lost it. The Sixth Corps had given way before the Prussian advance, as we have seen. The next French reinforcements, though they had at first thrust the Prussians back, in turn gave way as the last units of the enemy arrived, and the Prussian batteries were dropping shot right on to the fields which bordered the Brussels road.
Napoleon took eleven battalions of the Guard (the Imperial Guard was his reserve, and had not yet come into action25) and drew them up upon his flank to defend the Brussels road; with two more battalions he reinforced the wavering troops in Plancenoit. They cleared the enemy out of the village with the bayonet, and for the moment checked that pressure upon the flank and rear which could not but ultimately return.
It was somewhat past seven by the time all this was accomplished. Napoleon surveyed a field over which it was still just possible (in his judgment at least) to strike a blow that might save him. He saw, far upon the left, Hougomont in flames; in the centre, La Haye Sainte captured; on the right, the skirmishers advancing upon the slope before the English line; his eastern flank for the moment free of the Prussians, who had retired before the sudden charge of the Guard. He heard far off a cannonade which might be that of Grouchy.
But even as he looked upon his opportunity he saw one further thing that goaded him to an immediate hazard. Upon the north-eastern corner of his strained and bent-back line of battle, against the far, perilous, exposed angle of it, he saw new, quite unexpected hordes of men advancing. It was Ziethen debouching with