Every one is acquainted with the first phase of this battle; a
beginning which was troubled, uncertain, hesitating, menacing to both
armies, but still more so for the English than for the French.
It had rained all night, the earth had been cut up by the downpour, the
water had accumulated here and there in the hollows of the plain as if
in casks; at some points the gear of the artillery carriages was buried
up to the axles, the circingles of the horses were dripping with liquid
mud. If the wheat and rye trampled down by this cohort of transports on
the march had not filled in the ruts and strewn a litter beneath the
wheels, all movement, particularly in the valleys, in the direction of
Papelotte would have been impossible.
The affair began late. Napoleon, as we have already explained, was in
the habit of keeping all his artillery well in hand, like a pistol,
aiming it now at one point, now at another, of the battle; and it had
been his wish to wait until the horse batteries could move and gallop
freely. In order to do that it was necessary that the sun should come
out and dry the soil. But the sun did not make its appearance. It was
no longer the rendezvous of Austerlitz. When the first cannon was
fired, the English general, Colville, looked at his watch, and noted
that it was thirty-five minutes past eleven.
The action was begun furiously, with more fury, perhaps, than the
Emperor would have wished, by the left wing of the French resting on
Hougomont. At the same time Napoleon attacked the centre by hurling
Quiot’s brigade on La Haie-Sainte, and Ney pushed forward the right
wing of the French against the left wing of the English, which rested
on Papelotte.
The attack on Hougomont was something of a feint; the plan was to draw
Wellington thither, and to make him swerve to the left. This plan would
have succeeded if the four companies of the English guards and the
brave Belgians of Perponcher’s division had not held the position
solidly, and Wellington, instead of massing his troops there, could
confine himself to despatching thither, as reinforcements, only four
more companies of guards and one battalion from Brunswick.
The attack of the right wing of the French on Papelotte was calculated,
in fact, to overthrow the English left, to cut off the road to
Brussels, to bar the passage against possible Prussians, to force
Mont-Saint-Jean, to turn Wellington back on Hougomont, thence on
Braine-l’Alleud, thence on Hal; nothing easier. With the exception of a
few incidents this attack succeeded. Papelotte was taken; La
Haie-Sainte was carried.
A detail to be noted. There was in the English infantry, particularly
in Kempt’s brigade, a great many raw recruits. These young soldiers
were valiant in the presence of our redoubtable infantry; their
inexperience extricated them intrepidly from the dilemma; they
performed particularly excellent service as skirmishers: the soldier
skirmisher, left somewhat to himself, becomes, so to speak, his own
general. These recruits displayed some of the French ingenuity and
fury. This novice of an infantry had dash. This displeased Wellington.
After the taking of La Haie-Sainte the battle wavered.
There is in this day an obscure interval, from midday to four o’clock;
the middle portion of this battle is almost indistinct, and
participates in the sombreness of the hand-to-hand conflict. Twilight
reigns over it. We perceive vast fluctuations in that fog, a dizzy
mirage, paraphernalia of war almost unknown to-day, pendant colbacks,
floating sabre-taches, cross-belts, cartridge-boxes for grenades,
hussar dolmans, red boots with a thousand wrinkles, heavy shakos
garlanded with torsades, the almost black infantry of Brunswick mingled
with the scarlet infantry of England, the English soldiers with great,
white circular pads on the slopes of their shoulders for epaulets, the
Hanoverian light-horse with their oblong casques of leather, with brass
hands and red horse-tails, the Scotch with their bare knees and plaids,
the great white gaiters of our grenadiers; pictures, not strategic
lines—what Salvator Rosa requires, not what is suited to the needs of
Gribeauval.
A certain amount of tempest is always mingled with a battle. _Quid
obscurum, quid divinum_. Each historian traces, to some extent, the
particular feature which pleases him amid this pell-mell. Whatever may
be the combinations of the generals, the shock of armed masses has an
incalculable ebb. During the action the plans of the two leaders enter
into each other and become mutually thrown out of shape. Such a point
of the field of battle devours more combatants than such another, just
as more or less spongy soils soak up more or less quickly the water
which is poured on them. It becomes necessary to pour out more soldiers
than one would like; a series of expenditures which are the unforeseen.
The line of battle waves and undulates like a thread, the trails of
blood gush illogically, the fronts of the armies waver, the regiments
form capes and gulfs as they enter and withdraw; all these reefs are
continually moving in front of each other. Where the infantry stood the
artillery arrives, the cavalry rushes in where the artillery was, the
battalions are like smoke. There was something there; seek it. It has
disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and
retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back,
distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? an
oscillation? The immobility of a mathematical plan expresses a minute,
not a day. In order to depict a battle, there is required one of those
powerful painters who have chaos in their brushes. Rembrandt is better
than Vandermeulen; Vandermeulen, exact at noon, lies at three o’clock.
Geometry is deceptive; the hurricane alone is trustworthy. That is what
confers on Folard the right to contradict Polybius. Let us add, that
there is a certain instant when the battle degenerates into a combat,
becomes specialized, and disperses into innumerable detailed feats,
which, to borrow the expression of Napoleon himself, “belong rather to
the biography of the regiments than to the history of the army.” The
historian has, in this case, the evident right to sum up the whole. He
cannot do more than seize the principal outlines of the struggle, and
it is not given to any one narrator, however conscientious he may be,
to fix, absolutely, the form of that horrible cloud which is called a
battle.
This, which is true of all great armed encounters, is particularly
applicable to Waterloo.
Nevertheless, at a certain moment in the afternoon the battle came to a
point.