The French, after their usual custom, had opened a cannonade over the whole front. Behind the quick-set hedges the first lines of British infantry remained lying down, while the second lines of cavalry, drawn back on the downward slope to the north, suffered little from shot which for the most part fell short of them. The sodden condition of the ground caused many of the shells to explode harmlessly in deep mud, but there were uncomfortable moments when shells with extra long fuses fell among the troops, hissing and burning for some time before they burnt. Some of the old soldiers lit pipes, and lay smoking and cracking jokes, but every now and then there would be a sob from some man hit by a splinter, or a groan from a boy with a limb shattered by caseshot. In front line, in the intervals between the brigades, the gunners were busy, loading the 9-pounders with round shot with a case over it, the tubes in vents, portfires glaring and spitting behind the wheels.
The Duke was standing by Maitland's brigade on the right, critically observing the effect of the French cannonade. The shots tore up the ground beside him, and hissed over his head, but he merely remarked:
"That's good practice. I think they fire better than in Spain."
The cannonade continued until twenty minutes past eleven without any movement of infantry attack being made by the enemy. The hottest fire was being directed upon Hougoumont, but the wood on the southern side of the chateau to a large extent protected it. At twenty minutes past eleven, Prince Jerome Bonaparte's division of infantry, belonging to Reille's corps, on the French left, began to advance in column towards the wood, with a cloud of skirmishers thrown out in front. These were met by a blaze of musketry fire from the Hanoverian and Nassau troops posted among the trees. The Duke shut his telescope with a snap, and galloped down the line, with his staff streaming behind him, to where Byng's brigade was drawn up on the high ground behind the chateau. An order was rapped out; Colonel Canning wheeled his horse, and made for the spot where Captain Sandham's field battery was stationed. "Captain Sandham! You are wanted immediately in front! Left limber up, and as far as you can!"
The order was swiftly repeated: "Left limber up! At a gallop, march!"
The horses strained at their collars; the mud gave up its hold on the wheels with a sucking sound; the train moved forward, lurching and clanking over the ground, and came up in grand style, guns loaded with powder, priming wires in the vents to prevent the cartridges slipping forward, slow matches lighted. The leading gun, a howitzer, was quickly unlimbered, and its first shell burst over the head of the French column moving upon the wood of Hougoumont. The other guns followed suit one after the other, as they came into position and unlimbered; and in a few minutes an additional and destructive fire was being directed on the column by Captain Cleeve's battery of the legion, in front of Alten's division.
The column shuddered under the fire, and checked. In the wood, the skirmishers were already engaged with the Hanoverian and Nassau defenders. Twelve pieces of horse artillery of Reille's corps were pushed forward, and a heavy counter-cannonade was begun. The column of infantry recovered, and pressed on, leaving its dead and wounded lying on the field. A well-directed fire from Sandham's and Cleeve's batteries again threw it into disorder, but it reformed, and reached the wood, driving the defenders back from tree to tree. The popping of musketry now mingled with the roar of the cannons; and a steady trickle of wounded men began to make their way to the shelter of the British line.
Colonel Audley, who had been sent off to the left wing with instructions to Sir Hussey Vivian not to fire on any troops advancing from the west, did not see the start of the fight in Hougoumont Wood. By the time he returned to the Duke, it had been in progress for half an hour, and the Nassauers, after contesting the ground with a good deal of courage, were giving way. More of Reille's corps had moved to Jerome's support, and the skirmishers of the Guards, pressed back through the Great Orchard, were being driven into an alley of holly and yew trees separating it from the smaller orchard surrounding the garden.
The Nassauers, retreating in disorder, poured out on to a sunken lane forming the northern boundary of the Hougoumont enclosure. When Colonel Audley rode up, the Duke, spurring forward from his position in front of Byng's brigade, was trying to rally them. But his presence, so invigorating to his own men, had very little effect upon the Nassauers, some of whom, in the panic of the moment, actually fired after him as he rode through their ranks. "Pretty scamps to win a battle with!" he said, with a bark of laughter; and wasting no more time on them, he galloped off to where, a few yards from where the Nivelles highway crossed the hollow road to Braine-l'Alleud, Major Bull's howitzer troop was drawn up. He brought the troop up in person, explaining in a few incisive sentences what he wanted done. Major Bull, ordered to clear the wood with shell fire, considered the position calmly for a moment, and gave his gunners their directions. It was a ticklish business, for the chateau, with its defenders, lay between his troop and the enemy, and a shell falling short must inevitably drop among the British Guards, desperately fighting in the alleys south of the garden wall. The first shell shot up, clearing the enclosures, and exploded over the wood.
"That's right!" said his lordship. "That's good shooting. Well, Audley, any news of the Prussians yet?"
"No, sir. A patrol of French cavalry came up to Colonel Best's people. He formed the brigade in squares, but the cavalry seemed only to be reconnoitring, and drew off again. The French are massing their guns in the centre of the line."
"Oh yes! This is nothing but a diversion," said the Duke, nodding towards Hougoumont. He found that several officers from Byng's brigade had come up to watch the struggle, and told them curtly to get back to the brigade. "You will have the devil's own fire on you immediately!" he said, and, as though to prove the truth of his words, a hurricane of grape and round shot began to whistle about the position, as Reille's gunner found their range.
The howitzer shells, falling thick in the wood, drove Jerome back. The swarms of French infantry rallied and came on again; the Hanoverians were forced back and back, through sheer weight of numbers, into the orchard. A glimpse of red showed through the trees: Jerome's troops hurled themselves forward at what they believed to be a line of British soldiers, and were brought up short by the brick wall enclosing the garden. They tried to scale it, but the Coldstream Guards, posted on the inner platforms and at the loopholes, poured in such a murderous fire that the blue-coated infantry recoiled. The ditches lining the alley separating the wood from the orchard became choked with dead; in the orchard, Saltoun's light companies began to press back the invaders; but the 1st Leger Regiment succeeded in setting fire to a haystack. and, under cover of the black smoke, crept round the western side of the chateau. A British battery, raking the Nivelles road, was assailed by a storm of tirailleurs and suffered such loss of men and horses that it was forced to retire. A horse battery attached to Pire's lancers, who had come up as an observation corps to the south-west, opened fire on Bull's troop; and the Guards posted on the avenue leading from the high road to the north gate of the chateau saw, through the smothering whorls of smoke, hundreds of Jerome's men advancing on them.
The north gate was open, and it was down the avenue of elm trees that reinforcements of men and ammunition were being passed into the chateau. The Hanoverians defending the approach to the avenue were overwhelmed and flung back in confusion. The Guards, attacked on all sides, stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting off the waves of the French that broke over them, and retreating, step by step, to the gateway. The French saw Hougoumont almost within their grasp; one of their generals spurred forward, shouting to his men to prevent the closing of the gates. They surged after him, but a sergeant of the Coldstream dashed forward, right into the mass of the enemy, and hurled himself at General Cubieres. Before the French had had time to realise what was happening, the general had been dragged from his horse, and Sergeant Fraser, brandishing a bloodstained halberd, was up in the saddle, and riding hell-for-leather towards the gate. The momentary check caused by this diversion enabled the handful of Guards to reach the courtyard, but a party of sapeurs, recovering from their astonishment at Fraser's daring, rushed after him, led by a young sous-lieutenant of ferocious mien. The Guards, fighting their way backwards through the gateway, heard above the rattle of musketry and the thunder of artillery a yell of: "En avant, I'Enfonceur!" and saw the sapeurs coming charging through the smother of black smoke. Thq made a desperate attempt to shut the gates, but with a roar of rage and triumph the sapeurs flung themselves against the heavy doors. The Guards, reduced in numbers, suffocated by the smoke, could not hold them. Amid the crash of timbers and crumbling masonry, the French burst through into the courtyard and fought for possession of the gatehouse.
The noise reached the ears of Macdonnell, directing the defence of the garden wall. Shouting to three of his officers who stood nearest him, he raced, drawn sword in hand, to the inner yard, and across it to the wicket leading to the main courtyard. There the most appalling sight met his eyes. The courtyard was full of Frenchmen; some of the Guards were fighting to defend the cowshed, where their own wounded lay; from every ambush of shed, or window, or cellar, a steady musketry fire was holding the surge of men through the gateway in check; while in the chateau, the Guards besieged on the staircase had hacked away the lower steps, and were firing down upon the French trying to storm up to them. By the gate, the paving stones were slippery with blood, and cumbered by the dead and wounded who lay there; a heroic little band, under the command of two sergeants, was still fighting to prevent the gatehouse from falling, but in the gateway itself the French were massed, and outside reinforcements were advancing down the avenue.
Roaring at his officers to follow him, Macdonnell launched himself across the courtyard. Hatless, with nothing but a sword in his hand, he fell upon the French in the gateway, and with such force that they broke involuntarily, as they would have broken before the charge of a mad bull. His officers and a few sergeants rushed to his support. For an instant the French were scattered; and while a couple of ensigns and two sergeants held them at bay, Macdonnell and Sergeant Graham set their shoulders to the double doors, and forced them together, the sweat pouring down their faces and the muscles standing out like corrugations down their powerful thighs.
Yells of fury sounded outside, as Graham, while his colonel held the doors together against every effort of the sapeurs to force them open, slammed the great iron crossbar into position. Bayonets and hatchets beat upon the unyielding timbers; and the French trapped in the courtyard tried to set fire to the barns before being shot or bayoneted by the Guards who were round them.
A few brave men managed to scale the wall, but were shot before they could even leap down into the courtyard. Fresh columns were being moved down by Jerome, and had carried the avenue. Colonel Audley, his right sleeve torn by a musketball, was sent flying to bring up two guns from Bolton's battery, and arrived above the north alley enclosing the orchard just as Colonel Woodford led forward four companies of the Guards to the relief of the garrison.
"There, my lads: in with you! Let me see no more of you!" the Duke called out to them.
The Guards gave him a cheer, and went in at the charge. They drove the French before them at the point of the bayonet, sweeping them away from the chateau walls; and Woodford managed to reinforce the garrison through a side door leading into the alley. The light companies reoccupied the ground they had lost, and Jerome drew off to re-form his mutilated battalions.
Several officers of the staff corps had galloped up with messages for the Duke from time to time; of his personal staff, Lord Arthur Hill and young Cathcar; were both mounted on troopers, their horses having been shot under them; and Colonel Audley has suffered a contusion on his right arm from a glancing musketball. Fremantle, returning from the left wing, found him trying to tie his handkerchief round the flesh wound with one hand and his teeth, and pushed up to him, saying: "Here, let me do that!"
"Any news of Blucher?" asked Audley.
"Not so much as a sniff of those damned Prussians! My God, you've got a pretty shambles here! What's been going on?"
"We all but lost Hougoumont, that's all. Bull's had to retire. He's been enfiladed by a troop of horse artillery belonging to the lancers over there." He jerked his head towards the Nivelle's road. "Jerome's bringing up reserve after reserve. Looks as though he means to take Hougoumont or perish in the attempt. Anything happening anywhere else?"
"Not yet, but we'll be in for it soon, or I'm a Dutchman. Never saw so many guns massed in my life at the batteries they're bringing up in the centre. There you are - all right and tight!"
It was now nearly one o'clock, and for an hour and a half the most bitter struggle had been raging for the possession of Hougoumont. The Duke, who seemed to have been everywhere at once, cantered back to the centre of the position, to where an elm tree stood on the highest point of the ground, to the west of the Charleroi chaussee. He had no sooner arrived there than an artillery officer came up to him in a great state of excitement, stating that he could clearly perceive Bonaparte and all his staff before the farm of La Belle Alliance, and had no doubt of being able to direct his guns on to them.
This suggestion was met by a frosty stare, and a hasty: "No, no, I won't have it! It is not the business of general officers to be firing upon each other!"
"Just retire quietly," said Gordon, in the chagrined officer's ear. "Forget that you were born. You had better not have been, you know."
Colonel Fremantle's description of the guns being assembled upon the opposite ridge had not been exaggerated. During the struggle about Hougoumont, battery after battery had been brought up on the French side, covering the whole of the Allied centre, from Colin Halkett's brigade on the right of Alten's division to Prince Bernhard's Nassauers at Papelotte. Nearly eighty guns had been massed upon the ridge, and at one o'clock the most infernal cannonade broke out. Shells screamed through the air, ploughing long furrows in the ground as they fell, blowing the legs off horses, exploding in the Allied lines, and scattering limbs and brains over men crouching behind the meagre shelter of the quick-set hedges. The infantry set its teeth and endured. Young soldiers, determined not to lag behind their elders in courage, gulped and smiled waveringly as the blood of fallen comrades spattered in their faces; veterans declared that this was nothing, and went on grimly cracking their jokes. On the high ground under the elm tree balls hummed and whistled round the Duke and his brilliant staff, until he said in his cool way: "Better separate, gentlemen: we are a little too thick here."
Shortly after one o'clock, Reille's guns, away to the right, succeeded in setting fire to the haystack in the yard of Hougoumont. In the centre of the line, smoke was beginning to lie thickly in the valley between the opposing ridges. The air was hot and acrid; and a curious noise, like the hum of a gigantic swarm of bees, was making novices ask anxiously: "What's that? What's that buzzing noise?"
Baron Muffling, after a short colloquy with the Duke, rode away to take up his position with the cavalry brigades on the left flank. Messenger after messenger went galloping off to try to gain some intelligence of the Prussian advance, for it was plain that the cannonade was a prelude to an attack upon the Allied centre, which, held by Picton's and Alten's divisions on either side of the chaussee, was the weakest part of the line.
At half past one, the cannonade slackened, and above the diminishing thunder could be heard the French drums beating the pas de charge.
"Here comes Old Trousers at last!" sang out a veteran, uncorking his muzzle stopper and slipping off his lock cap. "Now for it, you Johnny Newcomes!"
On the ridge of La Belle Alliance, a huge mass of infantry was forming, flanked by squadrons of cuirassiers. Sharp-eyed men on the Allied front swore they could discern Bonaparte himself; that he was there was evident from the shouts of "Vive L'Empereur!" and the dipping of colours, as the regiments filed past the group beside the chaussee. The rub-a-dub of drums and the blare of trumpets now mingled with the roar of artillery. Four divisions of infantry, led by Count D'Erlon, began to advance down the slope to the hollow road, in ponderous columns at 400 pace intervals, showing fronts from 160 to 200 files. The battalions of each division were deployed, and placed one behind the other, except on the French left, where Allix's division was formed into two brigades side by side, under Quiot and Bourgeois. These moved forward to encircle the farm of La Haye Sainte, Quiot branching off to the west of the chaussee and Bourgeois advancing to the east of it. A determined musketry fire from the orchard and the windows of the farm met them, but Baring's Germans were soon driven from the orchard and gardens into the building itself. While the other divisions moved in three columns down the slope towards the Allied left centre, the Luneberg field battalion was detached from Count Kielmansegg's brigade, and sent forward to try to reinforce Baring. These young troops advanced boldly down the slope but wavered under the French fire. The sight of their own skirmishers falling back took the heart out of them. They began to retreat; the cuirassiers, covering Quiot's left flank, swept down upon them, and in their disordered state killed and rode over many of them, driving the rest back with great loss to their own lines.
Upon the eastern side of the chaussee the three other columns, led by Donzelot, Marcognet, and Durutte, moved steadily down upon the Allied line. As each column cleared its own guns on the ridge behind it, and descended the slope into the valley, these began firing again, until the thunder and crash of artillery drowned the roll of the drums and the shrill blare of the trumpets.
To the eyes that watched this tidal advance, it seemed as though the whole slope was covered with men. European armies had seen these columns, and had broken and fled before them, appalled by the sheer weight of infantry opposed to them. The British had time and again proved the superiority of line over column, but Count Bylandt's Dutch-Belgic brigade, badly placed on the slope confronting the French position, already demoralised by the heavy cannonading, could not stand the relentless march of the columns towards them. They had suffered considerably at Quatre-Bras, had had no rations served out to them since the morning of the previous day, and had seen Count Bylandt carried off the field. The men in their gay uniforms and white-topped shakos began to waver, and before the head of the column immediately in their front had reached the valley below them, they fled. The exertions of their officers, frantically trying to check the rout, were of no avail. The men, some of them flinging down their arms, broke through the hedge in their rear, and retreated in the wildest confusion through the interval between Kempt's and Pack's brigades. Byleveld's battery was swept back in the rush, and a great gap yawned in the Allied line.
The Dutch-Belgians were met by derisive calls from Pack's Highlanders. Not a man in the 5th Division caught the infection of that mad panic; instead, the Scots helped the terrified foreigners to the rear with sly bayonet thrusts, while the men of Kempt's left, until called to order by their officers, fired musketballs into the retreating mass.
In the confusion, Colonel Audley, desperately trying with a handful of others to stem the rush, came upon Lavisse, livid and cursing, laying about him with the flat of his sword. "That's no use, man!" he shouted. "Christ, can't you fellows get your men together? Form them up in the rear, and bring them on again, for God's sake! We can't afford this gap!"
"Damn you, do I not know?" Lavisse gasped.
"Och, sir, let the puir bodies gang!" shouted a sergeant of the Gordons. "We dinna want furriners hired to fight for us!"
The three companies of the 95th Rifles, posted on the knoll and in the sandpit in front of Kempt's right, were firing steadily into Bourgeois' and Donzelot's columns, advancing on either side of them; and two of Ross's 9-pounders, guarding the chaussee, caused Bourgeois' brigade to swerve away from La Haye Sainte to its right, where it was thrown against Donzelot's division, and advanced with it in one unwieldy mass. The riflemen stood their ground until almost hemmed in by the sea of French, but were forced at last to abandon the sandpit and retreat to the main position.
Bylandt's men had forced their way right to the rear, and although Byleveld's troop had extricated itself from the melee and was in the front line again, firing into the head of the column already starting to deploy in the valley, over two thousand Dutch - Belgians had deserted from the line, leaving three thousand men of Picton's decimated division to face the charge of thirteen thousand Frenchmen.
Picton, wasting no time in trying to bring Bylandt's men to the front again, deployed Kempt's brigade into an attenuated two-deep line, to fill the breach. Below, in the hollow road and the cornfields beyond it, the French columns were also trying to deploy in the constricted space afforded for such a movement. The whole valley swarmed with blue-coated infantry, struggling in the press of their own numbers to get into line. The front ranks charged up the banks of the hedge concealing the British troops, shouting and cheering, confident that the flight of the large body of troops in their front had left the field open to them through the Allied centre. Picton's voice blared above the roar of cannon: "Rise up!"
The men of Kempt's brigade, crouched behind the hedge, leaped to their feet; the French saw the bank crowned by a long line of red, overlapping their column on either side. Every musket was at the present; a volley riddled the advancing mass; and as the French recoiled momentarily under it, Picton roared: "Charge! Hurrah!" and Kempt's warriors, with the British cheer the French had learned to dread, charged with bayonets levelled.
To the east of Donzelot, Marcognet's column was surging up the bank to where Pack's Highlanders waited, a little drawn back from the crest. "Ninety second! Everything has given way in front of you!" Pack shouted. "You must charge!"
A yell of "Scotland ever!" answered him. The skirl of pipes soared above the din, and the men of the Black Watch, the Royals, and the Gordons, all with the deaths of comrades to avenge, hurled themselves through the hedge at the advancing column.
In Kempt's brigade, the Camerons, attacked by a devastating crossfire from Bourgeois' column on their right, began to give way. Picton shouted to one of Uxbridge's aides-de-camp: "Rally the Highlanders!" The next instant he fell, shot through the right temple. Captain Seymour rode forward to obey this last command, but it was the Duke, watching the crash of the two armies from the high ground in the centre, who galloped before him into the thick of the fight, and succeeded in rallying the Camerons and the hard pressed riflemen.
"Stand fast, Ninety-fifth! We must not be beaten!" he shouted. "What will they say in England?"
A ragged cheer answered him; he re-formed the 79th himself, and directed them to fire upon the column that had driven them back, only withdrawing out of the heat of the battle when he saw that they stood firm.
The guns on both sides had ceased fire as the French and the British troops met, but in the valley smoke lay thick, and muskets spat and crackled. The French were hampered by the size of their own columns, but although the men of Picton's depleted division had checked their advance by the sheer ferocity of their charge, they could not hope to hold such overwhelming numbers at bay. West of the chaussee, the cuirassiers, having routed the Luneberg battalion, re-formed under the crest of the Allied position. Ignorant of what the reverse slope of the ground concealed, they charged up the bank, straight at Ompteda's men, hidden behind it. But the Germans had opened their ranks to permit the passage of cavalry through them. Before the cuirassiers had reached the crest, they heard the thunder of hooves above them, and the next instant the Household Brigade was upon them, led by Uxbridge himself, at the head of the 1st Life Guards.
With white crests, and horses' manes flying, the Life Guards came up at full gallop and crashed upon the cuirassiers in flank. The earth seemed to shudder beneath the shock. The Hyde Park soldiers never drew rein, but swept the cuirassiers from the bank, and across the hollow road in the irresistible impetus of their charge. Swords rang against the cuirasses; someone yelled above the turmoil: "Strike at the neck!" and the cuirassiers, already a little disorganised by their encounter with the German infantry, were flung back in fighting confusion. The Life Guards and the 1st Dragoon Guards hurled their left flank past the walls of La Haye Sainte in complete disorder, and scattered Quiot's brigade of infantry assailing the farm. The right flank of the cuirassiers swerved sharply to the east, and plunged down on to the chaussee to escape from the fury of six-foot men on huge horses, who seemed to have no idea of charging at anything slower than a full gallop. Not more than half their number had crossed the chaussee to the valley where Donzelot was driving his congested ranks against Kempt's brigade, when the rest of the Household Cavalry, coming up on the left of the Life Guards, fell upon them in hard-riding squadrons, and crumpled them up. The abattis, so painstakingly built up by the riflemen, was scattered in an instant; the cuirassiers were cut down in hundreds, and the Dragoon Guards rode over them to charge full tilt into the column of French infantry pressing Kempt's men back.
At the same moment, an aide-de-camp rode up from the rear to the hedge beyond which Pack's Highlanders were fighting fiercely with the men of Marcognet's division. For one moment he stood there, closely observing the state of the battle raging in the valley; then he took off his cocked hat and waved it forwards.
There was yell of: "Now then, Scots Greys!" and the next instant the whole of the Union Brigade came thundering up the reverse slope. The French, disordered through their inability to deploy their enormous column before the Highlanders charged them, appalled hardly more by the fury of the kilted devils who rushed on them than by the unearthly music of the pipes playing Scots, Wha' Hae in the hell of blood and smoke and clashing arms that filled the valley, heard the cavalry thundering towards them, and looked up to see great grey horses clearing the hedge above them.
They fell back. In the valley, officers were shouting to the Gordons to wheel back by sections to let the cavalry pass through. The Scots Greys tightened their grips, and came slipping and scrambling down the bank shouting: "Hurrah, Ninety-second! Scotland for ever!" as they caught sight of the red-feathered bonnets in the press and the smoke below.
Greys, Royals, and Inniskillings, riding almost abreast, poured over the hedge and down into the seething valley. The Gordons were yelling: "Go at them, the Greys! Scotland for ever!" and snatching at stirrup-leathers as the Greys rode through them, so that they too were borne forwards in this terrific charge. Somewhere, lost in the smoke, a pipe-major was coolly playing, Hey, Johnny Cope, are ye waukin' yet? while all around sounded screams, shouts, musketry fire, and the clash of steel.
Many of the horses and their riders were brought down by musketballs or the desperate thrust of bayonets, but the cavalry charge had caught Marcognet's column unawares and in confusion. The Union Brigade rode over the column, lopping off heads with their sabres, while the Gordons, who had been carried forward with them, did deadly work with the bayonet.
To the right, where Donzelot's men had fought their way through Kempt's thin lines to the crest of the position, the Royal Dragoons, unchecked by the frontal fire that met them, charged straight for the leading column of the division. The column faced about and tried to retreat over the hedge, but there was no time to get to safety before the Royals were in their midst, their sabres busy and their horses squealing, biting, and striking out with their iron-shod forefeet. Between the Greys and the Royals, the Inniskillings, with their blood-curdling howl, broke through Donzelot's rear brigades. As the Royals, capturing the Eagle, charged on over the slaughtered leading column to the supporting ones behind it, and the Greys rode down Marcognet's men, the French, utterly demoralised, began throwing down their arms and crying for quarter.
The Household Brigade, having broken the cuirassiers and smashed their way through Bourgeois' rear column, dashed on, deaf to the trumpets sounding the Rally and to the voices of Uxbridge and Lord Edward trying to recall them, up the slope towards the great French battery on the ridge. The Union Brigade, leaving behind them a plain strewn with dead and wounded, and prisoners being herded to the rear, charged after the Household troops, and galloped up the slope to within half-carbine shot of where Napoleon himself was standing, by the farm of La Belle Alliance.
A colonel of the Greys shouted: "Charge! Charge the guns!" and his men dashed after him, through a storm of shot, laming the horses, cutting the traces, and sabring the gunners.
The cavalry charge had put almost all Count D'Erlon's Corps d'Arm&e to rout, but it had been carried too far. Ahead, solid columns of infantry were advancing from the French rear; and behind, from either flank, lancers and cuirassiers were riding to cut off the retreat.
A voice cried: "Royals, form on me!" The Greys and the Inniskillings on the ridge, their horses blown, themselves badly mauled, looked round in vain for their officers, and tried to reform to meet the onset of the French cavalry. The Colonel who had led them in the charge towards the battery had been seen riding among the guns like a maniac, with both hands lopped off at the wrists, and his reins held between his teeth; but he had fallen, and a dozen others with him. A sergeant called out: "Come on, lads! That's the road home!" and the gallant little band rode straight for the oncoming cavalry that separated it from its own lines.
A pitiful remnant broke through. On the Allied left wing, Vandeleur flung forward his light dragoons to cover the retreat. They cheered the heavies as they passed them, caught the lancers in flank, and drove them back in disorder. The survivors of the Union Brigade reached the shelter of their own lines, having pierced three columns, captured two Eagles, wrecked fifteen guns, put twenty-five more temporarily out of action, and taken nearly three thousand prisoners.