The Cavalry that Broke Napoleon E-Book

Richard Goldsbrough

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 493

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

On 18 June 1815, Napoleon and Wellington took to the fields of Waterloo for one final, decisive battle – a battle that would put an end to over two decades of warfare and determine the fate of Europe. Yet, little is known about the significant contribution made by the 1st or King's Dragoon Guards who, ultimately, helped deny Napoleon victory. As a regiment, the KDG was the greatest contributor to the charge, made by the British heavy cavalry, fielding nearly half of the Household Brigade's sabres, but it also made the biggest sacrifice. In successfully repelling the main French assault of the day it paid a heavy price: of the 540 men who bravely fought, only thirteen of its number were still standing at the close of the battle. With the regiment severely depleted at the end of the fighting, it did not make sense for the officers and sergeants to dine separately, as was the custom. So they ate together, a tradition that continues to this day, every 18 June, with the KDG's descendant regiment 1st The Queen's Dragoon Guards. Here, Richard Goldsbrough tells the remarkable story of the KDG before, during and after the Battle of Waterloo.

Leseprobe

THE CAVALRY THAT BROKENAPOLEON

THE CAVALRY THAT BROKENAPOLEON

THE KING’S DRAGOON GUARDS AT WATERLOO

RICHARD GOLDSBROUGH

FOREWORD BY HRH PRINCE CHARLES

For all the officers and men of the 1st or King’s Dragoon Guards who fought at Waterloo and for my father Harold (Bill) Goldsbrough. You were all great men and will be remembered.

***

‘I often shed tears for the loss of my Brave Comrades, I could never imagine that men could fight as they did, they seem to have the strength and courage of lions rather than of men.’

RSM Barlow KDG

First published in 2016

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

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This ebook edition first published in 2016

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© Richard Goldsbrough, 2016

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CONTENTS

Foreword by HRH Prince Charles

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Cuirassiers Menace

2 Uxbridge ‘Puts the Whole in Motion’

3 Glorious Past

4 Who Were the Men?

5 Regimental Structure

6 Clothing and Equipment

7 Daily Life

8 Training and Tactics

9 From the Plains of Clonmel to Flanders Field

10 Hostilities Open: 16 June to the Morning of 18 June

11 Waterloo I: Mounted Opponents

12 Waterloo II: The First Charge of the Union Brigade

13 Waterloo III: The First Charge of the Household Brigade

14 Waterloo IV: The Journey Back from the First Charge

15 Waterloo V: The Rest of the Day

16 Waterloo VI: Aftermath

17 ‘On to Paris!’: The Pursuit and Occupation

18 Fates and Fortunes of Survivors I: The Officers

19 Fates and Fortunes of Survivors II: The Soldiers

20 What Happened to the Regiment?

21 The KDG at Waterloo: The Cavalry that Broke Napoleon?

Appendix I: The Battle of Waterloo

Appendix II: Regimental Roll of KDG Who Fought at Waterloo

Notes

Bibliography

This book chronicles the contribution, and the fate, of a single Regiment, 1st The King’s Dragoon Guards (KDG), during the Battle of Waterloo, that epic struggle that defined European politics for almost a century. On 18th June 1815, the charge of the Household Brigade, of which the KDG represented almost half the formation sabre strength, threw back the French 1st Cuirassiers around La Haye Saint Farm. Remarkably, this was the same Regiment that the KDG had previously faced at the battles of Oudenarde (1708), Malplaquet (1709), and Fontenoy (1742). It was one of the pivotal actions of a momentous day, one that was filled with drama, danger, daring and death, and upon which the destiny of millions hung. In stopping the French cavalry in their tracks, the KDG bought for Wellington more precious time in which the Allied Army could hold the Waterloo ridgeline, in which the Prussians could close, inexorably, on Napoleon’s right flank and, ultimately, in which Napoleon’s ambitions to dominate Europe could be finally extinguished.

The KDG success was not without cost, and the Regiment suffered more casualties, both killed and wounded, than the whole of the Light Brigade in their famous charge at Balaclava. So few officers remained alive or unscathed at the close of the day that the Regimental Sergeant Major, WO1 Barlow, invited them to share a spartan meal with himself and the surviving senior ranks, a tradition that persists to the present day in their descendent Regiment, 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards (QDG).

I have been proud to be the Colonel-in-Chief of The Queen’s Dragoon Guards for the last 13 years, as was my Grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother, before me. The current Regiment has served honourably in almost every conflict and campaign the British Army has taken part in since their formation in 1959: Malaya, Aden, Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. They continue to display all the verve, loyalty, courage, resilience and steadfastness of their predecessors, and they continue to draw strength and inspiration from the example of 1st The King’s Dragoon Guards, and their remarkable heroism and sacrifice, on that extraordinary day in June 1815.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My first thanks go to HRH Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, for kindly writing the foreword to this book, which concerns the antecedent regiment to the Queen’s Dragoon Guards (QDG), of which he is the colonel-in-chief.

There are three people without whom this book would not have been published who must next be thanked. There is my friend and military historian Peter Caddick-Adams, who thoughtfully encouraged me. It was his introduction to Tim Newark, another accomplished historian and also a journalist, that ensured this book was commissioned; Tim promoted it in such a way that it was accepted by The History Press. The last of this trio to whom my thanks must go is Chrissy McMorris, the managing editor of that publisher, who has been responsible for ensuring my book went to print.

Special thanks must go to Philip Haythornthwaite, who, on the death of the 7th Marquess of Anglesey, must now be considered as the doyen of historians of the British cavalry of the Regency Period. Philip was tireless in his kind help in ensuring the finer details of the King’s Dragoon Guard’s (KDG) uniform and tactics were correctly described, as well as providing images and useful quotations. Another who has helped me produce this study of the KDG was Clive Morris, the curator of 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards Heritage Trust. His painstaking work of reproducing the service records of every KDG who fought at Waterloo would make a book in itself. On the basis of his work, much of the analysis of the KDG officers’ and soldiers’ origins and fates have been made. Another Cardiff-based supporter has been Gareth Glover, whose production of the Waterloo Archive series has underpinned an unbeatable knowledge of primary sources related to the battle. He has kindly pointed me in the right direction in my quest for information relating to the KDG and Waterloo. My old regiment, 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards, has been generous in its support of this book from the top down. My thanks go to the Colonel of the Regiment, Lt-Gen. Sir Simon Mayall KBE, Lt-Col Dan Duff, the commanding officer, and the officers and men, many of whom helped in some way with my demands for photographs of the regiment’s artwork. Thanks also must go to the Regimental Secretary, Lt-Col Richard (Basher) Brace, who has helped with this book and put up with me since I was the disorganised 4th Troop leader in A Squadron, of which he was the squadron sergeant-major. Also thanks must go to Jono Beatson-Hird and my fellow trustees of 1st The Queen’s Dragoon Guards Heritage Trust, who have supported me in this endeavour and in my desire to commemorate all the KDGs who fought during its finest hour on 18 June 1815.

Many other kind people have helped me in so many different ways. I list them below in no particular order and I apologise if I have mistakenly omitted anyone deserving of my thanks from this list: Mark Adkin, Anthony D’Arcy Irvine, Peter Archer, Rodney Atwood, Andrew Bamford, Professor Alessandro Barbero, Becs Barrett, Professor Ian Beckett, Jill Birtwistle, Viscount Brookeborough, Siobhan Brooks, Lady Frances Carter, Andrew Cormack, Raven Cozens-Hardy (photographs), Etienne Claude, Peter Dance of H. Tempest Ltd, Tricia Datené, Paul Dawson, Peter and Sylvia Derry, the Hon. Julia Elton, Andrew Field, Callum Graham (maps), Canon Anthony Hawley, John Lee, Robert Lowry, Elizabeth Mann, James Morrow, Rebecca Newton, John Julius Norwich, Ronald Pawly, Harry Pilcher, John Quicke, Col Alan Richmond, Andrew Roberts, Michael Russell, Agata Rutkowska, John Shead, Gen. Sir Rupert Smith, Elizabeth Vickers (photographs), Gen. Sir Christopher Wallace (who has sadly now passed away), Lt-Gen. Sir Barney White-Spunner, Pierre de Wit.

Last, and by no means the least, I pass on my thanks to my family for their backing. Thanks go to my ever-patient mother Audrey, my understanding children Jack, Emily and Hugh, who have seen little of their father whilst this was written, and to my supportive wife Gina, who has tolerated this enterprise.

INTRODUCTION

Every 18 June we Queen’s Dragoon Guards subalterns used to squeeze into our mess kits and proceed to the Sergeants’ Mess. En route we had to be alert to the other officers’ attempts at spur theft. The price for not being correctly dressed with one’s mess wellingtons properly appointed was a bottle of Gosset, the then regimental champagne. We were later joined by the more senior regimental officers in the anteroom of the Warrant Officers’ and Sergeants’ Mess. Dinner was a jovial, alcohol-fuelled affair which ended in mess rugby, which involved a competition between the officers and sergeants of moving a package between the two ends of the anteroom. Invariably we returned to the Officers’ Mess tired, bruised and a little unsteady on our feet, which those spurs did not help.

Yet there was a purpose to this ritual, and that was to remember our biggest and best battle honour, Waterloo. The tradition of the officers dining with the sergeants originated on the night of 18 June 1815, when the King’s Dragoon Guards’s 540-odd sabres had been reduced to thirteen and the two remaining officers ate with their men. From that day on, every 18 June the officers and sergeants of the KDG dined together. The KDG were amalgamated with the Queen’s Bays in 1959 to form the QDG, and their Waterloo dinner tradition has continued with that regiment. Notwithstanding over 300 years of existence and a regimental standard festooned with battle honours, the one awarded for 18 June 1815, when Wellington and Blücher defeated Napoleon, is paramount. However, at Waterloo the KDG met its own Waterloo, as the regiment lost more men than perished in the whole of the Light Brigade in its fabled charge at Balaclava some thirty-nine years later.

I have long since left the QDG but still take an active interest in its illustrious past as one of its regimental heritage trustees. Having just experienced the Waterloo bicentennial celebrations in 2015, I was disappointed to see or hear little mention of the KDG. One particular cavalry regiment with immaculate PR seemed to charge at one from every angle, but there was very little air time for the rest of the British heavy brigades, nor for its largest component, the KDG. As fate would have it, I was offered the chance to write just the book to highlight this almost forgotten regiment and its Waterloo exploits. On the award of the contract from The History Press, I decided to pledge my proceeds to be put towards a memorial to the KDG. Hopefully this will be at or near La Haye Sainte, the site of their first and battle-saving charge on 18 June 1815.

I have been lucky to have been taken on a fascinating journey in researching this book. It is not only a military history but also a social one, which revealed much about Regency society in Britain and Ireland. From reading Captain James Naylor’s diary, one really can imagine the KDG officers in a Jane Austen novel. This may actually have been the case, as 4th Troop’s Captain John Sweny’s brother Mark served under and was a great friend of Jane Austen’s brother Francis. Mark met Jane on several occasions when she lived in Alton. The links are very tenuous and this is mere conjecture, but was it just coincidence that she created characters in her novels with the same or similar names as KDG officers such as William Elton (Philip Elton in Emma), William D’Arcy-Irvine (Fitzwilliam Darcy in Pride and Prejudice) and the Hon. Henry Bernard, son of the Earl of Bandon (Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility)? Whilst there is no record of Jane having interacted with the KDG, the Sweny brothers were very close, so there may have been a connection. One of the most powerful experiences has been the contact with descendants of those KDGs who charged, many of whom left such graphic first-hand accounts of their and the regiment’s actions in this battle. The power of the Internet has put me in touch with nine of the direct descendants and close relatives, which represented almost a third of the regimental officers. I have also been in touch with Sergeant John Stubbing’s direct descendants and Private John Derry’s great-great-grandson.1 What is amazing is that some of the officers’ families are still living in the same place that they were located at the time of Waterloo. The Eltons are still seated at Clevedon Court in Somerset; the Bernards remain in a house on their estate at Bandon, notwithstanding having been burned out of Castle Bernard by the IRA in 1921; the Quickes still live in Newton St Cyres; and the Brookes are still seated at Colebrooke in County Fermanagh.

What has also been fascinating is that I walk in the footsteps of so many of the KDGs who fought at Waterloo. I live in the village of Kingsclere in Hampshire, and this one village attracted the largest number of recruits amongst the Waterloo men, with forty-three having lived within 20 miles of it and twenty-one from within 15 miles. Their ghosts are everywhere. I live yards away from the house in which Private Joseph Long’s brothers were born at Nutkin’s Farm. Troop Sergeant-Major (TSM) David Benwell’s uncle’s house, Long Cross Farm, is still standing opposite Cheam, my children’s school. And I worship at a church in which six of these men were christened, all but one falling at Waterloo.2 The coincidences have continued on my KDG Waterloo research odyssey, with Captain George Battersby’s Waterloo medal having been donated to the QDG regimental museum by an old friend from Jamaica’s godmother Dorothy Michelin, who had been a Battersby and the sister-in-law of a great friend of my father’s. I have also experienced great kindness from the many experts I have consulted and whose insights on their respective subjects have been fascinating and duly recognised in the acknowledgements.

There was one source for this book which was especially helpful and deserves a special mention – Bishop Michael Mann’s book And They Rode On, published in 1984. This pithy account of the KDG at the battle focused on the canvas of Waterloo. My book has been an attempt to provide a background and to add some colour to those who fought. I hope that this book, which was intended to get the reader as close as possible to both the men and the regiment, will reveal the KDG as they really were and highlight what they contributed to probably the most significant battle ever fought by the British Army. This book is my pietas to the magnificent men of the 1st or King’s Dragoon Guards who served at Waterloo. Let their names live on.

1

CUIRASSIERS MENACE

They knew the French were out there somewhere, and they needed to know where, and fast. Yet the Allied horsemen were blindfolded by the clouds of spent gunpowder that hung low over the battlefield in a black and white veil. The moisture in the air, produced by the heavy rain of the night before, caused the smoke from the hundreds of cannons to linger. They could do nothing in this miasma but wait and hope for a window in the smog through which they could see and discover the location of the main French assault.

Some moments later, a buzzing alerted them to their opponent’s whereabouts. Many later likened that sound to the murmur of a swarm of bees. This droning was overlaid by the steady and ominous drumbeat of the pas de charge that some of these cavalrymen, as veterans of the Peninsular War, knew only too well. The hum was interrupted intermittently by the jarring reports coming from what must have been a great concentration of guns some way to the south-east. As they moved to the forward edge of the ridge, the breeze freshened and blew a gap in the haze. The revelation was the sight of a dark mass of infantry, the 16,000 men of Count d’Erlon’s I Corps of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, which, at that moment, was poised to shatter the centre of Wellington’s army around the farm of La Haye Sainte.

So how did matters get to this point, where the future of an independent Europe hung on such a slim thread around this Brabantine farmhouse? Napoleon had returned from exile on Elba and, at this stage of the proceedings, only the Duke of Wellington could stop him on the field of Waterloo with his Anglo-Allied army. His ally, Marshal Blücher, was also in the vicinity on 18 June to help with his Prussian army, but he was still some miles away from Waterloo. And it was not known whether he would reach the Allies in time to save them from the impending French assault. The opposing armies first met at the indecisive battle fought at Quatre Bras on 16 June, but this action did not decide the matter. The following evening, the antagonists lined up opposite each other in the rolling fields just south of Brussels. That place was referred to as Waterloo by Wellington in his dispatches. However, this area was on the Mont St Jean plateau, somewhat to the south of the village of Waterloo where the Duke had established his headquarters.

Overview of the Battle of Waterloo, 18 June, 11.30 a.m. (Gareth Glover)

There had been a foul night on 17 June, with a torrential downpour of rain which soaked the battlefield into a morass. Between 11.30 and 11.45 a.m. on 18 June, Napoleon had started the battle. The French initiation of the action had been delayed by their need to wait for the sodden ground to harden somewhat before their artillery could be deployed successfully, and the late arrival of some of Durette’s soldiers and elements of the French Imperial Guard. Hostilities began with the French bombardment in the area of the château of Hougoumont. After this softening-up process had been completed, the 6th Division of Reille’s II Corps, under Napoleon’s brother Jerôme, had assaulted this château in a feint attack. This did not meet with the immediate success that had been hoped for and had now become a battle of attrition. The French objective for the assault on Hougoumont was principally to neutralise this fortified farm complex that threatened the left flank of Reille’s II Corps, which was to march in echelon to d’Erlon’s I Corps. It was also hoped that an attack on Hougoumont would suck in many of Wellington’s reserves to his right flank in order to expose the Allied centre to Napoleon’s main attack, which was to be the coup de main by d’Erlon’s Corps.

D’Erlon’s attack. (Gareth Glover)

However, the results so far were having the opposite effect, as the château was consuming more in numbers of French rather than Allied reserves. In spite of this setback, Napoleon continued with his plans to attack the Allied centre at 1 p.m. with a 30-minute bombardment of that area by the guns of the French Grand Battery, which was located to the south-east of La Haye Sainte. When the guns fell silent at around 1.30 p.m, d’Erlon’s men had advanced north to the assault in the direction of the Allied line on the forward edge of the Mont St Jean plateau. The French attacked in four columns, with the divisions of Quiot, Donzelot, Marcognet and Durutte, and a frontage of 600 yards. Allied round shot had torn into their ranks, yet they had still come on relentlessly and rigidly stuck to their axis of attack. The left of that line led directly to the whitewashed farm of La Haye Sainte.

Whilst the rapidly approaching masses of French infantry engrossed this clutch of British cavalry officers on the plateau, there was a simultaneous and closer threat of hundreds of French cuirassiers gathering in the fields below them. These steel-encased horsemen were the forward elements of Brigadier-General Baron Dubois’s 1st Cavalry Brigade. Although one of these regiments had the subsidiary task to take some of the Allied guns, it seemed that these cuirassiers’ main mission was to protect the left or western flank of d’Erlon’s corps in its assault and to probe the lines of Allied infantry on the ridge just to the north-west of La Haye Sainte. The farm was now barely visible amid the blue tide that was swamping it. The French cavalry had moved to a few hundred yards from where the British observers and their horses were huddled. At a closer glance, most of this small group would have been just about distinguishable, notwithstanding their mud-spattered uniforms. The brown busbies would have only indicated they were hussars. However, it was their dark blue dolmans, brown fur-trimmed pelisses and their just-about-visible, double gold-striped trousers that would have identified most of them as being officers of the British 7th Hussars.1

These men were now witnessing the French emperor’s gambit at Waterloo, his key opening move which had been concealed by the feint attack on the Château of Hougoumont over to their west. He had based his battle plan on his tactical principles of fast and aggressive action concentrated on a decisive point. Napoleon’s plan that day was so simple, and he was confident in its success. The job in hand would be ‘nothing more serious than eating one’s breakfast’, as he famously reassured his agitated Chief of Staff, Marshal Soult, on the night before the battle.2

Napoleon’s intention appeared to have been to use some of his cuirassiers to cover Quiot’s 1st Division in d’Erlon’s I Corps, as well as to provide protection to the right flank of Reille’s II Corps. They could also have been deployed in a speculative attempt to create a hole in Wellington’s centre around the Mont St Jean crossroads, just north of La Haye Sainte farm. If Napoleon’s cavalry had managed to rupture that decisive point, his infantrymen could have followed the cuirassiers and flooded through any resultant gap, thereby splitting Wellington’s forces in half. The French could then have rolled up the flanks of the Allied army, which would likely have resulted in its defeat. It was not so much the taking of ground but the destruction of Wellington’s army that was Napoleon’s strategy. His intention had been to separate and destroy each of the Allied armies piecemeal in order to negotiate a peace with them that would allow his resumption of the emperorship of the French on terms favourable to himself.

The hussars rode westwards along the edge of the low plateau of Mont St Jean ridge on the muddy track known locally as the Chemin d’Ohain. This road ran from the village of Braine l’Alleud in the south-west of Wellington’s position and continued north-east to the village of Ohain. Much of it marked the Allied front line. Almost halfway along the Allied positions, the horsemen arrived at the crossroads where the Ohain road crossed the main road that ran south from Brussels to Charleroi. The crossroads itself was a significant place and was later named the Elm Tree, or Wellington’s, Crossroads, as it was here, under a tree, that the Duke spent some time during the battle.

Almost opposite them and to the left was one of the two major Allied strongpoints, La Haye Sainte, where the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion (KGL), under Major Baring, was holding out against the surging French columns. They could recognise but not see these German troops in the farm buildings, as well as the 95th Rifles, holed up in a sandpit next to the farm, by the distinctive cracks of their Baker rifles, that sounded so different to the lower-pitched report of the muskets carried by most of the other infantry on the battlefield. Nearby them, on their right, were Ompteda’s King’s German Legionaries. The hussar officers were aware that the British heavy cavalry, ‘the heavies’, were nearby and behind them, out of sight on the reverse slope of the Allied position. The Household Brigade was on the west side of the Brussels–Charleroi road behind Ompteda’s brigade, and the Union Brigade was to the east of this road behind Pack’s brigade.

Having reined in their horses, to the right, they could spy Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians and Halkett’s British brigade stretching down in a line to the west. Moments later, the wind had started to swirl and once more the shrouds of smoke parted to allow the hussars to observe the ground in the valley to their south. To their astonishment, through this window in the clouds they saw yet more French in the drenched fields of rye in the valley below them. This time they were not the dark columns of infantry, they were the steel-clad ranks of hundreds of cuirassiers. Major Thornhill was the first to notice this new threat from this group, who were ADCs to Henry Paget, 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, himself still a 7th Hussar as the regimental colonel3, and the general commanding the British cavalry. Uxbridge and his entourage had just been positioning two cavalry brigades in the area of Hougoumont in response to the French attacks there. They were in the process of riding east along the Allied front line when they had spotted the French cuirassiers.

Uxbridge was described by Baron Stockmar in his diaries as, ‘A tall, well-made man; wild, martial face, high forehead, with a large hawk’s nose’, and he had ‘a great ease of manner’. He was no stranger to Napoleon’s armies, having faced them in the Peninsular War, where, when under the command of Sir John Moore, he had been one of the most successful leaders of cavalry, achieving great successes at the battles of Sahagún and Benavente (1808). Not only a great commander, he had also introduced much-needed reforms to British cavalry training methods in 1797–98. But in 1810, his adulterous affair with Wellington’s younger brother Henry’s wife, Lady Charlotte Wellesley, put his illustrious career on hold. His romantic preferences, along with his seniority to Wellington, stopped him from being employed in the Duke’s Peninsular campaign. Wellington was not happy when Uxbridge was foisted on him as his sole commander of cavalry in April 1815.

In One Leg, Uxbridge’s biography, his descendant, the 7th Marquess of Anglesey, wrote, ‘Wellington, always sceptical of “clever” men, much preferred the sound and solid to the brilliant and imaginative. Wellington felt safer with officers who bore in mind his own advice to Combermere, “that cavalry should be always held well in hand”.’4 Uxbridge was certainly not the Duke’s first choice to lead the cavalry in the upcoming Flanders campaign in 1815, given they had not previously served together and because the Earl was ‘clever’. Wellington’s first choice for the job had been his old cavalry chief in the Peninsular, Lord Combermere. Uxbridge’s biographer appears to have thought he was more of a ‘yes-man’, with whom Wellington had served since 1799 during his India days. At the very least, he would have tolerated the appointment of Uxbridge alongside Combermere as the co-commander.

This was revealed in the commander-in-chief’s secretary, Major-General Sir Henry Torrens’s, letter to the Earl of Bathurst, in which Sir Henry expressed his desire for a deal that might ‘eventually be made for the employment both of Lords Uxbridge and Combermere. Upon this point the Duke has been perfectly fair and reasonable.’5 However, the Prince Regent, the Duke of York, and some senior officers at Horse Guards ensured there was to be only one commander of the cavalry, and that was to be Uxbridge. In spite of their families’ antagonism and their professional differences, the two men got on at a personal level.6

However, Uxbridge, as will be discovered later, still had a point to prove to his chief that day, and may also have been smarting at his put-down by the Duke earlier that morning. As second-in-command, just in case anything should happen to his boss, Uxbridge quite reasonably wished to know what Wellington’s plans were for the battle. The Duke replied with the question, ‘Who will attack first tomorrow, I or Buonaparte?’, to which Uxbridge replied, ‘Buonaparte.’ Upon which Wellington caustically replied, ‘Buonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects; and as my plans will depend upon his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?’7

It was now 2 p.m. and the sight of the French cuirassiers spurred Uxbridge into action. However, the cavalry commander and his retinue were still unaware that the cuirassiers were reorganising, exhausted and elated, having just all but destroyed the Lüneburg Light Battalion. This unit had suffered 50 per cent casualties, including its commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Klencke, who had been seriously wounded; and its colour was taken. The unfortunate Hanoverians had been ordered to leave the safety of their square and rush the 200 yards or so to relieve the pressure on La Haye Sainte, where Major Baring and his 400 King’s German Legionnaires looked like they were about to be overwhelmed by the forward elements of d’Erlon’s infantry. These French troops were from Colonel Charlet’s brigade. The Hanoverians and some of Baring’s men were caught in the open by the cuirassiers and did not stand a chance. They suffered rather like the French infantry were to later in the day during the subsequent charges by the British ‘heavies’. The contest of cavalry against infantry that was broken and in the open was always going to be a one-sided affair.

After the assault on the Lüneburgers, the cuirassier commander, Colonel Ordener, knew that he had to get his men to regroup in order to focus on the job with which Marshal Ney had personally tasked him. This was the ‘capture and removal of an English battery placed near to the farm of Mont St Jean, which was inflicting too much harm on our line’.8 He probably then intended to probe north, with the hope of cutting the Allied line in the area of the squares belonging to Kielmansegge’s Hanoverians and Ompteda’s KGL. This point was just west of the Elm Tree Crossroads. It was also just a couple of hundred yards distant from the 1st, or King’s Dragoon Guards, which regiment was located in the centre of the Household Cavalry Brigade’s holding area on the Mont St Jean plateau.

The men of the KDG spent a miserable night on 17 June. They had bivouacked as best they could in a muddy morass of a field and the rain had bucketed down throughout the night. TSM James Page, a native of Merton, and an old sweat of fifteen years’ service with the regiment, described the KDG’s night and their actions in the early hours of the day of the battle: ‘We began to get dry, and as the rain ceased we wrung out our clothes, put them on again, and very few of them have been pulled off since.’9 Page thought the men were in a bad physical state, as the 3rd Troop sergeant-major continued his description of their conditions in his letter:

We remained in this situation the whole of the night halfway up to our knees in mud. Firing commenced the next morning, viz the 18th at daybreak which made the third day. What seemed worst of all during these three days, we could draw no rations, consequently we were without anything to eat or drink.10

Page’s comments were supported by one of the KDG officers, Captain James Naylor, the commander of 6th Troop, whose diary entry for 18 June mentioned that, ‘We continued our retreat until we took position in front of Waterloo for the night, where we bivouacked during an incessant rain and without any refreshment or forage.’10 Naylor had joined the regiment around the same time as Page, and was the second most senior captain in the regiment after Michael Turner.11

Regimental Sergeant-Major (RSM) Thomas Barlow had a particularly frustrating night but was cheered up by a kind gesture from Naylor, as he described in a letter home to his wife Betsy:

[We] then retired to a strong position near Waterloo and Bivouacked for the night, on very wet ground and inclement weather and without covering we remained all night, the wet ground our bed, the canopy of heaven our curtain, no sooner had I dismounted and taken off my valise when my horse and my servants ran away, you may judge my situation when I inform you that my Cloak and Blue Great Coat were on my horse and could not be found. Capt Naylor gave me a cigar to smoke which was all the comfort I had that night. The next morning I sent men in search of my horse who were so fortunate as to find him and the cloak but the coat was gone. 12

Barlow was the most senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) in the regiment. At that time he was 30 years old and younger than Page. Barlow had progressed swiftly through the ranks, having only served for fourteen years since he enlisted at the age of 16. He wrote a series of letters to his wife in the Yorkshire town of Bradford during the Flanders campaign and the occupation of Paris. Another useful source of information on the KDG at Waterloo was from the pen of Captain William Elton, who commanded 1st Troop. Straight after the battle, he wrote a letter to his fellow KDG troop captain John Bringhurst’s former boss, General Sir Henry Fane. This was to inform the general of his friend’s death at Waterloo. In this letter, Elton mentioned the men’s condition that morning was such that, ‘notwithstanding the bivouac that night in such weather, they were next day quite fit for service’.13

At first light, the KDG began to prepare itself for battle. Horses and men were turned out the best they could be in the conditions, and weapons were cleaned. At around 6 a.m., the four regiments were concentrated into a brigade formation and then moved south a short distance in the direction of the enemy, to take up position as a second line behind the infantry on the forward edges of the Mont St Jean plateau.14 The KDG’s final location before the first charge was in the middle of the Household Brigade’s concentration area. This was at the bottom of a reverse slope, ‘with its left near to the Brussels–Charleroi main road, or chaussée, about 250 yards in front of the farm at Mont Saint Jean’.15 Mont St Jean was to the north of their location. Directly to their south, and between them and the French, was Ompteda’s 2nd KGL Brigade of Alten’s 3rd British Division.

Further out, to their south-east, and directly east of Ompteda’s men, was Picton’s 5th Infantry Division on the Allied left flank. To their south-east were the farms of Papelotte and La Haye and the Château of Frichermont. The village of Plancenoit, just to the north of which the centre of the French Army was arrayed, was around 2 miles almost directly to their south. This village lay just east of the Brussels–Charelroi road that ran down to the south in their immediate east, past the farm of La Haye Sainte. To the Household Brigade’s front and west was the Allied right flank, protected, amongst other units, by the Guards brigades of Maitland and Byng. These were located just to the north of the Château of Hougoumont, which lay 1½ miles to the south-west of the 1st Cavalry Brigade’s location.

Naylor commented in his diary how the soldiers, although having been put on alert at daybreak, did very little until 11 a.m., when the KDG was formed into squadrons. ‘Having formed up the first incident of significance for the regiment was the bombardment from the French cannons.’16 However, those members of the regiment who recorded the events of mid-to-late morning that day all seem to have different recollections as to when they started suffering from incoming French cannon fire. Elton thought it had started earlier than the other observers:

At ten o’clock the regiment began to suffer before they were mounted & in columns, from the shot which missed the English batteries 200 yards in our front. Major Bringhurst recommended the colonel to move nearer to the battery, which was done with good effect; the shot passing over us & killing the Belgian cavalry who took our ground during the time they staid [sic] in the field; and previous to their running away and plundering our baggage.17

Private Thomas Hasker, a 26-year-old former framework knitter from Birmingham, reckoned the bombardment started around the time the regiment was formed into squadrons. He wrote, ‘About eleven o’clock, the balls came whistling over the hills, occasionally striking one or other of our men or horses.’18 Naylor reckoned the first salvoes came over an hour later, writing, ‘At 12 a general cannonade commenced by which we experienced some loss.’19 The inconsistency in timings is seen amongst many of the observers to this battle.20 Page gave more detail on the bombardment in one of his letters:

The men were ordered to dismount and lie on the ground beside their horses so as to avoid the worst of the cannon fire. We lost many men and horses by the cannon of the enemy. While covering the infantry we were sometimes dismounted in order to rest our horses, also when we were in the low ground, so that the shot from the French might fly over our heads. Whilst in this situation I stood leaning with my arm over my mare’s neck when a large shot struck a horse by the side of mine[,] killed him on the spot and knocked me and my mare nearly down, but it did us no injury.21

Elton’s commentary on the events that morning continued, ‘Lord E. Somerset thinking we were still too much in line of the batteries, deployed into line on one side & in rear of the infantry.’22

Lord Edward Somerset was the general commanding the 1st British Cavalry Brigade to which the KDG belonged. He was a historically fitting choice of British commander, given the opponents that day. As a Plantagenet, he was a direct descendant of King Edward III, the victor of Crécy and Poitiers; be it as it might from the wrong side of the 3rd Duke of Somerset’s blanket. Anyway, he was a good officer who earned promotion as fast as regulation would permit. He proved himself a talented cavalry commander in the Peninsular War, having been present at the Battle of Vitoria and commanded his regiment at Talavera and Bussaco. He gained particular recognition for his actions at the Battle of Orthez. Significantly, he had taken part in the famous charge of Le Marchant’s heavy cavalry at Salamanca, for which success he was promoted to major-general and given command of the Hussar Brigade.

During the Hundred Days campaign in 1815, Wellington numbered the cavalry brigades in a sequence of one to seven. The first two were designated heavy. As the 1st Heavy Cavalry Brigade, along with the KDG, contained the Household troops of the 1st and 2nd Life Guards and the Royal Horse Guards (Blues), it was referred to as the Household Brigade. The 2nd British Cavalry Brigade contained an English, a Scottish and an Irish regiment and was thus called the Union Brigade. The latter regiments were the 1st Royal Dragoons (Royals), the 2nd, Royal North British Dragoons (Greys) and the 6th, Inniskilling Dragoons. It was commanded by Major-General Sir William Ponsonby.

The rest of the Allied cavalry consisted of light dragoons and hussars. The 3rd Brigade was an Allied composite and comprised 1st and 2nd Light Dragoons of the KGL and the British 23rd Light Dragoons, and was commanded by Major-General Sir William Dornberg. Major-General Sir John Vandeleur commanded the 4th Cavalry Brigade, which comprised the 11th, 12th and 16th Light Dragoons. The regiments of the 5th Brigade, under Major-General Sir Colquhoun Grant, that were present at Waterloo were the 7th and 15th Hussars and the 13th Light Dragoons, attached from the 7th Cavalry Brigade. The 6th Brigade was another Allied composite, which comprised the 10th and 18th Hussars as well as the 1st Hussars of the KGL, commanded by Major-General Sir Hussey Vivian. The 7th Cavalry Brigade, under Sir Frederick Arentschildt, consisted of just the 13th Light Dragoons and the 3rd KGL Hussars. As the latter had only arrived at Waterloo on the morning of 18 June, the 13th Light Dragoons had been attached to Grant’s 5th Cavalry Brigade and the 3rd KGL Hussars, with seven troops present, had stood on their own at the Battle of Waterloo in the rear of the centre.23

Meanwhile, back on the battlefield of Waterloo, the commander of cavalry was not happy. Uxbridge realised that he had to snuff out the French threat as quickly as possible or the day would be lost. This meant he probably had to throw in the nearest cavalry unit he had to hand. This was the Household Cavalry Brigade, located just a couple of hundred yards away from where Uxbridge and his retinue had halted. He then galloped east along the Mont St Jean ridge to the 1st Cavalry Brigade’s concentration area some 330 yards north of the Elm Tree Crossroads, at the junction of the Ohain and Brussels–Genappe roads, just north of La Haye Sainte. It was now around about 2.10 p.m.

2

UXBRIDGE ‘PUTS THE WHOLE IN MOTION’

Just prior to Uxbridge’s arrival at the Household Brigade’s location, Somerset’s observers had returned from their reconnaissance. Earlier in the day he had sent a subaltern from each of the four Household Brigade regiments to the forward edge of the Mont St Jean ridge to observe the enemy’s dispositions. They now returned with news of the cuirassiers approaching from the west and pointed out the French infantry massing to the east of La Haye Sainte. With the benefit of this intelligence, Somerset anticipated his chief’s orders to charge and had given orders for his brigade to form up. To the west of the Household Brigade was the Dutch-Belgian Heavy Brigade commanded by Major-General Trip, and just to the east of the Brussels road was the Dutch-Belgian 2nd Light Brigade, under Major-General van Merlen; both brigades were part of the Netherlands Cavalry Division. The Duke of Cumberland’s Hussars of the Hanoverian Cavalry Brigade, under Lieutenant-Colonel Hake, were positioned in the rear of the Household Brigade. As they had not been ordered to dismount, they suffered heavily from the French artillery fire.

Private Thomas Playford of the 2nd Life Guards described the commander of the cavalry’s arrival at the Household Brigade’s concentration area:

The Earl of Uxbridge rode forward to gain a full view of the conflict and to watch the progress of events, that he might bring our brigade of a thousand powerful swordsmen into action under the most favourable circumstances and at a moment when a charge of heavy cavalry was particularly wanted.1

Uxbridge, once he observed the cuirassiers reform and attack the infantry squares of the Hanoverians and the KGL, realised the extreme precariousness of the Allied situation and decided at that point to send in the Household Brigade to save the situation. Playford was also aware of this threat, as he ‘naturally concluded a powerful attempt was being made to force the centre of the British army; and as there were no troops in our rear, we viewed ourselves as a last resource to defeat this project’.2

There has been some debate as to who decided to launch the heavy cavalry at Waterloo.3 In a letter dated 18 October 1842, published in Siborne’s book Waterloo Letters, the Marquis of Anglesey (as Uxbridge was by then styled) made it unequivocal that he made the decision to launch the two heavy cavalry brigades for their first, and shrewdly timed, charges when he wrote:

I received no order from the Duke of Wellington to make the first charge or any other during the day. I will in a moment explain to you the footing upon which he placed me upon my arrival in Brussels. The Duke said, ‘I place the whole of the Cavalry and Light Artillery of the United Army under your command.’

He finished the letter by stating, ‘I felt that he [Wellington] had given me carte blanche, and I never bothered him with a single question respecting the movements it might be necessary to make.’4 The Duke was still alive when this letter was published, and thus could easily have challenged Anglesey’s assertions had they been a lie. So it is safe to assume, as Uxbridge had alluded to in his letter, that Wellington had shrewdly delegated the decision on when and where to deploy his horsemen to his competent commander of the cavalry.

Having arrived at his decision to launch the 1st Cavalry Brigade, Uxbridge then, to use his own words, ‘ordered the Household Brigade to prepare to form line’.5 He went on to give Lord Edward Somerset his orders. These were for the Household Brigade to charge Dubois’s 1st and 4th Regiments of Cuirassiers that were only a few hundred yards to their front in a southerly direction. Like the French cuirassiers, their opponents in this particular tournament, these British cavalry were big men on big horses of over 15 hands, wielding the 1796-pattern heavy cavalry broadswords. As can be seen from contemporary illustrations in this book and from the comments made by British cavalrymen who fought at Waterloo, the ‘heavies’ did not slash their enemies with their sabres but killed them with the point. Luckily for them, a recent British Army directive had been issued whereby the fairly useless hatchet points of these swords were instructed to be filed down to a spear point. This made body-piercing an altogether easier task that day for the heavy brigades, who were faced with armoured opponents often impervious to the edge of their blades.

By this time, the French general Bourgeois’s 2nd Brigade of Quiot’s 1st Division was smashing into Kempt’s 8th Brigade. The British infantry replied with volley fire and a charge that pushed the French back down the ridge. However, on their left, the infantry of Marcognet’s 3rd Division and Donzelot’s 2nd Division were making real headway against Pack’s and van Bijlandt’s men. The latter’s Dutch-Belgian brigade, already severely tried at Quatre Bras, was so shaken up that it was subsequently broken, having been driven backwards by the massed French infantry.6 The majority of this brigade retreated to the rear, which left a hole in the Allied front line, through which the forward elements of the French infantry stormed on to the top of the Mont St Jean plateau. However, some of the Dutch-Belgians maintained their position and many of that brigade returned in pursuit of the French once the latter’s attack had been repulsed. As his troops poured on to the top of the ridge, Napoleon was about to make the incision in the Allied line right where he had wanted it; victory was within his grasp. Yet the thin red line stood firm. Picton’s men suddenly stood up from their reverse slope positions and volley-fired into the faces of their assailants. The French then wavered. Having reacted to the immediate threat of the French cuirassiers, Uxbridge had galloped on eastwards to the Union Brigade to assess the situation to the east of the Brussels–Charleroi road. It was now 2.20 p.m. and he decided that this was the moment to act again. He could see the plight of the Hanoverian soldiers to the east of La Haye Sainte and the more grave threat from the sudden retreat of van Bijlandt’s men. He knew he had to launch a counter-strike now, as there were no more Allied troops behind Kempt’s wavering lines.7 In addition to unleashing the Household Brigade, he would order the Union Brigade to charge as well to stop this infantry threat. Without a moment’s hesitation, Uxbridge commanded Ponsonby to order the Union Brigade to charge d’Erlon’s infantry as soon as they saw the Household Brigade starting to advance south.

For Uxbridge, this was the moment of truth. For him, this was not just a simple contest of the Allies versus the French; or, for that matter, between himself and the Duke on a personal and professional basis. The very honour of the British cavalry was at stake. Up until this point, the Duke of Wellington had made clear ‘that cavalry should always be held well in hand; that your men and horses should not be used up in wild and useless charges, but put forward when you are sure that their onset will have a decisive effect’.8 He was even reported to have said, ‘I will say, the cavalry of other European armies have won victories for their generals, but mine have invariably got me into scrapes.’9

Wellington expressed his belief that the British cavalry trooper was more than a match for his French counterpart, but that French cavalry discipline was superior to that of the British:

I consider our cavalry so inferior to the French from want of order, although I consider one squadron a match for two French squadrons, that I should not have liked to see four British against four French; and, as the numbers increased, and our order became more necessary, I was more unwilling to risk our cavalry without having superiority of numbers … Mine would gallop, but could not preserve their order, and therefore I could not use them till our admirable infantry had moved the French cavalry from their ground.10

His prejudice against the British cavalry arose from his first experience of battle in the Peninsular War at Vimeiro (1808). During this action, the 20th Light Dragoons had continued too far after a successful charge, and were only saved by the bayonets of the 50th Regiment. Wellington’s initial poor impression of the British cavalry was reinforced by their actions in two further battles in the Peninsular War. These were during the battles of Campo Mayor (1811) and Maguilla (1812). In the first action, the 13th Light Dragoons charged and broke the French, but then threw away their success with a wild pursuit of the enemy. General Beresford, commanding the cavalry, lost touch with the 13th Light Dragoons and, in the mistaken belief that they had been captured, called off the action. His decision allowed the French infantry to escape unmolested.

This debacle led to Wellington firing off his famous Waterloo Dispatch, which was his 1811 letter to Beresford. This was his severe rebuke of the 13th Light Dragoons, whose conduct he described as ‘that of a rabble, galloping as fast as their horses could carry them across a plain, after an enemy to whom they could do no mischief when they were broken … If the 13th [Light] Dragoons are again guilty of this conduct I shall take their horses from them.’11 The Battle of Maguilla was the third major event on which Wellington based his mistrust of the British cavalry. Here, a French cavalry brigade, under the command of Brigade-General Lallemand, routed a similar-sized British brigade under Brigadier-General Slade. Slade’s cavalry, having routed the French cavalry, galloped wildly after them. Failing to reform, they were taken in the flank and the rear by the French cavalry reserve.

After this battle, Wellington was prompted to write the condemnation that tainted the name of British cavalry officers for many years thereafter. This rebuke was contained in a letter to one of his generals, Lord Hill, dated 18 June 1812, in which he wrote, ‘I entirely concur with you in the necessity of inquiring into it (the cavalry action at Maguilla). It is occasioned entirely by a trick of our officers of cavalry have acquired of galloping at everything, and then galloping back as fast as they gallop on the enemy.’ However, Wellington’s dispatch to Beresford did not seem to be a fair assessment of what actually took place.12

During the morning of 18 June 1815, it was likely that he was still apprehensive of the performance of his mounted arm. However, Uxbridge intended to set the record straight that day and prove the Duke wrong in his views on the cavalry. Wellington’s cavalry maxim, contained in the aforementioned letter of his to Lord Hill after Maguilla, was that, ‘All cavalry should charge in two lines, of which one should be in reserve.’ The commander of cavalry followed that axiom to the letter in his orders to his heavy brigade commanders by arranging their forces to charge with one regiment in reserve. Uxbridge placed the Union Brigade on the start line for the first charge as follows: in the east on the left, three squadrons of the Inniskillings, under Lieutenant-Colonel Muter; on the right to the west, with the right-hand squadron touching the Brussels–Charleroi road, three squadrons of the Royals, under Lieutenant-Colonel Clinton; and in reserve three squadrons of Scots Greys, under Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton.

The Household Brigade’s formation was larger, with three regiments up and one in reserve. It was located to the right of the Union Brigade and just to the west of the Brussels–Charleroi road. Uxbridge placed them as follows: to the extreme east, on the left, and within sight of the Royals, two squadrons of 2nd Life Guards, under Lieutenant-Colonel the Honourable Edward Lygon; in the centre, four squadrons of the KDG, commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel Fuller; in the west, on the extreme right, two squadrons of the 1st Life Guards, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Ferrior; and in reserve two squadrons of the Blues, under Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Robert Hill. The axis of the left-hand squadron of the left-hand regiment of the Household Brigade, the 2nd Life Guards, was to be just to the right of the Brussels–Charleroi road. Likewise the axis for the right-hand squadron of the Royals was to abut the right or east of that road, making it the boundary between the two heavy cavalry brigades. It was hoped that these squadrons could be in contact to ensure the cohesion of the 1st and 2nd Cavalry Brigades during the first charge of the ‘heavies’.

There has been some uncertainty of how many squadrons of KDG charged that day. Many accounts and representations in maps, like that in Siborne’s Waterloo Letters, recorded them to have fielded only three squadrons. However, Sir Henry Torrens, the military secretary to the Duke of York, made it clear there were four squadrons in his letter to the Duke of Wellington on 21 April 1815, ‘In reference to what I said to you respecting the inefficiency in numbers of the Household Cavalry Brigade, four squadrons of the 1st Dragoon Guards have been ordered to be attached to it.’13

It can also be shown that there were four squadrons on the basis of anecdotes made by two of the KDG squadron commanders. Elton mentioned, ‘the right squadron & mine paired off’. So clearly there were two squadrons to the west on the right of the KDG line; the one nearest the centre commanded by Elton and the most westerly right-hand squadron most likely to have been commanded by Graham, as the most senior KDG officer after Fuller, who, as commanding officer, would not have commanded a squadron. And yet there must have been two further KDG squadrons, as Captain Waymouth of the 2nd Life Guards reported, ‘He [Naylor] distinctly remembers that he commanded the centre Squadron of the King’s.’14 So if Naylor commanded the centre squadron, then there must have been another to his left in the east, which would have been a fourth squadron, presumably commanded by the KDG’s senior captain, Michael Turner.

A possible explanation for the popular perception that the KDG was a three-squadron regiment at Waterloo was that the four KDG squadrons were arranged in three blocks on the start line before the first charge. Elton’s and Naylor’s comments that they commanded centre squadrons could have meant their units were lumped together in a two-squadron bloc behind their brigade commander for greater control. The fact that the KDG had four squadrons at the battle was also substantiated by Page’s statement that there were eight KDG troops at Waterloo, as each squadron comprised two troops.15

At around 2.15 p.m., the regiment shook out for its first charge as a regiment in twenty-one years. Barlow described the events leading up to this charge:

The Regiment formed in close Columns of Squadrons ready to commence the attack, the enemy then began to cannonade to which our column was very much exposed, we lost several men and horses at this time and after remaining in this situation and much exposed for about an hour we deployed into line.16

Captain Naylor gave some indications of the timing of these events in his diaries, ‘We deployed and (I think) about 2 o’clock a charge was made by the Heavy Brigades.’17 Uxbridge stated that having given Ponsonby his orders, ‘I instantly returned to the Household Brigade, and put the whole in motion.’18

At around this time, the Household Brigade was undergoing the same unusual experience as Uxbridge and his aides had experienced on arriving at the Elm Tree Crossroads. They could hear, smell and feel the battle but could see nothing, as Playford, who was located on the KDG’s left, described this experience:

[T]here was a tremendous thunder of cannon which drowned every other sound, immediately in front of us; but the rising ground before us concealed from our view what was taking place. The conflict was raging violently beyond the rising ground in front of us, and the roar of artillery with the report of small arms was incessant, yet we could not see what was taking place.19

Private John Derry KDG from Leicester, a 23-year-old former apprentice winder to a framework knitter, in 8th Troop was recorded as remembering that at that moment, ‘how he mounted ready for battle, was fearful and besought divine deliverance in prayer’.20 The brave man that he was, Uxbridge placed himself in the front rank of the left-hand squadron of the 2nd Life Guards just west of the Brussels–Charleroi road, effectively having positioned himself at the front and in the centre of his two heavy brigades for the first charge.21 This was a decision he was later to rue.