artillerymen in its front, who, to the letter, were driven from their guns, by the close intensity of the musketry, for some seconds before the 52d moved forward; a circumstance which alone appears to show that the great column of attack to the left of the 52d, from which the fire proceeded, must have really gained the summit before the repulsing charge took place.

As to the other point to which you object, of the distance of some guns which enfiladed the 52d on its right flank, and were driven off by the right section, I should be happy to be able to make oath to every other detail of the action, as confidently as I could, if necessary, to this. The guns were very close for artillery,-close enough to justify Sir John Colborne's permission to attempt the driving them off, as the result also proved; and yet, not close enough for the section to open its fire with effect, until it had run about 100 yards towards them. Of these two points I am positive; and they fix the distance at between 300 and 400 yards. The circumstances were sufficiently urgent to justify a very desperate attempt. Sir John Colborne, galloping to the right from the centre, had just said, "These guns will destroy the regiment." Three field-pieces, enfilading a four-deep line with grape, at a short range, must soon cause fearful havoc. The attempt, however, was by no means of a desperate character. The guns were without any close support,-no fugitives were near. They were not (as you say) "flying in every direction," but in one close, immense mass, before the front of the 52d. A section then consisted of about ten file, and to twenty extended skirmishers,-it is an easy task to drive off, though not to capture †, two or three unsupported fieldpieces. This 400 yards did certainly, as you infer, bring the section nearly to the position "in which the reserve of the enemy was posted to cover the retreat;" and this is an important fact: for the section then found itself within 250 yards of the squares of the Old Guard, and found them standing on the first rise of the French position, in perfectly undisturbed steadiness. The guns, detached and firing 250 yards in their front, prove most positively, that no British cavalry were, or had been recently charging, in the immediate neighbourhood; and the steadiness of the squares,-not firing a shot or attempting to move, --but standing in the same line with cuirassiers, as steady on their right, furnishes abundant corroboration to the same effect.

It appears, therefore, not only that the precise place and limit of the crisis has been correctly stated, but that your only two secondary objections to my account of it do not hold good.

With regard to the period described in my account as the close of the action that this period, including all the charges of your brigade, was subsequent to that which I have described as the crisis, it must be remembered, there is no question whatever between us, for you yourself positively declare it. Of the accuracy of the account of the movements

The evidence of an officer of that battery would be very valuable on this and other points.

66

The right section wheeled up and drove them off."-Crisis and Close, &c. "Do you really mean to say that a section of the 52d quitted the body of the regiment and captured three guns, 400 yards distant from it ?"-Sir Hussey Vivian's Reply, &c.

U. S. J., pages 314, 315.

of the 52d and 71st regiments in its duration, I feel very confident; and, for all that is said in your reply, have a right to be so, for you know nothing of the 52d *; and those of the 71st you impugn but in one point, and that very doubtfully. You say "whether those friends," the regiment that fired on the square which the 10th charged, the 71st regiment, or a regiment of Hanoverians, I will not presume to say, but the impression on my mind has always been that they were Hanoverians."

66

were

I have stated that this red regiment was the 71st, and while well weighing the contents of Sir Thomas Reynell's letter in the last U. S. Journal, still hold, that if any regiment of infantry was found by the 10th hussars in close pursuit of a square of the Old Guard, near the road which falls into the chaussée to Genappe on its right side beyond La Belle Alliance, it could have been no other than that regiment, which united with the 52d in driving the squares of the Old Guard from the first rising of their position, on the same side of the chaussée, in their front of La Belle Alliance. When the 52d crossed the chaussée to pursue one of these squares along the left side, the red regiment on its right pressed after two squares along the right side, and 400 yards farther in its course must have crossed the point at which the 10th found the red regiment and the square of the Old Guard. No regiment would have left an enemy's square behind it, or if by any accident they had done so, the rest of the British infantry was at that time several hundred yards in the rear; so that, on the supposition that the 10th came up with any other regiment, your brigade must have been still less in advance than even I have described them, which you certainly will not admit.

That the 71st was the red regiment, which covered the right flank of the 52d in its charge on the columns of the Moyenne Guard, and immediately afterwards joined with it in attacking the squares of the Old Guard, I never before Sir Thos. Reynell's letter heard questioned. The 71st was brigaded with the 52d, it was in square immediately on its right in the scene preceding the great attack on the Imperial Guard, and it was near it at daylight the next morning.

The testimony of eye-witnesses has always placed the 52d and 71st together in the attack on the squares of the Old Guard. Kincaid, as I before quoted him, says―

"The enemy made one last attempt at a stand, on the rising ground to our right of La Belle Alliance; but a charge from General Adam's brigade" of which the 52d and 71st were the red regiments," again threw them into a state of confusion."

Beauchamp, as quoted by you, says

"The 52d and 71st regiments of General Adam's brigade soon put to flight the battalions which endeavoured to stand on the high road.” And the story has several times appeared in print, that the 52d and 71st, after turning the reserve of the Old Guard, "separated, and running on two sides of an oval, met again, and thus cut off several thousand prisoners," which, in the general fact, took place with the 52d, and some other red regiment from La Belle Alliance to Rosomme. But, if

"I know nothing of what occurred to the 52d on the other side of the high road....Nor do I pretend at all to interfere with. ..your statement as regards the attack of the 52d immediately in advance of La Haye Sainte."-p. 317.

...

the movements of the 71st, from the time it left the British position until it reached the farm of Caillon, were confined, as Sir Thomas Reynell appears to describe them, to the mere pursuit at a distance of two columns of the enemy, then am I in error, and so is history, as to the number of the regiment which united with the 52d, in a close attack upon the squares of the Old Guard-squares certainly, and not columns, the flank faces fronted outwards, and mounted officers in the centre*. But whether mistaken as to the number or not, the facts of the conduct of a red regiment on the right of the 52d remain the same; and this, as a foundation of evidence with regard to other points at issue between us, is not in the slightest degree impaired. I, therefore, in this reply, leave the number 71 to represent the red regiment on the right of the 52d, having as yet no clear and concise distinction for it t.

The circumstance of that red regiment opening a fire on the square I had from yourself; and to me, this conduct in a regiment in line, pressing up a hill, and exhausted with a long and very rapid advance, appears exactly what would happen, and undeserving of censure. And if, during this firing, some muskets, in the dimness of twilight, should have been turned upon an irregular body of blue cavalry coming furiously down from a flank, it can scarcely be a matter of surprise, although it must be one of regret, that this cavalry, being British, was not as such more plainly distinguishable.

Your narrative of the movements of the 6th brigade during this period of the close convicts mine of several inaccuracies; but the leading points are the same in both accounts, and the inaccuracies are not of a kind to deprive it of credit to the extent of which you com plain. Your first charge is of the 10th on cuirassiers, so is mine; your second, of the 18th on cuirassiers, so is mine; your third, of an irregular body of the 10th, on a square of the Old Guard pursued by a regiment of red-coated infantry, so is mine. You make the two first to be very gallant and successful, and the last to be desperate and unsuccessful, so do I. In the main features, therefore, the two accounts coincide; but in the detail, yours states, that in the first the whole of the 10th charged; in the second, the whole of the 18th; and that the latter charged artillery as well as cuirassiers. In these things I submit to your statement, and acknowledge inaccuracies in details.

Taking the general bearing of your narrative, it appears to me evident that your brigade was not acting upon nearly the same perpendicular line with the 71st, as I had supposed, and as you also, in some

* We had in view, at the bottom of the declivity, two columns of the enemy's infantry....but they did not wait our approach, or afford ns an opportunity of attacking them....I do not recollect to have seen in our advance any body of men, cavalry or infantry, to our front, but the two columns of the enemy."-U. S. J., p. 543. + I need scarcely observe, that I am sure Sir Thos. Reynell would not, knowingly, make an incorrect statement. That, however, which he has given, appears so much at variance with my account of the achievements of the 71st in the close, that I have been compelled to meet it fully, in order, if possible, to elicit information which may enable me to see through the difficulty. While differing as to the achievements how ever, it must be remembered, that Sir Thomas corroborates, almost to the full, my account of the movements of the 71st.

sort, seem disposed to think; but that by the movement of Adam's brigade to the left, during its charge on the columns of the Guard, and your movement to the right before your advance commenced, the two brigades, as to the perpendiculars of their fronts, had changed places. Your left, which had been nearly on the perpendicular line of the chaussée to Genappe, being replaced by ours; and our right, which had been on the perpendicular line of the east hedge of Hougomont, being replaced, or nearly so, by yours. This exchange of places, while it brought Adam's brigade in front of the squares of the Old Guard near La Belle Alliance, brought, I conclude, the 6th brigade in front of 'Reille's 2d corps of the French army, to which Adam's brigade, before the charge on the columns of the Guard, had stood directly opposed. The cuirassiers, which the 10th and 18th charged, therefore, appear to have been covering the second corps, (which did not break into irremediable confusion as soon as the first, on the defeat of the Guard, but attempted for some distance a regular retreat,) and not squares of the Guard, as I had supposed them to do. The party of the 10th, which charged the square of the Old Guard, the men of the 18th who reached the farm of Rosomme, and afterwards the whole of your brigade which re-formed near the same farm, must have cut in upon the line of advance of the 71st and 52d, by inclining to the left after the commencement of your charges, following the course of the ground;-a reference to the map will, I think, make this evident.

The only remaining important difference between us, and this is the most important of all in the period of the close, is the comparative progress of the advances of the two brigades. You conceive, that at the time the sixth brigade was forming for its first charge, the 52d to its left was in the same line parallel to the front of the position with it;† and that, in the interval from that time to the charge of the 10th upon the square of the Old Guard, the sixth brigade was in advance of all the allied army t;-while I imagine that no regular body of the 6th -brigade attained the same distance in advance as the 52nd and 71st, until, at least, the charge of the 10th upon the square of the Old Guard. My conclusion proceeds from a principle which in itself you will not dispute:-that when two bodies, moving at different rates on direct lines from the same point, arrive at the same moment at a distant point, two things are inevitable-that the quickest was the last to commence its movement, and that it never passed the slowest on the way. The 10th and the 71st started from the same point, the summit of the British position. Their lines of advance were nearly direct. The 10th moving either at the walk or trot until it formed to charges, and at the gallop when it charged, must have averaged, on the whole,

"I wheeled half squadrons to the right, and moving a short distance parallel to the position, again wheeled the leading half squadrons to the left, and moved perpendicularly to the front."-U. S. J. page 316.

+"Supposing the 52nd then to have been at the period mentioned in a line parallel to that on which I was forming."-U. S. J. page 315.

"The brigade was at this time so much in advance of all other troops of the British army."-U. S. J.

page 316.

"Unless the movements of my cavalry were all at a walk, which they were not." -U. S. J. page 315.

a much more rapid rate of progress than the 71st; and yet, by your own evidence, at the same distant point, half a mile from that from which they started, the 10th and 71st arrived together. Does it not follow of necessity, that the 10th was never until that moment in advance of the 71st? and that it could not have started from its first ground, until the 71st was far on its way towards the French position? Another point also seems to follow-that, as the squares of the Old Guard attacked by the 52nd and 71st, and the cuirassiers charged by the 10th, appear to have been formed on about the same line, the first rising of the French position-and as the 10th at a gallop, and the 71st at a walk arrived together at a point 400 yards in rear of that line-that charge of the 10th, the first made by your brigade, must not only have been subsequent, as you acknowledge, to the advance of Adam's brigade in the crisis, but also must have been subsequent to the attack of Adam's brigade in the close.

If the 10th had charged the cuirassiers, even at the same time that the 52nd and 71st were attacking the squares of the Old Guard, they must have reached a point 400 yards farther in advance, before either the Old Guard or the 71st could have got there; and if they had so done, and had thus had time for consideration, surely they would not have placed themselves so completely under the fire of one of the squares, as, losing many men, to have had no alternative but instantly to retreat or to charge? In speaking also of the comparative progress in advance of the two brigades, it should be remembered, that the 71st was a part of the main body of Adam's brigade, while the 10th was only a part of the advance of yours; for at the time you charged the square with a broken party of the 10th, your compact body, the 1st German hussars, must have been far in the rear.

It appears, then, from your own narrative, that your advance only reached the main body of Adam's brigade, at the distance of half a mile from the summit of the British position;† but still more, it appears from a fact you mention, connected with one that I have stated, and of which I am very positive, that your main body only attained the same line of advance with the 52nd at the farm of Rosomme, half a mile at the least still farther forward. You have said, that you had halted and re-formed your brigade in front of, and on the right of the farm of Rosomme, when you were told that the Duke of Wellington was on its left. Now the 52nd had also halted in front of, and formed close column to the left of the farm of Rosomme, for some minutes before the Duke rode up from La Belle Alliance, and passed close to its right.

* "I found Major Howard with a small body of the 10th which he had collected, formed within a short distance of a French square, from the fire of which he was losing men fast.....I observed to Major Howard, we had one of two things to do; either to retire a little out of fire or to attack, and at that moment seeing a regiment in red advancing on my left," &c. &c.-page 317.

"I saw several of the 10th, and men of the French guards, of which the square was composed, dead and wounded on the spot."-page 318.

+I do not, of course, include straggling parties of the 18th, which, after the charge, dashed on, I have no doubt as you have described them, to the farm of Rosomme; but consider, as properly constituting your brigade, the reserve and advance with which you yourself were acting.

U.S. J. page 319.