The cavalry attacks were abating at last, but under cover of them renewed attempts were being made on La Haye Sainte. Again and again Major Baring sent to his brigade demanding more ammunition. One wagon never reached the farm; another was found to contain cartridges belonging to the Baker rifles used by the 95th, which were of the wrong calibre for the German rifles.
Colonel Audley arrived at the centre, immediately west of the Charleroi chaussee, in time to witness Uxbridge leading the gallant remnant of the Household Brigade against a column of French infantry, covered by cavalry, advancing upon the farm. Their numbers were so diminished that they could make little impression, and were forced to retire. Uxbridge, his hussar dress spattered with mud and soaked with sweat, went flying past to bring up Trip's Carabiniers, a powerful body of heavy cavalry, nine squadrons strong, who were drawn up behind Kielmansegg's brigade. He placed himself at their head, gave them the order to charge, and rode forward, only to be stopped by Horace Seymour snatching at his bridle and bellowing: "They don't follow you, sir!"
Uxbridge checked, and rode back, ordering the reluctant Carabiniers with a flood of eloquence to follow the example of the shattered Household Brigade. Nothing could avail, however: the squadrons would not attend to him, but began to retire, seeping a part of the 3rd Hussars of the legion before them. Old Arendtschildt's voice could be heard above the bursting shells, raised in a fury of invective; the German hussars, scattered by the sheer weight of the Carabiniers, were only restrained from engaging with their Dutch allies by the exertions of their officers, who rode among them, calling them to order, and re-forming them as the Carabiniers passed through to the rear. The stolid Germans, roused to rage by their forced rout, rallied, and charged down upon the French about La Haye Sainte. They were driven back by the cuirassiers supporting the infantry column; and the Hanoverian regiment, the Cumberland Hussars, which had been brought up, began to retire. Captain Seymour, despatched by Uxbridge to stop this retreat, thundered down upon them, a giant of a man on a huge charger, and grabbed at the commanding officer's bridle, roaring at them to get his men together, and bring them up again. The Hanoverian colonel, who seemed dead to all feeling of shame, replied in a confused way that he could not trust his men: they were appalled by the repulse of the Household Troops; their horses were their own property; he did not think they would risk them in a charge against such overwhelming odds. He almost cringed under the menace of the English giant who loomed over him, pouring insults on his head, but he would do nothing to stop the retreat. Seymour abandoning him, appealed to his next in command to supersede him, to any officer who had courage enough to rally his troops and lead them to the charge. It was useless: he galloped back to his chief, reporting failure.
"Tell their colonel to form them up out of range of the guns!" Uxbridge ordered.
But the Cumberland Hussars had no intention of taking part in the fight, and by the time Captain Seymour reached the Colonel again, the whole regiment was in full retreat towards Brussels.
Colonel Audley, finding the Duke at last, was sent off immediately with a scrawled message for Uxbridge. "We ought to have more Cavalry between the two high roads. That is to say, 3 Brigades at least… One heavy and one light Brigade might remain on the left."
This note delivered into Uxbridge's hands, Colonel Audley found himself beside Seymour, still seething with rage at the behaviour of the Hanoverians and the Dutch-Belgians. From him he learned that the head of the Prussian column, coming up to the west of Papelotte, had been sighted at about five o'clock, and that Baron Muffling, almost frantic at the delay, had ridden in person to bring up the reinforcements so desperately needed.
The farm of La Haye Sainte had caught fire from the cannonade directed upon it. Two of the French guns had been brought up to the north of it, and were enfilading Kempt's lines on the west of the chaussee. These were speedily silenced by the 95th Rifles, terribly reduced in numbers but still holding their ground in front of Lambert's brigade; but French skirmishers were now all round La Haye Sainte. A message from General Alten reached Baron Ompteda, requesting him, if possible, to deploy a battalion and sent it against these tirailleurs. Ompteda, knowing that they were strongly supported by cavalry, sent back this intelligence to his general, but the Prince of Orange, carried away by the excitement of the moment, and forgetful of the disaster attendant upon his interference at 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?"
He rode away with the Dutch officer; Colonel Audley, consigning Canning's body to the care of an officer of Halkett's brigade, also mounted, and plunged off through the confusion to find the Duke again.
Vandeleur had come up from the left flank with his brigade of light dragoons, and, passing behind Vivian, had formed his squadrons more to the right, immediately in rear of Count D'Aubreme's Dutch-Belgian line battalions, brought up from Vieux Foriez to fill a gap on the right centre. Here they were exposed to a galling fire, but D'Aubreme's men in their front were weakening, and to have withdrawn out of range of the guns would have left the road open to the Dutch-Belgians for retreat. They closed their squadron intervals, as Vivian had done, to prevent the infantry passing through to the rear, and stood their ground, while Vandeleur, with some of his senior officers, bullied and persuaded the Dutch-Belgians into forming their front again.
At seven o'clock things looked very serious along the Allied front. To the west, only some Prussian cavalry had arrived to guard the left flank; Papelotte and the farm of Ter La Haye were held by Durutte, whose skirmishers stretched to the crest of the Allied position; the gunners and the tirailleurs at La Haye Sainte were raking the centre with their fire; and although twelve thousand men of Reille's Corps d'Armee had failed all day to dislodge twelve hundred British Guards from the ruins of Hougoumont, all along the Allied line the front was broken, and in some places utterly disorganised.
The Duke remained calm, but kept looking at his watch. Once he said: "It's night, or Blucher," but for the most part he was silent. An aide-de-camp rode up to him with a message from his general that his men were being mowed down by the artillery fire, and must be reinforced. "It is impossible," he replied. "Will they stand?"
"Yes, my lord, till they perish!"
"Then tell them that I will stand with them, till the last man."
Turmoil and confusion, made worse by the smoke that hung heavily over the centre, and the debris that littered the ground from end to end of the line, seemed to reign everywhere. Staff officers, carrying messages to brigades, asked mechanically: "Who commands here?" The Prince of Orange had been taken away by March; three generals had been killed; five others carried off the field, too badly wounded to remain; the adjutant-general and the quartermaster-general had both had to retire. Of the Duke's personal staff, Canning was dead; Gordon dying in the inn at Waterloo; and Lord Fitzroy, struck in the right arm while standing with his horse almost touching the Duke's, had left the field in Alava's care. Those that were left had passed beyond feeling. It was no longer a matter for surprise or grief to hear of a friend's death: the only surprise was to find anyone still left alive on that reeking plain. Horse after horse had been shot under them; sooner or later they would probably join the ranks of the slain: meanwhile, there were still orders to carry, and they forced their exhausted mounts through the carnage, indifferent to the heaps of fallen red-coats sprawling under their feet, themselves numb with fatigue, their minds focused upon one object only: to get the messages they carried through to their destinations.
Just before seven o'clock, a deserting colonel of cuirassiers came galloping up to the 52nd Regiment, shouting: "Vive le Roi!" He reached Sir John Colborne, and gasped out: "Napoleon est la avec les Gardes! Voila l'attaque qui se fait!"
The warning was unnecessary, for it had been apparent for some minutes that the French were mustering for a grand attack all along the front. D'Erlon's corps was already assailing with a swarm of skirmishers the decimated line of Picton's 5th Division; and to the west of La Haye Sainte, on the undulating plain facing the Allied right, the Imperial Middle Guard was forming in five massive columns.
Colonel Audley was sent on his last errand just after seven. He was mounted on a trooper, and the strained and twisted strapping round his thigh was soaked with blood. He was almost unrecognisable for the smoke that had blackened his face, and was feeling oddly light-headed from the loss of blood he had suffered. He was also very tired, for he had been in the saddle almost continually since the night of June 15th. His mind, ordinarily sensitive to impression, accepted without revulsion the message of his eyes. Death and mutilation had become so common that he who loved horses could look with indifference upon a poor brute with the lower half of its head blown away, or a trooper, with its forelegs shot off at the knees, raising itself on its stumps, and neighing its sad appeal for help. He had seen a friend die in agony, and had wept over him, but all that was long past. He no longer ducked when he heard the shots singing past his head; when his trooper shied away, snorting in terror, from a bursting shell, he cursed it. But there was no sense in courting death unnecessarily; he struck northwards, and rode by all that was left of the two heavy brigades, drawn back since the arrival of Vivian and Vandeleur some three hundred paces behind the front line. An officer in the rags of a Life Guardsman's uniform, his helmet gone, and a blood-stained bandage tied round his head, rode forward, and hailed him.
"Audley! Audley!"
He recognised Lord George Alastair under a mask of mud, and sweat, and bloodstains, and drew rein. "Hallo!" he said. "So you're alive still?"
"Oh, I'm well enough! Do you know how it has gone with Harry?"
"Dead," replied the Colonel.
George's eyelids flickered; under the dirt and the blood his face whitened. "Thanks. That's all I wanted to know. You saw him?"
"Hours ago. He was dying then, in one of Maitland's squares. He sent you his love."
George saluted, wheeled his horse, and rode back to his squadron.
The Colonel pushed on to the chaussee. His horse slithered clumsily down the bank on to it; he held it together, and rode across the pave to the opposite bank and scrambled up, emerging upon the desolation of the slope behind Picton's division. He urged the trooper to a ponderous gallop towards the rear of Best's brigade. A handful of Dutch-Belgians were formed in second line; he supposed them to be some of Count Bylandt's men, but paid little heed to them, wheeling round their right flank, and plunging once more into the region of shot and shell bursts.
He neither saw nor heard the shell that struck him. His horse came crashing down; he was conscious of having been hit; blood was streaming down his left arm, which lay useless on the ground beside him, but there was as yet no feeling in the shattered elbow-joint. His left side hurt him a little; he moved his right hand to it, and found his coat torn, and his shirt sticky with blood. He supposed vaguely that since he seemed to be alive this must be only a flesh wound. He desired nothing better than to lie where he had fallen, but he mastered himself, for he had a message to deliver, and struggled to his knees.
The sound of horse's hooves galloping towards him made him lift his head. An adjutant in the blue uniform and orange facings of the 5th National Militia dismounted beside him, and said in English: "Adjutant to Count Bylandt, sir! I'm directed by General Perponcher to - Parbleu! it is you, then!"
Colonel Audley looked up into a handsome, dark face bent over him, and said weakly: "Hallo, Lavisse! Get me a horse, there's a good fellow!"
"A horse!" exclaimed Lavisse, going down on one knee, and supporting the Colonel in his arms. "You need a surgeon, my friend! Be tranquil: my General sends to bear you off the field." He gave a bitter laugh, and added: "That is what my brigade exists for - to succour you English wounded!"
"Did you succeed in rallying your fellows?" asked the Colonel.
"Some, not all. Do not disturb yourself, my rival! You have all the honours of this day's encounter. My honour is in the dust!"
"Oh, don't talk such damned theatrical rubbish!" said the Colonel irritably. He fumbled with his right hand in his sash, and drew forth a folded and crumpled message. "This has to go to General Best. See that it gets to him, will you? - or, if he's been killed, to his next in command."
A couple of orderlies and a doctor had come up from the rear. Lavisse gave the Colonel into their charge, and said with a twisted smile: "You trust your precious message to me, my Colonel?"
"Be a good fellow, and don't waste time talking about it!" begged the Colonel.
He was carried off the field as the attack upon the whole Allied line began. On the left, Ziethen's advance guard had reached Smohain, and the Prussian batteries were in action, firing into Durutte's skirmishers; while somewhere to the south-east Billow's guns could be heard assailing the French right flank. Allix and all that was left of Marcognet's division once more attacked the Allied left; Donzelot led his men against Ompteda's and Kielmansegg's depleted ranks, while the Imperial Guard of Grenadiers and Chasseurs moved up in five columns at rather narrow deploying intervals, in echelon, crossing the undulating plain diagonally from the chaussee to the Nivelles road. Each column showed a front of about seventy men, and in each of the intervals between the battalions two guns were placed. In all, some four thousand five hundred men were advancing upon the Allied right, led by Ney, le Brave des Braves, at the head of the leading battalion.
The sun, which all day had been trying to penetrate the clouds, broke through as the attack commenced. Its setting rays bathed the columns of the Imperial Guard in a fiery radiance. Rank upon rank of veterans who had borne the Eagles victorious through a dozen fights advanced to the beat of drums, with bayonets turned to blood-red by the sun's last glow, across the plain into the smoke and heat of the battle.
Owing to their diagonal approach the columns did not come into action simultaneously. Before the battalions marching upon the British Guards had reached the slope leading to the crest of the Allied position, Ney's leading column had struck at Halkett's brigade and the Brunswickers on his left flank.
Over this part of the line the smoke caused by the guns firing from La Haye Sainte lay so thick that the Allied troops heard but could not see the formidable advance upon them. Colin Halkett had fallen, wounded in the mouth, rallying his men round one of the Colours; two of his regiments were operating as one battalion, so heavy had been their losses; and these were thrown into some confusion by their own light troops retreating upon them. Men were carried off their feet in the surge to the rear; the Colonel, on whom the command of the brigade had devolved, seemed distracted, saying repeatedly: "What am I to do? What would you do?" to the staff officer sent by the Duke to "See what is wrong there!" The men of the 33rd, fighting against the tide that was sweeping them back, re-formed, and came on, shouting: "Give them the cold steel, lads! Let 'em have the Brummagum!" A volley was poured in before which the deploying columns recoiled; to the left, the Brunswickers, rallied once more by the Duke himself, followed suit, and the Imperial Guard fell back, carrying with it a part of Donzelot's division.
Those of the batteries on the Allied front which were still in action met the advance with a fire which threw the leading ranks into considerable disorder. Many of the British batteries, however, were useless. Some had been abandoned owing to the lack of ammunition; several guns stood with muzzles bent down, or touch-holes melted from the excessive heat; and more than one troop, its gunners either killed or too exhausted to run the guns up after each recoil, had its guns in a confused heap, the trails crossing each other almost on top of the limbers and the ammunition wagons. Ross's, Sinclair's, and Sandham's were all silent, Lloyd's battery was still firing from in front of Halkett's brigade; so was Napier, commanding Bolton's, in front of Maitland; and a Dutch battery of eight guns, belonging to Detmer's brigade, brought up by Chasse in second line, had been sent forward to a position immediately to the east of the Brunswick squares, and was pouring in a rapid and well-directed fire upon the Grenadiers and the men on Donzelot's left flank.
As the Brunswickers and Halkett's men momentarily repulsed the two leading columns, which, on their march over the uneven ground, had become merged into one unwieldy mass, the Grenadiers and the Chasseurs on the French left advanced up the slope to where Maitland's Guards lay silently awaiting them. The drummers were beating the pas de charge, shouts of "Vive L'Empereur!" and "En avant a la boi'onett!" filled the air. The Duke, who had galloped down the line from his position by the Brunswick troops, was standing with Maitland on the left flank of the brigade, not far from General Adam, whose brigade lay to the right of the Guards. Adam had ridden up to watch the advance, and the Duke, observing through his glass the French falling back before Halkett's men exclaimed: "By God, Adam, I believe we shall beat them yet!"
At ninety paces, the brass 8-pounders between the advancing battalions opened fire upon Maitland's brigade. They were answered by Krahmer de Bichin's Dutch battery, but though the grape shot tore through the ranks of the Guards the Duke withheld the order to open musketry fire. Not a man in the British line was visible to the advancing columns until they halted twenty paces from the crest to deploy.
"Now, Maitland! Now's your time!" the Duke said at last, and called out in his deep, ringing voice: "Stand up, Guards!"
The Guards leaped to their feet. The crest, which had seemed deserted, was suddenly alive with men, scarlet coats standing in line four-deep, with muskets at the present. Almost at the point of crossing bayonets they fired volley after volley into the Grenadiers. The Grenadiers, in column, had only two hundred muskets able to fire against the fifteen hundred of Halkett's and Maitland's brigades, deployed in line before them. They tried to deploy, but were thrown into confusion by a fire no infantry could withstand.
On Maitland's left, General Chasse had brought up Detmer's brigade of Dutch-Belgians in perfect order. When the word to charge was given, and the sound of the three British cheers was heard as the Guards surged forward, the Dutch came up at the double, and, with a roar of "Oranje boven!" drove the French from the crest in their front.
The Guards, scattering the Grenadiers before them, advanced until their flank was threatened by the second attacking column of Chasseurs. The recall was sounded, and the order given to face-about and retire.
In the din of clashing arms, crackling musketry, groans, cheers, and trumpet calls, the order was misunderstood. As the Guards regained the crest, an alarm of cavalry was raised. Someone shrieked: "Square, square, form square!" and the two battalions, trying to obey the order, became intermingled. A dangerous confusion seemed about to spread panic through the ranks, but it was checked in a very few moments. The order to "Halt! - Front! - Form up!" rang out; the Guards obeyed as one man, formed again four-deep, and told off in companies of forty.
In the immediate rear of Maitland's and Halkett's brigades, D'Aubremee's Dutch-Belgians, formed in three squares, appalled by the slaughter in their front, began to retreat precipitately upon Vandeleur's squadrons. The dragoons closed their ranks until their horses stood shoulder to shoulder; Vandeleur galloped forward to try to stem the rout; and an aide-de-camp went flying to the Duke on a foaming horse, gasping out that the Dutch would not stand, and could not be held.
"That's all right," answered his lordship coolly. "Tell them the French are retiring!"
Meanwhile, to the right, where Adam's brigade held the ground above Hougoumont, Sir John Colborne, without waiting for orders, had acted on his own brilliant judgment. As the columns advanced upon Maitland, he moved the 52nd Regiment down to the north-east angle of Hougoumont, and right-shouldered it forward, until it stood in line four-deep parallel to the left flank of the second column of Chasseurs.
Adam, seeing this deliberate movement, galloped up, calling out: "Colborne! Colborne! What are you meaning to do?"
"To make that column feel our fire," replied Sir John laconically.
Adam took one look at the Chasseurs, another at the purposeful face beside him, and said: "Move on, then! The 71st shall follow you," and rode off to bring up the Highlanders.
The Chasseur column, advancing steadily, was met by a frontal fire of over eighteen hundred muskets from the 95th Rifles and the 71st Highlanders, and as it staggered, the Fighting 52nd, the men in third and fourth line loading and passing muskets forward to the first two lines, riddled its flank. It broke, and fell into hideous disorder, almost decimated by a fire it could not, from its clumsy formation, return. A cry of horror arose, taken up by battalion after battalion down the French lines: "La Guarde recule!"
Before the column could deploy, Sir John Colborne swept forward in a charge that carried all before it. The officer carrying the Colour was killed, and a hundred and fifty men on the right wing, but the advance was maintained, right across the ground in front of the Allied line, the Imperial Guard being driven towards the chaussee in inextricable confusion. The 2nd and 3rd battalions of the Rifles, with the 71st Highlanders, followed the 52nd in support; the Imperial Guard, helpless under the musketry fire, cast into terrible disorder through their inability to deploy, lost all semblance of formation, and retreated pele-mele to the chaussee, till the ground in front of the Allied position was one seething mass of struggling, fighting, fleeing infantry.
Hew Halkett brought up his Hanoverians into the interval between Hougoumont and the hollow road; the 52nd advanced across the uneven plain until checked by encountering some squadrons of Dornberg's 23rd Light Dragoons, whom, in the dusk, they mistook for French cavalry and fired upon.
The Duke, who had watched the advance from the high ground beside Maitland, galloped up to the rear of the 52nd, where Sir John, having ordered his adjutant to stop the firing, was exchanging his wounded horse for a fresh one.
"It is our own cavalry which has caused this firing!" Colborne told him.
"Never mind! Go on, Colborne, go on!" replied the Duke, and galloped back to the crest of the position, and stood there, silhouetted against the glowing sky on his hollow-backed charger. He raised his cocked hat high in the air, and swept it forward, towards the enemy's position, in the long-looked-for signal for a General Advance. A cheer broke out on the right, as the Guards charged down the slope. The crippled forces east of the chaussee, away down to their left, heard it growing louder as it swelled all along the line towards them, took it up by instinct, and charged forward out of the intolerable smoke surrounding them, on to a plain strewn with dead and dying, lit by the last rays of a red sun, and covered with men flying in confusion towards the ridge of La Belle Alliance.
Cries of: "Nous sommes trahis!" mingled with the dismayed shouts of "La Garde recule!" Donzelot's division was carried away in the rush of Grenadiers and Chasseurs; the retreat had become a rout. Ney, on foot, one epaulette torn off, his hat gone, a broken sword in his hand, was fighting like a madman, crying: "Come and see how a Marshal of France dies!" and, to D'Erlon, borne towards him in the press: "If we get out of this alive, D'Erlon, we shall both be hanged!"
Far in advance of the charging Allied line, Colborne, having crossed the ground between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, had reached the chaussee, and passed it, left-shouldering his regiment forward to ascend the slope towards La Belle Alliance.
To the right, Vivian had advanced his brigade, placing himself at the head of the 18th Hussars. "Eighteenth! You will, I know, follow me!" he said, and was answered by one of his sergeant-majors: "Ay, General! to hell, if you'll lead us!"
Taking up his position on the flank of the leading half-squadron, holding his reins in his injured right hand, which, though it seemed reposed in a sling, was just capable of grasping them, he led the whole brigade forward at the trot. As the hussars cleared the front on Maitland's right, the Guards and Vandeleur's light dragoons cheered them on, and they charged down on to the plain, sweeping the French up in their advance past the eastern hedge of Hougoumont towards the chaussee at La Belle Alliance.
Through the dense smoke laying over the ground the Duke galloped down the line. When the Riflemen saw him, they sent up a cheer, but he called out: "No cheering, my lads, but forward and complete your victory!" and rode on, through the smother, out into the sea of dead, to where Adam's brigade was halted on the ridge of La Belle Alliance, a little way from where some French battalions had managed to re-form.
The Duke, learning from Adam that the brigade had been halted for the purpose of closing the files in, scrutinised the French battalions closely for a moment, and then said decidedly: "They won't stand: better attack them!"
Baron Muffling, looking along the line from his position on the left flank, saw the General Advance through the lifting smoke. Kielmansegg's, Ompteda's and Pack's shattered brigades remained where they stood all day, but everywhere else the regiments charged forward, leaving behind them an unbroken red line of their own dead, marking the position where, for over eight hours of cannonading, of cavalry charges, and of massed infantry attacks, the British and German troops had held their ground.
From Papelotte to Hougoumont the hillocky plain in front was covered with dead and wounded. Near the riddled walls of La Haye Sainte the cuirassiers lay in mounds of men and horses. The corn which had waved shoulder-high in the morning was everywhere trodden down into clay. On the rising ground of La Belle Alliance the Old Guard was making its last stand, fighting off the fugitives, who, trying to find shelter in its squares, threatened to overwhelm them. These three squares, with one formed by Reille, south of Hougoumont, were the only French troops still standing firm in the middle of the rout. With the cessation of artillery fire by the hollow road the smoke was clearing away, but over the ruins of Hougoumont it still rose in a slow, black column. Those of the batteries which had been able to follow the advance were firing into the mass of French on the southern ridge; musketry crackled as the Old Guard, with Napoleon and his staff in the middle of their squares, retreated step by step, fighting a heroic rearguard action against Adam's brigade and Hew Halkett's Hanoverians. Where Vivian, with Vandeleur in support, was sweeping the ground east and south of Hougoumont, fierce cavalry skirmishing was in progress, and the Middle Guard was trying to re-form its squares to hold the hussars at bay.
Muffling, detaching a battery from Ziethen's Corps, led it at a gallop to the centre of the Allied position. He met the Duke by La Haye Sainte. His lordship called triumphantly to him from a distance: "Well! You see Macdonnell has held Hougoumont!"
Muffling, who found himself unable to think of what the Guards at Hougoumont must have endured without a lump coming into his throat, knew the Duke well enough to realise that his brief sentence was his lordship's way of expressing his admiration, and nodded.
The sun was sinking fast; in the gathering dusk musket-balls were hissing in every direction. Uxbridge, who had come scatheless through the day, was hit in the knee by a shot passing over Copenhagen's withers, and sang out: "By God! I've got it at last!"
"Have you, by God?" said his lordship, too intent on the operations of his troops to pay much heed.
Colin Campbell, preparing to support Uxbridge off the field, seized the Duke's bridle, saying roughly: "This is no place for you! I wish you will move!"
"I will when I have seen these fellows off," replied his lordship.
To the south-east of La Belle Alliance, the Prussians, driving the Young Guard out of Plancenoit, were advancing on the chaussee, to converge there with Allied troops. Billow's infantry were singing the Lutheran hymn, Now thank we all our God, but as the columns came abreast of the British Guards, halted by the road, the hymn ceased abruptly. The band struck up God Save the King, and as the Prussians marched past they saluted.
It was past nine o'clock when, in the darkness, south of La Belle Alliance, the Duke met Prince Blucher. The Prince, beside himself with exultation, carried beyond coherent speech by his admiration for the gallantry of the British troops and for the generalship of his friend and ally, could find only one thing to say as he embraced the Duke ruthlessly on both cheeks: "I stink of garlic!"
When his first transports of joy were a little abated, he offered to take on the pursuit of the French through the night. The Duke's battered forces, dog-tired, terribly diminished in numbers, were ordered to bivouac where they stood, on the ground occupied all day by the French; and the Duke, accompanied by a mere skeleton of the brilliant cortege which had gone with him into the field that morning, rode back in clouded moonlight to his Headquarters.
Baron Muffling, drawing abreast of him, said: "The Field Marshal will call this battle Belle-Alliance, sir."
His lordship returned no answer. The Baron, casting a shrewd glance at his bony profile, with its frosty eye and pursed mouth, realised that he had no intention of calling the battle by that name. It was his lordship's custom to name his victories after the village or town where he had slept the night before them. The Marshal Prince might call the battle what he liked, but his lordship would head his despatch to Earl Bathurst: "Waterloo".