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Updated: May 15, 2025
Buche and I, with the remainder of our company, were posted over a stable in a corner of the barn, about ten or twelve hundred paces from Hougoumont. I can still see the row of holes which the Germans had knocked in the wall, about as high as a man's head, in order to defend the orchard.
Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, Papelotte are sown with illustrious dead but on the plateau of Mont Saint Jean the British still hold their ground. Wellington is still there on the heights, with the majestic trees of Soigne behind him, the stately canopy of the elm above his head more frigid than before, more heroic, but also more desperately anxious.
Having given his final orders about Hougoumont, the Duke galloped back to the high ground in the right centre of his position; and halting there, sat watching the enemy on the opposite heights, and conversing with his staff with that cheerful serenity which was ever his characteristic in the hour of battle.
The night raid, the wall of Hougoumont, the hollow way of Ohain, Grouchy deaf to the cannon, Napoleon's guide deceiving him, Bulow's guide enlightening him all this cataclysm is marvelously managed. There is more of a massacre than of a battle in Waterloo. Waterloo, of all pitched battles, is the one which had the smallest front for such a number of combatants.
To this gallant deed may be directly attributed the success of the British arms, for without powder it would have been impossible to have held Hougoumont, and the Duke of Wellington had repeatedly declared that had Hougoumont fallen, as well as La Haye Sainte, he would have found it impossible to have held his ground.
On the right was Hougoumont; a chateau with farm buildings attached to it and a chapel. In front of this lay a thick wood with a close hedge, and the house and farm buildings were surrounded by a strong wall. In front of the center of the line lay the farm and inclosures of La Haye Sainte, abutting on the main Charleroi road, which, as it passed the farm, ran between two deep banks.
They crossed the road obliquely and went down into the valley between Hougoumont and Haie-Sainte. I saw that they were going to attack the squares of the English, and that our fate was to be decided. We could hear the voices of the English artillery officers, giving their orders, above the tumult and the innumerable shouts of "Vive l'Empereur."
Eight battalions are sent forward, an outlying stronghold is captured, but more Prussians advance and threaten to regain the point. At seven o'clock while Ney is renewing the attack on Hougoumont other Prussians appear. The real crisis being at hand, Napoleon resolves on a final, concentrated movement against the enemy's center.
And it was not yet finished: the companies and battalions and brigades were being re-formed, the musketry rattled in the vicinity of Haie-Sainte, and the cannon thundered near Hougoumont. "It was only just a beginning," the officers said. You would have thought that men's lives were of no value!
If the officers deserved a stone, the men did. But come, let us away and drop a tear over the Marquis of Anglesea's leg! As for Waterloo, has it not been talked of enough after dinner? Here are some oats that were plucked before Hougoumont, where grow not only oats, but flourishing crops of grape-shot, bayonets, and legion-of-honor crosses, in amazing profusion.
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