The Eagle of the Empire: A Story of Waterloo, Cyrus Townsend Brady [best thriller books to read .txt] 📗

fire. But the unwounded Marshal scrambled to his feet and, mounting another horse, pressed on.

The slow-moving ranks were nearer. At point-blank range the English infantrymen now opened fire. Shattering discharges were poured upon the French. The fronts of the divisions were obliterated. The men in advance who survived would have given back, but the pressure of the masses in their rear forced them to go on. The divisions actually broke into a run. Again and again the British battalions spoke, the black muskets in the hands of the red coats were tipped with redder flame. It was not in human flesh and blood to sustain very long such a fire.

It was a magnificent charge, gloriously delivered, and such was its momentum that it almost came in touch with the English line. It did not quite. That momentum was spent at last. The French deployed as well as they could in the crowded space and at half-pistol-shot distance began to return the English fire. The French guns joined in the infernal tumult. The advance had been stopped, but it had not been driven back. The French cavalry were now coming up. Before they arrived that issue had to be decided. The critical moment was at hand, and Wellington's superb judgment determined the action. He let loose on them the heavy cavalry, led by the Scots Grays on their big horses. As the ranks of the infantry opened to give them room, the men of the Ninety-second Highlanders, mad with the enthusiasm of the moment, caught the stirrup-straps of the Horse and, half running, half dragged, joined in the charge.

The splendid body of heavy cavalry fell on the flank of the halted columns. There was no time for the French to form a square. Nay more, there was no room for them to form a square. In an instant, however, they faced about and delivered a volley which did great execution, but nothing could stop the maddened rush of the gigantic horsemen. Back on the heights of Rossomme Napoleon, aroused from his lethargy at last, stared at the great attack.

"Mon Dieu!" he exclaimed as he saw the tremendous onfall of the cavalrymen upon his helpless infantry, "how terrible are those gray horsemen!"

Yes, they were more terrible to the men at the point of contact than they were to those back of La Belle Alliance. No infantry that ever lived in the position in which the French found themselves could have stood up against such a charge as that. Trampling, hacking, slashing, thrusting, the horses biting and fighting like the men, the heavy cavalry broke up two of the columns. The second and third began to retreat under an awful fire. But the dash of the British troopers was spent. They had become separated, disorganized. They had lost coherence. The French cavalry now arrived on the scene. Admirably handled, they were thrown on the scattered English. There was nothing for the latter to do but retire. Retire they did, having accomplished all that anyone could expect of cavalry, fighting every step of the way. Just as soon as they opened the fronts of the regiments' in line, the infantry and artillery began again, and then the French cavalry got its punishment in its turn.

It takes but moments to tell of this charge and, indeed, in the battlefield it seemed but a few moments. But the French did not give way until after long hard fighting. From the beginning of the preliminary artillery-duel to the repulse of the charge an hour and a half elapsed. Indeed, they did not give way altogether either, for Donzelot and Allix, who commanded the left divisions, were the men who finally succeeded in capturing La Haye Sainte. And both sides suffered furiously before the French gave back.

There was plenty of fight left in the French yet. Ney, whatever his strategy and tactics, showed himself as of yore the bravest of the brave. It is quite safe to say that the hero of the retreat from Russia, the last of the Grand Army, the star of many a hotly contested battle, surpassed even his own glorious record for personal courage on that day. Maddened by the repulse, he gathered up all the cavalry, twelve thousand in number, and with Kellerman, greatest of cavalrymen, to second him and with division leaders like Milhaud and Maurice, he hurled himself upon the English line between Hougomont and La Haye Sainte. But the English made no tactical mistakes like that of Ney and d'Erlon. The artillerists stood to their guns until the torrent of French horsemen was about to break upon them, then they ran back to the safety of the nearest English square.

The English had been put in such formation that the squares lay checkerwise. Each side was four men deep. The front rank knelt, the second rank bent over at a charge bayonets, the third and the fourth ranks stood erect and fired. The French horsemen might have endured the tempest of bullets but they could not ride down the chevaux de frise, the fringe of steel. They tried it. No one could find fault with that army. It was doing its best; it was fighting and dying for its Emperor. Over and over they sought to break those stubborn British squares. One or two of them were actually penetrated, but unavailingly.

Men mad with battle-lust threw themselves and their horses upon the bayonets. The guns were captured and recaptured. The horsemen overran the ridge, they got behind the squares, they counter-charged over their own tracks, they rode until the breasts of the horses touched the guns. They fired pistols in the face of the English. One such charge is enough to immortalize its makers, and during that afternoon they made twelve!

Ney, raging over the field, had five horses killed under him. The British suffered horribly. If the horsemen did draw off to take breath, and reform for another effort, the French batteries, the English squares presenting easy targets, sent ball after ball through them. And nobody stopped fighting to watch the cavalry. Far and wide the battle raged. Toward the close of the day some of the English squares had become so torn to pieces that regiments, brigades and divisions had to be combined to keep from being overwhelmed.

Still the fight raged around Hougomont. Now, from a source of strength, La Haye Sainte had become a menace. There the English attacked and the French held. Off to the northeast the country was black with advancing masses of men. No, it was not Grouchy and his thirty-five thousand who, if they had been there at the beginning, might have decided the day. It was the Prussians.

They, at least, had marched to the sound of the cannon. Grouchy was off at Wavre. He at last got in touch with one of Bl�cher's rear corps and he was fighting a smart little battle ten miles from the place where the main issue was to be decided. As a diversion, his efforts were negligible, for without that corps the allies outnumbered the French two to one.

Telling the troops that the oncoming soldiers were their comrades of Grouchy's command who would decide the battle, Napoleon detached the gallant Lobau, who had stood like a stone wall at Aspern, with the Young Guard to seize the village of Planchenoit and to hold the Prussians back, for if they broke in the end would be as certain as it was swift. And well did Lobau with the Young Guard perform that task. B�low, commanding the leading corps, hurled himself again and again upon the French line. His heavy columns fared exactly as the French columns had fared when they assaulted the English. But it was not within the power of ten thousand men to hold off thirty thousand forever, and there were soon that number of Prussians at the point of contact. Frantic messages from Lobau caused the Emperor to send one of the divisions of the Old Guard, the last reserve, to his support.

It was now after six o'clock, the declining sun was already low on the horizon, the long June day was drawing to a close. The main force of the Prussians had not yet come up to the hill and ridge of Mont St. Jean. Wellington, in great anxiety, was clinging desperately to the ridge with his shattered lines wondering how long he could hold them, whether he could sustain another of those awful attacks. His reserves, except two divisions of light cavalry, Vivian's and Vandeleur's, and Maitland's and Adams' brigades headed by Colborne's famous Fifty-second Foot, among his troops the de luxe veterans of the Peninsula, had all been expended.

Lobau was still holding back the Prussians by the most prodigious and astounding efforts. If Napoleon succeeded in his last titanic effort to break that English line, Bl�cher would be too late. Unless night or Bl�cher came quickly, if Napoleon made that attack and it was not driven back, victory in this struggle of the war gods would finally go to the French.

Hougomont still held out. The stubborn defense of it was Wellington's salvation. While it stood his right was more or less protected. But La Haye Sainte offered a convenient point of attack upon him. If Napoleon brought up his remaining troops behind it they would only have a short distance to go before they were at death's grapple hand to hand with the shattered, exhausted, but indomitable defenders of the ridge.

CHAPTER XXXI WATERLOO—THE LAST OF THE GUARD

Long and earnestly, one from the heights of Mont St. Jean, the other from those of Rossomme, the two great Captains scanned the opposing line. Napoleon seemed to have recovered from his indisposition. Indeed, he had undergone frightful fatigues which would have been incredible if sustained by a younger man, and which would have been impossible to any other man than he. To add to his fatigue, he was ill. He could not sleep and the nature of his illness was such that it was agony for him to mount a horse. This condition had been aggravated by the awful exertion, physical and mental, he had made and the strain of that long afternoon of desperate fighting. Nor had he eaten anything the livelong day. Yet at about half after six that night he did get into the saddle again. Conquering his anguish, he rode down to the fifteen battalions of the Guard still held in reserve at La Belle Alliance, all that was left intact of that proud and gallant army.

"My children," he said hoarsely in last appeal, "I must sleep in Brussels to-night. There is the enemy. Go and break the English line for me."

Cambronne, to whom nature and education alike had denied every attribute of grace or greatness except unbounded devotion and stubborn courage, mustered the Guard. Ney, le terrible Rougeaud, the soldiers' idol, his torn uniform covered with dust, one of his epaulets slashed from his shoulder, his coat open, his shirt likewise, his bared breast black with powder, his face red-streaked with blood, for many bullets had grazed him, his hair matted with sweat—the weather had grown frightfully hot, the air was terribly humid—his eyes blazing, flecks of foam about his mouth, placed himself in the lead. Every staff officer left joined the great Marshal.

With the brass drums beating "La Grenadi�re," that famous grenadier quick-step, the great Guard moved out. Here, again, in the excitement of the conflict, an opportunity was overlooked. They could have gone up in rear of La Haye Sainte with practically no danger, but they went straight out into the open, between farm and ch�teau. Up the road, over the fields of bloody grain, through the torn hedges, trampling over the bodies of their comrades, the last hope advanced to meet the enemy.

All over the field the tide of battle ebbed and flowed. The armies came together for the last try. Off to the right Lobau still held his appointed station, but now the Prussians in great masses were swarming on the field about Planchenoit. Division after division, avoiding Lobau meanwhile, mounted the ridge to join the English line. It had almost been broken by d'Erlon at La Haye Sainte. Mouffling, Wellington's Prussian aide, had galloped over to Ziethen in command of the advance with the news that unless the English were reinforced heavily at once their line would be pierced and they would