"In an isolated corner of bucolic Belgium, down a dusty track that cuts through great fields of lettuce and shivering wheat, stands the farm that won Waterloo. Of the 170,000 people who visit the battlefield each year, few find their way to this particular spot. Fat wood pigeons coo undisturbed from the crumbling walls. The view across the miles of rolling fields over which Napoleon launched waves of attacks, is unspoilt by any building. The only sound of modern life is the faint roar of a motorway, hidden by a bank of trees.
Hougoumont is largely unchanged from where, on Sunday June 18, 1815, it was the centre of action throughout the Battle of Waterloo. Of the tens of thousands who died that day, 6,500 men were killed, or suffered terrible injuries, at Hougoumont. Many were dumped in a mass grave there to deter thieves.
The Duke of Wellington, joint commander of the Allied army who took on the French alongside Field Marshal Blücher's Prussians, regarded the farm on the right wing of his position as the anchor that secured his line. The French launched ceaseless attacks; pounding its walls with artillery and eventually burning down a château that occupied the centre of the farmstead. At one point, Napoleon's troops surged inside after a burly French lieutenant called Legros smashed through the main gate with an axe. But still the 4,000 defenders held strong.
"No troops but the British could have held Hougoumont," declared a triumphant Wellington following the battle, "and only the best of them at that."
But despite its status as one of Britain's most important battle sites, one that, according to the man nicknamed the Iron Duke, "turned the outcome of Waterloo", Hougoumont has been left to rot. Following the death of the cattle farmer who owned it a few years ago, the site has become derelict. The masonry and roof tiles of its outbuildings are crumbling. Trees spring out at improbable angles from locally quarried limestone walls. A 15th-century crucifix that adorned a chapel in the centre of the site and miraculously survived the blaze that gutted the château during the battle, has been looted.
Now a new defence of Hougoumont is under way. In his spending review in June, Chancellor George Osborne announced that more than £1.00 GBP million would be spent on helping restore the site in time for the 200th anniversary of the battle in 2015 – an event that has understandably been overshadowed by next year's centenary of the First World War. The money is going towards Project Hougoumont, a joint £3.50 GBP million initiative between Britain and the Belgians launched two years ago by the present Duke of Wellington, Arthur Valerian Wellesley, 98. This autumn, the refurbishment will finally begin.
I visited the site, about 10 miles from Brussels, on a still summer's day with Martin Drury, the former director general of the National Trust and chairman of Project Hougoumont, and his Belgian counterpart, Count Georges Jacobs. In addition to Mr Osborne's largesse, the pair have secured close to £1.00 GBP million from the Walloon government (one of three regional governments in Belgium), which is also spending £23.00 GBP million on a separate refurbishment of the rest of the battlefield. While £600,000.00 GBP has been secured in private donations, a further £600,000.00 GBP is needed to complete the project…"
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Amicalement
Armand
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
