Brief stories from The Battle of Waterloo (June 2015 reenactment) ~ A sense of the infantry squares

The forming of a square of foot soldiers in a battle is a defensive manoeuvre which I researched for my story The Lost Love of a soldier as Paul calls his men into a square during the battle. But again when I was at the reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo, I developed so much more of a depth of the concept behind the things I’d learnt from books.

Firstly the former colonel who led our tour of the battle sites at Waterloo explained the power of a square of foot soldiers (known as infantry). He described it like the game – Paper – Scissors – Rock. Think of a line of foot soldiers firing their guns as paper. Now sometimes paper is a good thing, because if you have a line of foot soldiers walking towards you, you need to expand so you can fire at more men in that line. Equally a line of men is harder for the cannons to hit.

Actually a quick aside fact which I think I have mentioned in a previous post, is that of course Wellington made his paper stronger by also placing the men behind the ridge of a hill, so that those firing cannons couldn’t see them.

But going back to the paper – scissors – rock. In the imagery of that game the cavalry are scissors. If the cavalry ride at a line of foot soldiers, the foot soldiers stand no chance of surviving, The cavalry charging at a line of men on their horses will be able to cut down every man, even musket fire would not have held them back due to the speed of a charge.

During The Battle of Quatra Bras when the canon fire ceased the English commanders knew it meant that Marshall Ney was about to send his cavalry in on a charge. The canons would never fire while their own cavalry went into the field, because the cannon fire scared the horses and meant they would not obey the commands of their riders. The English officers called the foot soldiers into squares, their shouts running along the line as I described in The Lost Love of a Soldier. The foot soldiers quickly pulled back and gathered into groups as a square, or probably in reality more of an oblong.

The Prince of Orange who led the Dutch though thought he knew better and said to the men near him, “What are you doing?” When they told him the order had gone out to form square, he told them not to be so stupid, that the cavalry were not coming, and that they should open back out into a line. They were following the Prince’s order and opening back out as the cavalry raced over the hill and swept in against them.

You can see the foot soldiers closing into squares when the cavalry ride in, in this video of the reenactment of the Battle of Waterloo,

An eye-witness account from a foot soldier in the 33rd recalls the call “Cavalry! Cavalry! For heaven’s sake form square!” then he described the charge as it passed his regiment who were in a square… “they passed us at full gallop and dashed on into the 69th… they were cut down like hay before the scythe…” The 69th were decimated, and their colours (their flag) captured.

A square of foot soldiers then in the game of paper scissors rock, is the rock. In all of the history of their use, the cavalry were only ever known to break through a square of men once.

A picture of a painting of a square and the charge against it from The Lion Mount on the battle site

I talk in The Lost Love of a Soldier of the gunners who had been firing the cannons running back into the squares for safety, which was an order directly from Wellington, and you can see here that some of the English officers, are also in the centre of the square. However our tour guide was saying that in reality Wellington’s order for the gunners to run back was flawed, because it meant their ammunition for the cannons, and the cannons themselves would have been left at risk of capture. However they could not have remained with the guns which were on the ridge before the foot soldiers as they would have been cut down easily.

During the Battle of Waterloo the onslaught of the cavalry on the allied squares lasted for two hours, and this was the period the cannons were silent; which I mention Ellen noticing in the city of Brussels in The Lost Love of a Soldier to give my readers a real sense of being in that period of history, yet, I didn’t know why then.

If you read my last post, about the impact of combat on Marshall Ney, these two hours of continual attack of scissors against rock, when Marshall Ney who ordered the charges was a very experienced and skilled leader who would have known a cavalry charge was not successful against squares, is further evidence of his personal death wish, and in those two hours none of the allied squares were broken into.

Here’s another video from the reenactment in Belgium in June 2015 showing the cavalry swarming about a square, remember there were only 6,000 reenactors, there were roughly 70,000 in the allied force, and 70,000 in the French force in the actual battle.

If you would like to read my fictional story set around the lead up to the Battle of Waterloo, then now is the time to do it, Harper Collins have put on some amazing deals this month to commemorate the battle. In one country the deal only lasts two weeks, though, I have not put the amounts as they are different in different countries, just click on the cover of The Lost Love of a Soldier in the side bar to find out your great cut price deal.

If you would like to see all the pictures and videos of Waterloo 200 which I will share on my Facebook page, click Like on the Jane Lark Facebook link in the right-hand column.

Look at all the book covers in the side bar to see the fictional stories I write… especially the limited time offer for Magical Weddings, which contains my story,

The Jealous Love of a Scoundrel

Brief Stories from the Battle of Waterloo ~ Marshal Ney and the impact of combat on men

The tour guide I attended the bicentenary of The Battle of Waterloo with told us lots of facts about the movement of the armies, and Wellington’s and Napoleon’s tactics for the battle, but as always when I research history, what I was fascinated by were the personal stories he mentioned, and the quotes he shared from eyewitness accounts.

On the first day our tour guide said that he believed Marshal Ney was suffering with combat stress – what we call today, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He said he’d tell us later why, but on the last morning he still hadn’t mentioned it, and so when we were in the museum at Waterloo beneath The Lion Mount, I asked him why he thought that, what were the specific things which made him think it? He went on to explain…

The Lion Mount was built by King William I of Holland in 1820 to commemorate the part his son The Prince of Orange played in the period leading up to and during The Battle of Waterloo, it was built on the spot where The Prince was shot in the shoulder. He survived the battle.

Inside the circular building is what the museum calls a panorama, a 360 degree painting, which you stand in the middle of, so that you get a greater sense of the battle, as around you the noise of battle, which I am sure does not replicate even one thousandth of the noise which must have gone on at Waterloo, makes you feel like you are there too – as models below the painting represent the bodies of men and horses who have fallen on the battleground and in the sunken road.

The tour guide, Nick Lipscome, a respected military historian, who knows Wellington’s descendants and is widely published on the subject of the battles in the Regency period pointed at the image of a man with red hair. “Look at him..”

The man in the centre on the dark horse is Marshal Ney. Ney had fought with and for Napoleon for years, and he’d been in some gruesome battles. In the Battle of Bautzen, fought against the Russians and the Prussians, in 1812, he’d faced some very fierce fighting and been wounded in the neck, and in earlier efforts against the Russians he’d endured starvation with his men and freezing temperatures and had to withdraw. He was wounded two more times after this.

Another thing which the guide told us was that the cavalry men were very hard to control, they often suffered with surges of blood lust, because they fought on Adrenalin rushes, charging their unwilling horses on as they used their swords indiscriminately, hacking and slashing at men. (This explained to me why the English cavalry, as I recorded in The Lost Love of a Soldier, beat back the battalion they had been sent in to fight but then galloped on to the French cannons to attack the gunners right at the far back of the French line, only for every man to be killed.) Wellington once said the cavalry ‘were always galloping into anything.’

Ney led a large group of cavalry, and they were known as the best in Europe.

In 1813 Napoleon’s success faded, and although Ney continued as Napoleon’s Marshal into early 1814, in April 1814 it was Ney who became the voice calling for war to be over, and for Napoleon to abdicate. When Louis XVIII returned to Paris, Ney promised his allegiance to the crown, and for his part in bringing King Louis to the throne, he was made a peer. When Napoleon then escaped the island of Elba, Ney said he would “bring Napoleon back alive in an iron cage,” and he put together a force to stop Napoleon’s march on Paris. Ney renegade on his intent to capture Napoleon, however, and instead joined Napoleon’s forces.

As one of the few Marshals Napoleon had at his disposal Ney became Napoleon’s right hand man during the battle, and when Napoleon withdrew from the field to rest, because he felt ill, Ney was left to manage the battle. He called his men to charge against the English infantry, and he persistently repeated the order, charging his men against the squares the allied army formed, even though there was little hope of penetrating the squares. (I’ll talk more about that in another post)

An eyewitness account of this period in the battle describes, ‘horses hooves sinking into men’s breasts and breaking bones, stroke following stroke, slaying men and splattering brains and blood, screams and the the crash of steal becoming the music of the field, drum and pipe silenced. Swing after swing of sword, as dead bodies became the pillows of those who were dying.’

So why in the face of such bravery would my tour guide, an ex colonel, say he believed that Ney was suffering combat stress. “Look at him…” He had taken off his hat. He had red hair. He rode at the front of his men. It would have been obvious to the men on the field who he was and they would have wanted to kill the man who gave the orders. It was a valuable tactic in battle; many junior officers died for that reason. So the commanders of high rank did not fight on the field. High rank commanders are at the back, because from there they can see the whole battle and order their army like chess pieces, which is what Napoleon and Wellington were doing. Instead Ney was at the front, and five times his horse was shot, and five times he got up, grabbed another horse and continued to lead the charge.

Why?

Because he had a death wish…

I imagine the pain in his mind was so great, and his personal battle against the wounds in his memories so strong, that he just wished it to end. In April 1814 he had searched for relief from it with peace. In June 1815 he searched for relief from it through death.

He received that relief in December 1815 when he was shot for treason in Paris on the 7th December. He could have even potentially avoided that death, as his lawyer claimed he could not be tried in France, because his place of birth had been taken over by Prussia after Waterloo, effectively officially making Ney Prussian, but Ney interrupted the lawyer, perhaps he still did not wish to be saved. “I am French and I will remain French.”

I gave Paul, in my story The Lost Love of a Soldier, a level of combat fatigue, because I knew men must have felt it then, so it was interesting to hear a military man confirm that. Only Paul, my fictional character, seeks to escape his pain through the love and innocence of young woman whose beauty and mild nature provide comfort to his soul…

If you would like to see all the pictures and videos of Waterloo 200 which I will share on my Facebook page, click Like on the Jane Lark Facebook link in the right-hand column.

Look at all the book covers in the side bar to see the fictional stories I write… especially the limited time offer for Magical Weddings, which contains my story,

The Jealous Love of a Scoundrel