第七十六章 下午四点钟
下午四点钟左右，英军的形势已十分严峻。奥兰治亲王指挥中路，希尔指挥右翼，皮克顿指挥左翼。奥兰治亲王，绝望而英勇，向荷兰比利时联军喊道：“拿骚！不伦瑞克！绝不后退！”已受创的希尔赶来支援威灵顿；皮克顿阵亡了。就在英军从法军手中夺走第105团军旗的那一刻，法军也一枪击穿了英军将领皮克顿的头部。对威灵顿来说，这场战役有两个关键据点：乌古蒙和圣拉埃庄园；乌古蒙仍在坚守，但已陷入火海；圣拉埃庄园则已失守。守卫该庄园的德意志营仅剩四十二人幸存；除五人外，所有军官非死即俘。三千名战士在那座谷仓中殒命。一位英国禁卫军军士，全英拳击冠军，被同伴们视为无可匹敌之人，却在那里被一个法国小鼓手杀死。巴林被赶出了阵地，阿尔滕也倒在了剑下。许多军旗被夺，一面来自阿尔滕师，一面来自吕讷堡营，由茨魏布吕肯家族的一位王子所举。苏格兰灰骑兵不复存在；庞森比率领的重骑兵团已被砍成碎片。那支英勇的骑兵屈服于布罗的长矛兵和特拉弗的铁甲骑兵之下；一千二百匹马中，仅剩六百匹；三位中校中，两人倒地——汉密尔顿负伤，马特尔阵亡。庞森比身中七枪，倒下了。戈登死了。马什也死了。第五师和第六师两个师已全军覆没。
乌古蒙受创，圣拉埃庄园失守，如今仅存一个集结地：中央阵地。这个据点依然稳固。威灵顿加强了它。他从梅尔布雷讷调来希尔；又从布赖讷拉勒调来沙塞。
英军的中路阵型略呈凹形，非常密集且坚固，占据了圣让山的高地，村落在其身后，前方是当时相当陡峭的斜坡。它依托那座坚固的石屋，该屋当时隶属于尼维尔领地，位于道路交叉口——一幢十六世纪的建筑，坚固得连炮弹击中也会弹开而无损。英军在高地四周将树篱隔一段挖开，在山楂树间开出射击孔，将炮口架在树枝间，把灌木丛也修成了垛口。他们的炮兵就埋伏在灌木丛中。这种普尼克式的工事，战争无可争辩地允许使用陷阱，做得如此巧妙，以至于皇帝在早上九点派去侦察敌军炮台的阿克索竟然毫无察觉，回去向拿破仑报告说，除了阻挡通往尼维尔和热纳普道路的那两处路障外，别无阻碍。此时正值麦子拔高的季节；在高地边缘，肯普旅的第95营，装备着卡宾枪，就隐蔽在高高的麦田里。
如此巩固和加强后，英荷联军的中路阵地部署得十分有利。其危险在于索瓦涅森林，当时紧邻战场，被格罗嫩达尔和布瓦福尔的水塘切割。军队若向那里撤退必然溃散；各团会立即瓦解。炮兵将在沼泽中损失殆尽。按照许多精通军事的人——尽管也有人对此持有异议——的看法，这样的撤退将会是一场分崩离析的溃逃。
为了加强中央阵地，威灵顿又调来了从右翼抽出的沙塞的一个旅，以及从左翼抽出的温克的一个旅，外加克林顿的师。他给自己麾下的英军、哈克特团、米切尔旅、梅特兰的禁卫军，补充了不伦瑞克步兵、拿骚分遣队、基尔曼塞格率领的汉诺威部队和翁普特达率领的德意志部队作为援军。这样他手下就有了二十六个营。正如夏拉所说，《右翼被抛向了中央》。一个庞大的炮台，用沙袋遮蔽着，就设在如今被称为“滑铁卢纪念馆”的地方。除此之外，威灵顿还在一个土丘后面布置了萨默塞特带领的龙骑兵卫队，有一千四百匹战马。那是另一半久负盛名的英国骑兵。庞森比覆灭后，萨默塞特留存了下来。
这个炮台，如果完工，几乎可以算作一个棱堡，布置在一道很矮的花园墙后面，墙外还堆了一层沙袋和一个巨大的土坡。这项工事并未完成；没有时间给它加设栅栏了。
威灵顿，内心忧虑却表情木然，整天骑着马，一直保持同一个姿势，在圣让山那座至今尚存的老磨坊前面一点，在一棵榆树下（后来一个英国狂热破坏者，花了两百法郎买下它，砍倒并运走了）。威灵顿是那种冷漠的英雄。子弹如雨点般落在他周围。他的副官戈登倒在他身旁。希尔勋爵指着一颗爆炸的炮弹对他说：“大人，如果您被击中，我该下什么命令？”“照我做的那样做。”威灵顿答道。他简略地对克林顿说：“死守此地，直到最后一人。”显然，那天的战局正变得不利。威灵顿对他塔拉韦拉、维多利亚、萨拉曼卡战役中的老战友们喊道：“小伙子们，难道还能想撤退吗？想想古老的英格兰吧！”
下午四点钟左右，英军阵线向后收缩了。突然，高地的脊线上除了炮兵和狙击手外，什么也看不见了；其余部队都消失了：被法军的炮火和子弹击退的各团，撤入了低谷，那里现在被圣让山农庄的后路所横穿；一种退却的行动发生了，英军前沿隐蔽了起来，威灵顿向后撤了。“撤退开始了！”拿破仑喊道。
Towards four o’clock the condition of the English army was serious. The
Prince of Orange was in command of the centre, Hill of the right wing,
Picton of the left wing. The Prince of Orange, desperate and intrepid,
shouted to the Hollando-Belgians: “Nassau! Brunswick! Never retreat!”
Hill, having been weakened, had come up to the support of Wellington;
Picton was dead. At the very moment when the English had captured from
the French the flag of the 105th of the line, the French had killed the
English general, Picton, with a bullet through the head. The battle
had, for Wellington, two bases of action, Hougomont and La Haie-Sainte;
Hougomont still held out, but was on fire; La Haie-Sainte was taken. Of
the German battalion which defended it, only forty-two men survived;
all the officers, except five, were either dead or captured. Three
thousand combatants had been massacred in that barn. A sergeant of the
English Guards, the foremost boxer in England, reputed invulnerable by
his companions, had been killed there by a little French drummer-boy.
Baring had been dislodged, Alten put to the sword. Many flags had been
lost, one from Alten’s division, and one from the battalion of
Lunenburg, carried by a prince of the house of Deux-Ponts. The Scotch
Grays no longer existed; Ponsonby’s great dragoons had been hacked to
pieces. That valiant cavalry had bent beneath the lancers of Bro and
beneath the cuirassiers of Travers; out of twelve hundred horses, six
hundred remained; out of three lieutenant-colonels, two lay on the
earth,—Hamilton wounded, Mater slain. Ponsonby had fallen, riddled by
seven lance-thrusts. Gordon was dead. Marsh was dead. Two divisions,
the fifth and the sixth, had been annihilated.
Hougomont injured, La Haie-Sainte taken, there now existed but one
rallying-point, the centre. That point still held firm. Wellington
reinforced it. He summoned thither Hill, who was at Merle-Braine; he
summoned Chassé, who was at Braine-l’Alleud.
The centre of the English army, rather concave, very dense, and very
compact, was strongly posted. It occupied the plateau of
Mont-Saint-Jean, having behind it the village, and in front of it the
slope, which was tolerably steep then. It rested on that stout stone
dwelling which at that time belonged to the domain of Nivelles, and
which marks the intersection of the roads—a pile of the sixteenth
century, and so robust that the cannon-balls rebounded from it without
injuring it. All about the plateau the English had cut the hedges here
and there, made embrasures in the hawthorn-trees, thrust the throat of
a cannon between two branches, embattled the shrubs. There artillery
was ambushed in the brushwood. This punic labor, incontestably
authorized by war, which permits traps, was so well done, that Haxo,
who had been despatched by the Emperor at nine o’clock in the morning
to reconnoitre the enemy’s batteries, had discovered nothing of it, and
had returned and reported to Napoleon that there were no obstacles
except the two barricades which barred the road to Nivelles and to
Genappe. It was at the season when the grain is tall; on the edge of
the plateau a battalion of Kempt’s brigade, the 95th, armed with
carabines, was concealed in the tall wheat.
Thus assured and buttressed, the centre of the Anglo-Dutch army was
well posted. The peril of this position lay in the forest of Soignes,
then adjoining the field of battle, and intersected by the ponds of
Groenendael and Boitsfort. An army could not retreat thither without
dissolving; the regiments would have broken up immediately there. The
artillery would have been lost among the morasses. The retreat,
according to many a man versed in the art,—though it is disputed by
others,—would have been a disorganized flight.
To this centre, Wellington added one of Chassé’s brigades taken from
the right wing, and one of Wincke’s brigades taken from the left wing,
plus Clinton’s division. To his English, to the regiments of Halkett,
to the brigades of Mitchell, to the guards of Maitland, he gave as
reinforcements and aids, the infantry of Brunswick, Nassau’s
contingent, Kielmansegg’s Hanoverians, and Ompteda’s Germans. This
placed twenty-six battalions under his hand. _The right wing_, as
Charras says, _was thrown back on the centre_. An enormous battery was
masked by sacks of earth at the spot where there now stands what is
called the “Museum of Waterloo.” Besides this, Wellington had, behind a
rise in the ground, Somerset’s Dragoon Guards, fourteen hundred horse
strong. It was the remaining half of the justly celebrated English
cavalry. Ponsonby destroyed, Somerset remained.
The battery, which, if completed, would have been almost a redoubt, was
ranged behind a very low garden wall, backed up with a coating of bags
of sand and a large slope of earth. This work was not finished; there
had been no time to make a palisade for it.
Wellington, uneasy but impassive, was on horseback, and there remained
the whole day in the same attitude, a little in advance of the old mill
of Mont-Saint-Jean, which is still in existence, beneath an elm, which
an Englishman, an enthusiastic vandal, purchased later on for two
hundred francs, cut down, and carried off. Wellington was coldly
heroic. The bullets rained about him. His aide-de-camp, Gordon, fell at
his side. Lord Hill, pointing to a shell which had burst, said to him:
“My lord, what are your orders in case you are killed?” “To do like
me,” replied Wellington. To Clinton he said laconically, “To hold this
spot to the last man.” The day was evidently turning out ill.
Wellington shouted to his old companions of Talavera, of Vittoria, of
Salamanca: “Boys, can retreat be thought of? Think of old England!”
Towards four o’clock, the English line drew back. Suddenly nothing was
visible on the crest of the plateau except the artillery and the
sharpshooters; the rest had disappeared: the regiments, dislodged by
the shells and the French bullets, retreated into the bottom, now
intersected by the back road of the farm of Mont-Saint-Jean; a
retrograde movement took place, the English front hid itself,
Wellington drew back. “The beginning of retreat!” cried Napoleon.
