Warriors: Extraordinary Tales from the Battlefield. Max Hastings
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fellows! The next brush we have with you, you shall see how a Brigade of the Peninsular Army (arrived yesterday) will serve you fellows out with the bayonet.’ He asked Butler why he carried a drawn sword. The American, matching Smith’s spirit, answered boldly: ‘Because I reckon a scabbard of no use so long as one of you Britishers is on our soil. We don’t wish to shoot you, but we must, if you molest our property; we have thrown away the scabbard.’
Smith was pleasantly surprised to notice that the Americans had not stripped the dead in the fashion of the French, indeed had taken only British soldiers’ boots, of which they were much in want. He and Butler fell out, however. The American seems to have been a grave fellow, unaccustomed to the manners of such insouciant cavaliers as Smith. Butler may have been disconcerted by the bearing of this English professional warrior, who was content to fight almost anyone wherever he was ordered, with scant heed to weighing the merits of the cause. Casualties that seemed appalling to the Americans gave no pause to such as Smith, who had seen Badajoz. In his eyes, losses were merely the price soldiers paid for practising their trade. Wellington seldom grieved for long over the casualties of his battles, and indeed he could not afford to.
At New Orleans Smith told Jackson’s man that he hoped next time they met, it would be Butler’s turn to ask leave to bury American dead. Yet after a few more weeks of desultory skirmishing, the invaders acknowledged failure. Smith, appointed military secretary to Pakenham’s successor Sir John Lambert, was one of the few men of the army in America who returned to England with an enhanced reputation. His courage on the battlefield was no more than that expected of any officer of those days, but his eager fellowship, zeal and efficiency marked him out for future advancement. He remained unfailingly popular with his comrades. The latter point should not be taken for granted among successful warriors. Many of those depicted in these pages were disliked or resented by their peers. Yet few men failed to warm to bluff, plain, eager, guileless Harry Smith.
As his ship entered the Bristol Channel on the homeward voyage, its passengers, eager for news, lined the side when it passed an outbound merchantman. A voice cried out from the deck: ‘Ho! Bonaparter’s back again on the throne of France!’ Smith, ever the career soldier, tossed his hat to the sky and cried out in exultation: ‘I’ll be a lieutenant-colonel yet, before the year’s out!’ Arrived at Whittlesey in a chaise, he found Juana, emotional as ever, fainting with fear that the vehicle brought some stranger bearing bad news for her. She recovered soon enough, of course, and Smith observed happily that never again in their marriage did they face a long separation. He himself embarked upon buying horses for the new campaign with the enthusiasm of a schoolboy off to play in a great match. One of his younger siblings, Charles, was to join the Rifle Brigade as a volunteer, and brother Tom was already in the field. There was one alarm before the Smiths departed. The whole family rode out together on the last evening. As they approached home, Harry glimpsed a fence and ditch at the edge of the town, and could not resist an exuberant flourish: ‘I’ll have one more leap on my war horse.’ He set his old mare at it. To the horror of them all, she came down. Her rider found himself with a leg trapped between the fence and his struggling mount. For a few terrible seconds he was sure that his leg must be broken, ‘and there was an end to my brigade majorship!’ Instead, to everyone’s relief horse and rider scrambled to their feet unscathed.
Major Smith set out next day for Harwich with Charles, Juana, assorted servants and West the groom, reaching Sir John Lambert and his brigade at Ghent on 5 June. Once again he was to fill his old post as brigade-major. A few days later, on 15 June 1815, the force was abruptly summoned to march for Brussels. Next afternoon, as they approached the Belgian capital, they were given fresh orders for Quatre Bras. Bonaparte and his army were closing upon the city from the west. A great battle was plainly imminent. As the column passed through Brussels, they were appalled by the scenes of confusion, haste, muddle and civilian flight which met their eyes. They encountered a mob of Hanoverians galloping for the coast, proclaiming that the French had already turned their rear. Smith went to report to Lambert, whom he found sitting down to dinner with Juana and his ADC. That cool commander contemptuously dismissed the Hanoverian rumour, and urged his brigade-major to enjoy a magnificent turbot which his butler had brought up from Brussels.
That evening came a thunderstorm which drenched the armies and reduced the ground to a quagmire. During the night Lambert’s brigade was ordered forward, a movement which the regiments found hard to execute amid the mud and the milling throng of panic-stricken camp followers and baggage carts. The troops were further disgusted when orders arrived instructing them to clear and hold open the road for further reinforcements, rather than join the main army which was expecting at any moment to receive Bonaparte’s assault. Early next morning, the day of Waterloo, Lambert sent Smith cantering forward to petition the Duke of Wellington for more congenial orders. He found the great man near Hougoumont, riding the ridge of Mont St Jean among his staff, deploying his divisions. Smith reported. The commander-in-chief directed Lambert’s brigade forthwith to move forward to occupy a position on the left of the British line.
Sometimes, the witnesses of great events do not perceive their magnitude until afterwards. On the morning of Waterloo, almost every man on the field understood that he was a part of history being made. Smith was sublimely conscious of beholding his idol the Duke at the summit of his powers, concise and assured as ever in his vision of the day ahead. Wellington showed the Rifleman exactly where Lambert’s brigade must deploy. Finally he said: ‘Do you understand?’ ‘Perfectly, my lord.’ Then Smith turned his horse and hastened back to Lambert.
As the brigade formed column for its advance to the field of Waterloo, Harry found time to instruct Juana to ride Tiny back into Brussels to await the outcome of the battle. Mrs Smith reached the great square of the city to encounter West the groom presiding over a heap of the family’s possessions. Orders had just come for the army’s baggage train to move to a village five miles further back. There, like Thackeray’s Becky Sharp with Jos Sedley in Vanity Fair, Juana and West spent an interminable afternoon, waiting upon news amid a torrent of rumour and alarms. Vitty the pug, infected by the excitement around him, leapt hither and thither, rejecting repose. Tiny the Andalusian would scarcely stand still. Word suddenly came that the French were upon them. Juana mounted and took Vitty in her arms. At that moment, the little horse bolted. For eight frightening miles he would not check until suddenly he gathered himself to leap a wagon, changed his mind and stopped. Juana was thrown over his head. She had just remounted and was gathering her breath when over the hill came a party of fast-riding horsemen. These proved to be British officers and troopers, together with one of her own servants, all bent on flight. ‘Pray, sir, is there any danger?’ she demanded of a hussar. ‘Danger, mum! When I left Brussels, the French were in pursuit down the hill.’ Unwillingly, she was persuaded to follow the party down the road. She sensed that she was in the company of scoundrels, however, when one man urged that she should throw away Vitty to hasten their flight. She arrived at Antwerp emotionally and physically exhausted, her face streaked with mud and tears. She took refuge in the care of the British commandant of the citadel and his wife, with whom she spent the long hours that followed, awaiting news of the outcome of the great clash of armies beyond Brussels.
Lambert’s brigade came late to the field, yet in time to share with the rest of the British army the terrible blood price of the day. Wellington’s sixty-seven thousand men held the ridge of Mont St Jean against French bombardment and relentless assault, at the cost of fifteen thousand casualties. By nightfall, some British infantry squares still occupied the ground they had defended all day, but they were heaped regiments of the dead. One of Lambert’s units, the 27th, was reduced to two officers, both wounded, and 120 men. Smith himself, plunging to and fro through flame and smoke hour after hour, must by late afternoon have been within a few hundred paces of Marcellin Marbot. Two horses were badly wounded under the Englishman. There was an extraordinary moment late that afternoon, when firing died away across the battlefield. Away out on the left flank Smith felt sure the outcome of the battle had been decided, yet could not judge which side was victorious. The fog of war, so literal a term in the age of black powder, obscured the rest of the army from his gaze. Only when the smoke drifted away from the ridge of Mont St Jean could he see red coats still standing firm along its length, amid the wreckage of Bonaparte’s hopes. It was the supreme triumph of Wellington’s generalship against that of the Corsican, a victory