‘My very words,’ remarked Gordon, who had come up to them. He glanced towards the French lines, and said, with a yawn: ‘Don’t seem to be in a hurry to come to grips with us, do they?’
The words had scarcely been uttered when the flash of cannonfire flickered all along the ridge, and the silence that had lain over the field for over an hour was rent by the boom of scores of great guns trained on the Allied position. The scream of a horse, hit by roundshot, sounded from a troop of artillery close at hand; a cannonball buried itself in the soft ground not three paces from where Colonel Audley was standing, and sent up a shower of mud. His horse reared, snorting; he gentled it, shouting to Gordon above the thunder of the guns: ‘What do you call this?’
‘Damned noisy!’ r
etorted Gordon.
The flashes and the puffs of smoke continued all along the ridge, suddenly a deafening crash, reverberating down the Allied line, answered the challenge of the French cannons, and a cheer went up: the English batteries had come into action.
Twenty-Two
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 case-shot. 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, port-fires 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 château to a large extent protected it. At twenty minutes past eleven, Prince Jérôme 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 château. 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 rear 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 Jérôme’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 château, 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 gunners found their range.
The howitzer shells, falling thick in the wood, drove Jérôme 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; Jérôme’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 Léger Regiment succeeded in setting fire to a haystack, and, under cover of the black smoke, crept round the western side of the château. 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 Piré’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 château saw, through the smothering whorls of smoke, hundreds of Jérôme’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 château. 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 Cubières. Before the French had had time to realise what was happening, the general had been dragged from his horse, and Sergeant Fraser, brandishing a blood-stained 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, l’Enfonceur!’ and saw the sapeurs coming charging through the smother of black smoke. They 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 château, 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 pavingstones 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 sup
port. 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 Jérôme, 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 château 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 Jérôme 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 Cathcart were both mounted on troopers, their horses having been shot under them; and Colonel Audley had 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 Blücher?’ 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. ‘Jérôme’s bringing up reserve after reserve. Looks as though he means to take Hougoumont or perish in the attempt. Anything happening anywhere else?’