Waterloo_ June 18, 1815_ The Battle for Modern Europe - Andrew Roberts [23]
Meanwhile the Grand Battery and the rest of the French artillery continued pounding the Anglo-Allied lines, if anything harder than before, and despite Wellington’s orders to his infantry to lie down, the cannonading caused heavy losses in the ranks. Next came a massive cavalry attack on the Anglo-Allied centre; like d’Erlon’s infantry assault it was statistically one of the largest battle movements of the Napoleonic Wars.
There are a number of explanations for why the main French cavalry charge at Waterloo commenced when it did, largely unsupported by infantry as it should have been. Some historians argue that Ney mistook through his telescope the sight of some stragglers from the enemy lines who were moving back from the cannonading, as well as groups of soldiers carrying wounded comrades back to the field-hospitals, for a general withdrawal that he believed he could punish.1 Others think that his poor performance at Quatre Bras and on the following day rankled with him to the extent that he was desperate to be seen to deliver the battle-winning stroke. Still others believe that Wellington’s order to some regiments to withdraw a few paces was misinterpreted by the French.
There is certainly no written evidence to suggest that Napoleon commanded Ney to order the heavy cavalry to attack, and the Emperor later explicitly denied having done so. Ney himself was executed by firing squad that December, and his motivation was never established either. Yet in 2003 a book by the distinguished Napoleonic Wars historian Digby Smith, entitled Charge!: Great Cavalry Charges of the Napoleonic Wars, presented a fascinating new theory and fresh evidence about how and why the charge took place when it did, one that rings true considering the febrile mood of a cavalry regiment awaiting the order to charge. It also explains why the cuirassiers commenced their massive endeavour without the crucial infantry support that would have been so helpful.
In this explanation, based on a cock-up rather than the French historians’ favoured conspiracy theories, a key figure is Captain Fortune Brack of the 2nd Guard Lancers, a relatively junior figure in a light cavalry regiment that had taken part in the destruction of Ponsonby’s Union Brigade. Twenty years after the battle, Captain Brack wrote a letter to a friend (see APPENRDIX II) in which he admitted personal responsibility for the disaster of Ney’s premature charge. It seems that Brack, over-excited by the success against the Union Brigade, had mistaken movement on the Anglo-Allied lines for a retreat, and loudly called for an attack.
Officers around him then pushed forward to see for themselves, whereupon, as he put it: ‘The right hand file of our regimental line followed them.’ This movement was automatically copied along the regiment, merely in order ‘to restore the alignment’, but once the adjacent regiment — the Chasseurs-à-Cheval of the Guard — had also copied it, even though it was ‘of only a few paces at the right’, further down the line of horses it ‘became more marked’, so that by the time that it reached the dragoons and the Grenadiers-à-Cheval — who were impatiently awaiting the command to charge from Ney — they believed that the order had actually been given. As Brack explained: ‘They set off — and we followed!’2
This explanation certainly takes into account the psychology of a cavalry regiment on the verge of a charge. Excitement, expectation, pumping adrenalin, keenness not to be seen as hanging back, a culture of élan and esprit de corps that prizes action over contemplation, all might have played their part. Above