The walls of the chateau and the tower — what remained of them — were pitted with bullet holes and still warm to the touch. The chapel door had gone — burnt to cinders — but the chapel itself still stood. Macdonell bowed his head and went in. The walls and floor were scorched black. He turned to look at the place above the door where the carving of Christ on the cross had hung on the wall. It was still there. The flames that had destroyed the chateau, and the farm which had brought death to so many, had reached Christ’s feet but no higher. Macdonell crossed himself. The Grahams had been right. God had watched over them.
In the south yard, where the worst of the fighting had been raging no more than twelve hours earlier, a party of men under James Hervey had begun the task of collecting the dead and carrying them outside. Hervey, too, was blank-eyed and exhausted. ‘I thought before the looters find them, Colonel …’ he began.
‘Quite so, Mister Hervey,’ replied Macdonell. ‘The scavengers must have been here all night. Let us bury them as quickly as we can. Where are you digging?’
‘Near the woods, Colonel.’
‘Good. Use every man you can find and do not forget the wretched souls in the barn.’
The gardener’s house, where the gardener and his daughter had hidden in the cellar for the whole day, was still standing. The south gate under it had been destroyed by the French light guns, as had much of the south wall. James left the yard through the arch of the gate.
The wood was no longer a wood. Such trees as were still standing had not a leaf upon them. Every trunk was black and every branch broken. He walked around the garden wall. Unlike the woods and the farm it had stood up to the assault remarkably well. The loopholes were there of course, in places there were gaping holes and barely a brick was unmarked by bullet or shot, yet it stood. Outside the wall the dead were being cleared and taken to what would be their grave near the wood. A large figure was pushing a handcart on which three bodies had been loaded.
‘Corporal Graham,’ called out Macdonell. ‘How is your brother?’
Graham put down the cart. ‘He lives, Colonel, but his leg has gone. The surgeon took it last night.’
‘Were you with him?’
‘I was, sir. He is in the farm at Mont St Jean. Many of the wounded are there. A young lady named Daisy held his hand while the surgeon worked. She helped him bear it. Joseph says he will live.’
‘Then I am sure he will.’
In the garden, piles of bodies had been heaped against the south wall. In the middle of what had been a parterre a fire had been lit. Five men sat around it, using upturned French cuirasses as seats and another as a cooking pot. One of them was Harry Wyndham.
‘Breakfast, Harry?’ asked James. Whatever was in the cuirass flooded his mouth with saliva.
The men jumped up. ‘Pigeon,’ replied Harry. ‘They obligingly arrived this morning from the wood. Nests blown to bits, I daresay. Would you care for a mouthful? I am sure we would not mind.’ The soldiers shook their heads.
‘Thank you, Harry, I would. And you have found new uses for French armour.’
Harry skewered a piece of pigeon on a bayonet and passed it to James. James took a bite and raised his eyebrows in surprise. It was good.
‘I found an unwanted bottle of claret. Just the thing for pigeon stew,’ said Harry. ‘We’ve grim work before us and we need a good breakfast.’ The four privates grunted their agreement. ‘It was hard fighting, James. The roll was difficult last night. It was dark and I may have missed some, but we lost at least five hundred. More in the orchard.’
‘Have you stood on the ridge?’
‘Not yet.’
‘There might be fifty times that and as many French.’
‘Good God. So many?’
‘I fear so.’
For some moments, Harry was lost in thought. Abruptly, he stood up. ‘But we held Hougoumont.’
Macdonell too rose. ‘Seeing it now in ruins, it is hard to believe, but we did.’
AFTERWORD
There are various spellings of ‘Macdonell’. Wellington, bizarrely, refers to him on at least one occasion, as ‘Macdonald’. I have used the spelling Macdonell himself used when signing the regimental order book on the morning of 16 October.
He was awarded, among other honours, a knighthood and the Order of the Bath for his gallant service at Waterloo and, not surprisingly, went on to a distinguished career in the army, becoming commander of the Brigade of Guards in Canada and being appointed a general in 1854. He died in 1857, aged 76.
There is more than one version of the story but the likeliest seems to be this. In August 1815, the rector of Framlingham, in Suffolk, one John Norcross, late of Pembroke College, Cambridge, offered an annuity of £10 to the man nominated by the Duke of Wellington as the most deserving of it for his gallantry at Waterloo. Wellington demurred and suggested that the choice should be made by Major General Sir John Byng. Perhaps advised by James Macdonell, Byng jointly nominated James Graham, who had been promoted to sergeant and had already been awarded a special gallantry medal and Joseph Lester, his boxing opponent. (Sergeant Ralph Fraser, the man who pulled the French colonel off his horse and rode it triumphantly through the north gates, was another to receive the medal. The unlucky colonel was named Cubières.) They received the annuity for two years but when the rector was declared bankrupt, it ceased.
The rector’s fortunes must have recovered because when he died twenty-two years later, his estate was sufficient for him to leave £500 (about £23,000 in today’s money) to the man nominated by Wellington as ‘the bravest man in England’. This time, Wellington agreed and nominated James Macdonell. More than once, Wellington, who was not given to extending praise, expressed the view that the outcome of Waterloo turned on the successful defence of Hougoumont and, in particular, on ‘the closing of the gates’. He was referring to the heroic closing of the north gates when the attackers might easily have overrun the enclosure and opened the south gates, allowing their waiting comrades to pour in. He wrote, ‘The success of the Battle of Waterloo turned on the closing of the gates at Hougoumont. The gates were closed in the most courageous manner at the very nick of time by the efforts of Sir J. Macdonell. I cannot help thinking Sir James is the man to whom you should give £500.’ Macdonell accepted the award only on condition that it be shared with James Graham. Every British soldier who fought at Waterloo was awarded The Waterloo Medal.
Not only was Macdonell a man of great personal courage, renowned for always being in the thickest of the fighting, he was also an exceptional leader of men. In scorching heat, his light companies marched twenty-seven miles from Enghien to Quatre Bras, were thrown straight into the battle there, spent a wet, miserable night in the open, conducted a fighting retreat for the twelve miles back to Mont St Jean, were sent down to Hougoumont without food or water, spent another wet night there, and, finally, fought for over eight hours in its successful defence. James Macdonell led them through all of this.
Estimates naturally vary but the consensus seems to be that at Quatre Bras the Allies lost nearly 5,000 killed and injured and the French about 1,000 less.
At Waterloo, on a single day, some 15,000 Allied, 7,000 Prussian and 25,000 French troops died or were injured. It took weeks to bury and burn the dead.