WATERLOO

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7930, 13 October 1911, Page 4

WATERLOO

AS NAPOLEON SAW THE FIELD A VISIT TO THE FAMOUS B ATTLE-GIIOUN D (By tho Ecv. \V. H. Fitchett.) No. 11. LONDON, September 1. Tho ground ou which tho greatest oi battles was fought ewuis to tho modern observer absurdly contracted. The positions held by each army are visible to tho unassisted eye. The line of ground forming the British left, where Ficton’s jeglnienls stood, if low is curiously level. It is u’wavc-like undulation; and when the .British regiments holding it were lying down—or were withdrawn a low score yards to the reverse slope— the whole ridge looked naked. Nothing was visible but a few ollicers, tiny groups in pickets, with., here and there, a cluster of guns. This makes intelligible Napoleon's oft-expressed fear that Wellington did not intend to light, but would *sJix> oil in retreat. Tim Trench line is • not at right angles to the Brussels road; to tho left it swept beyond Uougoumoi.it, and curved round its angle. Napoleon’s right was defined by a road —a more bridle track—running towards Planchenoit, along which, a few hours later, Lobau and tho Young Guard were to march to meet Binchor's columns. La Belle Alliance stands exactly as on the day of tho fight, and it is curious to note that Bougoumont is invisible to the observer who stands at the point whore Napoloon watched the fight. Perhaps • tho circumstance that Napoleon could not see Hougoumont helped him to forgot the light -which eddied round its rctl brick wall for so many hours and hold engaged one whole wing of French army. Of La Bayo Saiuto Napoleon, from tho point at which lie stood, could see only the roof, not tho garden ■with its solid, girdling walls. As a consequence, he could hardly realise tho defensive strength of the position held by Baring and his Germans, Close to where Napoleon stood, the soft, almost level contour of the landscape is broken by sharply pronounced undulations. They lay directly under Napoleon's right hand; and if he had chosen, liko "Wellington, to conceal his men, or to fight a defensive battle, this part of his position, at least, lent itself perfectly to such tactics. It is easy, understanding where Napoleon stood, to call up a dear mental picture of tho great French infantry attack. As seen from this position it would have a broader front, and a more menacing aspect, than even a» seen from tho British ridge. 'Tho four great divisions, each 50U0 strong, with intervals for deploying, could bo seen to their last file, and must have formed a majestic sight. It was a groat battlewave, rising, taking shape, breaking into movement and sound —the sound ot fife and drum and shrill voices; a landscape of steel, and ,of sloping muskets, .sweeping forward to that low green ridge that secured almost empty. DTMou’s attack in'a word, as Napoleon watched, must have seemed an overwhelming expression of battle-power. AVhat could 6top such a mass under such leaders? Tho slopo was easy; tho white road *t one point had a farmhouse oil one side, a sandpit, with a fringe of trees, on the other; but what resisting power could they have? Some Hanoverian troops stood a black patch on the green slope, a little below the ridge, but they .dissolved into flight before tho coining French columns touched them. As Napoleon and his staff officers ■watched- that attack they must have felt . sure of its success. All that was visibleon tho ridge was a thin, faint thread ol . red. It was only a thread to stop a tidal wave! BUrlon's great, four-head-ed mass of. infantry moved without pause up the slope; the left echelon swirled round La Baye Sainte; tfio obstinate stinging splutter of lire from tho sandpit was submerged, the heads dx the French columns begin, at irregular intervals, to deploy. Then Picton's slender, extended line spoke! There is B far running sparkle of musketry fire, red, deadly, repeated l ; pulse after pulse of flame. It seems to scorch the heads of the French columns. They halt; they are slowly deploying. Tho red lino on the ridge this time is advancing; here and there is an.outward sparkle of its bayonets beyond the hedge. .Then comes the counter stroke of the British cavalry !

The low ridgo is suddenly crowded with tossing horseheads and swift riding squadrons. They como round La Hayo 6ainto in glittering lino and dash at speed on the French cuirassiers, and the far-heaxd ring of steel floats up to •where Napoleon stands. Then to the left of the Life Guards come the Dragoons, then the Greys, the Inniskillings; swift, sudden, spurring furiously, they crash on the masses of French infantry. The solid columns seem to crumble; they fall Lack down the slope under tho fierce impact of the charge. They dissolve into flight. Napoleon is familiar with all tho changing landscape of .battle but ho had never before looked upon a eight like that. The fierce-riding British cavalry must have flung its human spray—grey horses and red coats—'almost to the very point where Napoleon watched. From this point, later, Napoleon •watched tho second great stage of the ■battle, tho French cavalry charges.: the tumult of; mailed horsemen that rodo up tho slope' betwixt Hougoumont and La Haye Saiute, disappeared over the British ridge, with gleam of brandished swords, ajid v»;re' lost to sight, while blasts of musketry volleys, sent their •waves of sound far and wide over the battle-field. Presently, disordered, in broken flight—tho French horse came back again. The space betwixt the two horns ot Wellington's defence—Hougoumont and La' Haye Saiute—through which ran the track of tho French charge, seems comparatively narrow, locked at from Napoleon's position, but tho slope wears an absurdly easy aspect. It seems a gentle ascent of green turf, up which a hundred squadrons might gallop at once. As a matter of fact it is steeper than it seems, and tho tall rye, the rainsodden turf, made tho going very heavy. For two hours Napoleon watched that fierce duel of horsemen and infantry, 'Ney drawing practically the whole of tho French cavalry into his attacks. Thirteen times ho led that rush of disciplined riders up the hill, and thirteen times they came back, each stern onfall followed by a broken recoil. Napoleon’s face must have darkened as ho watched tho long struggle. He exchanged angry complaints against Ney with his chief • of staff. "He is compromising us as he did at Jena,”. growled Soult. "It is a movement,” said Napoleon, "which may produce fatal results." But no attempt was made to stop Ney’s cavalry attacks, or to adequately support them with guns and infantry. Wellington, it will ho remembered, was on horseback during the whole of tho day, and constantly riding from one threatened point in his position to another; but Napoleon’s methods as a commander were of a different order. He remained at one point, usually sitting at n table on which a map was spread. Ho never rode to his left, to.

watch or control tho fight at Hougouinont, or to his right to soo for himself what tho Prussian attack threatened. Apparently ho only loft tho position iuhad chosen when ho determined to throw the whole of tho Old Guard into tho fight.

It was growing dusk as Napoleon rod< forward across the Brussels road, and, just where, rising from tho shadowed valley, the road cuts deep into tho hill, ho made arrangements for his last stroke at tho stubborn British, Standing at this point to-day the spectator can ckll up a clear picture of tho scene; tho preparations of the French veterans for their attack; Napoleon’s gestures as ho addressed them. Then tiirough the smoke, and tho shadow of the coming night, tho echelon of tho bearskin caps l moves—not directly up, but athwart—tiie slope, towards the British position.' Then came the rolling volleys, the charge of the English Guards that' v/it-cked tho first section. Still tho second section—a huge black oblong seen dimly through the smoke—moves up. Then comes tho sadden apparition of a long red line—a lino edged with flame on its flank. It is Colburn, with the 52nd. Before that deadly Hank stroke the Guard is broken; it crossed the whole British front to tho Charleroi road, and beyond it. As he watches .tho sight, Napoleon whispers, “La Garde Itecule”; in a moment .he sees his whole buttle line break. ‘

A few hundred yards south of the point where Napoleon stood, Ney rallied the last square of the Old Guard. What passions—valour, despair, flight—readied their climax at this spot! ® Local tradition says that hero the dead lay thickest; anti in the* gathering darkness, hero was heard, for tho last time, a deep voice commanding in French,

"Close the ranks.'’' A monument to the valour of tho French stands at this point. It represents an eagle with beak and claws extended; its plumage is tom with bullets, its loft wing stretched out to the full, its right crushed and broken. Tliis is ingeniously contrived to be a sort of parable in bronzo of tho causes which explain .the French defeat. The broken right wing of the eaglo represents the onfall of tho Prussians on the French right. But the French left was almost as much crippled by tho stubborn resistance of the Coldstreams at Hougoumont as its right wing was by the withdrawal of Lobau and the Young Guard to resist tho Prussian attack. •’ Tho British position at Waterloo is sufficiently familiar and hardly needs description, though it is still profoundly interesting to walk across it from west to east, and look over tho gcntlo slopes and shallow valley and the roofs of La Belle Alliance, as, during those long hours of battle, Wellington's eyes must have searched them. Tho buildings at La Hayo Sainto to-day are, in the main, modern, but tho plan is exactly that of the chateau held by Baring and bis Germans.,

They plainly formed a very strong post. But for tho failure of ammunition suited to the rides tho Germans carried, it might have been held as successfully—it was held as stubbornly—as Hougoumont itself. Tho sandpit on the other side of tho road is gone, save for a ridgo marking its upper side, but its contour can still be traced. The cross-road running cast from the Brussels road defining Ficton's front is exactly as it was ou tho day of tho battle; but tho famous hedge is gone. A red-roofed villa stands to-day at the extreme left held by Picton's regiments; and a little back from tho road, when tho present writer walked along it, stood half a dozen fat haystacks, signs of peaceful industry on tho very fields where war, a century ago, reaped its red harvest. Tho, little ridge is low, and runs at an almost perfect level from east to west: tho slope to tho south, up which D'Erlou’s massive infantry columns came, and down which tho Household (Brigade charged, is’ perfectly easy. To the rear of tho ridgo still stands the windmill, which finds a place in nearly all contemporary descriptions ot tho battle, only, to-day it wears a red roof. Tho clay hut, too, which’ stood in tho lino of the British cavalry charge, and is referred to so often in the "Waterloo Letter's,'' is gone, or rather it has been transformed, into respectability; a brick house stands on its site.

Close to tho Brussels road are two monuments, that of Sir Alexander Gordon, tho best-loved and most-trusted member of Wellington’s staff, and that of the King’s . German Legion. Both monuments are perched to-day on a high earthen base; as a matter of fact, this base defines tho actual surface of the ridge on the day of tho great fight. Tho whole ridge, as far as the Brussels road, was cut down ten feet in order to supply material for the huge vast mound on which the Belgian lion is perched. Gordon was only twenty-nine when ho fell, and tho epitaph on his monument is pathetic: "An inconsolable sister and five brothers who survived him,” the inscription runs, "raise this modest monument to tho object of their dearest affections.” The four sides of tho monument of' "Tho King’s German Legion” bear' long lists of tho valiant dead who fell at Waterloo, "To tho memory ot their companions in arms,” tho inscription runs, “who gloriously fell on the ■memorable day of Juno 18th, 1815. This monument is erected by tho officers of tho German Legion of tho King." Tho sunken road which played such a part in tho battle—and which, indeed, both Victor Hugo and Thiers make responsible for tho French defeat—is not wholly effaced, even along tho centre of Wellington’s position. Tho northern bank, down which the Life Guards rodo, can still be traced. Further to tho west, along tho ridgo above Hougoumont, the sunken road is exactly as it was on that Juno Sunday in 1815. It is easy to understand that in the fight it formed a very useful feature in tho British defence.

Tho slope in front of Wellington’s right centre, up. which swirled Ney’s thirteen cavalry charges, aud up wliich, in tho dusk of tho evening, tho echelons of tho Old Guard came, though it is ten feet lower than in 1815, is a little more difficult than, is generally supposed, or that tho French cavalry leaders could have imagined, as they looked at it across the valley. A heavy horse, with a heavy man in armour on its back, galloping—or even trotting—up that long slope, thick with the tall rye, and sodden and made heavy -with rain, would roach the actual fighting point sadly blown, if not exhausted. Hougoumont ot course is, for tho ordinary visitor, tho most interesting feature in tho whole battle landscape, if only because it is tho one least changed. Tho ancient chateau, with its red brick walls and tiny chapel, has been, preserved, for show purposes for more than a century, and the visitor secs it in its main features, almost exactly as Macdo rm el and his Coldstreams held it. Tho little chapel—it is 13 feet by 17 feet—into which tho British carried their wounded, still stands, with the crucifix above the door which escaped tho fire kindled by tho French guns. To-day its walls are scrawled over with ignoble names, and tbo walls have to be periodically whito-wasbed to efface tho signatures of tho unending stream of visitors.. Victor Hugo found on the walls French names "with notes of exclamation, signs of anger.”- The inner orchard is almost

:wico Us size. Tho loopholes in the walls through which tho Guards fired arc plainly older than tho battle; many of ihem carry little stone architraves. The chateau, it must be remembered, was built originally to resist attack. But here and there, scattered at irregular distances, are tiny loopholes torn roughly through the original bricks. They were plainly made in haste, and at points where they commanded weak places in the outer defence. These are tho loopholes made by the Guards that stern Sabbath morning, more than a century ago. They arc still black with the musketry smoko of Waterloo.

Upon those weather-beaten walls what a llamo and fury of battle broke! The visitor to-day wonders how such a position could have been hold success! ally again tho numbers flung upon it. Tho French loft wing shut round the southwest angle of the chateau, and at a distance of not more than 500 or 750 yards, llcille’o whole artillery of, say, eighty guns might have been concentrated on those slender brick walks and that broad sloping roof. The French batteries were, later in the day, turned on tho chateau, ami sol lire to it; but in the main the French tried to carry Hougoumont by infantry attack. It was stupid tactics; and against Macdoxmol and his Coldstreams no wonder it failed. Tho Prussian monument stands on rising ground some 250 yards north, of the iittlo village of Planchenoit. It is an imposing mass of iron and granite, surmounted by a cross. The inscription runs: “Tho King and Country gratefully honour their fallen heroes. May they x-est in peace. Belle Alliance, dune ISth, 1815.“ But the monument should have stood in tho village itself, for its narrow streets and old stone church witnessed the fiercest fighting on the part of tho Prussians during the whole campaign. The French had in Planchenoit a stronger post, by far, than Hougouinoul. Tho stone church itself is a citadel, On one side it could only bo attacked through narrow, crooked streets, opening ou to a square swept by tho French musketry fire. On tho other bide the churchyard is, practically, a deep pit, with a solid stone wall along its edge. Beyond is a wide space which tho French, lying under the shelter ot the wall, covered with their fire, , On the further edge of this space stood, on the day of tho fight,, a line of low stonegabled cottages, with passages not more than six feet wide betwixt cottage and cottage. These buildings stood '‘end-on" to the churchyard, and the Prussian attack had to trickle through the narrow intervals betwixt the cottages, and could never gain sufficient ■weight to be ♦effective in face of the ’ deadly fire of the French muskets. One of these cottages still stands, and helxxs the visitor to realise the whole scene. On neither front could tho Prussians bring guns to bear on, the church; the French had to be driven out with the bayonet at tremendous cost. Not even on the elopes of the British position did the dead lie thicker after the fight, than round the little stone church at Planchenoit. The stubborn Prussians well deserve the monument which to-day stands to their memory. According to tradition . the French troops, * which under Marshal Gerard marched during tho troubles of 1652 in&> Belgium, broke the iron cross from the Prussian monument, and twisted the tail off the Belgian lion perched on the groat mound at Waterloo. The wrong done to tho tail of the lion may easily be forgiven, but tho insult to the Prussian monument —if it really happened—was unpardonable. Wellington had his headquarters on the night before AVaterloo' at the post-house in the village a little distance behind the field of battle. The building stands practically as it did in 1815, though it is now used as a cafe, and wears a somewhat neglected aspect. There is still preserved the armchair in which, weary from AVaterloo, AVellington eat, and the table at which he wrote his Waterloo dispatch. The bed —or rather its wooden frame—on which he slept tho night before, and the night after, the battle is preserved, AVhat dreams may have crept into the cells of his brain as he lay in the prosaic looking bed! To its side Dr Hume came the morning after Waterloo and woke Wellington, —his face still black with.the smoke of.battle —and read the list of the fallen; while tears, iron tears, rolled down tho great soldier s face. Victory itself was at that moment bitter to him. Tho room where Gordon died Is next to AVellington’s bedroom; the actual bed on w.hich he died stands now beside AVellington's bed. These relics might well find some more fitting shelter than the roof of a Belgian cafe.

Opposite Wellington’s headquarters stands tho church, with its monuments to tho British slain. The memorial which can ba least forgiven is that to Wellington himself. It consists of a marble bust wearing a simpering and inexpressive smile, not in the least suggesting tho face of the captain who rode among his shot-tormented square at Waterloo. Not the least touching of the monuments is that of Norman Kamsay, the most gallant and worst rewarded of all Wellington’s soldiers. One monument bears tho inscription "To the memory of all English officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers who died at the battles of 16th. 17th, 18th June, 1815.' This stone is erected by some brother soldiers and countrymen.” Sometimes the attempted pathos of a monumental record dissolves into unconscious humour. Amongst the memorials at Waterloo is one to the leg of Lora UxffrTdge. We read carved m marble. "Here lies buried tho leg of the illustrious brave aud valiant Count of Uxbridge .... who by his heroism

helped the triumph of the cause of mankind, gloriously decided by the splendid victory of the same day." On either side are other inscriptions. "This stone was visited on October 21st, 1821, by George XV., King of England"; and further "This stone was visited on September 20th, 1823, by the King of Prussia, Frederick 111., accompanied by his three sons." AVhen before in history was so much honour paid to a solitary human leg? -