108 guns, discovered the secret, which seemed an impossibility, of being
neither on the field of battle at Mont-St-Jean, nor at Wavres during the
day of the 18th ... Marshal Grouchy's conduct was just as unpredictable
as if his Army had experienced an earthquake on the way which had
swallowed it up .'
On the field of Waterloo Napoleon began the battle supremely
confident, with 72,000 men against the Anglo-Dutc� 68,ooo: 'We, have
ninety chances in our favour and not ten against.' The peculiarity of the
Battle of Waterloo was its narrow compass, with 14o,ooo men crammed
into three square miles; the front was only four kilometres wide, as
against ten at Austerlitz. Wellington had his men deployed along the
z!-mile ridge of Mont-St-Jean, with 17,ooo sent to the west near Hal to
stymie any French outflanking movements. His main strength was
concentrated on his right, doubtless because he expected the advancing
Prussian corps to safeguard his left. He established forward strong points
at the hamlets of La Haie and Papelotte, the large sprawling farm known
as La Haie Sainte on his left and the chateau of Hougoumont on his
right.
The opening salvoes from the artillery took place at around 1 1.35, then
Napoleon made yet another of his many mistakes this day by allowing his
brother Jerome to assault the chateau of Hougoumont on Wellington's
right. This position was heavily defended by the Scots and Coldstream
Guards and, in terms of Napoleon's overall tactics, was an irrelevance.
The idiotic Jerome chose to sacrifice his infantry - General Reille's II
Corps - by a direct assault on Hougoumont when the obvious course was
to bring up heavy artillery and blast holes in the walls. As the hand-to
hand fighting around Hougoumont became increasingly bitter, Napoleon
did not intervene to halt it or take decisive action but simply allowed
more and more French troops to be sucked into the pointless conflict.
Wellington sent only slender reinforcements to Hougoumont, but the
best part of an entire French corps was soon pinned down in a slugging
match for an unimportant secondary target. The battle for Hougoumont
went on all day. Flames began to engulf it around 3.30 p.m. but the
fortress never fell; the French did succeed in breaking into the courtyard
but were soon driven out, and fighting was still going on at 9 that night.
It was not until 1.30 that Napoleon finally ordered a cannonade against
Wellington's centre with eighty big guns. This fusillade was largely
ineffective, as Wellington ordered his men to lie down on the reverse
slopes and the cannonballs whizzed over their heads; only the brigade
under Bylant in the front of the ridge took significant casualties. Then
d'Erlon's I Corps went into action against Wellington's left centre at
marcin
(Marcin)
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