The battery was unmasked at the same moment with the ravine. Sixty cannons and the thirteen squares darted lightning point-blank on the cuirassiers. The intrepid General Delort made the military salute to the English battery. The whole of the flying artillery of the English had re-entered the squares at a gallop. The cuirassiers had not had even the time for a halt. The disaster of the hollow road had decimated, but not discouraged them. They belonged to that class of men who, when diminished in number, increase in courage. Wathier's column alone had suffered in the disaster. Delort's column, which Ney had deflected left as though he had a presentiment of an ambush, had arrived whole. The cuirassiers hurled themselves on the English squares. At full speed, with bridles loose, swords in their teeth, pistols in fist: such was the attack. There are moments in battles in which the soul hardens the man until the soldier is changed into a statue, and when all this flesh turns into granite. The English battalions, desperately assaulted, did not stir. Then it was terrible. All the faces of the English squares were attacked at once. That cold infantry remained impassive. The first rank knelt and received the cuirassiers on their bayonets, the second ranks shot them down. Behind the second rank the cannoneers charged their guns, the front of the square parted for an eruption of grape-shot, and closed again. The great horses reared, strode across the ranks, leaped over the bayonets and fell, gigantic, in the midst of these four living wells. The form of this combat was monstrous. The squares were no longer battalions, they were craters. Those cuirassiers were no longer cavalry, they were a tempest. Each square was a volcano attacked by a cloud. Lava contended with lightning.
The square on the extreme right, the most exposed, was almost annihilated at the first shock. It was the 75th Highlanders. The bagpipe-player in the centre dropped his melancholy eyes, filled with the reflections of forests and lakes, in profound inattention, while men were being exterminated around him, and seated on a drum, with his pibroch under his arm, played the Highland airs. These Scotchmen died thinking of Ben Lothian, as the Greeks recalling Argos. The sword of a cuirassier, which hewed down the bagpipes and the arm which bore it, put an end to the song by killing the singer. The cuirassiers, already fewer, had almost the whole English army against them, but they multiplied themselves so that each man was equal to ten. Some Hanoverian battalions yielded. Wellington perceived it, and thought of his cavalry. Had Napoleon at that same moment thought of his infantry, he would have won the battle. This forgetfulness was his great and fatal mistake. All at once the cuirassiers, who had been the assailants, found themselves assailed. Before them two squares, behind them Somerset: fourteen hundred dragoons of the guard. On the right Dornberg, on the left Trip. Attacked on the flank and in front, before and in the rear, they had to face all sides. What mattered it to them? They were a whirlwind. In an instant the fourteen hundred dragoon guards numbered only eight hundred. Fuller, their lieutenant-colonel, fell dead. Ney rushed up with the lancers and Lefebvre-Desnouettes's light-horse. The plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean was captured, recaptured, captured again. There were a dozen assaults. Ney had four horses killed under him. Half the cuirassiers remained on the plateau. This conflict lasted two hours. The English army was profoundly shaken. There is no doubt that, had they not been enfeebled by the hollow road, the cuirassiers would have overwhelmed the centre and decided the victory. Wellington, three-quarters vanquished, admired heroically. He said in an undertone, Sublime.
The cuirassiers annihilated seven squares out of thirteen, took or spiked sixty pieces, and captured six flags, which were borne to the Emperor in front of La Belle Alliance. Wellington's situation had grown worse. This strange battle was like a duel between two raging, wounded men, each still fighting, each still expending all his blood. Which of the two will be the first to fall? The conflict on the plateau continued. On the day after, a cuirassier and his horse were found dead among the woodwork of the scales at Mont-Saint-Jean, where the four roads meet. This horseman had pierced the English lines. One of the men who picked up the body still lives there. His name is Dehaze. He was eighteen. Wellington felt that he was yielding. The crisis was at hand. The cuirassiers had not succeeded, since the centre was not broken through. As every one was in possession of the plateau, no one held it. Wellington held the village and the culminating plain. Ney had only the crest and the slope. They seemed rooted in that fatal soil on both sides. But the weakening of the English seemed irremediable. Kempt demanded reinforcements. There are none, replied Wellington. He must let himself be killed. Almost at that same moment Ney demanded infantry from Napoleon, and Napoleon exclaimed, Infantry! Where does he expect me to get it? Does he think I can make it? The English army was in the worse case of the two. A few men clustered round a flag marked the post of a regiment. Alten's division was almost destroyed. The Dutch grenadiers were hardly anything. Uxbridge had his knee shattered. England had the worse of it in that bloody scale. The Hanoverian hussars of Cumberland turned bridle and fled to the forest of Soignes, sowing defeat all the way to Brussels. From Vert-Coucou to Groenendael the roads were encumbered with fugitives. The panic reached the Prince de Conde at Mechlin and Louis XVIII at Ghent. With the exception of a feeble reserve and two flanking brigades, Wellington had no cavalry left. The Iron Duke remained calm, but his lips blanched. Vincent and Alava, watching from the English staff, thought the Duke lost. At five o'clock Wellington drew out his watch, and he was heard to murmur these sinister words: Blucher, or night! It was at about that moment that a distant line of bayonets gleamed on the heights in the direction of Frischemont. Here comes the change of face in this giant drama.
