Monday, December 9, 2019

Luckily, an aide-de-camp at full gallop caught him up before he reached the enemy and told him there was nobody behind him.

From Waterloo A Near Run Thing by David Howarth. Page 128.
After Lord Uxbridge’s first successful counter-charge, the infantry expected the same success to be repeated every time, but it was not. They began to grumble, as one arm of an army often does, and ask what the other arm was doing. And they had some reason: things had gone wrong in the allied cavalry.

Lord Uxbridge had had an ignominious experience. The British heavy cavalry was terribly thinned and exhausted by its earlier charges, and a light cavalry charge which he led had not had much success. But there were still large numbers of foreign cavalry who had not been in action yet. Uxbridge knew very little about them, not even the names of their officers. They had been under the Prince of Orange, but the Prince had asked the Duke that very morning, just before the battle began, to put them all under Uxbridge’s command. Now, in the desperate moment of the French attacks, he saw a column of Dutch cavalry, magnificently accoutred and splendid in appearance. He galloped back to them, called on them to charge, and led the charge in person. Luckily, an aide-de-camp at full gallop caught him up before he reached the enemy and told him there was nobody behind him. The Dutchmen were standing stolidly in their ranks. Uxbridge was naturally angry, and the British in general blamed the Dutch for cowardice. But possibly none of them, except their most senior officers, knew who Lord Uxbridge was. They may not have seen any obvious reason to follow an excited Englishman who gave his orders in a language they could hardly understand and galloped madly at a force of several thousand French.

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