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The battle once begun, its very various changes, the resistance of Hougomont; the tenacity of La Haie-Sainte; the killing of Bauduin; the disabling of Foy; the unexpected wall against which Soye's brigade was shattered; Guilleminot's fatal heedlessness when he had neither petard nor powder sacks; the miring of the batteries; the fifteen unescorted pieces overwhelmed in a hollow way by Uxbridge; the small effect of the bombs falling in the English lines, and there embedding themselves in the rain-soaked soil, and only succeeding in producing volcanoes of mud, so that the canister was turned into a splash; the uselessness of Pire's demonstration on Braine-l'Alleud; all that cavalry, fifteen squadrons, almost exterminated; the right wing of the English badly alarmed, the left wing badly cut into; Ney's strange mistake in massing, instead of echelonning the four divisions of the first corps; men delivered over to grape-shot, arranged in ranks twenty-seven deep and with a frontage of two hundred; the frightful holes made in these masses by the cannon-balls; attacking columns disorganized; the side-battery suddenly unmasked on their flank; Bourgeois, Donzelot, and Durutte compromised; Quiot repulsed; Lieutenant Vieux, that Hercules graduated at the Polytechnic School, wounded at the moment when he was beating in with an axe the door of La Haie-Sainte under the downright fire of the English barricade which barred the angle of the road from Genappe to Brussels; Marcognet's division caught between the infantry and the cavalry, shot down at the very muzzle of the guns amid the grain by Best and Pack, put to the sword by Ponsonby; his battery of seven pieces spiked; the Prince of Saxe-Weimar holding and guarding, in spite of the Comte d'Erlon, both Frischemont and Smohain; the flag of the 105th taken, the flag of the 45th captured; that black Prussian hussar stopped by runners of the flying column of three hundred light cavalry on the scout between Wavre and Plancenoit; the alarming things that had been said by prisoners; Grouchy's delay; fifteen hundred men killed in the orchard of Hougomont in less than an hour; eighteen hundred men overthrown in a still shorter time about La Haie-Sainte, all these stormy incidents passing like the clouds of battle before Napoleon, had hardly troubled his gaze and had not overshadowed that face of imperial certainty.
In fact, only on their extreme left could the defenders feel much security; for there the slope is steeper, besides being protected in front by marshy ground, copses, and the hamlets of Papelotte, La Haye, and Smohain. Napoleon paid little attention to the left wing of the allies.
And lastly in front of their left wing on the road leading to Wavre, about a hundred paces from the hill on our side, were the farms of Papelotte and La Haye, occupied by the Germans, and the little hamlets of Smohain, Cheval-de-Bois, and Jean-Loo, which I informed myself about afterward in order to understand all that took place.
But the head of Pirch's corps was near at hand to strengthen Bülow; while, after long delays caused by miry lanes and an order from Blücher to make for Planchenoit, Ziethen's corps began to menace the French right at Smohain. Reiche soon opened fire with sixteen cannon, somewhat relieving the pressure on Wellington's left. Still the Emperor was full of hope.
In fact, only on their extreme left could the defenders feel much security; for there the slope is steeper, besides being protected in front by marshy ground, copses, and the hamlets of Papelotte, La Haye, and Smohain. Napoleon paid little attention to the left wing of the allies.
Further to the left were the hamlet of Smohain and the farms Papelotte and La Haye. Wellington had arranged his brigades so as to distribute the older troops as much as possible among the less experienced. Sir Thomas Picton's fifth division formed the left of the line; to his right was Alten's second division, and beyond him to the right was the guards division under Cooke.
But the head of Pirch's corps was near at hand to strengthen Bülow; while, after long delays caused by miry lanes and an order from Blücher to make for Planchenoit, Ziethen's corps began to menace the French right at Smohain. Reiche soon opened fire with sixteen cannon, somewhat relieving the pressure on Wellington's left. Still the Emperor was full of hope.
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