Chapter XIII: At Waterloo (2)

Throughout the march, keeping their position at a little distance from the squares of the Grenadiers, rode the Horse-Grenadiers and the Mounted Chasseurs of the Guard. One of the finest displays of soldierly endurance ever made, perhaps, was that given by the Horse-Grenadiers of the Guard as the magnificent regiment left the field, “moving at a walk, in close columns and in perfect order; as if disdaining to allow itself to be contaminated by the confusion that prevailed around it.” So describes a British officer who saw them ride away. They beat off all attacks and kept steadily and compactly together. “They literally walked from the field in the most orderly manner, moving majestically along, with their Eagle in their midst, as though merely marching to take up their ground for a field-day.” This, further, is what a British officer of Light Dragoons, who came up with them in the pursuit, says of their heroic demeanour: “Seeing the men of our brigade approach, they halted, formed line, and fired a volley--a rare thing for dragoons--and waited a few minutes, as much as to say, ‘We are ready to receive your charge if you are so disposed’; then finding we did not advance, they again continued their slow retreat.”

[Sidenote: A FAMOUS EAGLE NOW IN FRANCE]

The Eagle of the Horse-Grenadiers has disappeared since Waterloo: that of the Mounted Chasseurs of the Guard is in existence, in France, in the custody of a member of the Bonaparte family. It was preserved by General Lefebvre-Desnouettes, Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, who commanded the Chasseurs at Waterloo. Carried in safety to France, the Eagle was then taken to America, when the General, on whose head a price had been placed, escaped across the Atlantic in the autumn of 1815. He presented it later to Joseph Bonaparte, in the possession of whose representatives the Eagle is now. It still bears attached to the staff the green silk guidon-shaped flag, inscribed “Chasseurs de la Garde,” and embroidered with gold and silver laurel-leaves, which it bore at Waterloo.

Napoleon quitted the square of Grenadiers about two miles from Jemmapes. By that time the Prussians had ceased their attacks on the Guard for easier prey elsewhere. He rode on at a little distance ahead; the battalions of the Guard at the same time re-forming into columns of march. They kept with the Emperor until the neighbourhood of Jemmapes was reached. There Napoleon and Soult and the others quitted the road, betaking themselves across the fields to make their way as best they could to Charleroi, whence Napoleon was able to continue his flight in a post-chaise.

Yet another of the Waterloo Eagles of the Guard with a story to be told of it was that of the 2nd Chasseurs--one of the Eagles that have now disappeared. How the Eagle was saved from capture, and finally brought through to safety, recalls a remarkable and dramatic incident of the battle.

The 2nd Chasseurs was one of the twelve battalions of the Young Guard detached by Napoleon late in the afternoon to assist General Lobau and the Sixth Army Corps to keep off the Prussian flank attack. Between them they saved the army from an even worse catastrophe than that which actually befell Napoleon at Waterloo--from having to surrender. For nearly an hour after the rout had become general, the Sixth Corps, and the battalions of the Young Guard assisting it, by their heroic resistance, prevented the Prussians from breaking in on the only line of retreat open to the defeated army, and enabled Napoleon to get clear away.

[Sidenote: TO SAVE THE REST OF THE ARMY]

“Lobau,” to quote the words of a modern military writer, “recognised to the full that he alone interposed between the Prussians and the French line of retreat. If he failed, retreat would be cut off, and the army taken in rear as well as in front and flank; not a man would get away. The fate of the Army, the Emperor, of France, rested on Lobau at the supreme moment, and splendidly he did his duty. Dusk had given way to dark, only illuminated by the blazing ruins of Planchenoit, before Lobau retired, but by that time the rear of the flying army had cleared the point of peril, and comparative safety was assured. Still steady, and in good order, he took post on the high-road to close the line of flight and block pursuit, and the gallant remnant of the Sixth Corps and the Young Guard had to bear the full fury of the combined advance of the enemy. Nothing at Waterloo can surpass for coolness, courage, and determination the heroic resistance of Lobau.”

It was in the village of Planchenoit that the 2nd Chasseurs fought side by side with the other battalions of the Guard in that quarter under the leadership of General Pelet, to whom Napoleon had specially entrusted the defence of the post. Planchenoit was defended foot by foot at the point of the bayonet against ever-increasing numbers of the Prussians. The 2nd Chasseurs were the last troops of all to quit, after contesting the village house by house, cottage by cottage, fighting the Prussians man to man among the bushes and walls of the gardens, and finally in the churchyard, where they made their last stand at bay, desperately combating among the tombstones. Fresh Prussians kept coming up to join in the attack, but the 2nd Chasseurs, their Eagle defiantly displayed in the midst of the battling throng, resisted stubbornly. When at the last they drew off, the whole of Planchenoit was a mass of flames, blazing from end to end.

There remained a rough half-mile of open ground before they could get to the Charleroi road--the line of retreat along which, by that time, a large proportion of the fugitives from the main army had got away. The 2nd Chasseurs, in rear of all, as they left their last shelter in Planchenoit and were beyond the churchyard walls, were swept down on by a furious rush of Prussian cavalry, and half the regiment was cut to pieces. The moon was rising by that time, and the Prussians had sufficient light for their deadly work.

The survivors, broken up, and thrown in irremediable disorder, could after that only run for their lives. But they still bore their Eagle among them. It was draped under a black cloth. Somebody, in some house in the village, as they were falling back to the churchyard, had, it would appear, caught up a strip of crape or black cloth, and hastily wrapped it round the Eagle to conceal it in that way from hostile eyes. The Eagle-bearer refused to break the Eagle from the staff, and hide it under his coat, as others had done elsewhere with other Eagles.

With the Eagle so covered, a small party of devoted soldiers were accompanying their standard as the survivors of the Prussian charge hastened towards the Charleroi road, when there came yet another attack from the Prussian horse, who charged among them and trampled them down as the troopers slashed mercilessly at the fugitives. At that moment the Eagle and its guardians found themselves near the General. They were isolated and cut off in the midst of the wild _mêlée_. Pelet caught sight of them, desperately striving to protect the Eagle-bearer, who was frantically clutching at the Eagle-staff as he held on to it and tried to get through.

[Sidenote: “SAVE YOUR EAGLE OR DIE ROUND IT!”]

Pelet made for the group, shouting at the top of his voice: “Rally, Chasseurs! Rally on me! Save your Eagle or die round it!” (“A moi, Chasseurs! A moi! Sauvons l’Aigle ou mourons autour d’elle!”)

In the midst of the frenzied tumult his cry for help was somehow heard by the men ahead. They turned back in their flight and fought their way to the threatened Eagle. Others pressed round to join them, until by degrees was formed a compact body between two and three hundred in number, who with their bayonets kept the cavalry back as they fought their way towards the high-road step by step.

More than once they had to halt and face about, as the Prussian horsemen in their repeated attempts to capture the Eagle circled round them, and dashed in at them again and again, but, “forming what is usually termed a rallying square, and lowering their bayonets, they succeeded in repulsing the charges of the cavalry.” At one point in the retreat “some guns were brought to bear upon them, and subsequently a brisk fire of musketry; but notwithstanding the awful sacrifice which was thus offered up in defence of their precious charge, they succeeded in reaching the main line of retreat, and saved alike the Eagle and the Honour of the Regiment.”

* * * * *

The Eagles of the Guard all came safely through the turmoil and horrors of the night of the rout after Waterloo. And--it seems incredible, but the fact is vouched for by several officers--so did the other Eagles of the army. All at Waterloo, it is declared, were brought back to France, except the two taken from the ill-fated 45th and the 105th of the Line by the Scots Greys and the Royals. Those two only remained as trophies in the hands of the victors. General Charras, whose good faith we have no right to impugn, declares the fact in explicit language, and another officer relates how, on the day after the battle, when the rallied remains of the army assembled at Phillippeville and Maubeuge, “the soldiers wept tears of joy at learning how many of their Eagles had been saved.”

[Sidenote: “MAKE WAY FOR THE EAGLE!”]

Says General Charras, describing how the Eagles were saved that night: “Two standards had been lost on the battlefield. There was none other lost. In the crowd of disbanded horsemen and foot-soldiers, marching and running pell-mell, some still armed, others having thrown away or broken their sabres and guns under the impulse of rage, of despair, of terror, there were to be seen, by the pale light of the moon, little groups of officers of every grade, and of soldiers, spontaneously collected round the standard of each regiment, and advancing sabre in hand, bayonet on the gun, resolute and imperturbable in the midst of the general disorder. ‘Place au drapeau!’ cried they when the rout arrested their march, and this cry always sufficed to cause the very men who had become deaf to every word of command and to all discipline to stand aside before them and open a passage. They had often to endure peril, they had often to repulse the enemy’s attacks, but they saved their conquered flags from the attempts and hands of the conqueror.”

Grouchy also saved all his Eagles--although one had its adventures in the attack on Wavre, and was nearly lost to the Prussians. The story this time is not exactly creditable to some of those concerned; but the regiment in question, it must be said, had but few old soldiers in its ranks, having been made up almost entirely of recently levied and half-trained conscripts. Also, it had just previously been very roughly handled by the Prussians on the battlefield of Ligny. There, indeed, it had been charged by cavalry, and had suffered severely. The unfortunate regiment was the 70th of the Line.

In Grouchy’s fighting at Wavre they were in Vandamme’s Division, which had orders to carry the bridge over the Dyle and storm the town, held by the Prussians in considerable force. To give the 70th a chance of getting their revenge for Ligny, and winning back the old good name of the regiment, Vandamme specially chose them for the post of honour in the attack; appointing the 70th to lead the van in the preliminary storming of the bridge. They led the attack, dashing forward bravely enough at the outset, and got halfway across. Then they stopped short, their ranks decimated by the furious fire with which the Prussians received them from the houses on the opposite bank, hesitated, went on a few paces, stopped again, and finally ran back in panic.

[Sidenote: SAVED BY ANOTHER REGIMENT]

The sight of the sudden rout maddened their leader, Colonel Maury. Stooping from his charger, he snatched hold of the Eagle from its bearer, and held it up before the men. “What! you scoundrels! You dishonoured me two days ago; you are again disgracing me to-day! Forward! Follow me!” (“Comment, canaille! Vous m’avez deshonoré avant-hier, et vous recidiviez aujourdhui! En avant! Suivez moi!”) Brandishing the Eagle the colonel turned his horse to ride back across the bridge. The drums beat the charge: the regiment followed. But all was to no purpose. As fate willed it, the gallant colonel fell, shot dead before he could get across, and at the sight of his fall panic again seized the regiment. They ran wildly back again, leaving the dead colonel’s body and the Eagle lying halfway across the bridge. The Eagle was rescued and brought back by the men of another regiment. Had it not been for the sudden rush forward of the leading company of the 22nd of the Line, the regiment supporting the 70th in the attack, the Eagle would have been taken. Several Prussian soldiers had indeed already run forward to pick it up, and their leader was in the act of doing so when the foremost of the rescuers arrived, beat back the Prussians, and recovered the fallen Eagle.

The failure of this one regiment at Wavre is the only recorded instance of bad behaviour before the enemy in the Waterloo campaign. And for it too, in view of the composition of the regiment in question, some allowance may surely be made.

THE EAGLES ANNOUNCE VICTORY TO LONDON

The last of the four episodes is supplemental: the story of how Wellington’s Eagle-trophies themselves first announced Waterloo to London.

The two Eagles were sent to England immediately after the battle, together with Wellington’s Waterloo despatch, by Major the Hon. Henry Percy, of the 11th Light Dragoons, who was almost the only member of Wellington’s staff who went through the battle unwounded. He arrived in London, displaying the Eagles from his post-chaise as he travelled through the streets, on the stroke of eleven o’clock on the night of Wednesday, June 21.

Up to then not a word had come from Wellington: not a word of reliable news as to what had happened had reached England. Rumours of an early check to the French had arrived, from unofficial sources, during the previous day, but nothing more had been heard, and all London was on tenterhooks of suspense.

[Sidenote: THE FIRST RUMOURS IN LONDON]

The battle was fought on Sunday the 18th. But no news of it, or in regard to it, of any kind reached England during either Monday or Tuesday. There was no intelligence from the seat of war at all. On the Wednesday morning the _Times_ announced vaguely that Napoleon had struck the first blow unsuccessfully. A Mr. Sutton, of Colchester, it said, the owner of packet-boats running between Harwich and Ostend, had forwarded a message to the effect that there had been fighting on the 15th and 16th and skirmishing on the 17th, and that a fresh battle was beginning on the morning of the 18th. His informant at Brussels had sent that news. There was no more news until Wednesday afternoon, when the _Sun_ came out with a special edition stating that the Government had received no despatches, but that “a gentleman who left Ghent on Monday, and two others from Brussels, brought word that Sunday’s battle had been successful.” All London was in the streets until between ten and eleven that night, in a state of eager expectation; but repeated inquiries at the Horse Guards, at the War Office, and at the Mansion House only met with the answer--“No news yet.”

It was just as the crowds were dispersing, tired of waiting, and taking it as certain that nothing could be known until the morning, as the clocks were on the stroke of eleven, that Major Percy arrived in London.

“He left the Duchess of Richmond’s ball,” says his niece, Lady Bagot, in whose words the story may best be told, “on the night before the battle, and had no time to change his dress, or even his shoes, before going into action. When he received orders to go to England with the despatches, he posted to Antwerp, and there took the first sailing boat he could find to convey him to Dover, where he landed in the afternoon. He found that a report of the victory had preceded him there. The Rothschilds had chartered a fast sloop to lie off Antwerp, and bring the first news of the battle to the English shore--news which was to be used for Stock Exchange purposes.

“My uncle’s confirmation of the rumour of a great victory was received with the greatest relief and enthusiasm. At that time the hotel-keeper at Dover, a certain Mr. Wright, had the monopoly of the posting arrangements between that port and London. He immediately placed his best horses at my uncle’s disposal, and despatched an express to order fresh relays all along the road. Besides the despatches my uncle took the two captured Eagles of the Imperial Guard with him. These, being too large to go into the carriage, were placed so as to stick out of the windows, one on each side. In this manner he drove straight to the Horse Guards, where he learnt that the Commander-in-Chief, at that time the Duke of York, was dining out. He next proceeded to Lord Castlereagh’s, and was told that he and the Duke of York were both dining with a lady in St. James’s Square. To this house he drove, and there learnt that the Prince Regent was also of the dinner-party.

[Sidenote: PRESENTED TO THE PRINCE REGENT]

“Requesting to be shown immediately into the dining-room, he entered that apartment bearing the despatches and the Eagles with him. He was covered with dust and mud, and, though unwounded himself, bore the marks of battle upon his coat. The dessert was being placed upon the table when he entered, and as soon as the Prince Regent saw him he commanded the ladies to leave the room. The Prince Regent then held out his hand, saying, ‘Welcome, Colonel Percy!’ ‘Go down on one knee,’ said the Duke of York to my uncle, ‘and kiss hands for the step you have obtained.’ Before the despatch could be read, my uncle was besieged with inquiries of various prominent officers engaged, and had to answer ‘Dead’ or ‘Severely wounded’ so often that the Prince Regent burst into tears. The Duke of York, though greatly moved, was more composed.

“By this time my uncle was exhausted from fatigue, and begged the Prince’s permission to go to his father’s house in Portman Square. The crowd was so great in St. James’s Square, that he had the greatest difficulty in getting through it and reaching my grandfather’s house, which was soon surrounded by anxious multitudes begging for news of relations and friends. My uncle told them that the victory was complete, but that the number killed and wounded was very large. He told them that he would answer more questions next morning.”

The Eagles themselves in fact announced the victory in London. People in the streets saw the chaise as it passed on its way with its horses at a gallop, racing at full speed along the Old Kent Road, across Westminster Bridge, and through Parliament Street to Whitehall, “the gleaming lamps showing a French Eagle and the French flags projecting from each window.”

The news spread like wild-fire, and before Colonel Percy could reach the house where the Prince Regent was dining--Mrs. Boehm’s, in St. James’s Square--South London was flocking over Westminster Bridge to Whitehall. The West End heard the news immediately afterwards, and everybody hurried out again into the streets.

It became quickly known where the chaise had gone after leaving the Horse Guards, and promptly an ever-increasing crowd hurried off there. Before the despatch had been read an enormous mass of people had assembled in St. James’s Square, outside the house. They were in time to hear the cheering by the company inside the house that greeted the reading of the despatch; the cheers were instantly echoed back, accompanied by an outburst of vociferous shouting followed by a tremendous chorus of “God save the King!” The windows of the dining-room were open, and a moment later the two Eagles with their tricolor flags were thrust through. They were held up, with candles at either side, to show them plainly, so that all might know that the victory had been decisive.

“For a few minutes dustmen’s bells and watchmen’s rattles were sprung all over London. Liquor was produced at many a street-corner, and toasts were drunk to Wellington and confusion to Bonaparte.”[45]

[Sidenote: HOW PARIS HEARD THE NEWS]

The closing scene took place on Thursday, January 18, 1816--on the “General Thanksgiving Day for the Restoration of Peace.” The two Eagles were on that day publicly paraded at the Horse Guards and laid up in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, with ceremonies similar to those that attended the reception of the Barrosa and Salamanca trophies. Again the battalions of the Brigade of Guards in England, with their bands “in State clothing,” turned out to take part in the display, the Eagles, as before, being made to march round the square and do formal obeisance to the British flag by being prostrated in the dust before the Colour of the King’s Guard of the day, at which sight, as on the former occasions, both the troops and the crowd of spectators “instantaneously gave three loud huzzas with the most enthusiastic feeling.” The Duke of York, as Commander-in-Chief, presided this time at the parade. Two sergeants of the Grenadier and Third Guards who had been wounded at Waterloo were selected to carry the Eagles; escorted by a picked company of eighty-four officers and men “drawn from among the heroic defenders of Hougoumont on the field of battle.” Lifeguardsmen and Blues just arrived from the Army of Occupation, in France, assisted the Foot Guards on parade.

[Sidenote: IN THE CHAPEL ROYAL, WHITEHALL]

The escort entered the Chapel Royal by the two doors in equal divisions, the band playing and marching up to the steps of the Communion Table, where they filed off to right and left. As soon as the band had ceased, the two sergeants bearing the Eagles approached the Altar and fixed upon it their consecrated banners. Both the Chaplain-General to the Forces (Archdeacon Owen) and the Bishop of London, with two Royal Chaplains (“the Rev. Mr. Jones and the Rev. Mr. Howlett”), officiated in the service; the Bishop preaching a special sermon, with for his text Psalm xx. verses 7 and 8:

“_Some trust in chariots and some in horses: but we will remember
the name of the Lord our God._

“_They are brought down and fallen: but we are risen and stand
upright._”

“After the customary blessing, the band played ‘God save the King!’ the whole congregation standing. Among those who attended were a considerable number of persons of fashion and distinction in public life, the Dukes of Gloucester and York, and the Earl of Liverpool, and several officers of the Army and Navy, with many elegant and distinguished females.”