Scotland Forever E-Book

Iain Gale

• Herausgeber: Birlinn
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 208

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

One of the most iconic incidents of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 was the charge of the Scots Greys, a crack cavalry regiment, into the heart of the French army. It was a moment of supreme daring and horse-riding skill, and Sergeant Ewart of the Greys succeeded in snatching one of Napoleon's coveted eagle standards. However it was also a military blunder. The Greys were quickly surrounded by enemy cavalry and cut to pieces. Of the regiment's 442 officers and men almost half, 198, were killed or injured. In the end the battle was won by the British and their allies and the eagle of the French 45th regiment is now on show in Edinburgh Castle. Iain Gale brings the bare outline of this legendary military exploit to life, giving the stories of the men involved and reconstructing the prelude, the aftermath, life in the Greys and the Battle of Waterloo as a whole. It is a uniquely exciting story of courage and military tactics in the heat of war.

Leseprobe

SCOTLAND FOREVER!

Iain Gale, art critic, military historian, journalist and author has been studying the Napoleonic wars for the last forty years. He sits on the Scottish Committee of Combat Stress, the veterans’ mental health charity, and on the Scots Dragoon Guards Waterloo 200 Committee. He is currently writing the official regimental history of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers and is a militaria and fine art consultant for the auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull. He lives with his family in Edinburgh.

First published in 2015 by Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh

EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

Text copyright © Iain Gale, 2015

Foreword copyright © Brigadier Simon Allen

The right of Iain Gale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patent Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publishers.

ISBN: 978 1 84341 068 3 eISBN: 978 0 85790 855 1

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Typeset in Sabon at Birlinn

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd

Contents

Foreword by Brigadier Simon Allen

Author’s Note

Acknowledgements

Map: The Waterloo Campaign June 1815

Map: The Battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815

1Opening Moves

216 June, 4 pm, Enghien, The Low Countries

316 June, 5 pm, Near Quatre Bras

4Situation Report, Evening, 16 June

516 June, 6 pm, Quatre Bras

616 June, 7 pm, Quatre Bras

717 June, 8 am, Quatre Bras

817 June, 2 pm, The Quatre Bras-Brussels Road

9Situation Report, Morning, 17 June

1018 June, 5 am, Mont St Jean

11Situation Report, 18 June, Breakfast, Mont St Jean

1218 June, 11 am, Mont St Jean

13Situation Report, 18 June, 12.30 pm

1418 June, 12.30 pm, East of the Crossroads, Mont St Jean

1518 June, 1 pm, Mont Saint Jean

16Situation Report, 18 June, 1.15 pm

1718 June, 1.30 pm, The Valley

1818 June, 2 pm, The Valley

1918 June, 2.30 pm, The Valley

2018 June, 3 pm, Mont St Jean

21Situation Report, 18 June, 4 pm

2218 June, 5 pm, The Rear of the Crossroads, Mont St Jean

23Situation Report, 18 June, 7 pm

2418 June, 9 pm, The Ridge of Mont St Jean

25Postscript

Bibliography

Foreword

by

Brigadier Simon Allen Colonel, The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards

The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards is Scotland’s senior regiment and her only regular cavalry. The Regiment retains the captured eagle of the 45th Regiment as the centrepiece of its cap badge and celebrates the Battle of Waterloo annually as one of two principal battle honours. The story of the battle has been recounted in numerous publications and examined from every angle. But the military history of this period is not always presented in such a way as to appeal to everyone, and it can appear dry to those unfamiliar with the significance of the events of nineteenth-century Europe.

In his lively and very readable book, military historian and novelist Iain Gale has enthusiastically and energetically embraced his subject to give us a very colourful description of the part played by the Scots Greys in the Battle of Waterloo, as it has come to be known. He brings to life the characters of this unfolding drama, with all their imperfections and foibles, in a way that makes them readily identifiable to readers in the twenty-first century. The privations and lifestyle of the Scottish soldier nevertheless remain a million miles away from the profligate excesses of the present day, reminding the reader of his good fortune in not having been born in those times.

Whether or not the charge of the Union Brigade turned out exactly as Wellington had hoped it would, there is little doubt that the actions of the Scots Greys contributed to victory over Napoleon and the end of his dreams of political liberalisation in Europe. Britain grew stronger and richer as a result, and the charge of the Greys became one of the many romantic tales to emanate from the battle and was recorded by various artists, most notably by Lady Butler in her painting ‘Scotland Forever!’.

Today the Regiment is based in its native Scotland in an essentially expeditionary role that would be familiar to its antecedents. The nature of warfare is constantly changing and yet, whatever the future may bring, I have little doubt that the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards will rise to the challenges, as did their forbears, bolstered by the justifiable belief that the Regiment remains Second to None.

Author’s Note

This book has been in my head for some forty years. Ever since when, as a boy, I was taken to see Dino de Laurentis’s spectacular film Waterloo in 1970, I have been fascinated (some would say obsessed) by the battle and campaign. I have written about it, studied the men who fought in it, refought it myself in miniature, visited the battlefield countless times and guided tours around it ranging from parties of schoolchildren to 32 serving US army officers on a TEWT. After all those years the key episodes still stand out. The defence of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, the great French cavalry charges against the chequerboard Allied squares, the assault of the Old Guard and, not least, the attack of d’Erlon’s Corps and its destruction by the redcoats of Picton’s Division and the British heavy cavalry.

The charge of the Scots Greys at Waterloo is probably the most iconic of all images of the battle. Thanks to Lady Butler’s hugely inspiring, if inaccurate, painting of 1881, Scotland for Ever!, it resonates in the public imagination every time the battle is mentioned.

It was early on in the course of my reading that I began to realise that Lady Butler’s image was far from true to life. The Greys, it seems from contemporary accounts, did not charge. The fastest they got was a gallop. Yet, far from shattering my boyhood dreams of glory this only made me want to enquire further. How did they defeat the French? How could the Union Brigade of just 1,200 cavalry destroy an entire 15,000-man army corps? Was it true that they went too far and were in their own turn destroyed? Above all, who were they, these extraordinary Scottish horsemen?

Thanks to the recent research of Stuart Mellor in his invaluable book Greys’ Ghosts, we are closer to knowing just that. But I wanted to go a stage further: to put the men in the context not only of the ‘charge’ but of the whole campaign and the later stages of the battle. What was the truth about the taking of the French eagle which forms the centrepiece of the regimental museum in Edinburgh Castle. And who was the man who had taken it, the hero, Ensign Ewart, who lies entombed on the Castle Esplanade?

Using memoirs, diaries and letters written by some of the men who were there, I was able to piece together the events of the four days of the campaign with more accuracy I believe than ever before. I would like to think that I may also have laid to rest some old rumours and arguments.

That said, however, no history of a battle is ever wholly correct and the reader must remain aware that even such apparently truthful primary sources as those used by me in this work still have their biases, prejudices and personal agendas.

I have had to be careful too not to over-embroider. As a writer of military fiction there is a tendency for me to invent dialogue and to put into the heads of the protagonists thoughts which I might suppose to be there.

I have endeavoured not to do either of these things. Ninety percent of the dialogue in this book is as it was reported in the original sources. All the rest is careful guesswork based upon my knowledge of the period.

Doubtless some readers will find fault in some details and for this I apologise. I am always happy to stand corrected and welcome all correspondence.

Lastly a word on the title. ‘Scotland forever’ was, according to several sources, the cry given up as the Greys went to meet the French, and it was naturally taken up by the men of the 92nd Gordon Highlanders as the great grey horses pushed through their ranks to get at the enemy. The Caton-Woodville image of the leaping Highlander holding on to the dragoon’s stirrup must be taken with a pinch of salt. But it seems certain that in their haste to be on the French, some of the 92nd did try to hold the legs of the cavalrymen. Either way it is a fitting title for a book which commemorates perhaps the greatest feat to date of Scotland’s only cavalry regiment.

Acknowledgements

Over the past two years I have come to know the regimental descendents of the Greys who fought at Waterloo, being privileged to have been asked to sit on the Waterloo 200 Committee of the regiment’s present day incarnation, the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. I can honestly say that I have never before been a member of quite so convivial a committee, and through my acquaintance with the officers and men of today’s Scottish cavalry, both retired and those who at the time were still serving on the front line in Afghanistan, I have come to understand something of the spirit and strength of character which surely held together the regiment at Waterloo in its finest and ultimately most perilous hour.

I would like to thank in particular Major Robin Maclean, curator and librarian of the regimental museum at Edinburgh Castle for his tireless help in finding source material and his suggestions throughout the process. I should also like to thank Brigadier Mel Jamieson for his enthusiastic support in the project and of course Brigadier Simon Allen, Colonel of the Regiment, for his foreword to this book.

Other members of the Committee who also deserve my thanks include Captain Rory Maclachlan, Major Jamie Erskine, Lt Colonel Mike Bullen and regimental historian Stephen Wood for his advice on casualties during the battle. On this last point, while the figures on which I have settled for losses at Waterloo are 105 dead and 93 wounded, these by no means represent only the men lost by the Greys as a consequence of the attack on d’Erlon’s corps. The regiment had suffered several casualties on 17 June, and on the18th on its return from the valley, stood for another six hours of fighting and engaged in several further charges. All this time it continued to take casualties, and I hope that I have made this attrition plain in the course of the text.

Lastly I would like to thank my publisher Hugh Andrew who believed in the book from day one, and my editor Tom Johnstone, for their guidance and advice.

Iain Gale, Edinburgh 2015

Dedication

To the officers and men of the 2nd Royal North British Dragoons who fell in the Waterloo campaign 16–18 June 1815

1

Opening Moves

Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from exile on the island of Elba on the 26th of February, 1815. He had with him only 1,000 men. Landing on the south coast of France at Golfe-Juan near Antibes, the man who as the Emperor of France had once ruled most of Europe led his tiny army north.

At Besançon on the 10th of March he was confronted by Marshal Michel Ney, one of his most trusted generals, and a regiment of foot. Ney had promised the French King, the Bourbon Louis XVIII, to return with Napoleon ‘in an iron cage’. But such was his former master’s magnetism that Ney’s troops went over to Napoleon, and Ney himself joined them.

Following a triumphant march through France, the Emperor arrived in Paris on the 20th of March at the head of two Divisions comprising some ten thousand men.

News of his escape was laughed at by the allied generals and politicians attending the peace negotiations in Vienna; until they realised that it was not in fact a joke. Then panic gripped Europe, as people wondered if this man would plunge them into another twenty years of world war.

In fact Napoleon wanted peace, and tried his best to obtain it. He wrote letters to the Prince Regent of Britain and the Russian Emperor, proposing a peaceful resolution of the conflict. But the Allies steadfastedly refused his entreaties and declared war not on the French nation, but on Napoleon himself.

His response was swift and effective. Within two months Napoleon had assembled an army of half a million men, with some 200,000 in the field along with 360 cannon. They were mostly veterans and loyal to the man who for two decades had led them to glory.

It was a remarkable feat and it almost bankrupted France. It cost 5 million francs a month to supply the Armée du Nord, and they also needed new weapons and horses. Across France the munitions factories turned out 40,000 muskets a month, although bayonets were more of a problem.

Uniforms too were a mess. Regiments broke the Royalist fleurs de lys off their shakos, and some managed to find brass eagles with which to replace them. In particular there was not enough body armour to supply Napoleon’s legendary cuirassiers, his elite heavy cavalry, and one regiment went into battle without it.

Horses too were in short supply. The Emperor’s disastrous campaign in Russia had cost no less than 180,000 horses and there just weren’t enough of them. Nevertheless, by June 1815 Napoleon was able to field an impressive army which to any observer would have had at least the appearance of the Grand Armée of 1805.

His opponents had three times as many men on which to call. 200,000 Russians under Barclay de Tolley were marching to the French border along with the same number of Austrians under Schwarzenberg.

The Duke of Wellington, victor of the Peninsula, had managed to scrape together 112,000 men at his head-quarters in the Netherlands and 130,000 Prussians under the veteran Marshal Blücher had marched to join him from Germany. But importantly the armies were split, and Napoleon knew this. He had 123,000 men in the north of France with another 100,000 across the nation.

The only way to tackle his enemies was piecemeal, dividing Wellington and Blücher and dealing with each army in turn. To Napoleon’s advantage he was fighting in his own territory on interior lines and thus needed fewer men. He also had other considerable advantages.

Wellington’s army was not what he would have wished for. After six years of campaigning in Spain and Portugal, it was run down. Britain had also just fought and lost a war in America during which, famously, British troops had burned down the White House.

Most of the Peninsular veterans had been sent home, to fight in America or to suppress rioting in Ireland. The last thing that Britain wanted was a European war.

Wellington’s British army, a total of just 15,000 men, comprised 25 battalions of infantry and six regiments of horse, but many were at half strength. In addition to this, many of them were untried in battle and some were very young.

Apart from these troops he had an army of allies: Hanoverians, Nassauers, Brunswickers, Dutch and Belgians, making up the grand total of 112,000. A month before the battle of Waterloo, he called it ‘an infamous army, very weak and ill equipped and a very inexperienced staff.’

Of course, using his experience, Wellington did everything he could to strengthen this force. He brigaded green regiments with veterans. In each army corps he placed Dutch-Belgian divisions alongside British. The reserve was made up of British, Dutch and Germans.

The historian J. W. Fortescue describes how this filtered down to the brigades:

In every British Division except the First, foreigners were blended with redcoats. Altens and Clinton’s had each one brigade of British, one of the German Legion and one of Hanoverians. Picton’s and Colville’s had each two brigades of British and one of Hanoverians . . . In Cooke’s division of British footguards, the three young battalions were stiffened by one old one from the Peninsula.

Blücher’s army was similarly unimpressive. Prussia too was impoverished by war, but the King of Prussia ordered mobilisation and managed to get 130,000 men in the field. The staff was split between Blücher leading from the front and von Gniesenau, the mastermind who formed the strategy.

Napoleon took the initiative and on 15 June split his own army. The left wing of 50,000 men and 100 guns was to be commanded by Ney; the right, of the same strength, by Marshal Grouchy. Napoleon himself would have the reserve with the Imperial Guard infantry, an infantry corps and a reserve cavalry corps, 30,000 men with 150 guns. He would be able to detach units from each of these three wings as required.

His staff were vital. Soult was his chief of staff, with Ney and Grouchy as the senior commanders supported by the Minister of War, Davout. But some key men from his early campaigns were missing. There was no Lasnes, no Massena and no Murat. Worse than this, the staff were plagued by mistrust and jealousy.

And another key figure was missing. His chief of staff Berthier, who had been with him through his campaigns, had died in strange circumstances after falling from a window in Bamberg, Bavaria, on 1 June. So Napoleon had to make do with Soult, who had been beaten by Wellington in Spain. He was best known as a plunderer of fine art, and after Napoleon’s first abdication in 1814 had been Louis XVIII’s Minister of War. Soult was not what Berthier had been, an efficient military secretary. He was a battlefield general and was miscast by Napoleon.

From the start, though, whatever the Emperor’s deficiencies, the Allies were on the back foot. They knew that they needed to attack, but they would have to wait for the Russians and Austrians for this to be possible. Wellington prayed that Napoleon would not attack before this. The only thing they could do was post pickets to try to ensure they knew where the French were.

Wellington was increasingly paranoid that Napoleon might try a feint and believed that his adversary would try to cut his lines of communication to the sea at Ostend. But Blücher’s lines of communication were on the east, into Germany, and the old Feld-Marschal had to protect these. So even though they had already agreed that if one were attacked the other would help, the Allied commanders had their own conflicting demands.

The moment of truth came on 15 June, when at 3.30 am the Prussians were attacked at Thuin, south of Charleroi across the Belgian border.

The French had been on the move since 3 am, with light cavalry scouts in front and an endless train of marching men and wagons. Soon there was a bottleneck, and other things began to go wrong. General Vandamme did not receive his movement orders as the messenger fell off his horse and broke a leg. A general deserted to the allies. But battle had been joined. Jerome Bonaparte’s 6th Division of the 2nd Corps opened fire on a unit of Prussian Landwehr in Ziethen’s I Corps, and as the pressure was applied, the Prussians began to pull back.

By morning the French were in Charleroi fighting what remained of the Prussian resistance and Napoleon sat down beside a local inn and watched the columns march past on their way to the front. By nightfall on the 15th, the French had broken through and divided the armies of Wellington and Blücher, just as Napoleon had planned.

Wellington received the news of first contact at a ball that evening held in Brussels by the Duchess of Richmond. His response is well known: ‘Napoleon has humbugged me, by God; he has gained twenty-four hours’ march on me.’

His reaction was to mobilise immediately and move towards Quatre Bras, a strategic crossroads south of the capital. Then he went to bed. He was woken at 1.45 am by his Quartermaster General Sir William de Lancey, with the news that it was worse than they had thought and that Napoleon was actually beyond Charleroi.

Napoleon, who himself had hardly slept, was informed at 6 am on the morning of the 16th that the Prussians had grouped at Sombreffe. He was pleased. This was far too far south. Too far from Wellington.

Napoleon rode to the village of Fleurus, and finding his intelligence to be correct, positioned his army to do battle with the Prussians and sent a message to Ney’s left wing, which was advancing towards Wellington at Quatre Bras, to send d’Erlon’s army corps across to help him defeat Blücher.

Wellington meanwhile was concentrating on the crossroads and rode there, arriving at 10 am. He asked De Lancey for troop dispositions and was assured that the Reserve would be with him at midday and the rest of the army soon after.

In fact De Lancey was being somewhat being economical with the truth, and even as Wellington wrote a message to Blücher assuring him of his support, it must have been evident to his subordinate that such support would be impossible in the given time-frame. Unaware of this, Wellington rode across to a windmill near the village of Ligny to meet Blücher and assure him again in person of his support. Then he rode back to what there was of his own army, but not before commenting that Blücher was placing his men on a forward slope where they would be exposed to French gunfire and blown to pieces.

The stage was set for potential disaster.

2

16 June, 4 pm Enghien, The Low Countries

The old road had never been intended for an army on the march. Nonetheless, for 500 years soldiers had trodden its path on their way to war. Now, in this hot midsummer of the fifteenth year of the nineteenth century, war had come here yet again. And yet again the road bore witness to an army. Redcoats this time, a long snake of them: infantry marching in column of threes and cavalry two abreast, twisting down through the low countries for mile after mile like a fresh red scar.

Horses and men jostled for space on the rutted road with carts, cannon, limbers and wagons, while scarlet-coated officers rode down the ranks, giving orders or simply shouting a brief hallo to old friends.

Trooper Sam Boulter, just turned twenty and longing for his native Suffolk, scratched at the itch in his armpit and cursed the lice that had made their home there and become constant companions to himself and his comrades. Giving up, he pushed a finger beneath his brass chinstrap, and scratching at the side of his head, wished that his regiment had adopted a less cumbersome and uncomfortable headdress.

Boulter was a dragoon. A red-coated ‘heavy’ cavalryman. A big man, atop a big horse, armed with a razor-sharp 35-inch long sabre and a carbine. Dragoons were the shock troops of the British army. But Sam Boulter was no ordinary dragoon. He longed for one of the helmets worn by the two other regiments in his brigade – the Inniskillings or the Royals. Instead, he and his fellow troopers had to put up with this infernal thing, an 18-inch high fur cap with a gilt front plate above its shiny leather peak, and the white horse of Hanover galloping on the reverse of the crown. It was unique in the British army and marked out his regiment as something special, not that there was any need to tell Boulter that.

For 150 years, since their formation, the 2nd Royal North British, Dragoons had been known as the Scots Greys, on account of the fact that Scotland had been their country of origin and that they all rode, to a man, on grey horses. They made an impressive spectacle, and there was no unit to match their appearance in all the world. That at least was Boulter’s opinion, even though at that moment he felt something less than noble.