The cross-road which I have mentioned as lying along our position, and which was the celebrated “sunken road of Ohain,” runs in some places between banks, at others on the level; it is paved down its centre, like most Belgian roads, with irregular stones, terrible to traverse for any distance, and it undulates gently, as the ridge rises and falls, until it joins the Nivelle chaussée beyond Hougoumont. Hougoumont, surrounded by a quadrangle of tall trees, lies in a hollow in front of our ridge, perhaps halfway between it and the enemy’s line. A Flemish château with a garden laid out in the French style, and a smaller garden full of currant bushes; barns and quaint outbuildings clustering round the château, a brick wall about the height of a tall man, built on lower courses of grey stone, enclosing the garden, and at the east end of it a large open orchard; from the north-west corner, an avenue of ancient poplars winding into the Nivelle road with an abattis of tree trunks there, held by a company of the 51st Light Infantry; between the south wall and the French, a beech wood, through which one could see the corn-clad slopes beyond: and that was Hougoumont on the day of the battle.

The beech wood has been cut down, the apple-trees are sparse and scanty now, the château was burned by the French shells, and the garden is a grassy paddock; but the rest remains, loopholed and pockmarked with balls, a monument to the gallantry of two brave nations. The light companies of the Foot Guards occupied it on the 17th, and all night long they were busy, boring walls, barricading the gateways and erecting platforms from which to pour their fire.

On the high ground behind Hougoumont on our side the 2nd Brigade of British Guards was posted, having Maitland’s Guards on its left; beyond Maitland was Alten’s Infantry and Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians, flanked in their turn by the gallant King’s German Legion, in the pay of England, whose left rested on the Brussels chaussée, behind La Haye Sainte. On the other side of the chaussée was Kempt, then Pack’s Highlanders, the Royal Scots, and 44th Regiment, some more Hanoverians, under Best, the 5th Hanoverians of Vincke, Vandeleur’s Light Dragoons, and Vivian’s Hussar Brigade.

The 2nd Rifles of the German Legion held La Haye Sainte, three companies of our 95th occupying a knoll and sandpit on the other side of the road, and Papelotte was garrisoned by Dutch Belgians, who behaved with the greatest gallantry.

Along the front of this, our first fighting line, the artillery was posted at intervals, and sufficient justice has not been done to the brave gunners, the duke always being unfairly severe on that arm of the service. Our heavy cavalry stood, in hollows behind the line, right and left of the great road in front of the farm of Mont St. Jean, already full of the Quatre Bras wounded. Other troops were in reserve out of sight of the enemy, behind our ridge, ready to advance and fill up any gaps, and we had a strong force in and about Braine l’Alleud, two miles to our right, in case the French should try to turn us there.

Crops, as at Quatre Bras, covered the valley and ridges, and the whole plain undulated in every direction. The battle-field to-day is full of surprises. Sudden dips occur where the land seems flat from a little distance; tongues of ground and barley-covered hillocks rise unexpectedly as you approach them; and it is possible to lose sight of the entire field by a few yards of walking in some directions; so that, flat as Belgium is generally considered, it is not astonishing that the survivors of Waterloo could only speak to events in their own immediate vicinity.

Between nine and ten there was loud cheering, as the Duke of Wellington rode along the line with his Staff. He wore a blue frock coat, white cravat, and buckskin breeches, with tasselled Hessian boots; a short blue cloak with a white lining, and a low cocked hat with the British black cockade, and three smaller ones for Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands. He was mounted on his favourite chestnut, Copenhagen, a grandson of Eclipse, and carried a long field-telescope drawn out for use.

At nine o’clock there was a movement on the opposite side of the valley; columns debouched into the fields right and left of the chaussée, and took up their positions as orderly as if upon parade; glittering files of armoured Cuirassiers trotted through the corn, and formed behind the infantry, lance-pennons fluttered on each flank, and by half-past ten 61,000 French soldiers were drawn up in battle array, their right opposite Papelotte, their centre at La Belle Alliance, their left wing somewhat beyond Hougoumont.

The two greatest living commanders were about to measure swords for the first and only time; and as Napoleon galloped along his line, the music of the French bands was distinctly heard; helmets and weapons were brandished in the air, and a shout of “Vive l’Empereur!” rolled across the field.

Blue-coated infantry formed their first ranks, with batteries of brass cannon dotted here and there; behind stood the heavy cavalry with more guns, supported, on their right, by the gay light horse of the Guard, on the left by the heavy cavalry of the Imperial cohort, and in rear of the centre about the farm of Rossomme, stood the invincible infantry of the Guard, the most renowned body of warriors in Europe.

Napoleon was unwell.

At two in the morning he had been reconnoitring, and his horses were ordered for seven; at ten he still sat in an upper room in an attitude of bodily and mental suffering.

A little later he came down the steep ladder, and as his page, Gudin, was helping him into the saddle he lifted the Imperial elbow too suddenly, and Napoleon pitched over on the offside, nearly coming to the ground.

“Allez” he hissed, “à tous les diables!” and away he started in a great rage.

The page stood watching the cortège with tearful eyes, but when it had gone some hundred yards the ranks of the Staff opened, and Napoleon came riding back alone.

With one hand placed tenderly on the lad’s shoulder he said, very softly, “My child, when you assist a man of my girth to mount, it is necessary to proceed more carefully.” Yet it was of this man that Wellington could say, in after years, “The fellow was no gentleman”!

The page became a general, and fell in a sortie from Paris during the Franco-Prussian war.

There was a lull before the storm, and the duke went to have a final look at Hougoumont, where, in addition to the Guards, he had posted, in the woods and grounds, some Nassauers, Hanoverians, and Luneberg riflemen.

These foreigners were dissatisfied at their position, and as Wellington rode away several bullets came whistling after him! “How can they expect me to win a battle with troops like those?” was his only comment.

About half-past eleven came the First Attack!

One booming cannon echoed dully in the misty Sabbath morning, and a cloud of dark-blue skirmishers ran forward against Hougoumont, firing briskly into the wood.

Puffs of white smoke issued from the trees; here and there a blue-coat turned a somersault and lay still; but the cloud increased, and a loud rattle of musketry was kept up on both sides, which lasted, with short intervals, the whole day.

Our men fell back upon the buildings through the open beech-trees, and in twenty minutes the French supporting columns were pouring up the hill towards the château grounds.

Cleeve’s German battery opened on them, and his first shot killed seventeen men, the guns checking the advance and sending the column, broken and bleeding, down the ridge again.

Our batteries on the right now began; the French artillery replied; Kellermann’s horse batteries joined in, and the infernal concert was in full blast.

The green Lunebergers and the yellow knapsacks of the Hanoverians came helter-skelter back across the orchard, but the Foot Guards went forward at a run and drove the enemy off.

Bull’s howitzers sent a shower of 5½-inch shells over the château into the wood, and as often as the death-dealing globes fell crashing through the branches, so often did the enemy retire in confusion, until Jerome Bonaparte, ex-king of Westphalia, who was in command at Hougoumont, brought up Foy’s Division to help the attack.

Bravely led by their officers, the tall shakoes and square white coat-facings of the line regiments, the dark-blue and black gaiters of the light infantry, pressed through the wood until they reached a stiff quickset hedge, separated by a thin strip of apple orchard from the long south wall, over which peeped the head-gear of our Guardsmen, and in the confusion of smoke and skirmish the bright-red brickwork was mistaken for a line of British—you can see to-day where the French balls crumbled that barrier. But soon discovering their error, the brave fellows struggled through the hedge and rushed forward.

A line of loopholes perforated the wall about three feet from the ground, crossed bayonets protruded viciously from the openings, and a hail of bullets poured forth with such ghastly effect that in half-an-hour there were fifteen hundred of God’s creatures dead and dying on the green grass in the orchard, and still the others came on.

Some got as far as the loopholes, and seized the bayonets; others struck with their gunbutts at the men, who, on platforms behind the wall, fired down over the top, piling up the dead in dreadful heaps—privates and officers, conscripts and veterans.

From time to time our Foot Guards charged over the large orchard at the east end of the enclosed garden, and also at the south-west angle of the farm buildings, where a haystack helped to cover them until the French burned it; and this repulse and attack went on, time and again, until the evening, the enemy gaining no advantage but the beechwood for all their desperate valour.

The rest of our line had remained passive listeners to the firing, except for a little skirmishing here and there, but a hurricane was brewing and about to burst against our left and centre.

La Haye Sainte was a farm, lying like Hougoumont in a hollow; it was on the Brussels road, and was built with barn and stabling round three sides of an oblong yard, the fourth side being a high white wall, with a gate and a piggery alongside the roadway.

Towards the French position stretched a long orchard, a small garden lay behind the house, and a large double door opened from the yard into the fields on the Hougoumont side, half of which door had been burned for bivouac fires the night previous. The 2nd Rifles of the German Legion, dressed like our own in green with slate-coloured pantaloons, held the post, and held it like the heroes of old, three companies in the orchard, two in the building, and one in the garden, Major Baring, who had two horses shot under him, being in command.

The post was not as strong as Hougoumont, all the pioneers having been sent to fortify the latter place, and the “Green Germans” had a very insufficient supply of ammunition; Wellington afterwards admitting that he had neglected to make the most of the position there.

At 1:30 p.m. Marshal Ney had gathered seventy-four guns, mostly 12-pounders, on a ridge very near to La Haye Sainte on the French right of the road, and this was known as the “Great Battery.”

Behind the guns the whole of D’Erlon’s Corps, together with Bachelu’s Division, was massed in columns for the attack twenty regiments, Bachelu being in reserve. Ney sent to the Emperor to tell him all was ready, and with an appalling cannonade on our left and centre, they commenced the Second Attack.

When the smoke which hung about the guns had drifted slowly away across the slopes we could see four massive columns, led by the brave Ney, pouring steadily forward straight for our ridge.

The firing became general as we opened on the advance; men had to shout to be audible to their neighbours; long lanes were ploughed through Picton’s Division, and the balls went tearing through our cavalry in reserve, many of them striking the hospital farm, and some even travelling into the village beyond.

Bylandt’s Dutch Belgians, posted in front of the cross-road, forgot their gallantry at Quatre Bras, and bolted, almost running over the Grenadiers of our 28th, who were restrained with difficulty from firing into them. One ball cut a tall tree into half at the hedgerow above the sandpit, bringing the feathery top down and half-smothering two doctors of the 95th, who had stationed themselves beneath it.

Nearly 24,000 men advanced, with loud cries and the hoarse rolling of drums, in four masses: Durutte against Papelotte, Alix and Marcognet in front of Kempt and Pack, Donzelot upon the devoted Rifles in La Haye Sainte, the shock taking place about two o’clock, and lasting for more than an hour.

Durutte took Papelotte, but was driven out again; Alix and Marcognet breasted the rise, and gained the ridge under a murderous discharge; the smell of trampled corn mingling with the powder smoke as the Great Battery ceased firing lest it should kill its comrades, and with shouts of “Vive l’Empereur!” the two columns hurled themselves against the steel barrier of bayonets on the hedge-lined bank above them.

Hand to hand, no quarter asked or given, veteran and conscript came on yelling like mad, Picton’s Division meeting them in line.

Some of Marcognet’s fellows crossed the Wavre road and blazed into the 92nd; but our men advanced, after a withering volley, and, jumping into the cross-road, went at them with a will. Cameron Highlanders, 32nd and 28th, Scots Royals, and Black Watch, Gordons and 44th, with colours waving and courage high, over the causeway they rushed, into the wheat and barley.

“Charge, charge! Hurrah!” cried Picton, his little black eyes sparkling, his florid complexion redder with excitement—a ball struck his right temple, he fell dead from his horse, and his men passed over him driving the foe down hill.

A mounted French officer had his horse shot, and getting to his feet seized the regimental colour of the 32nd, which was nearly new. Belcher, who carried it, grasped the silk and the Frenchman groped for his sabre hilt, but Colour-sergeant Switzer thrust a pike at his breast. “Save the brave fellow!” was the cry, but it came too late; a private, named Lacy, fired point blank into him, and he fell lifeless.

Ney stood in the road beyond La Haye Sainte watching Donzelot’s attack on the farm, where the “Green Germans” were forced, after a struggle, out of the long orchard into the buildings, and simultaneously a mass of Cuirassiers tore past the Hougoumont side and rode at the ridge.

Our Household Cavalry and Ponsonby’s Heavies had walked on foot to the height overlooking the struggle; the trumpets rang out “Mount,” and swinging into their saddles they swooped down into the thick of it. With a clatter across the causeway, and the muffled thunder of hoofs on the ground beyond it, the scarlet-coated Life Guards, wearing no armour then, and mounted on black horses, dashed past the Wellington tree into the potato field, with the Blues and King’s Dragoon Guards, swinging, slashing, stirrup to stirrup, to meet Kellermann’s troopers and Ordoner’s Cuirassiers. There was the snort of eager horses, the creaking of leather, the clash of sword on steel cuirass, the yell of passion and the scream of agony; a seething mass of fighting-men and steeds, glinting and gleaming, swaying this way and that way, but always onward, jostling down the hill.

The 1st Lifes got jammed in the road beyond the farm with a body of Cuirassiers, on the spot where Ney had just before been standing, voltigeurs firing into them, on friend and foe alike!

Their Colonel, Ferner, led eleven charges, although badly wounded by sabre and lance.

The King’s Dragoons jumped their horses over a barrier of trees which our Rifles had built across the causeway and went thundering along that way, while the Blues were reaping a harvest of glory in another direction, and the 2nd Life Guards charged to the left for a great distance beyond the sandpit alongside the farm, where Corporal Shaw met his fate after slaying nine of the enemy singlehanded.

After the battle men remembered this mighty swordsman, and told in solemn voices his deeds of derring-do. One cuirassier sat, out of the mêlée, coolly loading his carbine and picking off our troopers, and it is believed he gave Shaw his mortal hurt.

A survivor narrated how, exhausted at nightfall, he had lain down on a dung-heap, when Shaw crawled beside him, bleeding from many wounds. In the morning the life-guardsman was still there, his head resting on his arm as if asleep, but it was the sleep which knows no waking.

Ponsonby’s Union Brigade was meanwhile making its immortal onslaught, more towards Papelotte, the ground they went over being billowy, and the troops before them infantry of the line.

The Royals gave a ringing cheer; “Scotland for ever!” was the war-cry of the Greys; and the Inniskillings went in with an Irish howl.

As they passed the 92nd, many of the Highlanders caught hold of their stirrup-leathers and charged down with them; the very ground seemed trembling under the iron hoofs; Marcognet and Alix were broken and trampled, and in three minutes more than 2,000 prisoners were wending their disconsolate way to the rear.

“Those beautiful grey horses!” said Napoleon, as he watched the charge.

Did he see that struggle round the Eagle of his 45th, I wonder—that famous “Battle for the Standard” which Ansdell has painted so well?

What says Sergeant Ewart, the hero of the incident? “It was in the charge I took the Eagle from the enemy. He and I had a hard contest for it. He made a thrust at my groin; I parried it off, and cut him down through the head. After this a lancer came at me; I threw the lance off by my right side, and cut him through the chin and upwards through the teeth. Next a foot-soldier fired at me, and then charged me with his bayonet, which I also had the good luck to parry, and then I cut him down through the head. Thus ended the contest.”

Captain Clarke and Corporal Styles, of the Royals, took an Eagle from the 105th between them—a glorious gilded thing, embroidered with the names of Jéna, Eylau, Eckmühl, Essling, and Wagram—the gallant captain losing the tip of his nose in the struggle.

A man of the Inniskillings named Penfold claimed to have taken that colour; but his story is vague, and I incline to think that a blue silk camp-colour of the 105th, now at Abbotsford, was the one that Penfold seized and afterwards lost in the fray.

Sir William Ponsonby led the charge on a restive bay hack, and was killed; while some of the Greys got as far as the Great Battery, disabling many of the guns, and getting slain in the end.

Part of the 28th lost its head, and charged with the brigade; Lieutenant Deares of that regiment being taken prisoner, stripped of his clothes, rejoining at night in nothing but shirt and trousers.

Tathwell, of the Blues, tore off a colour, but his horse was shot and he lost it; and the greater part of the two brigades rode along the battery until heavy bodies of Cuirassiers and Lancers came to drive them back.

Vandeleur charged to their relief with his Light Dragoons—the 12th with bright yellow lancer facings, the 16th with scarlet, the buff 11th remaining in reserve.

“Squadrons, right half-wheel! Charge!” and the sabres of our light horsemen were soon busy in the valley below. The ground was very soft, for a month after the battle some of the holes made by horses’ feet were measured, and found to be eighteen inches deep, and in speaking of artillery movements it must be remembered that the guns were at times up to the axle in clay.

The heavy cavalry regained our position; but so much had they suffered that, later in the day, when they were drawn up in line to show a bold front, there were only fifty of them; Somerset, who led the “Households,” losing his hat, and wearing the helmet of a life-guardsman, with its red and blue worsted crest, until nightfall.

The attack had failed, and there was a long pause, broken only by the firing at Hougoumont and some feeble attempts on La Haye Sainte; but it was now the turn of our troops in the centre, from the chaussée to the back of the château; and a terrible time they had!

A renewal of the cannonade—a forming of our regiments into squares and oblongs—and then the grandest cavalry affair in history, as forty squadrons of Cuirassiers and Dragoons crossed from the French right in beautiful order, wheeled up until they almost filled the space from Hougoumont to La Haye Sainte, and, about four o’clock, put spurs to their horses and began the Third Attack!

A forest of sword-blades, an undulating sea of helmets, a roar of mighty shouting as they came through the yet untrampled grain.

Wave after wave, far as the eye could scan, now glinting with thousands of bright points as the sullen sun shone for a moment upon them, now grey and sombre as the clouds closed together again. Nearer! nearer! nearer! Men clutched their muskets tighter and breathed hard; gunners rammed home and hastened to re-load before the smoke had drifted from the cannon.

Suddenly they left their guns, and ran to the infantry for protection as the sea burst upon us, and our ridge became alive with furious horsemen, surging and foaming round and round the squares. There were many who thought that all was over, but the little clumps of scarlet fringed with steel were impenetrable.

In vain the moustached troopers cut desperately at the bayonets; in vain they rode up and fired their pistols into the faces of our lads. For three-quarters of an hour they expended their strength in a hopeless task; and when our fresh cavalry from Dörnberg’s and Grant’s Brigades charged them, they went down the slope again, leaving the ground dotted with dead and dying.

A moment’s respite to re-form in the hollows below, and back they came once more, in the face of a fearful fire from our artillery, whose guns were double-shotted—some loaded with scattering grape and canister. Lanes, sickening to behold, were torn through the squadrons; but Milhaud’s men were not to be daunted, and the same strange scene was repeated many times.

A small body of Cuirassiers that had surrendered was being escorted to the rear by a weak party of the 7th Hussars, when they made a bold dash for liberty along the Nivelle road, stampeding, ventre à terre, until they reached the abattis at the end of the Hougoumont avenue.

Here they met Ross’s company of the 51st, who killed eight men and twelve horses, the rest—about sixty—surrendering again.

One artilleryman was seen, under his gun, dodging a French trooper, who tried to reach him with his long sword.

After some moments the cuirassier’s horse was shot, and the gunner, sallying out, hit him over the head with his rammer, and packed him off to the rear with a parting kick.

The ridge was once more cleared, and Mercer’s battery brought into the front line. The whole field was now littered with corpses and accoutrements. Gaily-dressed trumpeters, and officers on whose breasts hung crosses of the Legion of Honour, lay bleeding in the barley among hundreds of dead and wounded horses. Here a lancer in green and light blue, there a heap of cuirassiers of the 1st Regiment, mown down by grape shot; yonder a chasseur-à-cheval, propped against his charger, while swords and cuirasses were almost as numerous as the stalks of corn.

All the slope was torn and trampled; flies were busy in the now loathsome hollows; there was constant firing still at Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, when the trumpets sounded again, and with seventy-seven squadrons, including the cavalry of the Guard, France returned to the charge. Every arm of the mounted service was represented in this attack, the beauty and brilliancy of the uniforms baffling description. Carabiniers, white-coated, with brass cuirasses and red-crested helmets; Lancers, Dragoons, and Chasseurs in green, with facings of every hue; the Red Lancers of the Guard, clad in scarlet from head to heel, and Napoleon’s own favourite Chasseurs-à-cheval, with hussar caps and red pelisses, richly braided with orange lace; tall bearskinned Horse Grenadiers, with white facings to their blue coats; the Cuirassiers, dark and sombre looking; the high felt shakoes of the Hussars—it was as though a flower garden in all its summer dress were moving at a slow trot upon us, heralded by the thunder of hell from the batteries behind it.

When the thunder stopped, which it always did as the leading files reached the crest of the ridge, our men could hear in the momentary intervals of their own firing the jingling of bits and scabbards, and the heavy breathing of the horses. Mounted skirmishers came close to the batteries and commenced firing at the gunners, who were literally dripping with perspiration from the exertions they made. One fellow took several pot-shots at Captain Mercer, who was coolly walking his horse backwards and forwards along a bank to set an example to his men. He missed each time, and grinned grimly as he reloaded, but as the head of the squadrons closed up the skirmishers vanished and were succeeded by the rush which threatened death to every soul on the plateau. Wellington’s orders were to retire into the squares and leave the batteries, but Mercer’s men stuck to their guns, repulsing three charges of the Horse Grenadiers, and dealing such slaughter that the position of “G Troop” was known next day by the enormous heap of slain lying before it, visible from a considerable distance.

The carnage on the slope was shocking—the oldest soldiers had seen nothing like it: men and horses lay piled one on another, five and six in a heap, every fresh discharge adding to the ghastly pyramid. The 1st Cuirassiers numbered 300 of the Legion of Honour in its ranks—it lost 117, including two lieutenants and the brave Captain Poinsot, page to the Emperor in 1807, wounded at Moscow and Brienne. One officer, finding the fire from a particular gun playing havoc with his men, rode straight at it and was blown to atoms.

The horses during the battle suffered cruelly, and some of the details are heartrending: the charger of a very stout officer with the Duke’s staff, probably Müffling, was seen to rear for some time without the rider being able to bring it down—its front legs had been both shot off. Another trooper’s horse was seen next morning sitting on its tail, its hind legs gone; and one poor beast ran for sympathy to six guns in succession, and was driven off from each with exclamations of horror until it reached “G Troop,” where they mercifully killed it: the whole of its face below the great brown pleading eyes had been carried away by a round shot!

After a repulse and a re-attack, the remnant of the seventy-seven squadrons reeled back to their own lines: the cavalry of France, magnificent, irresistible, brave as lions, and nobly led, had shattered itself without result, and the third great attempt had failed!

All the afternoon there had been great doings at Hougoumont. About one o’clock Colonel Hepburn had relieved Saltoun in the large orchard with a battalion of the 3rd—now the Scots Guards—and the combat on that side became a long succession of advances with the bayonet to the front hedge and retirings into a green dry ditch, which is known to us as the “friendly hollow-way.” When our men fell back, a terrific fire from the short east wall would stagger the foe, and the Scots, having formed again, would scramble out of the hollow and clear the orchard of all but the dead.

Along the terrible south wall a staff-officer, who had been through all the Peninsula battles, afterwards said that the slain lay thicker than he had ever seen them elsewhere.

The château and barns were now burning furiously, fired by Haxo’s howitzers at Napoleon’s orders, and many of our wounded perished in the flames; some officers’ horses tore out of the barn, galloped madly round the yard, and rushed into the fire again to be destroyed.

Twice the enemy got in: once by a little door in the west wall, through which they never got out alive; and the second time, when our Guardsmen had sallied out into the lane to drive off a body of infantry, about fifty French entered on their heels through the north gate. Then, by main strength of arm, Colonel Macdonell, Sergeant Graham, and three or four more, shut and barred the wooden gate in the faces of the others, and those inside were all shot down.

A brave fellow climbed on to the beam that crossed the gateway; but Graham fired, and he dropped with a scream on to the heads of his comrades outside the wall.

The fire stopped at the door of the château chapel, which was full of wounded, and a wooden figure of our Saviour had the feet nibbled by the flames, at which the superstitious marvel greatly to this day.

Columns of smoke hung over everything. A gallant artillery driver rushed his horses to the wall, and flung a barrel of welcome cartridges over into the yard. At the corner, before the gardener’s house, Baron de Cubières lay wounded under his horse; afterwards, when Governor of Ancona, he expressed himself very grateful that we had not fired on him!

Crawford of the 3rd Guards was killed in the kitchen garden, Blackman of the Coldstreams died in the orchard; but the attack and repulse grew gradually weaker, as both sides tired of the hideous slaughter.

Meanwhile, a serious trouble which had been menacing the Emperor on his right flank for some time at last grew terribly imminent.

The Prussians were coming in spite of Grouchy, who had been sent in their pursuit.

They should have arrived about one o’clock; but, thanks to the bad roads, a fire in the town of Wavre, which had to be extinguished before the ammunition-waggons could be got through, and some hesitation on the part of Gneisenau, Blücher’s Chief of Staff, who doubted Wellington’s good faith, it was half-past four when part of Bülow’s corps came out of the woods at St. Lambert and confirmed Napoleon’s previously awakened fears.

In the hazy weather they thought it was Grouchy, and a false report was afterwards sent through the French army to cheer the wearied men; but the Emperor and Soult knew otherwise, and the line of battle was weakened by a strong force being detached to meet the new arrivals.

There was no time to be lost; drums rolled and trumpets sounded again, and the last remnants of the cavalry had not regained their position when the Fourth Grand Attack began with a fury that even exceeded the others.

While fresh bodies of horse and foot advanced up the ridge, a most determined rush was made on La Haye Sainte. Baring had been reinforced, it is true; but, although he sent time after time for more ammunition, not a single cartridge was forthcoming!

A feeble excuse has been made that there were no means of getting it into the building; but a large door and several windows faced our line at the back of the house then, as now. They may still be seen by the visitor to Waterloo.

A horde of French infantry flung themselves on the buildings, setting the barn on fire, and besieging the broken gateway.

While the brave Germans filled their camp-kettles from the pond and extinguished the flames, others, with their bayonets only, kept the door leading into the field. Seventeen corpses they piled up there in a few minutes, one gallant fellow defending a breach with a brick torn from the wall! The individual acts of heroism on authentic record would fill many pages: but, without ammunition, they were at a fearful disadvantage.

The voltigeurs climbed on to the roof of the stable, and shot them down at their ease: the half barn-door is preserved to the present day, with eighty bullet-holes in it! Alten sent the brave Christian Ompteda to their aid, if practicable, with the 5th Battalion. He pointed to an overwhelming force; but the irrepressible Orange repeated Alten’s suggestion in a tone that brooked no delay, and Ompteda went down with his 5th Battalion, and they died, almost to a man!

Baring dismounted to pick up his cap, knocked off by a shot; four balls had lodged in the cloak rolled on his saddle-bow, and a fifth then pierced the saddle itself, while the Scotch Lieutenant Græme, sitting on the rafters of the piggery, in which a calf was lowing, raised his shako to cheer his men, and his right hand was taken off at the wrist. He was only eighteen.

It was hopeless. “If I receive no cartridges,” said Baring in his last appeal, “I not only must, but will abandon the post!” And very soon those neglected heroes retreated slowly through the house and out through the garden beyond, the French, bursting into the yard, chasing the remnant round and round and bayoneting them on the dungheaps.

A roar of cheering rang above the battle. At last they were victorious, and the French had taken La Haye Sainte.

Without a moment’s hesitation their conquest was turned to the best possible advantage. Smart red-braided Horse Artillery galloped down the causeway, dragging their guns to the knoll above the sandpit, from which our 95th had been driven, and, unlimbering, opened fire at sixty yards range on to our line.

Skirmishers filled the hedgerows and the farm buildings. The Great Battery renewed its work of death, and in a few moments there was a serious gap in the centre of our position.

Lambert’s brigade had been brought up before this, and suffered terribly.

The 27th, which had lain down and slept soundly behind Mont St. Jean until after three o’clock, lost 478 out of 698 in its new quarters; and the 40th thirteen officers and 180 rank and file, one round shot taking off the head of Captain Fisher and killing twenty-five men.

Ompteda’s brigade mustered a mere handful, Kielmansegge was almost destroyed, Halkett had two weak squares, one of his regiments being very shaky indeed, and, altogether, things were unpleasant when the Duke came up with reinforcements to patch our front as best he could.

Far off on our right Chassé’s Dutch Belgians had arrived, shouting and singing, from Braine l’Alleud, very drunk, narrowly escaping a volley from us, as they wore the French uniform; and at this time, by reason of the bolting of Hake’s Cumberland Hussars and some of our supports, with the enormous losses from the six hours of carnage, the British affairs were in bad case.

Halkett’s 30th and 73rd in square had been charged no less than eleven times: the Duke pointed to a scarlet mass in front through the smoke, and inquired what regiment it was. It was the dead and wounded of those two corps, huddled together where they had fallen.

The green-faced 73rd was at one time commanded by Lieutenant Stewart, all the other officers having been killed or wounded; and at half-past seven the colours of both regiments were sent to the rear.

The 2nd Line Battalion of the German Legion went into action with 300 men, but mustered only six officers and thirty-six privates after the battle; but Blücher was now nearing the French right rear with nearly 52,000 troops and 104 guns, and the Emperor was obliged to send General Duhesme with eight battalions of the young Guard down into the straggling village of Planchenoit to help to check them.

He had been at La Belle Alliance all day, and Prussian shot were now falling about him.

Marshal Ney sent for more infantry to renew the attack. “Où voulez vous que j’en prenne: voulez vous que j’en fasse?” was the Emperor’s impatient reply—“Where can I get them: do you wish me to make them?”

The long June day was drawing into evening, and shadows began to lengthen across the fields. Wellington, who had always been seen where the fire was hottest, rode with a calm, inscrutable face, followed by a sadly diminished staff, his eagle eye taking note of the strength and weakness of our line.

The Hussars had been moved in rear of the centre; and Adams’ Brigade took position immediately behind the ridge. In front of the clover field where the 52nd stood in square, a pretty little tortoiseshell kitten, which had been frightened out of Hougoumont by the firing, lay dead—a strange feature in the scene of destruction.

The men were growing accustomed to the hideous sights and sounds around them, and became impatient at the inactivity which doomed them to endure without reprisal. Suddenly the brass guns blazed forth once more upon us; the pas de charge was rolling from a thousand drums; a serried line was seen advancing along our entire front, and, led by the Emperor himself, on his grey charger Marie, his famous redingote gris open and showing the well-known dark-green chasseur coat, the Grenadiers of the Guard marched in solid columns into the valley.

Two winding serpents of determined men; ten battalions in tall black bearskins, white facings and dark-blue pantaloons—that was their dress at Waterloo—with Friant and Morand, Petit, whom Napoleon had kissed at Fontainebleau, Poret de Morvan, and old Cambronne. The élite of the French army, the Grenadiers and Chasseurs of the Old and Middle Guard, marching sternly to victory or death. Marcognet, Alix, and Donzelot, with their remnants, against our reeling left; Reille, Foy, and Jérôme renewing on Hougoumont—cavalry in the gaps and spaces—a simultaneous, mighty LAST ATTACK!

The yet unbroken Imperial Guard set their faces towards the spot where Maitland’s, Adams’ and Byng’s redcoats looked to their priming and closed their ranks: had Napoleon hurled them against the cross road behind La Haye Sainte, the story of Waterloo had been written differently.

He missed his chance; he threw away his final hope. The greatest of his many mistakes was committed, and, handing over the leadership to Ney, he remained on a hillock above the farm, and watched the downfall of France and the death-blow of his empire! For the last time in this world their Emperor addressed them, pointing towards the heights with a gesture all could understand.

“Déployez les aigles. En avant! Vive l’Empereur!” and with a great shout they quickened their pace, passing proudly, unheeding, over the bodies of those comrades who had gone before.

Red tongues of flame burst from the smoke of our guns; whiz came the fiery rockets, darting into their ranks, scorching, blinding, and burning in their course; humming shells dropped among them with terrible destruction; but the Old Guard pressed on, and began to mount the ridge.

Ney’s horse fell—the fifth killed under him that day, and the “bravest of the brave,” went forward on foot. Alas, would that it had been to death!

Our Guards were lying down to avoid the hurricane from the French artillery. A shell dropped in one of the squares, and Colonel Colquitt, picking it up, fizzing and fuming, walked to the edge and flung it outside to burst harmlessly. Another officer, mortally wounded, said faintly:

“I should like to see the colours of the regiment again before I quit them for ever”: they were brought and waved round his body, and with a smile, he was carried away, to die.

It was men like those that the oncoming columns had to face, and batteries as famous as those of Bull and Bolton, of Norman Ramsay, Whinyates, and Webber Smith, with guns double shotted and served as on parade; no need to sight so carefully, for the moving target is a wide one, and they hit in every time!

Now the skirmishers run out, shouting and firing as before, and when they have said their say, they fall back leaving all clear for the others; but the columns seem to get no nearer, though they are marching steadily; front rank after front rank is blown to shreds—that is why they appear stationary!

The gunners have done their work; the guns recoil, and are left there: it is the turn of the infantry now, and the time has come for that historic signal, “Up, Guards, and at ’em!” which in reality was never said.

But whatever the word was, they do “up,” and they do “at ’em”; and again it is bayonet to bayonet, and man to man.

One Welsh giant, named Hughes, six feet seven inches in height, is seen to knock over a dozen of the Old Guard single handed; the redcoats and the blue-coats mingle for a moment and the blue-coats melt away.

The second column, a little behind the other, is in good order: it has suffered less from the cannonade, and is full of fire and fury; but so also are our 52nd lads, who advance down the slope with three tremendous cheers.

Colborne is leading, and when they get abreast of the column he cries—

“Halt! Mark time!”

The men touch in to their left, and regain their dressing; Colborne’s horse is shot, and he comes forward wiping his mouth with a white handkerchief, still wearing Ensign Leeke’s blue boat-cloak.

“Right shoulders forward!”

The regiment swings round, and, four deep, faces the column’s flank two hundred yards away.

“Forward, 52nd—charge!” and the Foot Guards, who are back on the ridge again, behold a noble spectacle.