How the French Won Waterloo (or Think They Did) by Stephen Clarke Page A

alias when escaping from France (see Chapter 6).
    fn8 Jérôme’s morose mood was nothing new. On his way to Belgium, he had attended a country fête organised to whip up support for Napoleon, but had been unable to say anything positive or look anything but glum. A young French lieutenant called Le Sénécal noted in his memoirs that ‘I saw his downcast attitude as the prelude to our imminent ruin’.
    fn9 This was Napoleon’s national anthem, and contained patriotic lines like ‘the well-being of the universe depends on the well-being of our homeland, and if ever we are enslaved, all nations will be in chains’. Napoleon did not believe in modesty.

3

NAPOLEON DIDN’T LOSE THE BATTLE (Everyone Else Did)
    ‘Bataille terrible où la victoire, au milieu des armées confondues, se trompa d’étendard.’
    ‘A terrible battle where, with all the armies intermingled, victory chose the wrong flag.’
    – nineteenth-century French writer François-René de Chateaubriand
I
    THINGS BEGAN TO go wrong for Napoleon almost immediately. His cannons started to pound the English lines, but instead of bouncing and inflicting havoc, many of the cannonballs plopped harmlessly into the mud and stayed there.
    Meanwhile, he ordered an attack on a farm called Hougoumont, halfway between the French and English lines, on the extreme left flank of the French army. However, in giving his order, Napoleon was acting on incomplete information. Earlier, he had sent out General François-Nicolas Haxo to report on possible allied fortifications along their front line. Haxo had omitted to mention that Hougoumont was more of a fortress than a farmhouse, with high brick walls around the farmyard, a thick wooden gate and a tower that was a perfect vantage point for snipers. Not only that, it was protected by a dense woodland that would prevent artillerymen dragging even the lightest cannons anywhere near the walls.
    The farm was heavily manned by 1,700 highly trained British Guards and 300 Germans from one of the Nassau regiments, ensuring that the 30 metres of open ground between the woods and the walls of Hougoumont would be a killing field for any Frenchman who set foot in it.
    All this shouldn’t have mattered, though, because Napoleon’s orders were simply to send out skirmishers and keep the farm’s occupiers occupied, in the hope that they would call up reinforcements and weaken Wellington’s centre.
    As it was merely a tactical diversion, the job was given to Napoleon’s brother Jérôme, who decided to launch an all-out attack. After his first assault had been repelled (almost killing Jérôme in the process, and mortally wounding another of Napoleon’s few trusted generals, Pierre-François Bauduin), Jérôme decided to encircle the farm and even sent cavalry against the high brick walls. In all, throughout the day he would launch eight waves of men against the almost impregnable fortress, setting it alight and killing many of its defenders but wasting the lives of 8,000 Frenchmen in what was supposed to be a simple feint to distract Wellington.
    Hougoumont did provide the French with some heroes, most notably Sous-lieutenant Legros (‘Fatman’), a huge former sergeant who had come out of retirement to join Napoleon, and who ran at the farm’s north gate with an axe and succeeded in forcing a breach, under furious fire from within. A few Frenchmen managed to get inside the farmyard full of firing, bayoneting Guardsmen, only to be massacred. The gate was re-closed, with Legros left lying just outside, the axe still in his hand.
    Mostly, though, Hougoumont was about senseless slaughter. When British cannons joined the defence of the farm from afar, they began decimating the lines of Frenchmen waiting to attack. A young soldier called Larreguy de Civrieux was among them: ‘Soon our feet were soaked in blood. In less than half an hour our ranks were more than halved. We all stood stoically awaiting death or terrible injury … No