What became, then, of the forty-five officers who were no longer with the 1st Battalion? Fourteen of them had fallen in battle or died of wounds received there, with two more perishing of sickness. Eighteen had been wounded at some stage. These and the other unscathed officers had all gone home at some point during the long conflict. Leach was doubly exceptional in both being there at the end and having escaped wounding in his many fights.
The picture among the disembarking rankers was a little different, because almost none of them had had the option of taking leave in England during the long wars. The 1st Battalion had 1,095 NCOs and soldiers at the time it sailed in May 1809, but the vagaries of Army record-keeping do not allow every single man's fate to be precisely determined. The fact that the Army itself did not know the exact numbers is clear from a note on the monthly returns for March 1814. The acting paymaster had listed twenty-one men as having died on 1 March, a day on which the battalion had no combat losses. That this was a book-keeping exercise becomes clear with the symbol beside each name, one which was explained at the bottom of the ledger with the words, 'those for whom no satisfactory account could be given'. This squaring of the regimental books was a writing off of men last seen in hospitals or disappearing from camp at night; in short, those whose fate was unknown. When multiplied by all the corps in the Peninsular Army, the 95th's twenty-one lost soldiers became an extraordinary 1,837. Wellington's Adjutant General, reporting this vast writing-off of lives to Horse Guards in London, opined that 'it is to be presumed that nearly the whole of these men have died in hospitals'. Given the skill of some soldiers at sloping off after they were discharged from hospital, it is difficult to share his confidence, and it is likely that a significant minority of these men deserted. To return to the riflemen, though, it is possible leaving aside these twenty-one to determine pretty much what happened to the rest of the original battalion.
Of the 1,095 who originally went out, about 180 were sent home during the course of the war, with something like 125 of them invalided by a medical board for being too injured or broken down to continue and the others sent home 'to recruit' as the battalion dissolved four of its companies in the field. The 1st/95th had lost seventy-nine prisoners of war and at least twenty-three men had deserted. It is likely that a good few of the men written off on 1 March 1814 had also deserted, which is why the 'at least twenty-three' lost to the battalion in this way was probably more like thirty. The largest portion of the original group, 421, were those who had died in Iberia about two-thirds in battle and the remainder through sickness. All of this meant that only about a third of those who had sailed with the battalion roughly 350 also returned with it.
Having formed the men up on the quayside, Barnard led his battalion to Hilsea Barracks. Many officers took immediate leave. One captain who disappeared off to the capital recorded, 'Here we enjoyed the luxuries of London life for a short time, having three years' pay to receive one for arrears and two for wounds received.' The men took a sort of communal holiday, marching up the coast to Hythe and Sandgate, 'for seabathing'. Those who had been wounded received in many cases not just the official blood money but also extra grants of anything up to 50 from the Patriotic Fund, set up by citizens grateful to the men who had vanquished the Corsican ogre.
George Simmons, who had sailed home on another ship, made his way immediately to London, where he settled down on the morning of his arrival at Old Slaughter's Coffee House to drink a pot of the fine stuff, have a smoke and peruse the newspapers. Whether the people looked upon the weathered Green Jacket like a 'dancing bear', he did not record. He was able to use some of his back pay to buy some plain clothes and return home to Yorkshire to see his beloved family.
Very few of those who had gone to war in 1809 had left behind wives. The figure may have been as low as one man in twenty among the NCOs and privates. There were, though, a few awkward homecomings to be negotiated. In one case, Ned Costello accompanied a sergeant who went in search of his wife and daughter in Portsmouth. Finding the house at last, they saw several children and another man, clearly her new spouse, in residence: 'My poor friend looked perplexed, his features alternating between doubt and fear.' The woman began sobbing and there was a general expectation that murder might be committed. Costello's comrade, however, had lived through enough to take this reverse phlegmatically. The sergeant told his wife's new husband that 'it is no use our skirmishing about', then extracted a sixpence from him to seal the bargain; he placed a golden guinea in the hands of the daughter he had not seen for five years, turned, and left, retiring to a nearby public house with Costello to drown his sorrows.
Among many of those who had rediscovered their wives in happier circumstances, there was a strong desire to resume some sort of quiet domesticity. Riflemen who had lived for years with hungry bellies and no roof over their heads at last found normality. A few fifteen or so decided that they did not intend to take their chances on another campaign and deserted in England during the later part of 1814 and early 1815.
Some, like Sergeant Robert Fairfoot, who had sailed as unmarried men, were struck by the providential nature of their survival, and wanted to settle down and raise families. He did not intend to be backwards about it: so it was that Fairfoot married Catherine Campbell, a slip of a girl of sixteen, on 2 October 1814. That it had been a rapid courtship is self-evident. There is every reason, though, to suppose that the couple were happily in love. He was a handsome man, despite his scars, and one in receipt of a good deal of pay, evidently well qualified to keep Catherine in some comfort.
The battalion wintered, then, with its members rediscovering the pleasures of peace. Lieutenant John Kincaid disappeared to Scotland for hunting and fishing. James Gairdner planned to take several months' leave to visit America in the summer of 1815, and the battalion was left in the hands of its veterans, with the likes of Jonathan Layton and George Simmons overseeing the companies.
All calculations were upset, however, in April 1815, when news reached the battalion of Napoleon's escape from exile in Elba. Lieutenant Colonel Barnard received orders to prepare the 1st/95th for imminent embarkation. It had been tricky enough leading them through the final year of their campaign in Spain and France the desertion, looting and sickness had shown that a significant number of soldiers had endured enough campaigning, and wanted only to escape the regiment on terms as advantageous to themselves as possible. Although the Rifles had received hundreds of new recruits since returning the previous summer, Barnard saw fit to use just six out of ten companies, one already on the continent would fall in with another five that he would bring across the Channel. His aim was to concentrate the best men in the small battalion that he was taking on service, and to sprinkle them with a leavening of recruits. In this way, as in the battalion that sailed six years before, the veterans would aim to impress the new men and vice versa. There was a difference, though: many of the old soldiers who embarked in 1815 considered that their survival through so many years of war was little short of miraculous, and were unsettled at being wrenched out of peaceful southern England. For this reason, the campaign that lay ahead would be the 95th's ultimate test.
TWENTY-FIVE.
Quatre Bras
AprilJune 1815
The embarkation at Dover was performed at the same quay as that of 1809. On 25 April 1815, six companies of the 1st Battalion, 95th, were put on board a packet boat, the Wensley Dale Wensley Dale, to the cheers and acclamation of the townsfolk. The Rifles had already changed quite a bit since returning from France the previous year, and about one soldier in four was new to the battalion.
Leach's 2nd Company was the least altered. It was under the same chief that had embarked it in 1809, and its lieutenants, John Cox, FitzMaurice and Gairdner, were all veterans. The more senior subalterns had pulled rank on the lowly ones when Colonel Barnard had begun to prepare the battalion for its new campaign. Costello and many of the other 2nd Company soldiers remained under Leach too. Sergeant Fairfoot, meanwhile, had gone to the 8th Company, and George Simmons to the 10th. Simmons's brother Joseph had been left behind in the general trampling over the junior men. The Smith family, always able to pull a stroke, had managed to attach Charles, younger brother of Tom and Harry, to make his military debut in Simmons's company as an uncommissioned gentleman volunteer.
That the battalion included many Johnny Raws was simply one of those features of military life that would have to be overcome, just as it had five years before and never mind that the old sweats were calling them 'recruits' in a derisive tone of voice. The more subtle difference from 1809 was that now, many of the regiment's veterans felt a certain tiredness and even resentment at having all their hopes for a peaceful life thrown over for a new campaign. James Gairdner wrote to his father: This cursed war has knocked all my plans in the head; I thought a month ago that by this time I should be on my way to see you, but this scoundrel Bonaparte to the astonishment of the world has, as it were, by magic reseated himself without spilling a drop of blood on that throne which cost Europe just twelve months ago so much blood and treasure to pull him down from. This cursed war has knocked all my plans in the head; I thought a month ago that by this time I should be on my way to see you, but this scoundrel Bonaparte to the astonishment of the world has, as it were, by magic reseated himself without spilling a drop of blood on that throne which cost Europe just twelve months ago so much blood and treasure to pull him down from.
As for those who had hoped to get on with the business of raising a family, their dilemmas were personified by Corporal George Pitt, who brought his wife to Dover docks. Lieutenant Colonel Barnard was determined to stick with Beckwith's 1809 ban on embarking women, and soon found himself in a heated argument with the corporal. 'Sir', cried Corporal Pitt, 'my wife was separated from me when I went to the Peninsular War, I had rather die than be parted from her again.' Barnard was not used to being confronted in such an insolent way and he gave Pitt the choice of leaving his wife behind or embarking her and facing court martial. The corporal chose the latter, for he and Mrs Pitt had no way of knowing whether he would be away for six months or six years, or indeed whether he would ever come home.
The Wensley Dale Wensley Dale docked in Ostend on 27 April, after a wretched voyage in which many men had been helplessly seasick. Their feelings were further upset when they were paraded on the quay to witness George Pitt's punishment. Barnard had ordered him broken to the ranks and awarded three hundred lashes. The flaying of his back duly began, the buglers laying on their cats nearly a hundred times before George Simmons called out, testifying to Pitt's qualities as a soldier and asking Barnard to spare him further punishment. The colonel agreed to stop it, telling Simmons afterwards that he 'disliked flogging as much as any man', but had been left with no choice because of the flouting of his orders. docked in Ostend on 27 April, after a wretched voyage in which many men had been helplessly seasick. Their feelings were further upset when they were paraded on the quay to witness George Pitt's punishment. Barnard had ordered him broken to the ranks and awarded three hundred lashes. The flaying of his back duly began, the buglers laying on their cats nearly a hundred times before George Simmons called out, testifying to Pitt's qualities as a soldier and asking Barnard to spare him further punishment. The colonel agreed to stop it, telling Simmons afterwards that he 'disliked flogging as much as any man', but had been left with no choice because of the flouting of his orders.
The Pitt affair meant the campaign began in poor humour. Among the veterans, there were many who doubted whether they had the fortitude to endure years more suffering. Even Simmons himself, a real fire-eater, wrote home that he must buy a riding horse, for 'my legs will never carry me through a long campaign. After a day's march I am lame. If I get hit again they must promote me or recommend me for Chelsea.'
The surliness of the Belgians did not help matters either. Simmons had noted that on entering Brussels on 12 May, there were 'crowds of natives who were gaping and staring at us. I heard no Vivas Vivas, they appeared to treat the whole concern very coolly indeed.' There was still a great of sympathy for the Bonapartist cause among Belgians. On 17 May, some riflemen were even attacked by the locals, resulting in a sergeant shooting dead one of the rioters.
All the same, campaigns were best endured by putting a best foot forward and some compensations were soon discovered. Many did not expect the fighting to last long. The 1st Battalion of Rifles would be brigaded under General Kempt, who was known and respected from the Peninsula, as was Picton, their divisional commander. Picton was remembered by some for his feud with Craufurd and his occasional signs of ill grace towards the Light Division. In this new campaign, however, this evidently did not prevent him appreciating the 95th's military qualities.
Food was very cheap, the messes being able to fry up a pound or two of bacon every morning. Drink, likewise, did not strain the pocket, with many soldiers indulging rather too freely, reminding their officers of their duty to limit the consumption of alcohol.
'As the middle of June approached', wrote Kincaid, who had scurried across to Belgium from a shooting party in Scotland, 'we all began to get a little more on the qui vive qui vive, for we were all aware that Napoleon was about to make a dash at some particular point.' Orders were duly received in Brussels late at night on 15 June to muster the men in the Place Royale at 11.30 p.m. Such were the pleasures of the Belgian metropolis that 'in consequence of the difficulty of assembling the division, it did not march until near four o'clock this morning'. Lieutenant Gairdner was left behind to round up the 95th's stragglers and this party got under way at 8 a.m. on 16 June.
Kempt's brigade was marched down towards Charleroi, south of the forest of Soignes, where there were alarms that the French were present in great numbers. Wellington, 'humbugged' by Napoleon's marches, had been obliged to throw together a disparate body of men to reinforce his Dutch-Belgian allies near an important road junction called Quatre Bras.
At about 2 p. m., the 95th, having marched a hot summer's day, paused just north of the crossroads and began cooking up a meal. As they sat there, the riflemen watched the Black Legion, the Germans under the Duke of Brunswick, march by. Wellington soon appeared and directed the Rifles to move to the south-east of Quatre Bras to occupy a position in some trees on the left flank of his army, maintaining the line of communication to the Prussians who were heavily engaged that day at Ligny. As was often the case in the Peninsula, Wellington gave orders to the commanding officer of the Rifles in person, saying, 'Barnard, these fellows are coming on; you must stop them by throwing yourselves into that wood.'
The 95th marched a little south-east on the Namur road and then turned right, or south, into the fields. Four companies were ordered by Barnard to attack some French light troops to their front. The companies extended among rows of billowing corn, which came up so high they could hardly see over it. Simmons, with the 10th Company, fell under that tough old duellist Jonathan Layton, for the titular commander, Charlie Beckwith, had quickly removed himself to a staff position, just as he had in the Peninsula.
Layton and Simmons directed their men down to a formidable-looking hedgerow not far in front of the French. Some enemy cannon had begun playing on the Allied lines and one of the old riflemen quipped, 'Ah! My boys, you are opening the ball in good style!' Simmons worked his way through the thorny hedge, dropping onto lower ground on the other side and instantly coming under French fire. With the crackle of musketry intensifying, he wondered why his men were holding back. Simmons went back through the thorns and found Sergeant Daniel Underwood, a veteran like himself of O'Hare's old Peninsular 3rd Company. Why was he holding back? Underwood made out it was because of the thorns. 'Why man! You are like a fine lady!' Simmons taunted him. Still he did not go forward. 'I rushed forward and struck him in the centre of the knapsack with my right shoulder, it had the effect of a battering ram, through it he went.'
With his men on the same side of the brambles as their enemy, they opened fire. For the French soldiers at the head of this column, this sudden hail of metal came as a shock. 'We were saluted by a fusillade of extreme violence,' wrote one French colonel, 'it was the English who, hidden in the tall corn, fired onto us. Since, for the moment, we could not see where this firing was coming from, the column faltered somewhat.' Seeing the effect of this murderous rifle fire, Picton threw his formed infantry forward. The kilted Black Watch and Camerons marched on, accompanied by several English or Irish battalions.
The French were thrown back some way, but soon rallied their forces. The thump of hooves announced the imminent arrival of cavalry and the voltigeurs voltigeurs at last began to move forward again, answering the 95th's fire with fire. The French fusillade was becoming heavy, and Layton made his way over to Simmons to confer. As he arrived, a bullet smacked into the company commander's wrist, leaving Layton's hand hanging limply and blood pouring out of the wound. Simmons ripped off Layton's shirtsleeve and began to bind it, advising him to go to the rear and find a surgeon. Layton, one of the few to soldier through the Peninsula without injury, took it personally: he looked in the direction from where the shot had come, telling Simmons, 'You must hit the fellow first.' at last began to move forward again, answering the 95th's fire with fire. The French fusillade was becoming heavy, and Layton made his way over to Simmons to confer. As he arrived, a bullet smacked into the company commander's wrist, leaving Layton's hand hanging limply and blood pouring out of the wound. Simmons ripped off Layton's shirtsleeve and began to bind it, advising him to go to the rear and find a surgeon. Layton, one of the few to soldier through the Peninsula without injury, took it personally: he looked in the direction from where the shot had come, telling Simmons, 'You must hit the fellow first.'
Simmons ran forward at a crouch with one of the sergeants to take cover behind a tree stump just in front. The lieutenant readied his rifle, while the sergeant kept his eyes keenly on the spot where they expected the French sharpshooter to appear, so that he might direct the shot. When the Frenchman at last fired, the ball hit Simmons's companion square in the forehead. The sergeant was hurled back several feet and his brains blown out of the back of his head. Simmons turned to see how his men might react to this loss, calling out to them, 'Look at that glorious fellow, our comrade and brother soldier he now knows the grand secret!'
The Rifles had put themselves in a particularly hot post, for they were under fire from hundreds of French light troops. Costello was hit too, a ball tearing off his trigger finger. Lieutenant Gairdner followed Layton to the rear, having been struck in the leg by a shot his personal run of bad luck continuing from Badajoz and Vitoria.
With heavy French columns advancing now on the Quatre Bras junction, supported by cavalry, the Rifles would soon have to step aside. Several of their men had been killed in the initial skirmishing; those wounded included Private James Burke, that 'wild untameable animal' of the Peninsular sieges, who would die of the wounds received that day. The 95th took refuge in a wood close to the Namur road and to the flank of the main fighting, which raged between French divisions under Ney and the British infantry led forward not half an hour before by Picton.
Two of the British battalions, including the 42nd Highlanders or Black Watch, had advanced in line into some dead ground south of the Namur road. While this position sheltered them from artillery, it also gave them little time to react to the approach of enemy horse, who were now thrown on them by the French generals. This was the British Army's first real brush with cuirassiers, the heavy cavalry in breastplates that Napoleon usually kept as a personal reserve. These big men came galloping through the smoke; on seeing the Highlanders, they bore down on them. Being caught in a two-deep line, the Scots were hardly able to defend themselves except by firing off a volley as the cuirassiers ploughed through their files, sabreing left and right as they passed: many of them were knocked flying by the flanks of the cuirassiers' big chargers and some were trampled under hoof. The 42nd were then ordered to about-turn, where they gave the French another, slightly more effective volley and then belatedly attempted to form square, as the onslaught continued. Many riflemen witnessed this bloody engagement, which cost the 42nd dear, with some anxiety. At length, the dark falling on the field, the 95th were withdrawn a little to a group of farm buildings, where they lay down for some rest.
On the morning of the 17th, the day began with a satisfying brew of tea and a few pounds of good bacon, but it was destined to be marred by one of those bizarre mishaps of war. Sergeant Fairfoot was standing chatting with his old friend Lieutenant Simmons when the latter decided on a little horseplay. Finding a cuirassier's breastplate and gloves, he began to parade up and down, eliciting hoots and laughter from the men. One French sharpshooter posted nearby, regarding this as a fighting rather than laughing matter, took a shot at Simmons. The ball hit, not its intended target, but Fairfoot's right arm. Doubled over with pain, Fairfoot shouted out, 'Oh Mr Simmons, the game is up with me, for this campaign anyhow.' His resignation turned to anger as Simmons bound the wound. Before heading back to the surgeons with his arm in a sling, Fairfoot loaded his rifle, rested it on Simmons's shoulder, and fired it with his left hand towards his assailant.
The 95th spent the remainder of the 17th covering the rear of Wellington's army as it fell back towards Brussels, taking up its fighting position on the Mont Saint Jean ridge. News had reached the British of the mauling received by Field Marshal Blucher the day before at Ligny. Leach commented, 'The man of candour will not deny, be he ever so determined a fire eater, that the news of this disastrous defeat of our allies was calculated to throw a damp on the prospects of the campaign.'
That night they were all dampened more literally, by a torrential downpour of the kind that the veterans had come to regard as a good omen during their years in Iberia. Barnard was able to find quarters in a small farm building and, perhaps remembering the lieutenant's kindness after his wounding at the Nivelle, invited Simmons to stay with him. Simmons thanked him but replied, 'Sir, if I were to stay here, the Company would have contempt for me, I must go and rough it with them.'
At dawn on the 18th the French Army was revealed to them in the murky light. Fires were started and men stretched stiff, wet limbs. They were soon hard at work, checking their weapons were dry and ready to fire, drinking tea and preparing themselves for the trial that would be Waterloo.
TWENTY-SIX.
Waterloo
June 1815 and Afterwards
From early morning on 18 June, the 95th's camp kettles were boiling away outside Barnard's billet. The house was just behind a crossroads on the Mont Saint Jean ridge. As it was one of the pivotal points of the battlefield, the riflemen found themselves serving up hot, sweet tea to every variety of commander from Wellington downwards, as they came to study the ground.
The paved road from Brussels to Genappe extended away downhill to their front. About two hundred yards from the top of the ridge, on the right of the road, was the walled farm of La Haye Sainte. This had been turned into a strongpoint and was occupied by light troops of the German Legion. On the left of the road, halfway between the ridge top and that farm, was an area which had been excavated for gravel, known as the sandpit. It was here that Captain Leach was initially posted with two companies, ready to go forward and skirmish. Just to his rear was another company, which could join them. The 1st/95th's formed reserve, its other three companies, would be posted on the road running from east to west on top of the ridge, behind some hedges. Barnard and his second-in-command, Major Alexander Cameron, would be here too.
Wellington and Napoleon had of course brought vast armies to this field and the 95th's position represented but a stitch or two on the tapestry of deployments. Several artillery batteries were placed on the ridge just in front of Barnard and the 95th's reserve. Picton's infantry battalions were mostly behind them, in an area invisible to the French. Off to the Rifles' right was an infantry division under Karl von Alten, the Light Division's old Peninsular chief. Way off, further to the right and outside their view, was the chateau of Hougomont which would be defended by the Guards Division.
As for Napoleon, he chose a ridge about five hundred yards in front of Leach's position to site his main concentration of artillery. This wall of eighty guns would be able to hurl a weight of shot at the British centre and left quite unlike anything they had experienced in the Peninsula. During the morning, 'we perceived our adversaries bringing into position, on the heights opposite, gun after gun', Leach wrote, 'intended particularly to salute our division, the farm of La Haye Sainte and the left of Baron Alten's division.' Wellington had ensured that by placing them on the reverse slope of the ridge, much of his infantry would be untouched by that battery, but the 95th and German Legion around Haye Sainte would not have that luxury.
While the French were hauling up caissons full of ammunition and yet more cannon, the 95th distributed cartridges and sent its transport to the rear. Simmons and a party under him went to cut down trees to help build up a barricade on the main road south, near Haye Sainte. This would stop enemy cavalry and horse artillery using this route to rush up to the British position.
At about 1 p.m. the French guns opened the ball, the very first shot from the grand battery taking off a rifleman's head, and scattering its contents about. The eighty guns thundered away for most of that hour, the riflemen lying down in the sandpit or on the ridge, as the shot ripped through the air just above them.
This firing had little effect on Wellington's concealed infantry, and as the familiar drumming and 'Vive l'Empereur's of an infantry attack replaced the cacophony of the guns, the three forward companies of the 95th extended out and began skirmishing with their covering of an infantry attack replaced the cacophony of the guns, the three forward companies of the 95th extended out and began skirmishing with their covering voltigeurs voltigeurs. The firing checked this screen, but General d'Erlon's columns kept advancing, marching through their light troops, who were still engaged in their private struggle with the 95th.
Captain Duthilt marched forward in the main part of d'Erlon's column. He was a grizzled veteran of twenty-two years who had fought in the first revolutionary campaigns. He looked up towards the ridge, and a little to his left at La Haye Sainte. He was worried by the strength of the defences, the cloying mud, the unusual formation in which they were delivering their attack, and by the fact that the usual cheering and egging on of the conscripts had begun too soon in their progress forwards. 'This rush and enthusiasm were becoming disastrous,' according to Duthilt, 'in that the soldier still had a long march to make before meeting the enemy, and was soon tired out by the difficulty of manoeuvring on this heavy churned-up soil, which ripped off gaiter straps and even claimed shoes ... there was soon some disorder in the ranks, above all as soon as the head of the column came within range of enemy fire.' Riflemen, German legionnaires, light companies from Picton's division and cannon all poured death into the head of d'Erlon's corps.
The French, falling into confusion, were still moving forward at this point, confronted with several thousand infantry, Leach had little choice but to fall back up the slope to his supports on the ridge. Stopping every now and then to turn and fire, the riflemen made their way up and were soon behind the hedge.
The engagement had become hot, and raged across the front. Major Cameron was hit in the neck by one shot, being carried to the rear. Picton too fell, his wound being mortal.
It was at this moment, at around 2 p. m., that the riflemen looking down to their right saw French cuirassiers cantering up to a Hanoverian militia battalion, which was making its way to reinforce the defenders of Haye Sainte. Catching them unawares, the French cavalry rode down the whole lot. The armoured horsemen set about the infantry with their long sabres, bringing pathetic cries for mercy from the lacerated Germans. No quarter was given, though, and the few bloodied survivors fled back up the slope.
The French were soon coming onto the ridge. It was at this moment that the 1st Battalion of the 95th faced the final crisis, and one of the most severe, of all its years' fighting under Wellington. Seeing the cuirassiers cantering up the slope towards them, and hearing the cries of the sergeant majors who were getting their men into square, many of the riflemen panicked. They had seen what had happened to the 42nd at Quatre Bras and they had witnessed the riding down of the Germans moments before. The power of heavy cavalry en masse was not something that even the Peninsular veterans had really seen before. Dozens of them started running.
Rallying the steady men around them, the 95th's officers were able to withstand the cuirassiers. Having arrived on top of the ridge, faced with red-coated walls bristling with bayonets, the French heavies were unable to make any serious impression. Those riflemen who had fled, meanwhile, were running into the woods at the rear of Wellington's position.
A general charge of British cavalry now swept forward, inflicting the same treatment on the leading battalions of d'Erlon's corps as the Germans had suffered not an hour before. The riflemen stood or lay flinching, hoping desperately that they would not be trampled as the Life Guards came thundering past them and down onto the French. With the leading battalions already disordered by their long and trying march towards the ridge, the French were at the mercy of the British horse. In a few moments, two eagles were taken and thousands of enemy infantry were sent streaming back towards their own lines. Captain Duthilt joined in the rout: 'The brigade started retreating, dissolving, ridden through everywhere by this cavalry, and the ground was clogged with dead and wounded.' The old veteran was captured by a British trooper, but his luck soon changed. Some of the British cavalry, enthused by their success, rode down as far as the French battery, where they were duly overwhelmed by a French counter-attack. Duthilt and hundreds of other prisoners from the wrecks of d'Erlon's column were freed.
Once the French cavalry pulled back from the ridge, Leach once more led the three Rifle companies, now somewhat depleted, back to the sandpit and the left of La Haye Sainte. The Rifles then enjoyed a period of comparative calm, while Napoleon prosecuted a huge attack between La Haye Sainte and Hougomont. This the 1st/95th could hear but not see.
By about 4 p. m., pressure was building again in front of La Haye Sainte. The French battery had regained its organisation after the driving off of the British horse, and was lofting dozens of shot at the defenders of the walled farm. Many shells also struck the 27th, the Inniskillings, who had remained in square, close to the crossroads on the ridge top. Fear of further cavalry attack prevented them abandoning the formation, but increased the effect of the roundshot that ploughed through its ranks. In front of the sandpit, French skirmishers too were coming forward again.
Simmons, firing with his men at this new swarm of voltigeurs voltigeurs, was felled by a blow to his midriff. He bit the dust and struggled for breath. Blood was pouring out of a wound to his belly. Probing with his fingers, Simmons could feel that a couple of his ribs had been smashed by the ball going in. He had seen enough wounds in his campaigns to know that a ball smashing through the trunk made the outcome most doubtful for him. Four riflemen carried him back up behind the ridge to a little house that was being used as a dressing station.
Finding himself surrounded by dying men, fighting for breath, Simmons was struggling not to lose hope. Then, to his surprise and delight, Sergeant Fairfoot appeared. Having heard his old friend was seriously wounded, with his own right arm still strapped up from its wound of the day before, Fairfoot came to rescue Simmons. 'Oh lift me up, I am suffocating!' cried Simmons in agony. Fairfoot struggled to prop up the lieutenant. Six years they had campaigned together, fighting against the odds from that dark night in Barba del Puerco to Tarbes. Tears began streaming down Fairfoot's cheeks, cutting tracks through the grime of battle. He was not ready to see his old friend die like this.
At last an assistant surgeon began poking around Simmons's insides in what passed for an operation. Fairfoot propped him up, all the time, as the sawbones prodded and pushed with his infernal instruments and Simmons gritted his teeth against the pain. At last the ball was extracted. Moments later a British cavalry officer ran into the surgery and shouted the alarm. The French were attacking again and would be upon them in moments!
Fairfoot helped Simmons, wincing with agony, blood pouring down his side, to his feet. The sergeant spied a French prisoner on a horse and pulled him off it without ceremony. Fairfoot and another tried to help Simmons up, but he passed out and the two men could not manage the dead weight.
The alarms at the aid post had been occasioned by the renewal of a heavy French infantry attack at about 6 p.m. Leach, who was now in charge of the battalion, both Barnard and Cameron having fallen wounded, could do little but watch in horror as the German Legion abandoned La Haye Sainte. After resisting heroically for six hours, the legionnaires had run out of ammunition and taken heavy casualties. They were forced to quit the buildings with dozens of their men strewn about the courtyard, shattered timbers and tiles spread crazily across them.
With the French now in possession of the shattered farm, balls began whistling into the sandpit from its exposed flank, killing several riflemen. A further French infantry attack was also making its way up the ridge to Leach's left. Having both flanks turned, he had no choice but to abandon the position again, taking his survivors back to their supports on the ridge.
Behind them, Fairfoot, desperately agitated, had at last found a cavalry horse for Simmons and was taking him further to the rear. The immediate crisis was over, but neither of them had any great faith that Simmons would survive his wound.
With the light beginning to fail on the field of Waterloo, the tide at last turned. The French capture of La Haye Sainte did not prove decisive. Instead the defeat of the Imperial Guard in the centre, and the arrival of the Prussians on Wellington's left, settled the matter. In that first contest, Colonel John Colborne had covered himself with glory, leading his 52nd forward to complete the Guard's discomfiture. The struggle was over, as was Bonaparte's gamble to regain power.
With his second abdication, the French imperial dream was buried, and Europe began its 'long peace' of almost forty years. The hopes of individual veterans for some tranquillity and relief from the dangers of campaigning were now answered. But the inevitable contraction of the Army posed its own risks to the 95th.
In the days after this epic struggle, church bells rang in England and Wellington wrote a weary victory dispatch. Scattered across the Belgian countryside on smelly mattresses, Barnard, Cameron and Simmons all made their recovery. The short campaign, the Hundred Days, would soon be over. It had not passed well for the 1st/95th.
Barnard had been deeply shocked by what had happened on the ridge. Three days after the battle, he wrote to Cameron: I regret to say that a I regret to say that a great great number of our men went to the rear without cause after the appearance of the Cuirassiers, there were no less than 100 absentees after the fight and this vexes me very much as it is the first time such a thing has ever happened in the regiment. Kincaid says very few if any quitted the corps after the charge of the cavalry. Many of those that went to the rear were men that I little expected to have heard of in that situation. number of our men went to the rear without cause after the appearance of the Cuirassiers, there were no less than 100 absentees after the fight and this vexes me very much as it is the first time such a thing has ever happened in the regiment. Kincaid says very few if any quitted the corps after the charge of the cavalry. Many of those that went to the rear were men that I little expected to have heard of in that situation.
It may be deduced from the fact that many of these men were evidently veterans that the incidents involving Corporal Pitt at Dover and Sergeant Underwood at Quatre Bras were in some sense portents. There were too many in the battalion who had fought more than they felt anyone could reasonably be expected to fight and resented being wrenched from what they thought would be a peaceful life back in England. For that reason, the short Belgian campaign had proven the severest moral test of the battalion.
Simmons, Fairfoot and Leach had all come through. Their devotion to one another and their ability to resign themselves to whatever fate the battlefield held for them had allowed them to end their campaigns with heads held high.
The losses of the 1st/95th in the battle were not great amounting to around 21 men killed and 124 injured. The 27th, by way of contrast, suffered 478 casualties (of whom 105 were slain) well over half of the men who came into action. They had been close to the 95th (actually slightly further from the French), standing in square, with enemy cannon balls ploughing great lanes through their ranks. With its open fields, reserves of French heavy cavalry and artillery, Waterloo had not been a good place for the 95th to demonstrate the superiority of rifle power over mass or bayonets. Many thousands of Green Jackets would have been needed for that. However, the comparatively slight losses at least showed yet again that troops who fought in this way were far less vulnerable, even when standing under the fire of Napoleon's huge battery for an entire day.
It seems that Wellington and other British generals were unaware that a significant proportion of Barnard's battalion had fled. This was to become an unmentionable subject in the regiment, which had long shown sensitivity about its reputation. Had the Duke ever become aware of it, he would probably have been philosophical, given the Rifles' previous service. He was, after all, the general who said that all soldiers ran away sometimes, it was just a matter of how quickly they came back.
With Napoleon's second abdication, the campaigns of the 1st Battalion of the 95th came to an end. The months after Waterloo saw the battalion reconstitute itself. For a couple of days after the great battle, those skulkers who had fled at the sight of Boney's cuirassiers returned to the abuse and scorn of their messmates. The journey of the sick and wounded was often a longer one. Corporal Costello, Lieutenant Gairdner and Sergeant Fairfoot, wounded at Quatre Bras, all returned after a brief recuperation. George Simmons took longer, as befitted a man drilled in the guts at Waterloo.
They were all back in the ranks before the battalion left Paris in the bitter cold of that December of 1815. It was not the happy idyll of Castel Sarrazin and the previous summer. Instead there was plenty of grumbling. Certain reports of Waterloo in the newspapers highlighted the role of the Scottish regiments in Picton's division. This nettled some officers like Leach, who felt that those from north of the Tweed were always making great claims for their own valour and ignoring those of others.
The award of a Waterloo medal caused some other latent tensions to break into the open. Peninsular men were livid that their own long sufferings had not yet been recognised with any badge or distinction, whereas dozens of Johnny Newcomes could wear the Waterloo medal. Some of the old soldiers taunted the younger men, calling them 'recruits' long after the battle, ripping off their Waterloo medals.
Wellington tried to repay some of his debt to the 95th by insisting that they be taken out of the 'line': from 1816 they would no longer be part of the sequence of numbered infantry regiments, but were known instead as the Rifle Brigade. This distinction honoured the riflemen, but also saved their skills for the Army. In times of peace there would soon be disbandments, and there was evident agreement in Horse Guards that the 95th Rifles must be saved from the fate of two regiments previously given that number: one was broken up at the end of the American wars, along with many other higher-numbered corps.
The 5th Battalion of the 60th, the mercenary corps that predated the Rifles and also served in the Peninsula, did not escape the disbandments. With its passing, it might be said that the Army finally abandoned the eighteenth-century notion that the rifleman was a born woodsman, best recruited from Germany or Switzerland. Britain and Ireland would henceforth be quite capable of furnishing the raw material for its rifle corps.
Even the formation of the Rifle Brigade, however, did not completely protect it: the 3rd Battalion was wound up a couple of years later. This event helped to ensure that George Simmons, who had written to his parents in 1810 that a man could get his company in five years in the Rifles, did not achieve that goal until nineteen years after he entered the regiment despite all the suffering that attended his service.
In the meantime, the 1st Battalion returned home in November 1818, losing many veterans before being sent first to Scotland and then Ireland to protect the ministry from the anger of the mob. Although these were simply the exigencies of the service, none of the old sweats could pretend that keeping rioting Celts in check was a particularly pleasing occupation.
Ned Costello was among those invalided out of the regiment aged thirty-one, he was awarded the miserly sum of sixpence a day. He later married, but finding the money insufficient to keep him, he ended up volunteering to fight in a British Legion which took part in the Spanish civil war in 1835. Costello's previous services qualified him for the rank of lieutenant in this mercenary force, and he returned to England in 1836. A year and a half later, Costello's difficulties in maintaining his wife and seven children finally came to an end with his appointment as a Yeoman warder at the Tower of London.
Many of the private soldiers who had served with Costello were a good deal less fortunate. Several succumbed to drink, becoming penniless drifters, begging beside the roads. Tom Plunket, the man who killed the French general during the Corunna campaign and was held up by his colonel as a 'pattern for the battalion', was sighted years later selling matches on the streets of London. In his case, the best efforts of that old commanding officer to obtain him a good pension failed to save the old soldier from alcoholism.
George Baller was another veteran of O'Hare's company whose fate gives some insight into the pitiful circumstances into which many of the old 95th men fell. Baller was one of the hard core of the regiment, having been given the skulker Esau Jackson's stripes outside the walls of Badajoz in 1812. He was invalided out in 1816, while the regiment was still in France, aged just twenty-eight. Baller had attained the status of colour sergeant but could not carry on due to the severity of his five wounds. One month after his discharge Baller was awarded a pension of ninepence per day by the board at Chelsea. Once married, Baller found himself too sick to work, with a pension too small to provide for his children. He ended up making a desperate appeal to the Chelsea board for more money in 1819. Baller's exact fate is unknown, but it is clear that despite the most exemplary record, and testimonials from Andrew Barnard, he lived what remained of his life in grinding poverty and great physical pain.
As the years of the 95th's great Peninsular fights receded, so those who were still fit and serving in the regiment found themselves living, as they had before the war, according to the petty routines of a peacetime army. For an officer like Jonathan Leach, who personified the 'wild sportsman' of those campaigning days, this was all too much. 'I feel no particular penchant for passing the remainder of my days in marching off guards, going grand rounds and visiting rounds and performing other dull, monotonous and uninteresting duties of the kind, on which great stress is laid, and to which vast importance is attached, in various stiff-starched garrisons,' he wrote. Leach resigned from the Army with the rank of lieutenant colonel to pursue other business.
Those with less wealth did not have this option. While serving on in the Rifle Brigade, Robert Fairfoot committed himself to raising a family, his wife Catherine bearing four children between 1817 and 1823. He named his son Joseph George Fairfoot, thus commemorating his father and his closest friend. Fairfoot eventually joined Simmons in the commissioned class, being made quartermaster in 1825. He had been a model soldier and was long overdue his reward. Andrew Barnard, writing to recommend the promotion, stated, 'I cannot give a stronger proof of his merit than the anxiety that all all the officers who command the Battalion to which he belongs feel for him.' the officers who command the Battalion to which he belongs feel for him.'
Simmons was destined to raise a family too, although he did not marry until 1836, by which time he had reached the ripe old age of fifty. The poorer officer's life was not conducive to romance, involving as it did periods of unaccompanied service which might go on for years at a time. Several, including John Kincaid, never married.