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Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo
Ernest Crofts (Source) |
Soldat Louis Vaugeois struggled up the muddy, torn slope as he marched with his comrades into battle. Though they had been spectators for most of the day, they had been engaged two days ago and it seemed that they had been marching every day without cease for at least a month.
For the Imperial Guard was always the last to move. Enemy spies were everywhere and where the Guard was, there too was the Emperor of France. Where Napoléon was marked the main thrust of a campaign. The Emperor led the main body, first, last, and always.
Louis grunted as he thought of that. Back in '06 he had been in the Iron Marshal's¹ corps standing alone against the bulk of the Prussian Army at Auerstädt whilst the Emperor fought a small portion of the Prussian Army with the bulk of the Grande Armée.
Nothing seemed to change, Louis thought, they had watched the Emperor turn his horse off the road and salute the Guard with his famous cocked hat. There was grumbling in the ranks, this was the last cast of the dice, "Why is the Emperor not leading us to glory?" many of the men muttered.
Louis didn't care. He had been unemployed when the Bourbons had returned to France in 1814. He had been exiled to his native village, far from Paris and the intrigues of the Bonapartists.
When word had come of the Emperor's return, Louis had set out for Paris immediately, along with many other veterans who had shared the bitterness of exile.
The whirlwind rebuilding of an army to convince the crowned heads of Europe that only Frenchmen could decide the fate of France and who sat on the throne. Not some bunch of diplomats drawing up new maps in far off Vienna!
Now that was all in the past, finally they were advancing to put paid to Wellington and his hirelings, the dregs of England's prisons.
The smoke was thicker up here, there were dead men and horses everywhere. The ranks began to waiver and turn as men picked their way through this field of the dead. Louis' heart beat faster as the drums beat the pas de charge and the cry "Vive l'Empereur!" issued from a thousand throats.
As rifts in the drifting powder smoke slowly revealed the ridge ahead, Louis was puzzled, where were the English? All he could see were more dead men and horses, though here and there a corpse clad in a red uniform could be glimpsed, he saw no living man in the red jacket of the English army.
Trampled crops, there, an abandoned cannon, more smoke and in the right rear of his unit, he heard the distinctive thump of artillery. Louis thought that odd, who could that be, in that direction?
But immediately his attention was focused again to his front, for there, there were the English, seemingly springing from the torn soil, muskets at the present ...
The first volley seemed to rip away the men who were ahead of him in the column. Screams and groans filled the air as his comrades fell all around him.
There was Lieutenant Portier, the cross of the Legion of Honor shining on his chest, his sword held aloft, screaming incoherently as blood gushed from his mouth. Louis watched in shock as this veteran of a hundred battles collapsed to his knees and died.
The sergeants were now trying to get the men to deploy into line so they could return the English fire. What madness is this, Louis' mind screamed, to attempt to deploy in the face of the enemy?
Another volley crashed out, more men fell. Louis found himself taking a step backwards, still facing front but unable to will himself to take one more step into the maelstrom of English musketry. Other men began to drift to their rear, slowly and inexorably the Imperial Guard demonstrated that regardless of their prowess and reputation, they were still but mortal men.
As the Guard tried to keep it's order as it slid back down the ridge, another English unit had advanced onto their left flank. Again these men seemed to appear from the smoke of battle like phantoms of some military nightmare.
When the volleys began to pour into the Guard from the flank, the men could take no more. Many turned and ran, throwing their muskets down, discarding anything which might slow their retreat from the slaughterhouse of the ridge of Mont St. Jean.
As night fell, Louis passed a square of grenadiers, he recognized them as one of the senior units of the Guard, they stood like a rock against a gathering tide of ruin.
He was mixed in with a group of regular infantrymen and even a few unhorsed cavalrymen who found great difficulty in treading through the mud in their big boots. He tried to veer towards the square but it was impossible, the tide of defeat was carrying him south, away from the field.
He thought he caught a glimpse of the Emperor in the square of grenadiers, but then the blare of an English trumpet sounded behind him, and the mob surged again, screaming in panic. His face burned with shame as he was swept along.
The battle was over, they had lost.
Could France be saved?
Louis had his doubts.
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Napoleon at Waterloo, 1815
Mezzotint by Jazet after Steuben (Source) |
¹ Louis-Nicolas Davout, commander of the III Corps during the Prussian campaign of 1806.
