The French authors have pretended that squares were broken, and colours taken; but this assertion, upon the united testimony of every British officer present, is a positive untruth. This was not, however, the fault of the cuirassiers, who displayed an almost frantic valour. They rallied again and again, and returned to the onset, till the British could recognise even the faces of individuals among their enemies. Some rode close up to the bayonets, fired their pistols, and cut with their swords with reckless and useless valour. Some stood at gaze, and were destroyed by the musketry and artillery. Some squadrons, passing through the intervals of the first line, charged the squares of Belgians posted there, with as little success. At length the cuirassiers suffered so severely on every hand, that they were compelled to abandon the attempt, which they had made with such intrepid and desperate courage. In this unheard-of struggle, the greater part of the French heavy cavalry were absolutely destroyed. Buonaparte hints at it in his bulletin as an attempt made without orders, and continued only by the desperate courage of the soldiers and their officers.[145] It is certain that, in the destruction of this noble body of cuirassiers, he lost the corps which might have been most effectual in covering his retreat. After the broken remains of this fine cavalry were drawn off, the French confined themselves for a time to a heavy cannonade, from which the British sheltered themselves in part by lying down on the ground, while the enemy prepared for an attack on another quarter, and to be conducted in a different manner.
It was now about six o'clock, and during this long succession of the most furious attacks, the French had gained no success save occupying for a time the wood around Hougomont, from which they had been expelled, and the farm house of La Haye Sainte, which had been also recovered. The British, on the other hand, had suffered very severely, but had not lost one inch of ground, save the two posts, now regained. Ten thousand men were, however, killed and wounded; some of the foreign regiments had given way, though others had shown the most desperate valour. And the ranks were thinned both by the actual fugitives, and by the absence of individuals, who left the bloody field for the purpose of carrying off the wounded, and some of whom might naturally be in no hurry to return to so fatal a scene.