The Battle Dance: Waterloo

The Lines of Wellington

The British high command had an hour's hard ride from the village of Waterloo along slippery cobbles.  The highroad cut through a subtle slope to a straggle of houses and hotels: Mont Sainte Jean. Between the hamlet and its farm, they found the first signs of an army positioned for battle. Through waves of water vapour, Jasper saw dark blue splashes of uniform, silvery glitters of harness and weapon, and variously shaded sheens of the horse.

The Netherlands cavalry division, he thought. Collaert... Fought mostly for the French in the last war. Now he is for us, but how loyal?  General Collaert's Dutch and Belgian horsemen had conducted the disorganised charge at Quatre Bras to save their defeated foot soldiers. Intended to be a gallant counterattack, the thing had expired as a chaotic retreat. Commanding the mounted carabiners was the profligate General Trip, whose Dutch charm had seduced the pliable and pretty Miss Harriet Capel. The light brigade retained the supervision of General van Merlin.

The commander in chief spared little time to these foreign squadrons, his least trusted troopers on the field, placed almost out of reach. "I hope I won't be obliged to call on their services, " Wellington said. "Give me Brunswickers on any day of battle before these ex-Bonapartists."

Around the village of Merbe Braine, the black bodices of Brunswickers blurred with the shadows. The cops of trees held the Germans in its dark arms, hid crimes against the native population. Yet the Duke barely glanced at the bands gathering sticks for their campfires and searching farms for food.

"Impatient to inspect his British troops?" Jasper queried.

"Offerman has his men well in hand," Fremantle said. "Our rear reserves matter less than our front columns. Like the other forces cut up at Quatre Bras, the Brunswickers might not play any part today."

"If we do need them to fill a gap in the line, they are tough fighters who hate all Frenchmen," Gordon said. "We can depend on them to do their duty despite their depletion in numbers."

Jasper saw a calf volt out of a farmyard and a dozen German privates chasing after with gleaming knives. Blood squirted across the street. The smell menaced Jasper's nostrils. His stomach curdled as he recalled a similar smell from the previous day when he had been able to avoid contemplating it by going on with his tasks then at hand. The Duke's nose twitched but his chin was held high as Copenhagen stepped over the red streaks running in the road. The butchers were slicing up the animal's entrails. Jasper hoped nothing he was destined to see today would equal this sight. Nothing to match this butchery must happen to him.

He focused on the fellow attaché rising at his side. "Does he not mind this looting?" he asked.

"More important things occupy his mind at the moment," Fremantle replied.

The stretch of lane leading to the far western rear of the ground was so long that the entourage again broke into a full gallop. After Merbe Braine the ridge cut at a right angle north-west for three-quarters of a mile to Braine le Alleud. The outpost was far-flung, the last link in the chain until the eight-mile off garrison at Tubize. Last night Wellington had feared Napoleon would sweep around one of these points west to separate his army from its escape routes, Brussels or the channel coast. But Uxbridge's cavalry and the tempest had combined to stop a French advance. The Anglo-Allied line for the present was secure.

"More Dutch-Belgians," Fremantle murmured.

"Third Netherlands Division?"

"Yes. General David Chassé."

"If only we had your Spanish gorillas, General Àlava, " the Duke said, "I would be well satisfied and secure in my victory." 

The horsemen slowed, panting, their animals' puffing, and surveyed the circles of camps spread in and around the small town. Sixteen guns stood on the smooth slope. Morning mist rolled out of the valley and curled around the gunners scrubbing their machines. The rain had better be over, Jasper thought.