Page 567 - les-miserables

three ensigns; the first battalion of the 30th infantry had lost
24 officers and 1,200 soldiers; the 79th Highlanders had lost
24 officers wounded, 18 officers killed, 450 soldiers killed.
The Hanoverian hussars of Cumberland, a whole regiment,
with Colonel Hacke at its head, who was destined to be tried
later on and cashiered, had turned bridle in the presence of
the fray, and had fled to the forest of Soignes, sowing defeat
all the way to Brussels. The transports, ammunition-wag-
ons, the baggage-wagons, the wagons filled with wounded,
on perceiving that the French were gaining ground and ap-
proaching the forest, rushed headlong thither. The Dutch,
mowed down by the French cavalry, cried, ‘Alarm!’ From
Vert-Coucou to Groentendael, for a distance of nearly two
leagues in the direction of Brussels, according to the testi-
mony of eye-witnesses who are still alive, the roads were
encumbered with fugitives. This panic was such that it at-
tacked the Prince de Conde at Mechlin, and Louis XVIII.
at Ghent. With the exception of the feeble reserve ech-
elonned behind the ambulance established at the farm of
Mont-Saint-Jean, and of Vivian’s and Vandeleur’s brigades,
which flanked the left wing, Wellington had no cavalry left.
A number of batteries lay unhorsed. These facts are attest-
ed by Siborne; and Pringle, exaggerating the disaster, goes
so far as to say that the Anglo-Dutch army was reduced to
thirty-four thousand men. The Iron Duke remained calm,
but his lips blanched. Vincent, the Austrian commission-
er, Alava, the Spanish commissioner, who were present at
the battle in the English staff, thought the Duke lost. At five
o’clock Wellington drew out his watch, and he was heard to

567