And here we go. I hope everyone thinks it was worth the wait.
* * *
Although David’s 25e Août (1819) is considered by many art historians to be the fifth in his celebrated series Les Garçons de Nancy, it differs from them markedly in its subject matter. Whereas the other paintings show ordinary soldiers in moments of repose or poised to attack, this painting captures the frenetic movement of combat as the emperor commands the artillery to fire on the dark figures of oncoming cavalrymen as they emerge from the swirling gunsmoke. Certainly, what the painting lacks in historical verisimilitude it more than makes up for in drama.
Spitzer & Chauncey, A History of Western Art of the 19th Century
August 25, 1815
11:15 a.m.
Nancy
Well, this was something I didn’t plan for, thought Wellington. The messengers from north and south had come within two minutes of each other. It seemed the French were pulling back on both fronts. The messenger from the north had come first, but he had had a shorter distance to ride.
Just to make things more complicated, instead of retreating west across the river, the French on that wing were falling back onto Custines. In other words, they were falling back onto the exact spot Wellington had planned to go through.
He wondered if Bonaparte was abandoning Nancy entirely. It would make sense — most of the defenses here had been taken already. In any case, he needed to come to a quick decision about which way his force should march.
“Count Colleredo?”
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“There is a change of plan. We will go northwest, taking advantage of the gap in the French line, and cross the Meurthe at Bouxiéres-aux-Dames. Send a messenger to Barclay de Tolly. Tell him — request, I should say” (damn, it was hard not being in command) “that he be prepared to take the offensive against any forces Napoleon might send to intercept us. And order Bull and Drummond north to support Wrede.” Without the artillery, the river could be forded quickly. Right now, the duke needed speed more than firepower.
* * *
This was one of the shallowest parts of the river. The spray kicked up by his horse’s hooves didn’t even touch the soles of Wellington’s boots. To his right, thousands of men were marching through it fifty abreast, stirring the silt into the water, turning the river a richer brown and giving it an earthy smell.
To his left, in the village of Champignuelles about a mile to the southeast, the Russians had formed a line of infantry that ran halfway up the hillside. The line was being attacked savagely by cavalry and field artillery, but showed no sign of retreating just yet. They only had to hold on a little longer — on the spit of land north of the village, where the river veered east and then west again, their compatriots were hastily digging ditches and raising breastworks.
Wellington couldn’t see what was happening around Custines, but the cannon-fire around there had a satisfyingly distant sound. As much as he had started to hate the leaders of this army for their timidity and infighting, he felt profoundly grateful to him at this moment. They were keeping the tyrant’s blade off his neck. Once he got his army over this river and up that hill, it would be time to repay them properly.
And now he was across the Meurthe. Before him lay two thousand feet of farmland — or rather, picked-over and trampled-down fields that afforded no cover for anything bigger than a mouse. The hillside beyond, on the other hand, was still fairly heavily wooded in spite of having been raided for firewood every night for about three weeks. Anything could be hiding in there.
He turned to his immediate left. Major General Kempt had just finished bringing the 8th Brigade across the river. His unit was the first — he was in a hurry to redeem his failure at Sackett’s Harbor. Wellington approached him.
“Sir James,” he said, “take your men up that hill ahead of the rest. If any Frenchmen are lurking in there planning to attack, I want their plans to go awry.”
While the 8th was going up the hill, like hunters beating the bushes for an unusually lethal variety of partridge, Wellington concentrated on
organizing his army on this side. He noted that Campbell’s Hanseatic contingent was bringing up the rear, and had a message sent to him.
“Tell Campbell that I have no intention of imitating Blücher’s fate here today,” he said. “Tell him that whatever happens, he must keep an escape route open to the east — or, if necessary, make one himself.”
* * *
As it turned out, there hadn’t been any Frenchmen lurking in the woods. The trek up the hillside was slow, but quiet. Wellington used the time to consider where Boney was likeliest to be lurking. The sheer number of soldiers on both sides had made scouting missions difficult, but the most obvious answer was that the tyrant was at the barracks some four miles west of the city. Wellington had already dispatched the Prince Consort’s Own to hunt down any French scout and messengers they saw going to and from the barracks.
The trouble was going to be getting to him. The reason Wellington had planned to move so far to the north or south was to take his army out of sight of Bonaparte’s scouts, so that when he attacked, it would be less obvious where. That part of the plan was already a casualty of war. However… He summoned Lord Uxbridge.
In about fifteen minutes, the Second Earl of Uxbridge arrived and stepped off his horse, giving Wellington a salute as polite and respectful as if he hadn’t cuckolded the duke’s brother Henry six years ago.
Without pausing for pleasantries, Wellington told him: “You will take every cavalryman in this army, proceed southwest about three miles, then turn southeast and attack the barracks west of Laxou and everything nearby.” He then turned to Colloredo.
“I want a general attack on this end of the French lines,” he said. “If we can roll up the army, so much the better, but at least we will draw them away from the center.”
* * *
It was… Wellington had no idea how long it was later. Days, surely… but judging by the position of the sun, probably not more than an hour. Less than that, likely. He was on his own feet. Three horses had been shot out from under him.
There was blood on his bayonet. He’d never seen the face of the man whose blood it was, but the man had been in a French uniform, so that was all right. There was a dull ache in his arms and shoulders. It would be a burning agony later. It had been a long time since he had been that close to the fighting. A squad of French grenadiers had blasted a path right through the line of Triple X’s that had been all that was between him and the enemy, and he had been forced to fight for his life before the army could re-form around him.
Tired as he was, distracted as he was, he still knew exactly where his army was and what it was doing. It was digging in on the hillside above Frouard. He had tried to make notes of regiments that had performed particular feats of valor — the Royal Welch Fusiliers driving two French regiments back a hundred yards, the Light Bobs charging through canister to capture a field-piece, the Orange Lillies rescuing a captured scout of the Prince Consort’s Own — but before long he had realized that everybody in his army was fighting like wild boars at bay.
Unfortunately, the French had fought like boarhounds. Finally, he had had to organize a fighting retreat. Otherwise, the retreat would have happened whether he ordered it or not, and might have turned into a rout. As it was, he’d only withdrawn half a mile before the Russians came to keep the French from pressing their advantage too hard. (Campbell was in Frouard right now. Poor sod, he’d been grazed by a Russian bullet. That was now the second time he’d been wounded by a Russian on French soil. War had a bad sense of humor.)
He had no idea how the rest of the battle was going. Apparently the fighting in the north had ended in stalemate. How things were going for Lord Uxbridge, let alone Württemberg… he just didn’t know.
* * *
It had taken Lord Uxbridge over an hour to get into position to attack. The woods were heavy in this part of Lorraine, and a horse galloping through deep forest — assuming you could persuade it to do such a foolish thing — was more likely to trip than a man was, and far more likely to injure itself in so doing. So they had moved at a walk.
The good news was that his men (more often leading their horses than riding them) had moved as quietly as men could, and, with a little help from the Prince Consort’s Own, had taken care of the few scouts. If Boney was ahead, he didn’t know they were coming.
The clearing around the barracks was well over a hundred yards wide, and full of tents. There seemed, from what Lord Uxbridge could tell, to be fewer guards than officers about — most of the fighting men were busy with one army or another. Whatever happened, he was about to do a lot of damage to the French officer corps.
There was sudden movement among the officers. Some of them were glancing toward the woods. One of them must have heard or seen something. Now or never.
He turned and nodded to the bugler.
The horn sounded.
As his horse charged out of the dark forest into the sunlit clearing, Uxbridge fought the urge to shut his eyes. The sudden light was blinding and agonizing, but his eyes would adjust to it soon enough.
In the meantime, there were running figures in dark blue coats all around, screaming and shouting in French. He slashed at them with his saber, wishing he had something longer, like a lance. He would save his firearms for when his vision returned.
A sword slashed at his horse’s side. He spurred it to keep moving. Speed was the only line of defense.
He hadn’t really had time to see what the rest of his force was doing. From what he could tell, they were doing the same thing — charging into the clearing, knocking down tents and killing anything that looked or sounded French.
Now they were at the barracks themselves. Some men who had grenades threw them through the windows. Uxbridge, whose sight had begun to come back, shot at the men who fled. He was pretty sure he’d killed one of them.
He looked around him. All was chaos and confusion and gunsmoke. He let out a yell that wasn’t part of any regiment’s official battle cry.
Then, from the south, came a fresh wave of cavalry. They were on his side, but they had the look of men fleeing rather than attacking.
“Sir!” one of them shouted. “Masséna is coming!”
Uxbridge took a moment to reflect on what he knew of the enemy’s tactical dispositions, then thought Oh, hell. The whole southern wing of the French army had to be folding up like a bear trap, with him in the middle.
It was time to get the hell out of here.
* * *
When Wellington heard the horses coming, he nearly ordered his men to open fire. Then he heard the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere behind them. Those had to be British, returning to him after achieving whatever it was they had done, and the enemy was hot on their heels.
Wellington shouted out a series of orders, creating a gap in his own lines that Uxbridge could charge through while ordering the rest of his men to be ready to throw back the French with volleys. He wished he hadn’t sent the artillery north — now would be a good time for canister.
And there, in the distance, he saw Lord Uxbridge’s head in profile. Just as the British cavalry were starting to make use of the gap, Uxbridge jerked violently… and fell off his horse, in that boneless, rag-doll way that could only mean he was already dead.
In that moment, Wellington couldn’t remember ever having borne a grudge against the man. Two ranks of riflemen were already poised to fire.
And in another moment, the cavalry (or what was left of it — they seemed to have taken some terrible losses along the way) was out of the way.
“FIRE!” shouted the duke.
There was a deafening thunderclap. The enemy disappeared behind a cloud of gunsmoke. The musketeers were already preparing another volley — their weapons were less accurate, but with everyone firing blind that wouldn’t really matter.
And then, a unit of French cavalry came out of the smoke.
It happened very quickly. Wellington dodged a horse as it came past, stuck his sword into the barrel of it, and the horse’s momentum ripped the sword out of his hands. And then… something happened. For the rest of his life Wellington would wonder what it was.
* * *
Wellington rose to his feet. He felt very sick, and his head was in terrible pain that only got worse as he tried to stand, but he was determined to at least see what was going on.
He looked around. He was surrounded by dead men — British and French — and horses. He looked down. His rifle was gone, his sword (wait — he remembered how that had happened) and some utter bastard had stolen his boots.
He touched the side of his head. It was wet and sticky. What had happened to him there? A kick from a horse? No. Men kicked in the head by horses generally didn’t get up again. Probably a blow from the butt of a rifle.
Two Imperial Guardsmen walked up to him. Even if he’d been armed, he was in no shape to resist. He let them take him into custody.
The next few minutes were a blur. He was walking with other prisoners, behind one of those little horse-drawn field ambulances that was carrying someone more badly hurt than he was. The creaking of the wheels was making his head hurt worse. There didn’t seem to be too many prisoners — not more than a thousand — and there hadn't been too many bodies on the ground in British uniforms. Thank you, Campbell, he thought.
In the distance, the French were chanting something. It sounded like bon Jon only not quite. Vengeant? Vengeons? It sounded… bad.
One thing Wellington had learned in a lifetime of war was that, no matter how bad things seemed, they could always get worse. He looked around at the prisoners around him, in case any of them had a notion what was going on.
He made eye contact with one, an officer in the 11th Light Dragoons — the “Cherry Pickers,” a reliable old unit from the Peninsula. The dragoon leaned in close and whispered three words, so quietly Wellington had to read his lips… “Bonaparte is dead.”
Also, while we don't have the details yet it sounds like the French have a leadership problem and they have also almost certainly taken heavy losses. From what Wellington saw and the plans he had I suspect that the army is still in fighting shape, along with probably a good proportion of the alliance, although I'm not sure who Wellington's 2nd is.