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Updated: May 15, 2025
As an old man he supported Napoleon ardently until the empire and the ambitions of the emperor became too swollen, and, while he mourned Waterloo, he told his son, General Robert Lennox de St. Luc, who distinguished himself so greatly there and who almost took the château of Hougoumont from the English, that it was for the best, and that it was inevitable. It was the comment of St.
"When I reached Lloyd's abandoned guns, I stood near them for about a minute to contemplate the scene: it was grand beyond description. Hougoumont and its wood sent up a broad flame through the dark masses of smoke that overhung the field; beneath this cloud the French were indistinctly visible.
At each instant the road became more encumbered. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were pressing along pell-mell: jammed together like a solid mass. We could not take that way without destruction; so the generals who had collected together near the Hougoumont hedge dispersed across the fields.
A troop of the Seventh Hussars charged and drove back a body of light cavalry, who kept on disturbing the videttes; and the Second Light Dragoons of the king's German legion, posted in front of Hougoumont, charged and drove back a column of the enemy's cavalry that approached too close.
It appears that on the ever-memorable 18th of June four companies of the Third Guards and of the Coldstreams, under the command of Colonels Maitland and Byng, held the important farmhouse of Hougoumont at the right of the British position. At a critical point of the action these troops found themselves short of powder.
The cannonade, which commenced at first between the British right and the French left, in consequence of the attack on Hougoumont, soon became general along both lines; and about one o'clock, Napoleon directed a grand attack to be made under Marshal Ney upon the centre and left wing of the allied army.
Then, mounting a favourite charger, a small thorough-bred chestnut horse, named "Copenhagen," Wellington rode forward to the range of hills where his men were posted. Accompanied by his staff and by the Prussian General Muffling, he rode along his lines, carefully inspecting all the details of his position. Hougoumont was the object of his special attention.
The ground permitted in all places both cavalry and infantry movements, and except the crumbling walls of the Château of Hougoumont, or the farm-house of La Haye Sainte, both of which were occupied by the British, no advantage either by Nature or art inclined to either side. It was a fair stand-up fight.
Despairing of success, the French artillery now discharged shells upon Hougoumont; the tower and chapel were soon in a blaze, and in these many wounded men met a dreadful fate. Still, though surrounded by flames and bursting shells, with the heavy shot ploughing through wall and window, the Guards held their post, nor could Hougoumont be taken. "How beautifully these English fight!
The fire from the windows swept the garden, and that from the garden covered the wood, and that from the wood the side-hill, and the enemy could beat a retreat from one to the other. I did not see this with my own eyes, but some veterans gave me an account of the attack on this farm; it was called Hougoumont.
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