The Battle by Alessandro Barbero

Author:Alessandro Barbero
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2006-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

“A Stand-up Fight Between Two Pugilists”

FORTY - TWO

“IT DOES INDEED LOOK VERY BAD”

When the cavalry duels stopped for a moment in the no-man’s-land between the two armies, it seems unlikely that the men on the battlefield had any sensation of the pause so often spoken of by historians. Rather, the memoirists give the impression that everyone at Waterloo was in a state of high tension the whole time, without a moment to draw a calm breath; moreover, there was no spot on the battlefield where one was ever safe from a hurtling cannonball or from a sharpshooter’s bullet, fired from his hiding place among the stubble some one or two hundred yards away. Around the fortified positions of Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, and Papelotte, violent fighting continued between the defenders barricaded in the buildings and the swarms of tirailleurs posted outside; along the entire front, other skirmishers were moving across no-man’s-land—covered with dead or dying men and horses—trying to gain ground and push their line of outposts forward.

Sir Frederick Ponsonby was an involuntary witness to this type of combat. When he regained consciousness, he found himself wounded and immobilized in a sector of the battlefield patrolled by enemy skirmishers. One of these threatened to kill him and demanded his money; Ponsonby let himself be searched, the man found what he was looking for, and he went away. A second skirmisher with the same intentions arrived on the scene but left disappointed after an even more meticulous search of the colonel’s person. Finally, an officer passed his way at the head of a group of soldiers, gave Ponsonby a swallow of brandy, ordered one of his men to put a knapsack under the colonel’s head, and then departed, apologizing for leaving him there: “We must follow the retreating English.” Still later, another tirailleur came by and decided to use the immobile Ponsonby as a screen. He stayed for a long time, reloading and firing over the colonel’s body again and again, “and conversing with great gaiety all the while.” At last he went away, but not before assuring Ponsonby that he should not worry: “You’ll be happy to hear that we’re going to withdraw. Bon soir, mon ami.”

The French artillery also kept stubbornly pounding the enemy position. As soon as the cavalry fighting subsided, Napoleon concerned himself with returning the Grande Batterie to action. Fortunately for him, the Imperial Guard, which was lined up along the main road, had such a quantity of guns and so many caissons that his forces were able to reconstitute the battery quickly. The officers recruited infantrymen from nearby formations to give the gunners a hand in maneuvering their pieces, and the firing recommenced with the same intensity as before. The Allied counterbattery fire was equally intense, despite Wellington’s orders, and General Desvaux de Saint-Maurice, the Guard’s artillery commander, was killed by a cannonball while overseeing the placement of his 12-pounders. The interruption in the bombardment had been so brief that no one on the

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