Читать книгу Famous Men and Great Events of the Nineteenth Century - Charles Morris - Страница 11

Wellington Wins at Salamanca and Enters Madrid

These continued successes of the British were seriously out of consonance with the usual exploits of Napoleon’s armies. He was furious with his marshals, blaming them severely, and might have taken their place in the struggle with Wellington but that his fatal march to Russia was about to begin. The fortress taken, Wellington advanced into Spain, and on July 21st encountered the French army under Marmont before the famous old town of Salamanca. The battle, one of the most stubbornly contested in which Wellington had yet been engaged, ended in the repulse of the French, and on August 12th the British army marched into Madrid, the capital of Spain, from which King Joseph Bonaparte had just made his second flight.

Vittoria and the Pyrenees

Wellington’s next effort was a siege of the strong fortress of Burgos. This proved the one failure in his military career, he being obliged to raise the siege after several weeks of effort. In the following year he was strongly reinforced, and with an army numbering nearly 200,000 men he marched on the retreating enemy, meeting them at Vittoria, near the boundary of France and Spain, on June 21, 1813. The French were for the first time in this war in a minority. They were also heavily encumbered with baggage, the spoils of their occupation of Spain. The battle ended in a complete victory for Wellington, who captured 157 cannon and a vast quantity of plunder, including the spoils of Madrid and of the palace of the kings of Spain. The specie, of which a large sum was taken, quickly disappeared among the troops, and failed to reach the treasure chests of the army.

The French were now everywhere on the retreat. Soult, after a vigorous effort to drive the British from the passes of the Pyrenees, withdrew, and Wellington and his army soon stood on the soil of France. A victory over Soult at Nivelle, and a series of successes in the following spring, ended the long Peninsular War, the abdication of Napoleon closing the long and terrible drama of battle. In the whole six years of struggle Wellington had not once been defeated on the battlefield.

His military career had not yet ended. His great day of glory was still to come, that in which he was to meet Napoleon himself in the field, and, for the first time in the history of the great Corsican, drive back his army in utter rout.

The Gathering of the Forces at Brussels

A year or more had passed since the events just narrated. In June, 1815, Wellington found himself at the head of an army some 100,000 strong, encamped around Brussels, the capital of Belgium. It was a mingled group of British, Dutch, Belgian, Hanoverian, German, and other troops, hastily got together, and many of them not safely to be depended upon. Of the British, numbers had never been under fire. Marshal Blücher, with an equal force of Prussian troops, was near at hand; the two forces prepared to meet the rapidly advancing Napoleon.

We have already told of the defeat of Blücher at Ligny, and the attack on Wellington at Quatre Bras. On the evening of the 17th the army, retreating from Quatre Bras, encamped in the historic field of Waterloo in a drenching rain, that turned the roads into streams, the fields into swamps. All night long the rain came down, the soldiers enduring the flood with what patience they could. In the morning it ceased, fires were kindled, and active preparations began for the terrible struggle at hand.

The Battlefield of Waterloo

Here ran a shallow valley, bounded by two ridges, the northern of which was occupied by the British, while Napoleon posted his army on its arrival along the southern ridge. On the slope before the British centre was the white-walled farm house of La Haye Sainte, and in front of the right wing the chateau of Hougoumont, with its various stout stone buildings. Both of these were occupied by men of Wellington’s army, and became leading points in the struggle of the day.

It was nine o’clock in the morning before the van-guard of the French army made its appearance on the crest of the southern ridge. By half-past ten 61,000 soldiers—infantry, cavalry, and artillery—lay encamped in full sight. About half-past eleven came the first attack of that remarkable day, during which the French waged an aggressive battle, the British stood on the defensive.

The Desperate Charges of the French

This first attack was directed against Hougoumont, around which there was a desperate contest. At this point the affray went on, in successive waves of attack and repulse, all day long; yet still the British held the buildings, and all the fierce valor of the French failed to gain them a foothold within.

About two o’clock came a second attack, preceded by a frightful cannonade upon the British left and centre. Four massive columns, led by Ney, poured steadily forward straight for the ridge, sweeping upon and around the farm-stead of La Haye Sainte, but met at every point by the sabres and bayonets of the British lines. Nearly 24,000 men took part in this great movement, the struggle lasting more than an hour before the French staggered back in repulse. Then from the French lines came a stupendous cavalry charge, the massive columns composed of no less than forty squadrons of cuirassiers and dragoons, filling almost all the space between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte as they poured like a torrent upon the British lines. Torn by artillery, rent by musketry; checked, reformed; charging again, and again driven back; they expended their strength and their lives on the infantry squares that held their ground with the grimmest obstinacy. Once more, now strengthened by the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, they came on to carnage and death, shattering themselves against those unyielding squares, and in the end repulsed with frightful loss.

Blücher’s Prussians and the Charge of Napoleon’s Old Guard

The day was now well advanced, it being half-past four in the afternoon; the British had been fearfully shaken by the furious efforts of the French; when, emerging from the woods at St. Lambert, appeared the head of a column of fresh troops. Who were they? Blücher’s Prussians, or Grouchy’s pursuing French? On the answer to this question depended the issue of that terrible day. The question was soon decided; they were the Prussians; no sign appeared of the French; the hearts of the British beat high with hope and those of the French sank low in despair, for these fresh troops could not fail to decide the fate of that mighty field of battle. Soon the final struggle came. Napoleon, driven to desperation, launched his grand reserve corps, the far-famed Imperial Guard, upon his enemies. On they come, with Ney at their head; on them pours a terrible torrent of flame; from a distance the front ranks appear stationary, but only because they meet a death-line as they come, and fall in bleeding rows. Then on them, in a wild charge, rush the British Foot Guards, take them in flank, and soon all is over. “The Guard dies, but never surrenders,” says their commander. Die they do, few of them surviving to take part in that mad flight which swept Napoleon from the field and closed the fatal day of Waterloo. England has won the great struggle, now twenty years old, and Wellington from that day of victory takes rank with the greatest of British heroes.