Chapter 82 Ten St. John's Hill Heights

The catastrophe of the deep ditch is over, and the ambushing artillery has already appeared. Sixty cannons and thirteen phalanxes fired at the cavalry at the same time.The Dauntless General Delors immediately saluted the British artillery. All the British light artillery rushed back to the center of the phalanx.The Iron Cavalry didn't stop at all.The calamity of that concave road damaged their strength, but not their courage.Those people are full of courage because they are weak and lonely. Only Vatier's column suffered from the concave road, but Delors' column all reached their destination, because Ney had instructed him to go diagonally from the left, as if he had smelled the trap in advance.

The iron cavalry stepped on the square formation of the British army. Belly facing the loess, letting go of the reins, teeth clenched with a knife, and hands holding a gun, that is the situation of rushing to kill that day. Sometimes, in war, the mind so hardens that the soldier becomes a statue and the flesh becomes bluestone.The soldiers of the British battalions were frightened by the offensive and stood still. The situation at that time was indeed shocking. Every side of the British phalanx was hit simultaneously.The cavalry spun wildly, wrapping them in the middle.The infantrymen responded calmly and unwaveringly.In the first row, kneeling on the ground with one foot, greeted the cavalry with spears;The Iron Cavalry responded with kicks.Their strong horses stood on their heels, straddled the ranks, jumped over the spear points, and landed majestically in the middle of the four human walls.The shells made some holes in the cavalry team, and the cavalry also opened some gaps in the phalanx.Lines of people trampled by horseshoes fell to the ground and disappeared.The spear stabs were also inserted into the chests and abdomens of those divine knights.People in other places may have never seen that kind of bizarre casualties.After the phalanx was eroded by that kind of violent cavalry, it narrowed its scope and continued to fight.They exploded their inexhaustible shells in the ranks of the enemy.The image of that war is indeed extremely brutal.Those phalanxes are no longer teams, but craters.The Iron Cavalry is not a cavalry team, but a gust of wind.Each phalanx is a volcano battered by dark clouds, lava fighting thunder.

The phalanx on the extreme right, exposed to the outside, was the most unprotected one, almost completely wiped out upon contact.It is formed by the Seventy-fifth United of Scotland.The soldier with bagpipes sat on a snare drum in the center of the phalanx, with airbags under his arm, and his melancholy eyes, full of tree shadows and lake light, hung carelessly, while others were behind him. While fighting left and right, he also played mountain folk songs.Those Scotch soldiers, when they were dying, still thought of Banle Country, just as the Greeks remembered Argos.A cavalryman chopped off the airbag and the arm holding it at the same time, and the song stopped along with the singer.

The cuirassiers were few in number, weakened by the calamity of the sunken road, and opposed there by nearly the whole force of England, but they were greatly multiplied by one against ten.At that moment, several battalions of the Hanoverian army turned back.Wellington met and thought of his cavalry.If Napoleon had thought of his infantry then, he might have won the battle, and that omission was an irreparable blunder on his part. The cavalry who attacked people suddenly felt that they were attacked.The English cavalry were already behind them.There was a phalanx in front of them, and Somerset behind them, and Somerset was the fourteen hundred dragoon guards.Somerset has Dernberg's German Hussars on the right, and Trieber's Belgian Musketeers on the left; the cavalry, head and waist, front and rear, are attacked by cavalry and infantry, and they have to fight on all sides .What does it matter to them?They are whirlwinds.That kind of courage is indescribable.

In addition, artillery fires from behind them all the time.Without that, you can't hurt their backs.A pair of their iron armor, with a bullet hole in the left shoulder-blade, is still exhibited in the so-called Waterloo Gallery. With such a Frenchman there must be such an Englishman. It was no longer a melee, but a black whirlwind, a kind of fury, a shocking struggle of soul and courage, a storm of sword light and lightning.In an instant, only 800 of the 1,400 dragoon guards were left, and their chief Zoflai also fell off his horse and died.Ney arrived with Lefebvre-Dainuet's spearmen and snipers.The heights of Mount St. John were taken, and taken, and taken again.The cuirassiers abandoned the cavalry and turned back to attack the infantry, or, to be more correct, that group of chaotic men and horses was already twisted into a ball, and no one would let go.Those phalanxes never move.Has hit twelve times.Four of Ney's mounts died in a row.Half the cavalry died on the high ground.The struggle went on for two hours.

The British army was deeply shocked.It is well known that, had the cuirassiers had not suffered the damage of the concave road at first, they would have penetrated the center of the British army, and the victory would have been assured.Clinton, who had seen the battles of Talavera and Badajoz, couldn't help being dumbfounded when he saw this rare cavalry, and he was as dumb as a stone man.Seven out of ten, Wellington, who was determined to succeed or fail, did not lose his heroic qualities and praised him.He whispered, "Excellent!" The Cavalry Army annihilated seven of the thirteen phalanxes, captured or nailed sixty cannons, and obtained six banners of the British regiment, which were sent by three cavalrymen and three snipers of the Habayashi Army. Go to Jiameng Village and dedicate it to the emperor.

Wellington's position was even more disadvantaged.That strange war is like a hand-to-hand fight between two wounded and fierce fighters. The blood on both sides has been drained, but they will not let go of each other and continue to fight.Who will fall first among the two? The battle for the high ground continued. Where did those cavalry go?No one knows.But one thing is certain, that is, on the second day of the war, at the intersection of the four roads of Nivelles, Genappe, La Yubo and Brussels, someone found a cavalryman, man and horse, dead together in a place called those Enter the scale rack of the car on St. John's Hill.The knight passed through the British defenses.One of those who carried his body now lives at Mount St. John, and his name is D'Az.He was eighteen at the time.

Wellington felt that he was gradually unable to support himself.This is a matter of life and death. The cavalry had no success at all, because they did not break through the central defense line.Both sides occupied the high ground, which means that neither side occupied it, and most of it was still in the hands of the British army.Wellington had the village and the highest flat, Ney had the ridge and slope.Both sides seem to have taken root in that sad land. But the weariness of the British army seemed hopeless.The level of blood they bleed is truly horrific.Lambert on the left called for help.Wellington replied: "No reinforcements, sacrifice!" Almost at the same time - this strange coincidence is just to show that both armies are exhausted - Ney also asked Napoleon for infantry, and Napoleon cried: " Infantry! Where does he want me to find infantry? Does he want me to improvise?"

But the British army was the sickest.The onslaught of those steel-breasted hordes had trampled their infantry to pieces.A flag surrounded by a few people marks the line of defense of a regiment, and some battalion officers have only a captain or a lieutenant left; Van Klütz's brigade of Belgian warriors lay dead in the rye fields near the Never Road; mixed with us in 1811 and went to Spain to attack Wellington, and in 1815 allied with the British Few of the Dutch Guards, who had come to attack Napoleon, were left.Officer casualties are also prominent.The gentleman Uxbridge who buried his leg himself the next day had already burst his knee.From the French side, Delors, Lei Lijie, Colbert, De Nope, Travel and Blanca were all wounded and retired during the cavalry battle. Wounded, Barn wounded, Delancey killed, Van Meeren killed, Umpteda killed, Wellington's Combat Headquarters all gone, and in that lose-lose situation, England's loss was even greater. serious.The second regiment of the guard infantry lost five lieutenant colonels, four captains and three flag officers, the first battalion of the 30th infantry regiment lost twenty-four officers and 112 soldiers, the In the 79th Mountain Regiment, 24 officers were wounded, 18 officers were killed, and 450 soldiers were killed.A regiment of Cumberland's Hanoverian cavalry, under Colonel Harker, turned their backs in the heat of the battle, and all fled into the Sauvanen Forest, so that the heart of Brussels was shaken, and he was afterwards judged and exonerated. military post.Seeing that the French army was advancing steadily and approaching the forest, they hurriedly transported the baggage, vehicles, luggage, and wagons full of wounded soldiers into the forest.The Dutch soldiers who were killed by the French cavalry were called "unlucky".According to those who have seen it with their own eyes and are still alive today, the main road from Green Banjou to Gondal, which ran almost two leagues to Brussels, was full of deserters.The horror was so great that the Prince of Condé in Marin and Louis XVIII in Ghent were in fear.Wellington had no cavalry left, except for the small reserve cavalry stationed behind the field hospital at St. John's Hill House, and a small part of Vivian's and Van der Leer's brigades covering the left flank.The remains of many cannons lay on the ground.These facts were reported by Siborn, and Pringle even said that there were only 34,000 Anglo-Dutch troops left.The Iron Duke seemed calm, but his lips were pale.Both Vincennes, the Austrian representative, and Álava, the Spanish representative, in the British operational command, thought the duke was finished.At five o'clock Wellington took out his watch, and uttered these disconsolate words: "If Blücher doesn't come, it's over!"

Around that time, on the high hills facing Frischemont, in the distance, there appeared a bright line of spear stabs. Since then, the vicious battle has changed dramatically.