Waterloo_ June 18, 1815_ The Battle for Modern Europe - Andrew Roberts [30]
The struggle for La Haye Sainte was described by Charles O’Neil:
The combat now raged with unabated fury. Every inch of ground was disputed by both sides, and neither gave way until every means of resistance was exhausted. The field of battle was heaped with the dead; and yet the attacks grew more impetuous, and the resistance more obstinate.2
What almost all the authoritative early accounts on Waterloo and the eyewitnesses do agree upon — including Captain Becke, Henri Houssaye, Major Baring, Sir James Shaw Kennedy, Sergeant-Major Cotton, Captain Siborne, Colonel Chesney and Ney’s aide Colonel Heymès — is that La Haye Sainte fell to the French sometime between 6 and 6.30 p.m. The King’s German Legion were forced out of their citadel, by then collapsing in flames, at terrible cost. Of Major Baring’s original 400 defenders only forty-two were still fully operational by the end of the battle, the others all being killed, wounded or captured, an appalling attrition rate. Unlike the 95th Rifles just outside the farmhouse, there had not been a single deserter.3
For all his shortcomings earlier on in the battle — indeed during the campaign — Marshal Ney now took speedy advantage of the fall of this strategically vital farmhouse in the centre of the battle field, commanding the road from Charleroi to Brussels. This was the most dangerous moment in the entire battle for Wellington, affording as it did Napoleon’s best opportunity to punch a hole in the Anglo-Allied centre, before the large-scale arrival of the Prussians sealed his fate.
Ney brought up horse artillery, which started to pour fire into the Anglo-Allied line at devastatingly close range. It was here that the Inniskilling Regiment took the highest casualties of any infantry unit in the army. On the battlefield today is a memorial stone commemorating the stand of the Inniskillings, and Wellington’s verbal tribute to their sacrifice: ‘Ah, they saved the centre of my line.’
Ney also brought forces to bear on the Sandpit, forcing out the 95th Rifle Regiment (later to become the Royal Greenjackets). According to a new history of the 95th, a hundred Riflemen were so demoralised during the course of the engagements there that they simply absented themselves without good reason for the rest of the battle.4 An attempt to recapture the farmhouse by Colonel Ompteda and the 5th KGL was defeated, leaving Ompteda dead, the battalion virtually wiped out and the King’s colours taken. The centre of the Anglo-Allied line wavered momentarily under the terrific onslaught, and this was perhaps the psychological moment at which Napoleon should have flung every available man into the action in front of the farmhouse.
That he failed to do so cannot be put down to the Emperor’s lack of nerve, or lack of understanding about what was happening. His line infantry, exhausted after d’Erlon’s failed efforts, were in no state to deliver the killer blow, just as his cavalry had blown itself riding in vain around the British squares. Furthermore Billow’s corps had meanwhile retaken the village of Plancenoit, less than a mile to the east of La Belle Alliance, forcing out the Young Guard house by house and therefore threatening the whole right flank. Thus when Ney sent Colonel Heymès to beg for fresh troops to exploit the perceived weakness in Wellington’s centre, Napoleon responded with heavy sarcasm: ‘Des troupes! Où voulezvous que j’en prenne? Voulez-vous que j’en fasse?’ (Troops! Where do you want me to get them from? Do you want me to make them?’)
Of course the Emperor still had the bulk of the Imperial Guard to commit to the fray, but he tended only to do this at the precise moment to turn victory into a rout, which this clearly was not. Meanwhile, Wellington was in a scarcely better position, and gave repeated orders for his line to stand fast, understanding that even a modest re-alignment backwards might be misinterpreted as a withdrawal by the men themselves, which might itself turn