Note 414 — SECTION XXVI: CHAPTER III

The account of this in Wellington’s dispatch is hopelessly obscure, because instead of writing ‘the pickets of the 1st Division under Lieut.-Col. Hill,’ he wrote by a slip of the pen ‘the regiments of the 1st Division under Lieut.-Col. Hill.’ Hill of course (being a regimental major though a titular Lieut.-Colonel, after the Guards system) did not command whole regiments, as Wellington’s words imply, but simply the skirmishing line of pickets. The facts are made quite clear by Stepney of the Coldstreams and Stothert’s diary (who calls them ‘the pickets of the Guards’), Grattan (who calls them ‘the advance,’ or ‘the light troops of the 1st Division’), and Hall’s unpublished diary, which gives the whole story in a nutshell: ‘The enemy made a dart at the pickets of the 1st Division, with the expectation of sweeping off the line before our cavalry could support them. They succeeded in part, by coming up unexpectedly, but when they were perceived the men, by collecting into knots (or ‘hiving’ as they called it) repulsed them with the bayonet. A troop of the 14th Light Dragoons and some of the Royals were ordered out to the skirmish and suffered some loss.’

It is this incident which General Fournier, who led the charge, transforms in his dispatch (in the Archives de la Guerre) into the breaking two squares of the Light Division and taking General Craufurd prisoner—a wild story. Fririon makes the charge capture ‘300 Hussars of the English Royal Guard!’ Both say that three battalions of the Guards laid down their arms.