Waterloo (17 page)

‘No. The well is all but empty. There’s gin, but it scorches like fire down a raw throat.’

‘Then let us hope General Cooke takes pity on us and sends down a supply wagon loaded with water and bullets and powder. If he can, that is. Are the frogs in the sunken lane yet?’

‘I don’t know. They might be.’

The sound of the howitzer was unmistakeable. Instinctively, they both looked up. A shell passed over the trees and landed in the orchard. It had come not from the slope behind them but from the woods. Far from allowing them a rest, the Prince had called up his own howitzer battery.

When their sighting shots had given their teams the range, the deadly howitzers began their bombardment on the orchard. Saltoun’s tired and miserable troops could do little but seek meagre shelter from the shards of burning metal exploding over their heads. If they ran for the garden, the French would be into the orchard instantly, so they crouched behind apple trees and in the hedge, while the shells rained down like lethal hailstones, killing and wounding and maiming. Macdonell saw ten men carried to the barn, most with terrible wounds to the head, and ten more killed instantly. The awful howitzers were doing their duty and he expected them at any moment to turn their attention to the farm. Yet they did not. It soon became clear why.

From around the woods to the south galloped a company of Dragoons and, at the same time, several companies of infantry emerged from the trees beyond the gate, outside which
scores of French bodies had lain since their last attack. Prince Jérôme, it seemed, had decided that the defenders’ strength was sufficiently depleted and their ammunition low enough for another attempt to be made.

He was right. Saltoun’s troops were pinned down in the orchard, Wyndham’s were defending the garden and the barn was filling up with the wounded. The farm was under threat at both north and south gates and ammunition supplies were already dangerously low. Only the chateau itself was secure. At least until the French turned their heavy cannon on to it. Then its ancient walls would surely crumble and fall.

Macdonell ran to the garden, climbed on a wooden crate and peered over the south wall. The Dragoons had formed in line facing the wall, ready to charge the moment they saw a breach. The infantry were gathering behind them and on the edge of the trees beyond the gate. Drums sounded the advance, orders were shouted, and muskets raised. Under cover of their fire, French light troops dashed to the south walls of the garden and farm. Through loopholes and windows, the guards fired back, picking their targets and killing them with ease. So many fell that their bodies filled the clearing and obstructed the advance of those behind.

Yet they kept coming. For every man who died, two more ran out of the woods. They grabbed the burning hot barrels of muskets sticking out of loopholes, fired through the gaps and, still without ladders, climbed on each other’s backs to reach the top of the garden walls. In the clearing a mounted French colonel, impervious to the Guards’ fire, exhorted his troops forward. When his horse was shot from under him he walked
briskly back to the trees and returned on another one.

By sheer force of numbers, the French would breach the walls and take Hougoumont. Jérôme’s divisions would sweep through and around the farm and up the slope to attack the Allied army’s right wing. At the same time, his brother, the great Buonaparte, would continue to blast the Allied centre and left wing with his heavy cannon before unleashing his fearsome cavalry. If Wellington’s right wing was exposed, Buonaparte’s army of tough professional soldiers would destroy the Allied ragbag of Dutch militia, Belgians, Germans and raw British recruits without pausing to draw breath. It would be slaughter. Buonaparte clearly thought so too. He would take Hougoumont whatever the cost.

A French face appeared over the wall. Macdonell smashed the hilt of his sword into it and heard bones snap. All along the wall and at every window, individual battles of life and death were being fought. An attacker fired at a defender’s head and saw him fall. A defender thrust his bayonet into an attacker’s stomach and heard the life sucked out of him. The attackers, exposed to fire from every vantage point behind the walls, were taking enormous losses. Their dead piled up like sacks of grain, their wounded – those who could – limped and crawled back to the woods, pursued by fire from the chateau and the tower. As many as ten Frenchmen were dying for each Guard. But on they came, more and more of them, heedless of the unceasing fire, climbing over their bloody dead, most not even reaching the walls, those that did dying there.

Then everything changed. The French withdrew to the trees and brought up a pair of four-pounders, placed them
just inside the treeline and began firing over the heads of their own troops into the gardener’s house and the yard beyond. Unlike the gun teams behind the wood, these could see where they were aiming. And the Gunners were skilled in their work. Their first salvo crashed through the upper windows of the gardener’s house, the second blasted the roof of the stable.

Macdonell ran back to the farm. He had been expecting this. Indeed, if he had been in Jérôme’s shoes, he would have brought up his light cannon as soon as he had possession of the wood. It can only have been the Prince’s pride that led him to believe he could take Hougoumont without destroying it. To win the praise of his brother, the man had been prepared to sacrifice hundreds, even thousands of French lives. Now he had been forced to change his tactics.

The cannon fired and fired again. It could not go on. A single breach in the wall and the French would be inside. Worse, enough direct hits and the south gate would be blasted into firewood. Macdonell found Sergeant Dawson and asked for a man to take a message to General Byng. The man must be quick and nimble. The sergeant handed him a blood-soaked bandage for his arm and went to find a man suitable.

The cannon roared again and the stable wall took two more hits. The horses had been moved to the cowshed by the north gate, but that was scant comfort. Muskets fired from the gardener’s house and the roofs. They had no effect. The gun teams went busily about their work, making ready the cannon, loading, aiming and firing.

Macdonell was struggling with the bandage when there was a quiet voice behind him. ‘You sent for me, Colonel.’

He turned. It was Joseph Lester. Dawson had made a good choice. ‘I did, Private. Slip out of the west gate and through the woods behind us. You will find General Byng on the ridge near the Nivelles Road. Ask him if we might have a little assistance.’

‘Yes, Colonel. Can I help with your bandage?’

‘I’ll manage. Quick as you like, Private.’

Macdonell hated seeking help but there was nothing else for it. If he led an attack on the guns from the farm, the gate would have to be opened. That was too big a risk. If he did nothing, there would soon be no gate. Help it would have to be.

A round shot whistled over the roof of the gardener’s house and exploded against the wall of the chateau, sending bricks and debris flying across the yard. A man screamed and grasped his stomach. Another, struck on the head by a brick, fell to the ground without a sound. The French heavy artillery had started up again. Howitzers, light cannon, and now heavy cannon. Jérôme was taking the risk of killing his own men. But he would kill a thousand Frenchmen with his own hands if it meant taking Hougoumont.
C’était la guerre.

In the garden, Harry Wyndham’s troops still lined the walls, desperately beating back every French assault with musket and blade and fist, while the Dragoons waited and watched from the safety of the treeline.

Seeing, hearing, speaking, even thinking, became harder with each round shot, each shell, each musket ball. They brought not only death and disfigurement but mind-numbing, ear-shattering noise and smoke so foul and dense that a man could
barely keep his eyes open or take a breath without retching.

On both sides of the walls men died. The luckiest were dead before they fell. Many lay helpless and pleading for release from their agony. Some of the French even called on their enemies to shoot them. One heap of bodies grew so high that a fearless Frenchman, ignoring the screams of pain under his feet, clambered up it to get to the top of the wall. He leant over to take aim only to fall back onto the heap with blood pouring from his throat.

And on it went. Somewhere in the valley of smoke, now invisible even from the tower of the chateau, the battle for Hougoumont was being replicated a thousand times. Cannon fired, men died and very soon Buonaparte would unleash his cavalry. Macdonell forced that persistent and intrusive thought from his head. Hougoumont must be held.

The bombardment ended suddenly. One minute round shot was crashing into the walls of the chateau and the farm buildings, the next the guns were silent. Despite the noise of the battle being fought away to their left, for the newest of the guards it was an eerie moment of relief. For the veterans, the silence was a warning.

Miraculously, the gate was still standing. Its thick oak timbers had stood up to French cannon. Now it would have to stand up to another attack by French muskets. The assault was coming.

Macdonell yelled for the barricades to be strengthened, all muskets to be checked and a cup of gin issued to each man. Sergeant Dawson, his face black from powder and smoke, supervised the distribution. Harry Wyndham, in the garden,
went from man to man with a few words of encouragement and warning. For all his lack of experience, he too knew what was coming.

Henry Gooch, his mouth bloody from a French fist, had his men collect more broken timbers and rubble and use them to strengthen the south gate. In the chateau, the farm, the garden and the orchard, some seven hundred exhausted, filthy, parched men made ready. From the top of the tower came the sound of singing, hoarse and rough, but more or less in tune and accompanied by a child’s whistle. ‘Lilliburlero’ again. Joseph Lester was not the only musician at Hougoumont.

The faces of the troops who advanced from the wood were unmarked by powder or smoke and their uniforms were clean. Fresh men – perhaps a full battalion – as many as Macdonell had under his command. In extended line from the western edge of the wood, along the walls of the farm and garden as far as the Dragoons opposite the orchard, officers mounted, infantry poised with muskets primed and loaded, they waited for the order to charge.

Inside the walls, every man stood ready. A musket peeped from each loophole, the fire steps were manned and every roof and window hid three or four of the light companies’ best sharpshooters. Macdonell had instructed them not to expose themselves to the first French volleys and to fire only when the enemy were at the walls.

He did not see or hear the order. Without warning, the French charged forward, firing at windows and loopholes, allowing those behind them to pass, reloading, advancing and firing again. The manoeuvre was well executed and met with
little resistance. Very few of the defenders panicked and fired too soon. The front rank of the French had reached the walls and those behind them were in the middle of the clearing before the Guards opened fire. Their first volley, from muskets carefully cleaned and loaded, found scores of targets. The second found even more, piling yet more dead and wounded onto the heaps outside.

But every musket had to be reloaded and the Guards were tired. Shaking fingers fumbled with cartridge and ball, eyes half-blinded by smoke missed their aim and the French came on. Henry Gooch was beside Macdonell, firing over the corner of the garden wall where it turned towards the house, from where they had a good view of the clearing, the woods and the south gate. ‘Eight hundred, at least, Colonel, do you not think?’ he spluttered through his swollen mouth.

‘I do, Mister Gooch. Eight hundred fully occupied here, so not available elsewhere.’ He took a loaded musket from a private behind them, cocked it, aimed quickly and fired. Another Frenchman died. ‘Subtlety was never Boney’s strong point. Men, men and more men is his motto.’ He took another musket and fired again, wincing from the jolt to his wounded arm. ‘All the more targets for us.’

‘Shall we be reinforced?’ asked Gooch, taking another loaded musket and firing.

Macdonell wiped a sleeve across his eyes. ‘That will depend upon what is happening elsewhere. No doubt General Byng will send them if he can.’ A shot fizzed past his ear. ‘Meanwhile, we keep them out of Hougoumont.’

Such was the weight of fire thundering into them that
Macdonell expected the attackers’ discipline to collapse into chaos. Yet, for all their losses, it did not. There was no sign of panic or retreat. Man after man reached the gate or the walls, fired through the loopholes and windows and climbed up to shoot down into the yard. They hacked at the gate with picks and axes, searching for a weak spot, while in the clearing behind them their officers sat tall in their saddles, inviting shots from the tower and the roofs and diverting fire away from them. Many fell. They were soon replaced and more attackers emerged from the wood. Jérôme had decided that this would be his final, successful attack.

Inside, the Guards too were falling. No longer was there a man to step forward when another fell and there was little time to reload. Where once there had been two men on each step, now, more often than not, there was one. The line was spread alarmingly thin. Macdonell looked to his left, wondering whether he dare leave his position to find out what was happening in the garden and orchard, when the butt of a French musket caught him a blow on the temple. He fell back, scrambled to his feet and smashed the hilt of his sword into the face that appeared over the wall. He put his hand to his temple. There was no blood but he could not focus his eyes and his head felt as if it had been stuffed with straw. He bent double, hands on knees, and breathed slowly. Gradually his vision cleared but the straw did not. Muskets, cannon, howitzers, the cries of dying men and terrified horses close by and far off piled one on top of the other inside his head.

He had a mouthful of water in his canteen. He managed
to open it and tip the contents down his throat. It helped a little. A hand holding a tin cup appeared in front of his face. Unthinkingly, he took it and drank. It was gin. ‘I thought you could do with it, Colonel,’ said a voice. Macdonell tried desperately to focus his eyes. It was Sergeant Dawson. He nodded his thanks and climbed back onto the step. The straw was disappearing. He took a musket and fired at a French head. It exploded in a fountain of blood. That too helped. He could still kill Frenchmen.

A private, black from head to toe and nursing a broken right arm, arrived at the wall. He tapped Macdonell on the shoulder. ‘Beg pardon, Colonel. Captain Wyndham’s compliments and he says he will not be able to keep the French out of the garden much longer. The buggers are in the orchard again.’