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Updated: May 15, 2025
They were in two brigades, one commanded By Maitland, and the other by Byng. The entire division was under General Cooke. The buildings and gardens of Hougoumont, which lay immediately under the height, on which stood the British Guards, were principally manned by detachments from Byng's Brigade, aided by some brave Hanoverian riflemen, and accompanied by a battalion of a Nassau regiment.
In the evening he had a look at some of his own grim handiwork. "I had satisfied my curiosity at Hougoumont, and was retracing my steps up the hill when my attention was called to a group of wounded Frenchmen by the calm, dignified, and soldier-like oration addressed by one of them to the rest.
The Lion's Mound is just below the middle of this cross bar. Mont St. Jean, La Belle Alliance and Hougoumont, at the three angles of the triangle, are small villages scarcely more than hamlets. All were important points in the fortunes of that memorable 18th of June, 1815. Hougoumont, with its château and wall, in some sense was like a fortress.
The front battalions headed for a point a little to the west of the present Belgian monument, while for some unexplained reason the rear portion diverged to the left, and breasted the slope later than the others and nearer Hougoumont.
By it he had won notable advantages, above all at Dresden; and he believed that footmen, when badly shaken by artillery, could not stand before his squadrons. The French cavalry, 15,000 strong at the outset, had as yet suffered little, and the way had been partly cleared by the last assaults on Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, where the defenders were wholly occupied in self-defence.
From day to day the public in this country watched the fluctuations of the struggle with an interest so absorbing that the names of Douaumont, Vaux, Mort Homme, Cumières, the Goose's Crest, came to ring in our ears almost as the names of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, La Belle Alliance, rang in those of an earlier time. Verdun, from a distance, produces the same illusion as Rheims.
We see the attack on Hougoumont the appearance of Bülow on the heights of Saint Lambert the charge of the Inniskillings and the Scots Greys the death of valiant Ponsonby. We see Marshal Ney Prince of Moskowa the bravest soldier in France we see him everywhere where the mêlée is thickest, everywhere where danger is most nigh.
In front of the British right, that is to say, on the northern slope of the valley towards its western end, there stood an old-fashioned Flemish farm-house called Goumont, or Hougoumont, with out-buildings and a garden, and with a copse of beach trees of about two acres in extent round it.
The wind blew from the direction of Hougoumont, and drove the smoke through all the openings; we leaned out to breathe, and the second and third discharges followed each other instantly.
From Hougoumont, where the slaughter and the carnage continued unslackened and unstayed, every eye was now turned towards the right. I knew not what troops occupied La Haye Sainte, or whether they were British who crowned the heights above it; but in my heart how fervently did I pray that they might be so.
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