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Updated: May 15, 2025
At last, about noon, the cannon thundered on the left and were followed by the fire from the battalion and then the file. We could see nothing, for it was on the other side of the road. The attack had commenced on Hougoumont. Immediately shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" broke out. The cannoneers of our four divisions were standing the whole length of the hill-side, at twenty paces from each other.
The hedges were still tolerably sprinkled with bits of cartridge-paper, and remnants of hats, caps, straps, and shoes were discernible all over the plains. Hougoumont was a heap of ruins, for it had taken fire during the action, and presented a very perfect idea of the fracas which had taken place that day year. How different now!
There was one I can see him now a stoutish ruddy man on a crutch. He hobbled up alone in a lull of the firing to the side gate of Hougoumont and he beat upon it, screaming to his men to come after him. For five minutes he stood there, strolling about in front of the gun-barrels which spared him, but at last a Brunswick skirmisher in the orchard flicked out his brains with a rifle shot.
From elsewhere in the field, Wellington learns of his loss, places himself at the head of a brigade, and commands it to charge. Amid the utmost enthusiasm of the Allies the French are driven back from Hougoumont. Napoleon now turns his efforts against La Haye Sainte, a small height forward from Mont St. Jean, occupied by the enemy's left wing.
The first shots were fired at 11.50 to cover the assault on the wood of Hougoumont by Prince Jerome Bonaparte's division of Reille's corps. The Nassauers and Hanoverians briskly replied, and Cleeve's German battery opened fire with such effect that the leading column fell back.
One of our sergeants laid him gently down, and the other stretched the big blue mantle over him; and so we left those two whom Fate had so strangely brought together, the Scotchman and the Frenchman, lying silently and peacefully within hand's touch of each other, upon the blood-soaked hillside near Hougoumont.
It was defended with desperate gallantry, mainly by the British guards, who reopened the old loopholes in the garden-walls, and closed by sheer muscular force the eastern gate of the yard, which had been forced open by the French. In the fruitless siege of Hougoumont, as it may be called, the French left wing thus wasted most of its strength, and incurred enormous loss.
By six o'clock he has forty-eight guns in action and some of the guns send shot as far as La Belle Alliance. As the conflict deepens, Napoleon's fortunes are seen to be obviously in grave, if not critical, danger, but he strengthens his right wing and again hazards Hougoumont.
Hougoumont still defied the attacks of nearly the whole of Reille's corps, and the effective part of D'Erlon's corps was hotly engaged at and near La Haye Sainte. Above all, the advent of the Prussians on the French right now made itself felt.
"Be still, thou querulous old clapper! I can see over to Hougoumont and St. John. And about forty-five years since, I rang all through one Sunday in June, when there was such a battle going on in the corn-fields there, as none of you others ever heard tolled of. Yes, from morning service until after vespers, the French and English were all at it, ding-dong."
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