Ney’s Cavalry Attacks British at Waterloo

The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, captured or spiked sixty guns and took six English regimental flags.

Continuing The Battle of Waterloo,
with a selection from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo published in 1862. This selection is presented in 6 easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The Battle of Waterloo.

Time: 1815
Place: Waterloo Crossroads, 9 miles south of Brussels

There are moments in a battle when the soul hardens a man, so that it changes the soldier into a statue and all flesh becomes granite. The English battalions, though fiercely assailed, did not move. Then there was a frightful scene; all the faces of the English squares were attacked simultaneously and a frenzied whirl surrounded them. But the cold infantry remained impassive; the front-rank kneeling received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, while the second fired at them; behind the second rank the artillerymen loaded their guns, the front of the square opened to let an eruption of canister pass and then closed again. The cuirassiers responded by attempts to crush their foe; their great horses reared, leaped over the bayonets and landed in the center of the four living walls. The cannon-balls made gaps in the cuirassiers and the cuirassiers made breeches in the squares. Files of men disappeared, trampled down by the horses and bayonets were buried in the entrails of these centaurs. Hence arose horrible wounds, such as were probably never seen elsewhere. The squares, where broken by the impetuous cavalry, contracted without yielding an inch of ground; inexhaustible in canister, they produced an explosion in the midst of the assail ants. The aspect of this combat was monstrous: these squares were no longer battalions, but craters; these cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, but a tempest: each square was a volcano at tacked by a storm; the lava combated the lightning.

The extreme right square, the most exposed of all, as it was in the air, was nearly annihilated in the first attack. It was formed of the Seventy-fifth Highlanders; the piper in the center, while his comrades were being exterminated around him, was seated on a drum, with his pipes under his arm and playing mountain airs. These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as the Greeks did remembering Argos. A cuirassier’s sabre, by cutting through the bagpipe and the arm that held it, stopped the tune by killing the player.

The cuirassiers, relatively few and reduced by the catastrophe of the ravine, had against them nearly the whole English army; but they multiplied themselves and each man was worth ten. Some Hanoverian battalions, however, gave way; Wellington saw it and thought of his cavalry. Had Napoleon at this moment thought of his infantry, the battle would have been won and this forgetfulness was his great and fatal fault.

All at once the assailers found themselves assailed; the English cavalry were on their backs, before them the squares, behind them Somerset with the one thousand four hundred dragoon guards. Somerset had on his right Dornberg with the German chevaux-légers and on his left Trip with the Belgian carbineers; the cuirassiers, attacked on the flank and in front, before and behind by infantry and cavalry, were compelled to make a front on all sides. But what did they care? they were a whirlwind, their bravery became indescribable. In addition, they had behind them the still thundering battery and it was only in such a way that these men could be wounded in the back. For such Frenchmen, nothing less than such Englishmen was required.

It was no longer a melee, it was a headlong fury, a hurricane of flashing swords. In an instant the one thousand four hundred dragoons were only eight hundred; and Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, was dead. Ney dashed up with Lefebvre Desnouette’s lancers and chasseurs; the plateau of Mont St. Jean was taken and retaken and taken again. The cuirassiers left the cavalry to attack the infantry, or, to speak more correctly, all these men collared each other and did not lose their hold. The squares still held out after twelve assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him and one-half of the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This struggle lasted two hours.

The English army was profoundly shaken; and there is no doubt that, had not the cuirassiers been weakened in their attack by the disaster of the hollow way, they would have broken through the center and decided the victory. This extraordinary cavalry petrified Clinton, who had seen Talavera and Badajoz. Wellington, three parts vanquished, admired heroically; he said in a low voice, “Splendid!” The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, captured or spiked sixty guns and took six English regimental flags, which three cuirassiers and three chasseurs of the guard carried to the Emperor before the farm of La Belle Alliance.

How far did the cuirassiers get? No one could say; but it is certain that on the day after the battle a cuirassier and his horse were found dead on the weighing-machine of Mont St. Jean, at the very spot where the Nivelles, Genappe, La Hulpe and Brussels roads intersect one another. This horseman had pierced the English lines. The cuirassiers had not succeeded, in the sense that the English center had not been broken. Everybody held the plateau and nobody held it; but in the end the greater portion remained in the hands of the English. Welling ton had the village and the plain; Ney, only the crest and the slope. Both sides seemed to have taken root in this mournful soil.

But the weakness of the English seemed irremediable, for the hemorrhage of this army was horrible. Kemp on the left wing asked for reinforcements. “There are none,” Wellington replied. Almost at the same moment, by a strange coincidence which depicts the exhaustion of both armies, Ney asked Napoleon for infantry and Napoleon answered: “Infantry! where does he expect me to get them? Does he think I can make them?”

Wolfgang Menzel begins here. William Siborne begins here. Victor Hugo begins here.

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