Nick Stern | 07 Apr 2015 4:10 p.m. PST |
I am putting together a 54mm model of Hougoumont and, in all my research, I have yet to find a reference to a gate on the eastern wall separating the formal garden from the orchard. Am I to assume that all the British troops that reinforced the forces defending the orchard throughout the day exited the chateau through the north gate, even though that gate was under assault off and on? |
deadhead | 08 Apr 2015 4:33 a.m. PST |
I've always imagined the orchard battle as involving one side or the other advancing north/south. The "British" attacked the orchard from the covered way (along its North West boundary). They were drawn from the troops on the ridge progressively, not from the garrison of the chateau. The lads in the garden may have taken pot shots, over the wall, into the French west flank, but no gate……… That is my impression anyway……… |
Supercilius Maximus | 08 Apr 2015 5:47 a.m. PST |
Having walked the area around Hougoumont extensively, about a year ago, I found no evidence of a gate in the east wall – or, indeed, any of the four external walls – of the garden (I assume you mean the wall some way from the chateau, rather than the one on the east side of the building complex). |
deadhead | 08 Apr 2015 12:41 p.m. PST |
It can be very confusing. The complex was at least twice the width it now is. The orchard was as wide as the surviving formal garden….added on again to the side (east). We now see flat ploughed farmland and cannot appreciate what a massive barrier the Hgmt complex represented back then. No gate. The garrison stayed in the bricked complex. The orchard was defended by progressive reinforcement from the main line, to the north west. There was a well documented gate out of the farm complex into the formal garden. Many a photo from the 19th Century as it collapsed and disappeared |
Nick Stern | 08 Apr 2015 3:49 p.m. PST |
Thanks, deadhead and Supercilius Maximus, for clarifying. I am reading Iain Gale's Four Days in June (I know it's fiction) and was confused by the author's description of Alexander Salton's defense of the orchard by the light companies of the 1st Guards and assumed, incorrectly, that they came from the main complex of buildings, not the ridge. Now it all makes more sense. I pity the poor chateau gardener if he forgot his tools in the orchard and had to walk all the way 'round the houses to get from the formal garden to the orchard! |
deadhead | 10 Apr 2015 9:25 a.m. PST |
Good point. I do not recall that there is or was a north wall to the formal garden. South facing the French. East facing the orchard. West the chateau itself. Was not north just a hedge with a pathway and then basically a ditch………… "the covered way"? Yes, Saltoun's counterattacks drew soldiers from the ridgeline, not from the garrison. Nothing wrong with Four Days in June. I thought it did a very good job of explaining the difficulties in concentrating the armies opposing Napoleon. Pleasant surprise that it did not ignore logistics in an account designed for the general reader. I have read far worse in 2014/15 and will probably still! |
Nick Stern | 10 Apr 2015 9:09 p.m. PST |
Which brings up another question. How much of a barrier were the hedges around Hougoumont? Were they like the Normandy hedges in 1944 or were they more passable? I know there was a hedgerow to the south of the H'mont south wall through which the French had to advance. I do not recall reading that they disordered their ranks. |
deadhead | 11 Apr 2015 9:55 a.m. PST |
Hedges were a barrier but not like the bocage of Normandy. Norman hedges, after centuries, consisted of a steep earth bank with the hedge perched on the summit. The roots held the bank together in torrential rain and made them a major obstacle to vehicles (even with a Cullin plough). If you could get over, you exposed your underbelly to a panzerfaust! Hedges were notably recorded as an obstacle to the poor kilted highlanders (tears to your eyes just thinking about it). A major factor in breaking up d'Erlon's formation on the ridge crest, just at a critical moment. Hedges had to be a barrier, they were to prevent large animals crossing a field boundary and were usually supplemented by a ditch. Mercer records that the Belgians notably did not seem to graze their beasts out in their fields, but they certainly built many a hedge on the field of "Waterloo" (all gone now of course)…… Units in a rigid formation…hedges were passable but a real nuisance. I always think of the assault on the walls of Hougoumont as more of a massed light infantry exercise than a line column attack |
Nick Stern | 11 Apr 2015 10:17 a.m. PST |
deadhead, thanks for sharing your insights. All the paintings I've seen certainly portray the French assault as you suggest. For my 54mm game about half the French will be individually based. The rest four to a base. All the British, Nassau and Hanoverian Lights will be individually based. |
deadhead | 11 Apr 2015 1:08 p.m. PST |
Look, I am a total amateur at this. I have patched up many folk who have been blown apart, but the last weapon I myself fired was a Lee Enfield Mk IV…….. I have dragged my family around the perimeter of Hougoumont three times now (and collected mud for my model bases from the south east edge on every occasion). But I remain convinced that the French, after advancing through a now gone wood, then faced a now gone hedge, plus were a Light Regt,to start with anyway, were in a very broken "formation". I love in the film how they produce wooden ladders to scale the walls (and they are higher than you might think!). I can imagine them thinking "Oh hang on, there is a wood in front of us, we actually have little to no idea what is beyond that wood, someone says the Emperor, back there, has a map suggesting there is some sort of complex of buildings. Let's do what they do in the John Wayne movie of the Alamo (20 years later) and make some ladders. Now let's try and find the raw materials in a Belgian field on a Saturday night, when the shops are closed, in 1815…………" |
Supercilius Maximus | 12 Apr 2015 5:56 a.m. PST |
Worth bearing in mind that every French infantry battalion had a detachment of sapeurs, and each infantry division one or more companies of genie. Both on the march and in battle, these could be concentrated at brigade and corps level, respectively, in order to clear obstacles; repair roads and bridges; build observation platforms; fortify buildings, etc etc. Whilst it would indeed be wrong not to think of thick hedges, farmyard walls, and so on as genuine obstacles, experienced sapeurs/genie could clear gaps in these in pretty short order, even if they being defended. These were, in modern parlance, combat engineers – viz. "L'Enfonceur" at the North Gate of Hougoumont. I would also imagine that at least one of the corps, or possibly army, genie trains would have included storming ladders. |
Camcleod | 16 Apr 2015 12:09 p.m. PST |
Nick I was reading Waterloo Letters and found a description of the Hougoumont buildings that does mention a gate in the wall to the garden. Starts on p. 263 at the bottom: link |
Jemima Fawr | 16 Apr 2015 1:04 p.m. PST |
There's certainly account of a company or two of engineers being allocated to the assault on La Haye Sainte. |
deadhead | 16 Apr 2015 1:07 p.m. PST |
Oh yes. There certainly was a gate from the building complex into the formal garden. Let me show some pictures of it as it gradually disintegrated, leaving no trace now. There is then an earlier print to clarify quite where this lay. Finally a simple plan of the whole complex. The formal garden is still there and walled on three sides. Precious few if any French got in there. The orchard is gone without a trace. That is what changed hands so many times……….no gate in the wall between the garden and the orchard. Notice the rubble of the balustrade in the first picture?
|