Chapter VII: The Rifles at Waterloo

Nothing in Kincaid's "adventures" is finer than his account of Waterloo. He tells, it is true, only that which took place about himself, and, as the grey and strangling battle-smoke lay for hours on the ridge where Kincaid stood, he could see only a very tiny patch of the great landscape of the battle. Waterloo, for him, might be described as a ring of imprisoning smoke, over which bellowed and echoed constantly the roar of a hundred guns, and out of which, at irregular intervals, broke lines of French infantry--sometimes as a spray of skirmishers, sometimes as massed battalions. Sometimes, by way of change, a column of horsemen--helmeted dragoons, cuirassiers in glittering breastplates, red lancers of the Guard--broke through the fog, rode at the stubborn line of the Rifles, and reeled off into the fog again, pursued by darting musketry volleys. To endure and to repel incessant attacks, hour after hour, was the business of the dwindling companies of the Rifles. The third battalion, to which Kincaid belonged, formed part of Adams's brigade. It stood a hundred yards to the rear of La Haye Sainte, a little to the left of Wellington's centre. The famous sandpit was in the immediate front of the battalion, and was held by three companies of Rifles. On this point in the British line the utmost strength of the French attack--horse, foot, and artillery--was expended, and no men that day saw fiercer fighting than did Kincaid and his fellow-riflemen. Kincaid, therefore, has this right to tell the story of Waterloo: he fought through the whole of that fateful day in the very heart of the great struggle:--

"When I awoke this morning at daylight, I found myself drenched with
rain. I had slept so long and so soundly that I had, at first, but
a very confused notion of my situation; but having a bright idea
that my horse had been my companion when I went to sleep, I was
rather startled at finding that I was now alone, nor could I rub my
eyes clear enough to procure a sight of him, which was vexatious
enough; for, independent of his value as a horse, his services were
indispensable, and an adjutant might as well think of going into
action without his arms as without such a supporter. But whatever my
feelings might have been towards him, it was evident that he had none
for me, from having drawn his sword and marched off. The chances of
finding him again, amid ten thousand others, were about equal to the
odds against the needle in a bundle of hay; but for once the single
chance was gained, as, after a diligent search of an hour, he was
discovered between two artillery horses, about half a mile from where
he broke loose.

"The weather cleared up as the morning advanced; and, though
everything remained quiet at the moment, we were confident that
the day would not pass off without an engagement, and, therefore,
proceeded to put our arms in order, as, also, to get ourselves dried
and made as comfortable as circumstances would permit.

"We made a fire against the wall of Sir Andrew Barnard's cottage,
and boiled a huge camp-kettle full of tea, mixed up with a suitable
quantity of milk and sugar, for breakfast; and, as it stood on
the edge of the high-road, where all the big-wigs of the army
had occasion to pass, in the early part of the morning, I believe
almost every one of them, from the Duke downwards, claimed a
cupful. About ten o'clock an unusual bustle was observable among
the staff-officers, and we soon after received an order to stand to
our arms. The troops who had been stationed in our front during the
night were then moved off to the right, and our division took up its
fighting position.

"Our battalion stood on what was considered the left centre of the
position. We had our right resting on the Brussels road, about a
hundred yards in the rear of the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, and our
left extending behind a broken hedge, which ran along the ridge to
the left. Immediately in our front, and divided from La Haye Sainte
only by the great road, stood a small knoll, with a sand-hole in its
farthest side, which we occupied, as an advanced post, with three
companies. The remainder of the division was formed in two lines;
the first, consisting chiefly of light troops, behind the hedge, in
continuation from the left of our battalion reserve, and the second,
about a hundred yards in its rear. The guns were placed in the
intervals between the brigades, two pieces were in the roadway on our
right, and a rocket brigade in the centre.

"The road had been cut through the rising ground, and was about
twenty or thirty feet deep where our right rested, and which, in a
manner, separated us from all the troops beyond. The division, I
believe, under General Alten occupied the ground next to us, on the
right.

"Shortly after we had taken up our ground, some columns, from the
enemy's left, were seen in motion towards Hougoumont, and were soon
warmly engaged with the right of our army. A cannon ball, too, came
from the Lord knows where, for it was not fired at us and took the
head off our right-hand man. That part of their position, in our
own immediate front, next claimed our undivided attention. It had
hitherto been looking suspiciously innocent, with scarcely a human
being upon it; but innumerable black specks were now seen taking post
at regular distances in its front, and recognising them as so many
pieces of artillery, I knew, from experience, although nothing else
was yet visible, that they were unerring symptoms of our not being
destined to be idle spectators.

"From the moment we took possession of the knoll we had busied
ourselves in collecting branches of trees and other things, for
the purpose of making an abatis to block up the road between that
and the farmhouse, and soon completed one, which we thought looked
sufficiently formidable to keep out the whole of the French cavalry;
but it was put to the proof sooner than we expected, by a troop of
our own light dragoons, who, having occasion to gallop through,
astonished us not a little by clearing away every stick of it. We
had just time to replace the scattered branches, when the whole of
the enemy's artillery opened, and their countless columns began to
advance under cover of it."

The attack on Hougoumont, it will be remembered, was intended by Napoleon to be a mere feint, serving to draw off Wellington's attention from the real attack, the onfall of D'Erlon's huge columns on the left centre of the British position, which Napoleon hoped to pierce and destroy. Napoleon's tactics broke down first at Hougoumont, for the feigned attack grew persistent and obstinate, and drew into its madness more than twelve thousand good infantry, and after all failed. D'Erlon's great infantry attack was defeated by the stubbornness of Picton's slender lines, and by the sudden and overwhelming onfall of the Life Guards, Inniskillings, and Greys. Kincaid tells how he watched the French columns taking position for their attack:--

"The scene at that moment was grand and imposing, and we had a few
minutes to spare for observation. The column destined as 'our'
particular 'friends,' first attracted our notice, and seemed to
consist of about ten thousand infantry. A smaller body of infantry
and one of cavalry moved on their right; and, on their left, another
huge column of infantry, and a formidable body of cuirassiers, while
beyond them it seemed one moving mass.

"We saw Bonaparte himself take post on the side of the road
immediately in our front, surrounded by a numerous staff; and each
regiment, as they passed him, rent the air with shouts of 'Vive
l'Empereur,' nor did they cease after they had passed, but, backed
by the thunder of their artillery, and carrying with them the
rub-a-dub of drums and the tantarara of trumpets, in addition to
their increasing shouts, it looked at first as if they had some
hopes of scaring us off the ground, for it was a singular contrast
to the stern silence reigning on our side, where nothing as yet
but the voices of our great guns told that we had mouths to open
when we chose to use them. Our rifles were, however, in a very few
seconds required to play their parts, and opened such a fire on the
advancing skirmishers as quickly brought them to a standstill; but
their columns advanced steadily through them, although our incessant
tiralade was telling in their centre with fearful exactness, and our
post was quickly turned in both flanks, which compelled us to fall
back and join our comrades behind the hedge, though not before some
of our officers and theirs had been engaged in personal combat.

"When the heads of their columns showed over the knoll which we had
just quitted, they received such a fire from our first line that they
wavered and hung behind it a little; but, cheered and encouraged by
the gallantry of their officers, who were dancing and flourishing
their swords in front, they at last boldly advanced to the opposite
side of our hedge and began to deploy. Our first line, in the
meantime, was getting so thinned that Picton found it necessary to
bring up his second, but fell in the act of doing it. The command of
the division at that critical moment devolved upon Sir James Kempt,
who was galloping along the line, animating the men to steadiness. He
called to me by name, where I happened to be standing on the right
of our battalion, and desired 'that I would never quit that spot.'
I told him that 'he might depend upon it;' and in another instant I
found myself in a fair way of keeping my promise more religiously
than I intended; for, glancing my eye to the right, I saw the next
field covered with the cuirassiers, some of whom were making directly
for the gap in the hedge where I was standing.

"I had not hitherto drawn my sword, as it was generally to be had
at a moment's warning; but from its having been exposed to the last
night's rain, it had now got rusted in the scabbard and refused to
come forth! I was in a precious scrape. Mounted on my strong Flanders
mare, and with my good old sword in my hand, I would have braved
all the chances without a moment's hesitation; but I confess that I
felt considerable doubts as to the propriety of standing there to be
sacrificed without the means of making a scramble for it. My mind,
however, was happily relieved from such an embarrassing consideration
before my decision was required; for the next moment the cuirassiers
were charged by our household brigade, and the infantry in our front,
giving way at the same time under our terrific shower of musketry,
the flying cuirassiers tumbled in among the routed infantry, followed
by the Life Guards, who were cutting away in all directions. Hundreds
of the infantry threw themselves down and pretended to be dead, while
the cavalry galloped over them, and then got up and ran away. I
never saw such a scene in all my life.

"Lord Wellington had given orders that the troops were on no account
to leave the position to follow up any temporary advantage; so that
we now resumed our post, as we stood at the commencement of the
battle, and with three companies again advanced on the knoll. I was
told it was very ridiculous at that moment to see the number of
vacant spots that were left nearly along the whole of the line, where
a great part of the dark-dressed foreign troops had stood, intermixed
with the British, when the action began.

"Our division got considerably reduced in numbers during the last
attack; but Lord Wellington's fostering hand sent Sir John Lambert to
our support with the sixth division, and we now stood prepared for
another and a more desperate struggle. Our battalion had already lost
three officers killed and six or seven wounded; among the latter were
Sir Andrew Barnard and Colonel Cameron.

"Some one asking me what had become of my horse's ear was the
first intimation I had of his being wounded; and I now found that,
independent of one ear having been shaved close to his head (I
suppose by a cannon-shot), a musket-ball had grazed across his
forehead and another gone through one of his legs, but he did not
seem much the worse for either of them.

"Between two and three o'clock we were tolerably quiet, except from
a thundering cannonade; and the enemy had by that time got the range
of our position so accurately that every shot brought a ticket for
somebody's head. An occasional gun beyond the plain, far to our left,
marked the approach of the Prussians; but their progress was too
slow to afford a hope of their arriving in time to take any share in
the battle. On our right the roar of cannon and musketry had been
incessant from the time of its commencement; but the higher ground
near us prevented our seeing anything of what was going on."

The anguish of the fight, as far as the Rifles were concerned, came when La Haye Sainte was carried by the French. This gave them cover at half-musket range, whence they could waste the British front with their fire. Their elation at having carried the farmhouse, it may be added, gave them new fire and audacity. They believed they had broken the British centre, that the day was won, that the stubborn British line was about to crumble and flee! And French soldiers are never so dangerous as when the rapture of real or imagined victory is kindling their blood. The pressure on the sadly-thinned lines of the Rifles was cruel, but it was borne with cool and stubborn valour:--

"Between three and four o'clock the storm gathered again in our
front. Our three companies on the knoll were soon involved in a
furious fire. The Germans occupying La Haye Sainte expended all their
ammunition and fled from the post. The French took possession of it;
and as it flanked our knoll we were obliged to abandon it also and
fall back again behind the hedge.

"The loss of La Haye Sainte was of the most serious consequence as
it afforded the enemy an establishment within our position. They
immediately brought up two guns on our side of it, and began serving
out some grape to us; but they were so very near that we destroyed
their artillerymen before they could give us a second round.

"The silencing of these guns was succeeded by a very extraordinary
scene on the same spot. A strong regiment of Hanoverians advanced
in line to charge the enemy out of La Haye Sainte; but they were
themselves charged by a brigade of cuirassiers, and, excepting one
officer, on a little black horse, who went off to the rear like a
shot out of a shovel, I do believe that every man of them was put to
death in about five seconds. A brigade of British light dragoons
advanced to their relief, and a few on each side began exchanging
thrusts; but it seemed likely to be a drawn battle between them,
without much harm being done, when our men brought it to a crisis
sooner than either side anticipated, for they previously had their
rifles eagerly pointed at the cuirassiers, with a view of saving the
perishing Hanoverians; but the fear of killing their friends withheld
them, until the others were utterly overwhelmed, when they instantly
opened a terrific fire on the whole concern, sending both sides to
flight; so that, on the small space of ground, within a hundred yards
of us, where five thousand men had been fighting the instant before,
there was not now a living soul to be seen.

"It made me mad to see the cuirassiers in their retreat stooping and
stabbing at our wounded men as they lay on the ground. How I wished
that I had been blessed with Omnipotent power for a moment, that I
might have blighted them!

"The same field continued to be a wild one the whole of the
afternoon. It was a sort of duelling-post between the two armies,
every half-hour showing a meeting of some kind upon it; but they
never exceeded a short scramble, for men's lives were held very cheap
there.

"For the two or three succeeding hours there was no variety with us,
but one continued blaze of musketry. The smoke hung so thick about,
that, although not more than eighty yards asunder, we could only
distinguish each other by the flashes of the pieces.

"I shall never forget the scene which the field of battle presented
about seven in the evening. I felt weary and worn out, less from
fatigue than anxiety. Our division, which had stood upwards of
five thousand men at the commencement of the battle, had gradually
dwindled down into a solitary line of skirmishers. The 27th Regiment
were lying literally dead, in square, a few yards behind us. My horse
had received another shot through the leg, and one through the flap
of the saddle, which lodged in his body, sending him a step beyond
the pension-list. The smoke still hung so thick about us that we
could see nothing. I walked a little way to each flank, to endeavour
to get a glimpse of what was going on; but nothing met my eye except
the mangled remains of men and horses, and I was obliged to return to
my post as wise as I went.

"I had never yet heard of a battle in which everybody was killed; but
this seemed likely to be an exception, as all were going by turns.
We got excessively impatient under the tame similitude of the latter
part of the process, and burned with desire to have a last thrust at
our respective _vis-a-vis_; for, however desperate our affairs were,
we had still the satisfaction of seeing that theirs were worse. Sir
John Lambert continued to stand as our support at the head of three
good old regiments, one dead (the 27th) and two living ones, and we
took the liberty of soliciting him to aid our views; but the Duke's
orders on that head were so very particular that the gallant general
had no choice.

"Presently a cheer, which we knew to be British, commenced far to the
right, and made every one prick up his ears--it was Lord Wellington's
long-wished-for orders to advance; it gradually approached, growing
louder as it drew near--we took it up by instinct, charged through
the hedge down upon the old knoll, sending our adversaries flying
at the point of the bayonet. Lord Wellington galloped up to us at
the instant, and our men began to cheer him; but he called out, 'No
cheering, my lads, but forward, and complete your victory!'

"This movement had carried us clear of the smoke; and, to people
who had been for so many hours enveloped in darkness, in the midst
of destruction, and naturally anxious about the result of the day,
the scene which now met the eye conveyed a feeling of more exquisite
gratification than can be conceived. It was a fine summer's evening,
just before sunset. The French were flying in one confused mass.
British lines were seen in close pursuit, and in admirable order,
as far as the eye could reach to the right, while the plain to the
left was filled with Prussians. The enemy made one last attempt at a
stand on the rising ground to our right of La Belle Alliance; but a
charge from General Adams's brigade again threw them into a state of
confusion, which was now inextricable, and their ruin was complete.
Artillery, baggage, and everything belonging to them fell into our
hands. After pursuing them until dark, we halted about two miles
beyond the field of battle, leaving the Prussians to follow up the
victory.

"This was the last, the greatest, and the most uncomfortable heap of
glory that I ever had a hand in, and may the deuce take me if I think
that everybody waited there to see the end of it, otherwise it never
could have been so troublesome to those who did. We were, take us all
in all, a very bad army. Our foreign auxiliaries, who constituted
more than half of our numerical strength, with some exceptions, were
little better than a raw militia--a body without a soul, or like an
inflated pillow, that gives to the touch and resumes its shape again
when the pressure ceases--not to mention the many who went clear out
of the field, and were only seen while plundering our baggage in
their retreat.

"Our heavy cavalry made some brilliant charges in the early part of
the day; but they never knew when to stop, their ardour in following
their advantages carrying them headlong on, until many of them 'burnt
their fingers,' and got dispersed or destroyed. Of that gallant
corps, the Royal Artillery, it is enough to say that they maintained
their former reputation--the first in the world--and it was a serious
loss to us in the latter part of the day to be deprived of this more
powerful co-operation, from the causes already mentioned.

"If Lord Wellington had been at the head of his old Peninsula army,
I am confident that he would have swept his opponents off the face
of the earth immediately after their first attack; but, with such a
heterogeneous mixture under his command, he was obliged to submit to
a longer day.

"The field of battle next morning presented a frightful scene
of carnage; it seemed as if the world had tumbled to pieces and
three-fourths of everything destroyed in the wreck. The ground
running parallel to the front of where we had stood was so thickly
strewed with fallen men and horses, that it was difficult to step
clear of their bodies; many of the former still alive, and imploring
assistance, which it was not in our power to bestow. The usual
salutation on meeting an acquaintance of another regiment after an
action was to ask who had been hit? but on this occasion it was,
'Who's alive?' Meeting one next morning, a very little fellow, I
asked what had happened to them yesterday? 'I'll be hanged,' says
he, 'if I know anything at all about the matter, for I was all
day trodden in the mud and galloped over by every scoundrel who
had a horse; and, in short, that I only owe my existence to my
insignificance.'

"Two of our men, on the morning of the 19th, lost their lives by a
very melancholy accident. They were cutting up a captured ammunition
waggon for firewood, when one of their swords, striking against a
nail, sent a spark among the powder. When I looked in the direction
of the explosion, I saw the two poor fellows about twenty or thirty
feet up in the air. On falling to the ground, though lying on their
backs and bellies, some extraordinary effort of nature, caused by
the agony of the moment, made them spring from that position five or
six times, to the height of eight or ten feet, just as a fish does
when thrown on the ground after being newly caught. It was so unlike
a scene in real life that it was impossible to witness it without
forgetting, for a moment, the horror of their situation.

"I ran to the spot along with others, and found that every stitch of
clothes had been burnt off, and they were black as ink all over. They
were still alive, and told us their names, otherwise we could not
have recognised them; and, singular enough, they were able to walk
off the ground with a little support, but died shortly after.

"About twelve o'clock on the day after the battle we commenced our
march for Paris. I shall, therefore, leave my readers at Waterloo, in
the hope that, among the many stories of romance to which that and
the other celebrated fields gave birth, the foregoing unsophisticated
one of an eye-witness may not have been found altogether
uninteresting."

II

ONE OF CRAUFURD'S VETERANS

II.--ONE OF CRAUFURD'S VETERANS

"Rifleman" Harris, an innocent-looking sheep-boy, his face brown with the winds and rains of the Dorsetshire Downs, drifted, so to speak, into a soldier's life pretty much as a floating leaf, blown from some rustic valley and fallen into a rustic stream, might drift into a great historic river, furrowed by a thousand keels, and be swept away to unknown seas. His autobiography is curious alike in what it omits and in what it tells. It is so barren of one class of personal details that we are left in ignorance of when the writer was born. He leaves himself in his own volume without a Christian name. We are not told why he enlisted, nor where. Unlike most people undertaking an autobiography, Rifleman Harris appears to have had no interest whatever in himself, and he was incapable of imagining that anybody else would be interested. But he was keenly concerned in all the personal incidents of a soldier's life, and he describes them with a simplicity and a directness, an economy of adjectives, and a felicity of substantives, which makes his "Recollections" one of the freshest and most interesting soldier autobiographies ever written.

He had some good luck as a soldier. He belonged to a famous regiment; he served under some famous commanders; he heard the first shots fired by British muskets in the Peninsula. But he had also much ill-luck. He tramped, perspired, and probably swore, under South American suns in that most ignominious of all expeditions, under the most contemptible leader that ever wore a cocked hat--Whitelocke's fiasco at Buenos Ayres. He next served in Portugal, and took part in the fighting at Roliça and Vimiero. Under Sir John Moore he shared in the heroism and the horrors of the dreadful retreat to Corunna, or rather to Vigo. That Harris survived snow and rain and hunger, the inexpressible toils of the long marches, the biting cold of the black unsheltered nights, as well as the sabres of the pursuing French horsemen and the bullets of the French skirmishers, is little less than marvellous. But he did, and landed at Spithead, ragged, bare-footed, unshaven, with rusty musket, hollow cheeks, and eyes that had almost gone sightless with mere fatigue--about as stiff and hardy and unconquerable a bit of soldierly flesh and blood as the world of that day could produce.

A British private who had known the shame of Whitelocke's South American expedition and the distress of Moore's immortal retreat might well think he had exhausted all the evil possibilities of a soldier's life. But the unfortunate Harris had one more evil experience. He found a place in the unhappy Walcheren expedition, and crept out of it with wrecked constitution and ague-poisoned blood. He served after this in a veteran battalion; tried hard for service in the Peninsula, but, to his unspeakable disgust, was disqualified by a doctor with an unsympathetic temper and an inelastic conscience, and while still only thirty-two was discharged on a pension of sixpence a day. "For the first time," he says, "since I had been a shepherd-lad on the Blandford downs I found myself in plain clothes and with liberty to go and come where I liked."

But Harris never received a sixpence of his hard-earned pension, bought with blood and sweat. Before the first payment became due Napoleon had escaped from Elba; the veterans were called back to the ranks. Harris, wasted with fever and shaken with ague--legacies from Walcheren swamps--was unable to join, and forfeited his pension. He had to spend the rest of his days making shoes and writing his "Recollections of a Rifleman." In view of this record, perhaps, the most striking thing in Harris' "Recollections" is their unconquerable good humour. The writer never grumbles. No faintest accent of discontent ever steals into his voice. His cheerfulness is invincible. He is proud of his officers; in the best of temper with his comrades; takes mud, rain, toil, empty stomach, and too heavy knapsack, a couch on the wet grass and under weeping skies, the pain of wounds, and the peril of death, all as part of the day's work, about which nobody has any right to grumble. A soldier's life, he plainly holds, is the pleasantest in the world. No one is better qualified than Rifleman Harris to tell to a modern and ease-loving generation how the men of the Peninsula marched, suffered, fought, and conquered.