CHAPTER XXVII.

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

(_continued_).

1815.

But the situation of Wellington momentarily became more critical. Masses of the enemy had fallen, but thousands came on anew. With desperate attachment, the French army passed forward at Napoleon’s command, and although each advance terminated in defeat and slaughter, fresh battalions crossed the valley and mounting the ridge with cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” exhibited a devotion which never had been surpassed.

Wellington’s reserves had been gradually brought into action--and the left, though but partially engaged, could not be weakened to send assistance to the right and centre. Many battalions were miserably reduced; and the fifth division, already cut up at Quatre Bras on the evening of the 16th, presented but a skeleton of what these beautiful brigades had been when they left Brussels two days before. The loss of individual regiments was prodigious. The 27th had four hundred men mowed down in square without drawing a trigger; it lost all its superior officers; and a solitary subaltern who remained, commanded it for half the day. Another, the 92nd regiment, when not two hundred were left, rushed at a French column and routed it with the bayonet; and a third, the 33rd, when nearly annihilated, sent to require support--none could be given; and the commanding officer was told that he must “stand or fall where he was!”

Any other save Wellington would have despaired; but he calculated, and justly, that he had an army which would perish where it stood. But when he saw the devastation caused by the incessant attacks of an enemy who appeared determined to succeed, is it surprising that his watch was frequently consulted, and that he prayed for night or Blucher?

When evening came on, no doubt Buonaparte began to question the accuracy of his “military arithmetic”--a phrase happily applied to this meting out death by the hour. Half the day had been consumed in a sanguinary and indecisive conflict; all his disposable troops but the Guard had been employed, and still his efforts were foiled; and the British, with diminished numbers, shewed the same bold front they had presented at the commencement of the battle. He determined, therefore, on another desperate attempt upon the whole British line; and while issuing orders to effect it, a distant cannonade announced that a fresh force was approaching to share the action. Napoleon, concluding that Grouchy was coming up, conveyed the glad tidings to his disheartened columns. But an aide-de-camp quickly removed the mistake, and the Emperor received the unwelcome intelligence that the strange force now distinctly observed debouching from the woods of Saint Lambert, was the advanced guard of a Prussian corps.

Buonaparte appeared, or affected to appear, incredulous; but the fatal truth was ascertained too soon.

While the delusive hope of immediate relief was industriously circulated among his troops, Napoleon despatched Count Lobau, with the sixth corps, to employ the Prussians, while in person he should direct a general attack upon the British line.

Meanwhile the Prussian advance had debouched from the wood of Frichermont, and the operations of the old marshal, in the rear of Napoleon’s right flank became alarming. If Blucher established himself there in force, unless success against the British in his front was rapid and decisive, or that Grouchy came promptly to his relief, Buonaparte knew well that his situation must be hopeless. Accordingly, he directed the first and second corps and all his cavalry reserves against the duke; the French mounted the heights once more, and the British were attacked from right to left.

A dreadful and protracted encounter followed; for an hour the contest was sustained, and, like the preceding ones, it was a sanguinary succession of determined attack and obstinate resistance. The impetuosity of the French onset at first obtained a temporary success. The British light cavalry were driven back, and for a time a number of the guns were in the enemy’s possession; but the British rallied again--the French, forced across the ridge, retired to their original ground, without effecting any permanent impression.

It was now five o’clock; the Prussian reserve cavalry under Prince William was warmly engaged with Count Lobau; Bulow’s corps, with the second, under Pirch, were approaching rapidly through the passes of Saint Lambert; and the first Prussian corps, advancing by Ohain, had already begun to operate on Napoleon’s right. Bulow pushed forward towards Aywire, and, opening his fire on the French, succeeded in driving them from the opposite heights.

The Prussian left, acting separately, advanced upon the village of Planchenoit, and attacked Napoleon’s rear. The French maintaining their position with great gallantry, and the Prussians, being equally obstinate in their attempts to force the village, produced a bloody and prolonged combat. Napoleon’s right had begun to recede before the first Prussian corps, and his officers, generally, anticipated a disastrous issue, that nothing but immediate success against the British, or instant relief from Grouchy, could remedy.

The Imperial Guard, his last and best resource, were consequently ordered up. Formed in close column, Buonaparte in person advanced to lead them on; but dissuaded by his staff, he paused near the bottom of the hill, and to Ney, that “spoiled child of victory,” the conduct of this redoubted body was intrusted.

In the interim, as the French right fell back, the British moved gradually forward; and converging from the extreme points of Merke Braine and Braine la Leud, compressed their extent of line, and nearly assumed the form of a crescent. The British Guards were considerably advanced, and having deployed behind the crest of the hill, lay down to avoid the cannonade with which Napoleon covered the onset of his best troops. Ney, with his proverbial gallantry, led on the Middle Guard; and Wellington, putting himself at the head of some wavering regiments, in person brought them forward, and restored their confidence.

As the Imperial Guard approached the crest where the household troops were couching, the British artillery, which had gradually converged upon the _chaussée_, opened with canister shot. The distance was so short, and the range so accurate, that each discharge fell with deadly precision into the column as it breasted the hill. Ney, with his customary heroism, directed the attack; and when his horse was killed, on foot, and sword in hand, he headed the veterans whom he had so often led to victory. Although the leading files of the Guard were swept off by the exterminating fire of the British batteries, still their undaunted intrepidity carried them forward, and they gallantly crossed the ridge.

Then came the hour of British triumph. The magic word was spoken--“Up, Guards, and at them!” In a moment the household brigade were on their feet; then waiting till the French closed, they delivered a murderous volley, cheered, and rushed forward with the bayonet, Wellington in person directing the attack.

With the 42nd and 95th, the British leader threw himself on Ney’s flank, and rout and destruction succeeded. In vain their gallant chief attempted to rally the recoiling Guard; but driven down the hill, the Middle were intermingled with the Old Guard, who had formed at the bottom in reserve.

In this unfortunate _mêlée_, the British cavalry seized on the moment of confusion, and plunging into the mass, cut down and disorganised the regiments which had hitherto been unbroken. The British artillery ceased firing, and those who had escaped the iron shower of the guns, fell beneath sabre and bayonet.

The unremediable disorder consequent on this decisive repulse, and the confusion in the French rear, where Bulow had fiercely attacked them, did not escape the eagle glance of Wellington.

“The hour is come!” he is said to have exclaimed, as, closing his telescope, he commanded the whole line to advance. The order was exultingly obeyed; and, forming four deep, on came the British. Wounds, and fatigue, and hunger, were all forgotten as with their customary steadiness they crossed the ridge; but when they saw the French, and began to move down the hill, a cheer that seemed to rend the heavens pealed from their proud array, as with levelled bayonets they pressed on to meet the enemy.

But, panic-struck and disorganised, the French resistance was short and feeble. The Prussian cannon thundered in their rear, the British bayonet was flashing in their front, and unable to stand the terror of the charge, they broke and fled. A dreadful and indiscriminate carnage ensued. The great road was choked with equipages, and cumbered with the dead and dying; while the fields, as far as the eye could reach, were covered with a host of helpless fugitives. Courage and discipline were forgotten; and Napoleon’s army of yesterday was now a splendid wreck--a terror-stricken multitude! His own words best describe it--“It was a total rout!”

On a surface of two square miles, it was ascertained that fifty thousand men and horses were lying! The luxurious crop of ripe grain which had covered the field of battle was reduced to litter, and beaten into the earth; and the surface, trodden down by the cavalry, and furrowed deeply by the cannon wheels, strewn with many a relict of the fight. Helmets and cuirasses, shattered firearms and broken swords; all the variety of military ornaments; lancer caps and Highland bonnets; uniforms of every colour, plume and pennon; musical instruments, the apparatus of artillery, drums, bugles;--but good God! why dwell on the harrowing picture of “a foughten field”?--each and every ruinous display bore mute testimony to the misery of such a battle.

Could the melancholy appearance of this scene of death be heightened, it would be by witnessing the researches of the living, amid its desolation, for the objects of their love. Mothers and wives and children for days were occupied in that mournful duty; and the confusion of the corpses, friend and foe intermingled as they were, often rendered the attempt at recognising individuals difficult, and, in some cases, impossible.

In many places the dead lay four deep upon each other, marking the spot some British square had occupied, when exposed for hours to the murderous fire of a French battery. Outside, lancer and cuirassier were scattered thickly on the earth. Madly attempting to force the serried bayonets of the British, they had fallen in the bootless essay, by the musketry of the inner files. Farther on, you traced the spot where the cavalry of France and Britain had encountered. Chasseur and hussar were intermingled; and the heavy Norman horse of the Imperial Guard were interspersed with the grey chargers which had carried Albion’s chivalry. Here the Highlander and tirailleur lay, side by side together; and the heavy dragoon, with “green Erin’s” badge upon his helmet, was grappling in death with the Polish lancer.

Never had France sent a finer army to the field--and never had any been so signally defeated. Complete as the _déroute_ at Vittoria had appeared, it fell infinitely short of that sustained at Waterloo. Tired of slaughtering unresisting foes, the British, early in the night, abandoned the pursuit of the broken battalions and halted. But the Prussians, untamed by previous exertion, continued to follow the fugitives with increased activity, and nothing could surpass the unrelenting animosity of their pursuit. Plunder was sacrificed to revenge, and the memory of former defeat and past oppression produced a dreadful retaliation, and deadened every impulse of humanity. The _vœ victis_ was pronounced, and thousands besides those who perished in the field fell that night by Prussian lance and sabre.

What Napoleon’s feelings were when he witnessed the overthrow of his guard, the failure of his last hope, the death-blow to his political existence, cannot be described, but may be easily imagined. Turning to an aide-de-camp, with a face livid with rage and despair, he muttered in a tremulous voice--“A present c’est fini! sauvons nous”; and turning his horse, he rode hastily off towards Charleroi, attended by his guide and staff.

In whatever point of view Waterloo is considered, whether as a battle, a victory, or an event, in all these, every occurrence of the last century yields, and more particularly in the magnitude of results. No doubt the successes of Wellington in Spain were, in a great degree, primary causes of Napoleon’s downfall; but still, the victory of Waterloo consummated efforts made for years before in vain to achieve the freedom of the Continent, and wrought the final ruin of him, through whose unhallowed ambition a world had been so long convulsed.

As a battle, the merits of the field of Waterloo have been freely examined, and very indifferently adjudicated. Those who were best competent to decide, have pronounced this battle as that upon which Wellington might securely rest his fame, while others, admitting the extent of the victory, ascribe the result rather to fortunate accident than military skill.

Never was a falser statement hazarded. The success attendant on the day of Waterloo can be referred only to the admirable system of resistance in the general, and an enduring valour, rarely equalled and never surpassed, in the soldiers whom he commanded. Chance, at Waterloo, had no effect upon results; Wellington’s surest game was to act only on the defensive; his arrangements with Blucher for mutual support being thoroughly matured, he knew that before night the Prussians must be upon the field. Bad weather and bad roads, with the conflagration of a town in the line of march, which, to save the Prussian tumbrils from explosion, required a circuitous movement--all these, while they protracted the struggle for several hours beyond what might have been reasonably computed, only go to prove that Wellington, in accepting battle, under a well-founded belief that he should be supported in _four hours_, when single-handed he maintained the combat and resolutely held his ground during a space of _eight_, had left nothing dependent upon accident, but, providing for the worst contingencies, had formed his calculations with admirable skill.

The allied loss[15] was enormous, but it fell infinitely short of that sustained by Napoleon’s army. Of the latter nothing like an accurate return was ever made; but from the most correct estimates by French and British officers, upwards of five-and-twenty thousand men were rendered _hors de combat_; while multitudes were sabred in the flight, or perished on the roads from sheer fatigue, and in deserted villages for want of sustenance and surgical relief.

[15] Return of killed and wounded from the War-office, July, 1815.

Killed on the spot, non-commissioned and privates, 1715 Died of wounds, 856 Missing, supposed killed, 353 ---- Total, 2924 Wounded, 6831 ---- Total killed and wounded, 9755 ====

French Artillery captured at Waterloo:--

12-pounder guns, 35 6-pounder guns, 57 6-inch howitzers, 13 24-pounder howitzers, 17 ---- Total cannons, 122 ====

12-pounder waggons, 74 6-pounder waggons, 71 Howitzer waggons, 50 ---- Total, 195 ====

On the evening of the 29th, Napoleon quitted the capital, never to enter it again. Hostilities ceased immediately, the Bourbons were recalled, and placed upon the throne, and Europe, after years of anarchy and bloodshed, at last obtained repose, while he, “alike its wonder and its scourge,” was removed to a scene far distant from that which had witnessed his triumphs and his reverses, and within the narrow limits of a paltry island that haughty spirit, for whom half Europe was too small, dragged out a gloomy existence, until death loosened the chain and the grave closed upon the Captive of Saint Helena.