CHAPTER II--HOUGOMONT

  Hougomont,--this was a funereal spot, the beginning of the obstacle,the first resistance, which that great wood-cutter of Europe, calledNapoleon, encountered at Waterloo, the first knot under the blows of hisaxe.

  It was a château; it is no longer anything but a farm. For theantiquary, Hougomont is _Hugomons_. This manor was built by Hugo, Sireof Somerel, the same who endowed the sixth chaplaincy of the Abbey ofVilliers.

  The traveller pushed open the door, elbowed an ancient calash under theporch, and entered the courtyard.

  The first thing which struck him in this paddock was a door of thesixteenth century, which here simulates an arcade, everything elsehaving fallen prostrate around it. A monumental aspect often has itsbirth in ruin. In a wall near the arcade opens another arched door, ofthe time of Henry IV., permitting a glimpse of the trees of an orchard;beside this door, a manure-hole, some pickaxes, some shovels, somecarts, an old well, with its flagstone and its iron reel, a chickenjumping, and a turkey spreading its tail, a chapel surmounted by a smallbell-tower, a blossoming pear-tree trained in espalier against thewall of the chapel--behold the court, the conquest of which was one ofNapoleon's dreams. This corner of earth, could he but have seizedit, would, perhaps, have given him the world likewise. Chickens arescattering its dust abroad with their beaks. A growl is audible; it is ahuge dog, who shows his teeth and replaces the English.

  The English behaved admirably there. Cooke's four companies of guardsthere held out for seven hours against the fury of an army.

  Hougomont viewed on the map, as a geometrical plan, comprising buildingsand enclosures, presents a sort of irregular rectangle, one angle ofwhich is nicked out. It is this angle which contains the southerndoor, guarded by this wall, which commands it only a gun's length away.Hougomont has two doors,--the southern door, that of the château; andthe northern door, belonging to the farm. Napoleon sent his brotherJérôme against Hougomont; the divisions of Foy, Guilleminot, and Bacheluhurled themselves against it; nearly the entire corps of Reille wasemployed against it, and miscarried; Kellermann's balls were exhaustedon this heroic section of wall. Bauduin's brigade was not strong enoughto force Hougomont on the north, and the brigade of Soye could not domore than effect the beginning of a breach on the south, but withouttaking it.

  The farm buildings border the courtyard on the south. A bit of the northdoor, broken by the French, hangs suspended to the wall. It consists offour planks nailed to two cross-beams, on which the scars of the attackare visible.

  The northern door, which was beaten in by the French, and which has hada piece applied to it to replace the panel suspended on the wall, standshalf-open at the bottom of the paddock; it is cut squarely in the wall,built of stone below, of brick above which closes in the courtyard onthe north. It is a simple door for carts, such as exist in all farms,with the two large leaves made of rustic planks: beyond lie the meadows.The dispute over this entrance was furious. For a long time, all sortsof imprints of bloody hands were visible on the door-posts. It was therethat Bauduin was killed.

  The storm of the combat still lingers in this courtyard; its horror isvisible there; the confusion of the fray was petrified there; it livesand it dies there; it was only yesterday. The walls are in the deathagony, the stones fall; the breaches cry aloud; the holes are wounds;the drooping, quivering trees seem to be making an effort to flee.

  This courtyard was more built up in 1815 than it is to-day. Buildingswhich have since been pulled down then formed redans and angles.

  The English barricaded themselves there; the French made their way in,but could not stand their ground. Beside the chapel, one wing of thechâteau, the only ruin now remaining of the manor of Hougomont, rises ina crumbling state,--disembowelled, one might say. The château servedfor a dungeon, the chapel for a block-house. There men exterminated eachother. The French, fired on from every point,--from behind the walls,from the summits of the garrets, from the depths of the cellars, throughall the casements, through all the air-holes, through every crack in thestones,--fetched fagots and set fire to walls and men; the reply to thegrape-shot was a conflagration.

  In the ruined wing, through windows garnished with bars of iron, thedismantled chambers of the main building of brick are visible; theEnglish guards were in ambush in these rooms; the spiral of thestaircase, cracked from the ground floor to the very roof, appearslike the inside of a broken shell. The staircase has two stories; theEnglish, besieged on the staircase, and massed on its upper steps, hadcut off the lower steps. These consisted of large slabs of blue stone,which form a heap among the nettles. Half a score of steps stillcling to the wall; on the first is cut the figure of a trident. Theseinaccessible steps are solid in their niches. All the rest resembles ajaw which has been denuded of its teeth. There are two old trees there:one is dead; the other is wounded at its base, and is clothed withverdure in April. Since 1815 it has taken to growing through thestaircase.

  A massacre took place in the chapel. The interior, which has recoveredits calm, is singular. The mass has not been said there since thecarnage. Nevertheless, the altar has been left there--an altar ofunpolished wood, placed against a background of roughhewn stone. Fourwhitewashed walls, a door opposite the altar, two small arched windows;over the door a large wooden crucifix, below the crucifix a squareair-hole stopped up with a bundle of hay; on the ground, in one corner,an old window-frame with the glass all broken to pieces--such is thechapel. Near the altar there is nailed up a wooden statue of Saint Anne,of the fifteenth century; the head of the infant Jesus has been carriedoff by a large ball. The French, who were masters of the chapel for amoment, and were then dislodged, set fire to it. The flames filled thisbuilding; it was a perfect furnace; the door was burned, the floor wasburned, the wooden Christ was not burned. The fire preyed upon hisfeet, of which only the blackened stumps are now to be seen; then itstopped,--a miracle, according to the assertion of the people of theneighborhood. The infant Jesus, decapitated, was less fortunate than theChrist.

  The walls are covered with inscriptions. Near the feet of Christ thisname is to be read: _Henquinez_. Then these others: _Conde de Rio MaiorMarques y Marquesa de Almagro (Habana)_. There are French names withexclamation points,--a sign of wrath. The wall was freshly whitewashedin 1849. The nations insulted each other there.

  It was at the door of this chapel that the corpse was picked up whichheld an axe in its hand; this corpse was Sub-Lieutenant Legros.

  On emerging from the chapel, a well is visible on the left. There aretwo in this courtyard. One inquires, Why is there no bucket and pulleyto this? It is because water is no longer drawn there. Why is water notdrawn there? Because it is full of skeletons.

  The last person who drew water from the well was named Guillaume vanKylsom. He was a peasant who lived at Hougomont, and was gardener there.On the 18th of June, 1815, his family fled and concealed themselves inthe woods.

  The forest surrounding the Abbey of Villiers sheltered these unfortunatepeople who had been scattered abroad, for many days and nights. Thereare at this day certain traces recognizable, such as old boles of burnedtrees, which mark the site of these poor bivouacs trembling in thedepths of the thickets.

  Guillaume van Kylsom remained at Hougomont, "to guard the château," andconcealed himself in the cellar. The English discovered him there.They tore him from his hiding-place, and the combatants forced thisfrightened man to serve them, by administering blows with the flats oftheir swords. They were thirsty; this Guillaume brought them water. Itwas from this well that he drew it. Many drank there their last draught.This well where drank so many of the dead was destined to die itself.

  After the engagement, they were in haste to bury the dead bodies. Deathhas a fashion of harassing victory, and she causes the pest to followglory. The typhus is a concomitant of triumph. This well was deep, andit was turned into a sepulchre. Three hundred dead bodies were cast intoit. With too much haste perhaps. Were they all dead? Legend says theywere not. It seems that on the night succeeding the interment, feeblevoices were heard calling from the well.

  This well is isolated in the middle of the courtyard. Three walls, partstone, part brick, and simulating a small, square tower, and folded likethe leaves of a screen, surround it on all sides. The fourth side isopen. It is there that the water was drawn. The wall at the bottom hasa sort of shapeless loophole, possibly the hole made by a shell. Thislittle tower had a platform, of which only the beams remain. The ironsupports of the well on the right form a cross. On leaning over, theeye is lost in a deep cylinder of brick which is filled with a heaped-upmass of shadows. The base of the walls all about the well is concealedin a growth of nettles.

  This well has not in front of it that large blue slab which forms thetable for all wells in Belgium. The slab has here been replaced by across-beam, against which lean five or six shapeless fragments of knottyand petrified wood which resemble huge bones. There is no longer eitherpail, chain, or pulley; but there is still the stone basin which servedthe overflow. The rain-water collects there, and from time to time abird of the neighboring forests comes thither to drink, and then fliesaway. One house in this ruin, the farmhouse, is still inhabited. Thedoor of this house opens on the courtyard. Upon this door, beside apretty Gothic lock-plate, there is an iron handle with trefoils placedslanting. At the moment when the Hanoverian lieutenant, Wilda, graspedthis handle in order to take refuge in the farm, a French sapper hewedoff his hand with an axe.

  The family who occupy the house had for their grandfather Guillaume vanKylsom, the old gardener, dead long since. A woman with gray hair saidto us: "I was there. I was three years old. My sister, who was older,was terrified and wept. They carried us off to the woods. I went therein my mother's arms. We glued our ears to the earth to hear. I imitatedthe cannon, and went _boum! boum!_"

  A door opening from the courtyard on the left led into the orchard, sowe were told. The orchard is terrible.

  It is in three parts; one might almost say, in three acts. The firstpart is a garden, the second is an orchard, the third is a wood. Thesethree parts have a common enclosure: on the side of the entrance, thebuildings of the château and the farm; on the left, a hedge; on theright, a wall; and at the end, a wall. The wall on the right is ofbrick, the wall at the bottom is of stone. One enters the garden first.It slopes downwards, is planted with gooseberry bushes, choked with awild growth of vegetation, and terminated by a monumental terrace of cutstone, with balustrade with a double curve.

  It was a seignorial garden in the first French style which preceded LeNôtre; to-day it is ruins and briars. The pilasters are surmounted byglobes which resemble cannon-balls of stone. Forty-three balusters canstill be counted on their sockets; the rest lie prostrate in the grass.Almost all bear scratches of bullets. One broken baluster is placed onthe pediment like a fractured leg.

  It was in this garden, further down than the orchard, that sixlight-infantry men of the 1st, having made their way thither, and beingunable to escape, hunted down and caught like bears in their dens,accepted the combat with two Hanoverian companies, one of which wasarmed with carbines. The Hanoverians lined this balustrade and firedfrom above. The infantry men, replying from below, six against twohundred, intrepid and with no shelter save the currant-bushes, took aquarter of an hour to die.

  One mounts a few steps and passes from the garden into the orchard,properly speaking. There, within the limits of those few square fathoms,fifteen hundred men fell in less than an hour. The wall seems readyto renew the combat. Thirty-eight loopholes, pierced by the English atirregular heights, are there still. In front of the sixth are placed twoEnglish tombs of granite. There are loopholes only in the south wall, asthe principal attack came from that quarter. The wall is hidden on theoutside by a tall hedge; the French came up, thinking that they had todeal only with a hedge, crossed it, and found the wall both an obstacleand an ambuscade, with the English guards behind it, the thirty-eightloopholes firing at once a shower of grape-shot and balls, and Soye'sbrigade was broken against it. Thus Waterloo began.

  Nevertheless, the orchard was taken. As they had no ladders, the Frenchscaled it with their nails. They fought hand to hand amid the trees.All this grass has been soaked in blood. A battalion of Nassau, sevenhundred strong, was overwhelmed there. The outside of the wall, againstwhich Kellermann's two batteries were trained, is gnawed by grape-shot.

  This orchard is sentient, like others, in the month of May. It has itsbuttercups and its daisies; the grass is tall there; the cart-horsesbrowse there; cords of hair, on which linen is drying, traverse thespaces between the trees and force the passer-by to bend his head; onewalks over this uncultivated land, and one's foot dives into mole-holes.In the middle of the grass one observes an uprooted tree-bole which liesthere all verdant. Major Blackmann leaned against it to die. Beneatha great tree in the neighborhood fell the German general, Duplat,descended from a French family which fled on the revocation of the Edictof Nantes. An aged and falling apple-tree leans far over to one side,its wound dressed with a bandage of straw and of clayey loam. Nearly allthe apple-trees are falling with age. There is not one which has not hadits bullet or its biscayan.6 The skeletons of dead trees abound in thisorchard. Crows fly through their branches, and at the end of it is awood full of violets.

  Bauduin, killed, Foy wounded, conflagration, massacre, carnage, arivulet formed of English blood, French blood, German blood mingledin fury, a well crammed with corpses, the regiment of Nassau and theregiment of Brunswick destroyed, Duplat killed, Blackmann killed, theEnglish Guards mutilated, twenty French battalions, besides the fortyfrom Reille's corps, decimated, three thousand men in that hovel ofHougomont alone cut down, slashed to pieces, shot, burned, with theirthroats cut,--and all this so that a peasant can say to-day to thetraveller: _Monsieur, give me three francs, and if you like, I willexplain to you the affair of Waterloo!_