But see, the haughty Cuirassiers advance,
The dread of Europe and the pride of France!
Once the whole of Alten’s division had deployed, Wellington would have about 25,500 infantry, 2,000 cavalry and thirty-six guns, less casualties, on the battlefield. This gave him a slight superiority in infantry and, whilst Ney had virtually no uncommitted troops, Alten’s division of 5,500 men were still deploying and had not yet fired a shot. One of his brigades had moved to support the Brunswickers to the west of the Brussels road and the other, Picton’s ‘much crippled’1 division to the east. The two batteries were particularly welcome, but once again, as they deployed they attracted the attention of the French gunners and soon after, one of the batteries (Lloyd’s) had to abandon two guns as there were insufficient uninjured horses to move them.
As Wellington was beginning to feel the advantage was finally swinging in his favour, Marshal Ney was no doubt contemplating the same thing. It is hard to believe that he had not sent a stream of officers back down the Charleroi road to hasten d’Erlon’s march and then to report back on their progress, but there is no evidence to support this. Perhaps his lack of a proper headquarters meant his few available officers were already overstretched, or in the heat of the battle he had just not thought of it.
But as Ney was reflecting on the fact that he was facing a deteriorating situation, he received an order from Marshal Soult, carried by Colonel Laurent:
‘In front of Fleurus’, 16 June, 3.15pm
Marshal! I wrote to you an hour ago that the emperor would attack the enemy at two thirty in the position he has taken between Saint-Amand and Bry. At this moment the engagement is very fierce. His Majesty has directed me to tell you that you must manoeuvre onto the field in such a manner as to envelop the enemy’s right and to fall with full force on his rear. The enemy army will be lost if you act vigorously. The fate of France is in your hands. Therefore, do not hesitate an instant to move as the emperor has ordered, and head toward the heights of Bry and Saint-Amand to co-operate in a victory that should be decisive. The enemy has been caught en flagrant délit while trying to unite with the English.
Major Général, Maréchal de l’empire, Duc de Dalmatie2
As if this was not bad enough, and before Ney had the time to decide how he should act in the light of this order, General Delcambre, d’Erlon’s chief-of-staff, rode up and informed him that the emperor had ordered the 1st Corps to march towards the Ligny battlefield and that the movement had already begun. General d’Erlon, unsure whether Ney was aware of the situation, had despatched his chief-of-staff to confirm that he was. At Ligny, Napoleon’s attack on Blücher was in full swing and the intense artillery bombardment could be clearly heard at Quatre Bras. It was only after the emperor’s first message was sent off, and the Prussian deployment became clear, that Napoleon realised he had the main Prussian army before him. In fact, Blücher had concentrated his 1st, 2nd and 3rd Corps, but by this time had realised that his 4th, under General Bülow, would not be able to join him in time for the battle. However, with the support he expected from Wellington, the Prussian general was determined to fight a major battle against his inveterate foe.
Thus, as Ney had been impatiently awaiting d’Erlon’s arrival at Quatre Bras, Napoleon had been further developing his own scheme of manoeuvre to destroy Blücher’s army. After all, in Napoleon’s eyes, Ney’s command was just a wing of the main army that he commanded; it was not an independent army with a completely separate task, it was intrinsically linked to the emperor’s operations. Ney’s mission was subordinate to that of destroying the Prussians, but supported that end result by denying Blücher any support from Wellington and directly manoeuvring at least some of his own troops to ensure that destruction. Merely defeating Wellington was insufficient in itself in supporting Napoleon’s intent.
Committed now to a major battle against the main body of Blücher’s army, whose right flank was clearly vulnerable, Napoleon had developed his idea of the march of Ney’s troops on the Prussian right rear. About this time he received a letter from Lobau, commander of the 6th Corps, telling him that Ney had only 20,000 of Wellington’s troops in front of him. Lobau, allocated as the army’s reserve, had wisely sent his deputy chief-of-staff forward to Quatre Bras to bring back information that might be useful to him should he be deployed to this flank, and he had forwarded this information on to Napoleon. This had helped the emperor determine what his next step should be; he now aimed to use Ney to hold Wellington’s relatively weak force in check, whilst he annihilated the Prussians. In order to achieve this, Ney would only require Reille’s corps and Kellerman’s cuirassiers, leaving Napoleon free to use d’Erlon’s corps to support his main effort.
For Ney, whilst the urgency of Napoleon’s order is clear, what is less so is the description of what was happening 10 kilometres away on Ney’s rear right. Soult fails to inform the marshal that the emperor is engaged with the main body of the Prussian army, a significant piece of information in itself and one that should put all other activity into perspective. The message also lacks sufficient information for Ney to clearly understand that the action at Quatre Bras is very much of secondary importance should the Prussian army be destroyed. In modern military parlance, destroying the Prussian army was the main effort and all other activity and even sacrifices should be directed to ensure its success. Napoleon was clear in his own mind that Ney should keep the smallest possible force at Quatre Bras and send, and possibly lead, as many troops as possible to ensure a decisive victory at Ligny. But Soult’s order fails to make this clear.
Just as Ney received this unequivocal direction, he was at the point in the day when he was least able to execute it. We cannot be sure exactly what time this order arrived with Marshal Ney and estimates vary depending on the route that the carrier travelled and how good his horse was. We can confidently say that on a journey that was about 13 kilometres as the crow flies, or up to twice as far using a route that was better going and safer, should not have taken more than two hours. In his time as major génèral, Berthier would have sent a messenger on each route; Soult sent only one and appears to have left the route selection up to the messenger. We shall see some implications of this approach again later.
By the time the order had been written, despatched and put in the hand of Ney, it seems reasonable to estimate that the marshal received it at approximately 5.15pm. This was just the moment that he probably saw Alten’s division deploying onto the battlefield and realised that his chances of victory were slipping through his hands, as there was still no sign of d’Erlon’s troops. His frustration can be imagined; without the occupation of the Quatre Bras crossroads he clearly felt he could not execute the emperor’s demands and the chances of that happening were fading. Without d’Erlon, the task would be impossible. However, if he was now unable to seize Quatre Bras, he could at least support the emperor by facilitating the 1st Corps’s march on Ligny. True, he could not march it down the Namur road onto the Prussian rear, but as it had already started its march to the east it still had an opportunity to fall on the Prussian right flank.
However, Ney was furious, and even if he had understood the full importance of Napoleon’s orders it no doubt rankled that he had lost his own chance of gaining a victory. Up in the line of fire as usual, he was heard to exclaim, ‘Ah! These English shells; I wish they would all bury themselves in my body!’3 In a rage, he turned to General Delcambre and ordered him to return to d’Erlon and demand that he turn his troops about and return to Quatre Bras. In his anger, not only did he ignore the fact that d’Erlon was executing the emperor’s orders and he would be risking the outcome of the battle at Ligny, but he also clearly did not consider how long it would take d’Erlon to retrace his steps and reach Quatre Bras. If he had been thinking clearly he would have quickly realised that d’Erlon would not reach his own battlefield until night had brought an end to the fighting, and thus his recall would be useless.
‘The fate of France is in your hands!’ – the words must have echoed around in Ney’s head; the imperative was clear. The problem was how to seize the crossroads and still have time to intervene decisively at Ligny. As desperate times call for desperate measures, Ney called on the only fresh troops he had available. No doubt he reflected on his earlier decision to have only a single brigade of Kellerman’s powerful corps immediately under his hand; the remainder were too far away to call on in this emergency. He called Keller-man forward.
Arriving with the marshal, Kellerman, writing in the third person and referring to himself as Count Valmy, takes up the story:
. . . the marshal called Count Valmy, commander of the cuirassier reserve, and repeating to him the emperor’s words, he said to him, ‘My dear general, we must save France, we need an extraordinary effort; take your cavalry, throw yourself into the middle of the English army, crush it, trample it underfoot etc’
It was the hottest moment of the day, it was 6 or 7 o’clock. This order, like those of the emperor, was easier to give than to execute. Count Valmy objected to Marshal Ney that he only had a single brigade of cuirassiers with him, that the remainder of his corps had remained, in accordance with the Marshal’s orders, two leagues in the rear at Frasnes, and that he did not therefore have a sufficient force for such a mission.
‘It’s not important’ he replied, ‘charge with what you have, destroy the English army, trample it underfoot, the salvation of France is in your hands, go!’4
Kellerman put himself at the head of Guiton’s brigade, which consisted of the 8th and 11th Cuirassiers. The 11th were distinguishable by their lack of cuirasses; there were insufficient to equip all the regiments and this explains why some of the allied accounts refer to dragoons, for without a cuirass, the two were very similar in appearance. The 8th numbered 452 in three squadrons and the 11th, 325 men in two. Thus fewer than 800 men were about to charge well over 20,000! The two regiments rode forward in squadron columns with each squadron separated by an interval double its own front. Kellerman led them onto the high ground to the west of the road opposite Balcan, wanting to avoid the close and difficult country to the east, and formed them up with the 8th on the right and the 11th to their left. Whilst this move was being completed, the artillery, who had previously reduced their rate of fire, increased it again in an effort to prepare the way for the coming charge. This sudden increase in intensity made the allies suspect that the French were about to make a new assault.
Once the cuirassiers were in position and aware that his men might baulk at what was being asked of them, Kellerman gave them no time to reflect:
Count Valmy launched himself, like a devoted servant of Death, at the head of 600 cuirassiers, and, without giving them time to realise and reflect on the extent of the danger, led them, lost men, into a gulf of fire.5
The French cavalry rarely charged at more than the trot, putting more emphasis on order than on speed. However, on this occasion the order was given, ‘Charge, at full gallop, forward, charge!’6
Their move over the high ground was spotted and the order to form square had been given before the cuirassiers got close. The 2/69th (the South Lincolns), however, positioned just to the east of the main road, having been told there was no cavalry threat by the Prince of Orange, were in the middle of deploying back into line when the foremost squadron of the 8th Cuirassiers spotted them. Veering to their right the wall of heavy cavalry rushed towards the panic-stricken red coats caught in the middle of their manoeuvre.
A young British officer later described what it was like to face these celebrated warriors:
No words can convey the sensation we felt on seeing these heavily-armed bodies advancing at full gallop against us, flourishing their sabres in the air, striking their armour with the handles, the sun gleaming on the steel. The long horse hair [of their helmets], dishevelled by the wind, bore an appearance confounding to the senses to an astonishing disorder . . . Nothing could equal the splendour and terror of the scene . . . The clashing of swords, the clattering of musketry, the hissing of balls, and shouts and clamours produced a sound, jarring and confounding the senses, as if hell and the Devil were in evil contention.7
Unsurprisingly, the volley of the 69th was hurried and ragged; insufficient to stop the charging cavalry:
This regiment [the 69th] fired at thirty paces, but without being stopped, the cuirassiers trampled it under foot, destroyed it completely and overthrew everything they found in their path.8
The 69th were quickly dispersed and a fierce struggle started for possession of their colours. One fell out of sight beneath the bodies of an ensign and a colour sergeant, but the other eventually fell into the hands of the victorious cuirassiers and was carried off in triumph.
Having ridden down the 69th, the squadron rode on and confronted the square made up of the remains of the 42nd and 44th, but despite these regiments being much weakened they remained steady and, when called upon to surrender, replied with a disciplined volley that sent the cuirassiers scurrying off back towards the main road.
On the left, the 11th Cuirassiers did not fare quite so well. Despite their previously flaky morale, the Brunswickers’ squares remained solid and the cuirassiers rode round them, enduring their fire and looking for easier targets. The front squadron charged a square of the 30th (the Cambridge) Regiment; they again suffered casualties without making any impression. However, the second squadron wheeled left towards the 33rd (1st Yorkshire) Regiment that was in line between the Brunswickers and the Bossu wood. This newly arrived and inexperienced regiment had formed square with the rest, but had subsequently suffered severely from two French batteries that had been moved forward. One of their officers wrote, ‘Two French batteries, which had stealthily advanced to point blank distance, opened fire simultaneously on our helpless square, cutting down the men like hay before the scythe of the mower.’9 Eventually, fearing the square might break, the commanding officer ordered the regiment to re-form line to try to reduce casualties. One of its privates recalled:
The cannon shot from the enemy broke down our square faster than we could form it. Killing nine and ten men every shot, the balls falling down amongst us . . .10
In this shaken state, a shout of ‘cavalry’ was enough to panic the battalion, and its line broke up as it became a mob that rushed for the perceived safety of the Bossu wood. Unfortunately for the French, the cuirassiers were not well formed and most of the battalion made it into the trees before they were ridden down. The slower members were sabred or taken prisoner and one member of the unit claimed that one of their colours was in the possession of a cuirassier before he was shot down. Such was the level of officer casualties in the 33rd that in the closeness of the wood no order could be re-established and the men were ordered to move out of the wood to the north, where the regiment was eventually reassembled. Over a hundred men were unaccounted for.
This squadron of the 11th continued their forward move and although they bypassed the 73rd (Highlanders) that stood in the third line behind the 33rd, a number of this regiment too broke ranks to run to the safety of the wood. One of its soldiers reported ‘. . . a large body of the enemy’s cuirassiers . . . coming so unexpectedly upon us, threw us in the utmost confusion. Having no time to form square, we were compelled to retire, or rather run, to the wood . . .’,11 but the majority stood their ground and the integrity of the battalion was not compromised. These troopers of the 11th Cuirassiers, joining those of the 8th Regiment, found themselves at Quatre Bras itself, having charged through the entire allied army. But now their horses were blown, they had lost all order and they began to come under heavy fire from the allied reserves posted in the buildings and fields around the crossroads.
Kellerman reported:
Some of them even penetrated as far as the Quatre Bras farm and were killed there. Lord Wellington only just had time to jump onto his horse and slip out of the way of this furious charge.
It had completely succeeded, against all probability. A large breach had been made, the enemy army was shaken, but no cavalry was there to support it; the English lines were wavering, uncertain, in the expectation of what was going to happen next. The least support of our reserve cavalry engaged on our right would have completed the success; nothing had shaken it, this formidable cavalry was left on its own, unsupported, dispersed, disorganised by the very impetuosity of its charge.
No longer under control of its leaders, it was struck by the fire of the enemy, who were recovering from their surprise and fear. It abandoned the battlefield as it had taken it, without being pursued by enemy cavalry, for it had not arrived. Count Valmy himself, knocked from his horse which had been killed by a musket shot, returned on foot from the middle of the English and finally met, close to the point from where he had started off, Piré’s division, which moved off slowly and only made fruitless attacks that were too late against an enemy that had recovered from its terror.12
Now was the temerity of this charge exposed. All the momentum and order of the charge had been lost and it was now that the disorganised cuirassiers required support. In fact, the survivors were able to repulse a counter-charge by the shattered remains of the Dutch-Belgian light cavalry, causing them ‘great loss’,13 but they were unable to maintain themselves at the crossroads without support. Kellerman later reflected on the failure to keep his whole corps concentrated:
The distance of the other three brigades of Count Valmy’s corps was a great disaster for the army, for France. If they had been under his hand, ready to profit from this great temerity, to throw themselves into the middle of the English army like hungry wolves in the middle of a distressed herd, perhaps, in less than an hour, this is what the English army would have become. It would have disappeared under the horses hooves or under the merciless iron of the cavalrymen and this day would have become one of those actions that decide the destiny of empires.14
Kellerman, his horse killed under him and on foot near the crossroads, was not in a position to appreciate the lancers’ efforts and later rather unjustly complained:
The most complete success would have been assured if the lancers had followed us; but the cuirassiers, riddled by musket fire, were not able to profit by the advantages obtained by one of the most resolute and daring charges, against an infantry that did not allow itself to be intimidated and fired with the greatest sang-froid as on an exercise. We have taken the colour of the 69th Regiment, which was captured by cuirassiers Volgny and Hourise.
The brigade suffered an enormous loss and, seeing itself unsupported, retired in the disorder that is normal in such circumstances. My horse was killed by two shots and it was only with difficulty that I was able to escape. General Guiton, Colonel Juravapes were dismounted as well as a number of other officers and cuirassiers. I have had my knee and foot trampled, but nevertheless I will be back on horseback tomorrow . . .15
A number of French accounts claim that Kellerman was saved by hanging onto the bridles of two of his cuirassiers.
In fact Piré’s regiments did move forward to try to support the cuirassiers, but their horses were tired from their previous efforts; cavalry were rarely called upon to make more than one all-out charge in a battle and they had already conducted two. Their charge was carried out with less enthusiasm and they were driven back by the fire of the steady allied squares before they could reach the high-water mark of the cuirassiers’ charge. Lieutenant Henckens wrote:
As Marshal Ney was determined to become master of Quatre Bras, and as d’Erlon’s corps were not available, Kellerman’s cuirassiers were ordered to capture it with us in support. The cuirassiers’ charge began at 7pm and was admirable; but it did not have the success that Ney had hoped for; it was repeated by us, with the same courage but with the same lack of success, notwithstanding our great persistence. At the first charge we were received by Scottish infantry; an admirable troop. It was like a hail of balls that was fired at us; my beautiful horse, good and expensive, received seven of them. I mounted another horse to charge and charge again, but with the same result . . . In these final charges we had suffered heavy casualties. Captain Estève was killed, comrades dismounted and wounded, and when I gathered together the compagnie d’élite, there were only 25 men left mounted; the others remained on the ground over which we had charged, killed, wounded or dismounted.16
Noteworthy in this attack was the French cavalry response to finding the allied squares that were hidden by the tall rye; individual lancers would ride within fifty yards of a square and, having located it, would stick their lance into the ground as a point for the following squadrons to aim at.
The infantry too seemed disinclined to second the cuirassiers. A swift and resolute advance by Reille’s infantry might have been able to exploit the initial disorder and anxiety that Kellerman’s charge had caused. However, Bachelu’s infantry apparently made no forward move, suggesting that no order had been given or that they now lacked the determination for offensive action.
Colonel Heymès blames the lack of fresh infantry for the failure:
If the 1st Corps, or even a single one of its divisions had arrived at this time, the day would have been one of the most glorious for our arms; it needed infantry to secure the prize that the cavalry had taken, but the marshal had none available, all three divisions of the 2nd Corps were entirely committed.17
Some allied accounts claim that the cuirassiers made two charges, but this must be a mistake. Kellerman would surely have mentioned it if it was true and, given the circumstances, for the cuirassiers to have fallen back through the allied squares, rally and then charge again, seems fanciful. More likely is that allied units were charged by two different squadrons at different times; the whole aim of attacking in echelon being to strike the enemy with successive blows.
It will be noted that Kellerman described the withdrawal of the cuirassiers as taking place ‘in the disorder that is normal in such circumstances’. However, almost surrounded, disorganised and under heavy fire, the surviving cuirassiers now thought only of saving themselves; they wheeled round and in small disorderly groups fled back towards their own lines.
One serving French cavalry officer (who was not present at Quatre Bras), clearly basing his account on a conversation with someone who was there, blamed the rout on one of the cuirassier officers:
A small number of troopers went from retreat into flight, causing trouble in the rear amongst some baggage which was pillaged. This flight, said M. Giraud, was attributed to the poor conduct of a chef d’escadron who lost his head, or more likely his willingness, and who fled at top speed, striking all those he encountered in his path, causing disorder far and wide by shouting ‘SAUVE QUI PEUT!’ [save yourselves]18
Nothing could stop this panicked flight, not even reaching the rear of their own gun lines, and the panic spread throughout the rear areas. One account blames the panic in the 1st Corps baggage train on the cuirassiers displaying the captured colour and the drivers thinking they were the enemy:
At this moment, the cuirassiers that had come from overthrowing a Scottish square [he means the 69th], and whose colour had been captured during a vigorous charge, appeared on the crest on the main road in front, carrying in the middle of them the Scottish colour that they had captured flying in the wind; the first wagon drivers at the head of the column, suddenly seeing this cavalry moving towards them, thought they were the enemy and, seized by a sudden terror, they quickly turned their horses to get away and rapidly got into disorder on the sides of the route, dragging with them the wagons in the centre until the road and both sides of it was absolutely blocked by vehicles.
The drivers then cut their traces and took off across the fields without looking back, leaving their wagons abandoned, the baggage scattered and losing all the division’s stores, fleeing as far as Charleroi where they spread panic.19
However, this seems to be finding an excuse for the cuirassiers, as other accounts make it clear that the cavalrymen themselves spread the panic:
A brigade of cuirassiers . . . fled in disorder as far as Frasnes and more than half a league in the rear, encountering and bowling over the artillery reserves and baggage which were coming from Gosselies, pillaged the baggage and spread terror everywhere.20
Chef d’escadron Levavasseur was one of Marshal Ney’s ADCs. He was moving forward to join the marshal when he was a witness to this panic, which reached much further back than many others claimed:
On the 16th . . . I moved to Charleroi; fighting was in progress. I entered a house to rest my horses. I was at table, the cannon roared. Suddenly, a great commotion could be heard in the town; everyone was fleeing. The road was blocked with vehicles, cavalrymen, infantrymen who were running. ‘We are lost!’ I said to my host, ‘the enemy is here.’ I ran to the stable and, in the alley there, I met a naked man fleeing on one of my horses. I threw him off, mounted, and, not wanting to run without having seen the enemy, I rode forward; but coming out onto the plain, I only noticed a few dragoons, who told me of a cavalry charge in the distance. It was a false alarm which spread its terror all the way back into France.21
The charge, glorious at first, had finished in ignominy. But the brave survivors, having rallied and rejoined the rest of their corps, were to take part in the great cavalry charges at Waterloo just two days later.
The casualties for Guiton’s brigade are recorded as 300 killed and wounded out of a strength of 777.22 There is even disagreement on who captured the colour of the 69th. As we have seen, Kellerman credits cuirassiers Volgny and Hourise, but maréchal de camp Berton (a brigade commander not present at the battle) wrote in his account of the campaign:
Cuirassier Lami, of the 5th company of this regiment [the 8th], captured an enemy colour. The General-in-Chief, in complementing Colonel Garavaque on the courage displayed by this regiment, awarded Cuirassier Lami 100 Louis as a reward.23
The charge, though glorious, had been futile and doomed to failure; General Foy described it as ‘featherbrained.’24 Ney must surely have realised that fewer than 800 cuirassiers had no chance of turning the day around, and the fact that he ordered the charge is more indicative of his state of mind than it was a tactical miscalculation. It was a sign of his desperation and impotence.