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Of Hedges, Myths and Memories
A historical reappraisal of the château/ferme d’Hougoumont
Battlefield of Waterloo
Belgium
Alasdair White FHEA FINS
Of Hedges, Myths and Memories
A historical reappraisal of the château/ferme d’Hougoumont
Battleeld of Waterloo
Belgium
Alasdair White FHEA FINS
First published in Belgium as a PDF/eDoc original in 2016
by White & MacLean Publishing
Copyright © Alasdair White, 2016
e moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be
otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
However, short extracts, if properly cited and referenced, may be used for the purposes of
criticism, review or academic research, under fair usage rules.
Attribution: White A., Of Hedges, Myths and Memories – A historical reappraisal of the
château/ferme de Hougoumont, White & MacLean, 2016
ISBN 978-2-930583-58-7
Frontispiece:
Hougoumont from the southwest. In 1815, the green eld was a mature woodland and the
farm buildings would have been obscured by boundary trees. is perspective is from the
starting position of the French 6e Division under Jérôme Bonaparte, ꊯ Alasdair White
Front Cover:
e south gate of Hougoumont, ꊯ Alasdair White
Designed and Typeset in Garamond Premier Pro
White & MacLean Publishing
Chaussée de Charleroi 2
B-1420 Braine-l’Alleud
Belgium
www.whiteandmaclean.eu
Acknowledgements
Undertaking a historical reappraisal such as this requires access to a wide variety
of material and I am particularly indebted to Comte Guibert d’Oultremont, the
last private owner of Hougoumont, who granted me unlimited access to his
archive of material dating from 1662 to the early 20th century. I am also
indebted to Anne D’Hauwer of the print department of the Koninklijke
Bibliotheek van België who helped assemble a collection of images that have
served as a foundation to much of my research and in relation to this I must also
thank Prof. Dr Joost Vander Auwere of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of
Belgium who help me gain access to the sources I needed and who patiently
engaged in a number of discussions concerning the research. In addition, I must
thank Martin Drury and Michael Mitchell of Project Hougoumont for their
support and the access they granted to the materials assembled prior to the
restoration of Hougoumont, and Comtesse Nathalie du Parc Locmaria-
d’Ursel, la présidente de l'intercommunale Bataille de Waterloo 1815, the owners
of Hougoumont, who granted access to the site and graciously and generously
supported the investigations.
But there is a limit to what can be learned from old documents and drawings
and there comes a time when the theories about what was there and what
happened there simply have to be tested ‘on the ground’ and for this I owe a
huge debt of gratitude to Prof. Tony Pollard, Director of the Centre for
Battleeld Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, and Dominique Bosquet,
Attaché - Service de l’archéologie du Service public de Wallonie, the co-
Archaeological Directors of the Belgo-British ‘Waterloo Uncovered’
archaeology project. ey, their colleagues and their teams of eld workers
drawn from the international ranks of wounded veterans and students, patiently
listened to my theories and then designed and delivered the process of ‘ground-
truthing’ them. Together we have revealed Hougoumont for what it was and
have provided the evidence of what happened there over the years. Amongst the
Waterloo Uncovered team a special mention must also be made of Dr Stuart Eve
of LP Archaeology whose ability to take the drawings, plans and maps I came
across and to prove their accuracy by overlaying them on satellite imagery made
everyone’s life a lot easier.
Despite the quality of the expertise that has been made freely available to me,
any errors or omissions are, of course, my own.
Alasdair White
Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium
2016
General and historical context
e château-ferme of Hougoumont is situated 50º40’.14”N, 4º23’.40”E in the
communes of Braine-l’Alleud and Plancenoit, in central Brabant-Wallonia in
the country of Belgium, and forms a part of the Battleeld of Waterloo. It is
situated in the northwestern corner of a slightly raised area that is roughly
square and about 550 metres by 500 metres (approximately 27 hectares), the
elevation is 125 metres at the highest point and 113 metres in the valley that
surrounds it. Hougoumont is an enclosed (or walled) Brabant farm (une ferme
en quadrilatère), built in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, approximately 90
metres x 50 metres in size, comprising an upper south courtyard connected to
residential usage and a lower north courtyard associated with agriculture. e
surrounding land is a fertile sandy loam soil with clay at the bottom of the
depressions. e land tends towards a clay consistency when wet but is
subjected to quick drying by the persistent and prevailing southwest wind, and
can change from one state to the other in a matter of a few hours. e land is
ideal for arable agriculture but historically has also supported sheep and cattle
farming. Pannage (the keeping of pigs in woodland) appears to have been
practised in Brabant but no documentary evidence has come to light to suggest
it took place at Hougoumont. ere are extensive mixed deciduous woodland
parcels in this area of Brabant.
Fig. 1: Satellite image of Hougoumont and its policies, orientated with north at the
top. Google Earth server, 1 October 2015.
1
Hougoumont is of international military and historical importance: rst
garrisoned in the ‘War of the First Coalition’ in 1794, it became an iconic
symbol of the Battle of Waterloo that took place on Sunday, 18 June 1815 when
it formed the bastion on the Anglo-Dutch right. Aer the battle, certain of the
buildings were rebuilt and repaired while others were lost, but in terms of
layout, it remains what it was in 1815.
Since 1815, the farm appears to have been worked as a tenancy and when the
last farmer retired in 2002, the owner, Comte Guibert d’Oultremont, decided
to divest himself of the property and sold it to the Intercommunale Bataille de
Waterloo 1815 together with 11.55 hectares, including the garden.
1
Aer the purchase, a conservation project was created under the name ‘Project
Hougoumont’ and, following extensive research by historian Kevin Rogers, a
2
conservation plan was commissioned by Project Hougoumont UK and
presented in December 2013 by architects Inskip & Jenkins. Over €3.5 million
was raised and the conservation of the farm buildings commenced. e
completed conservation was formally opened to the public by HRH Prince
Charles, Prince of Wales, on 17 June 2015. Hougoumont now forms part of the
national patrimony of the Battle of Waterloo and is open to visitors.
Eric Meeuwissen, La ferme d'Hougoumont mise en vente , Le Soir.be, édition du 9 avril
1
2003, p. 21 - http://archives.lesoir.be/patrimoine-les-fermes-historiques-du-champ-de-
bataille-_t-20030409-Z0N100.html and other sources.
www.projecthougoumont.com
2
2
What’s in a name?
Some historians assert that Hougoumont is merely a 19th century anglophone
mispronunciation of Goumont, which in itself is a corruption of Gomont. It is
certainly true that Gomont is an old francophone name for the place but the
mispronunciation assertion is questionable as the Ferraris map (see below) of
1777 lists it as Hougoumont, as do all the cadastral maps from 1808
onwards, none of whose authors were English. The origin of the name
remains uncertain but may have been Flemish.
Main dates in the history of Hougoumont
According to Jacques Logie, a normally reliable historian, in his book Waterloo
l'évitable défaite (Duculot, Paris, 1984), the freehold property of Gomont
appears in a court record in 1358 – however Logie does not quote his source
for this assertion.
In 1386, there is mention of a ‘tenure et maison’ (tenancy and house) of
Gomont within the lordship of the manor of Braine-l’Alleud.
3
In 1474, it seems that the Order of Knights Hospitallar (St John of Jerusalem),
the successors to the Knights Templar, acquired the land from a Jean del Tour.
4
In 1536, it passed into the hands of Father Pierre du Fief, a lawyer for the
Council of Brabant, who enlarged the property by acquiring more land. But in
1562, it appears that the property belonged to Pierre Quarré and remained in
that family until 1637 when it was acquired by Arnold Schuyl, Lord of
Walhorn, from near the German border east of Liège. At this point a defensive
5
tower or tower house was in existence, together with a barn.
In 1661 , the property was purchased by Chevalier Jean-Jacques Arrazola de
6
Oñate (who was of Spanish origin) at the time of the Spanish Lowlands. In
1654, Arrazola de Oñate had been
appointed a Councillor and Auditor for
Brabant and managed the Brabançonne
domains of the Habsburg ruler, these oces
making him both powerful and wealthy. He
extended the logis or manor house (the
original tower house?) and added a chapel,
which was completed and consecrated in
1662. e family then constructed the
7
ferme en quadrilatère or enclosed farm with
the logis, the modied and extended tower
house, at the centre. A formal walled garden
in the style referred to as un jardin à la
ançaise together with an arboretum to the
south were also established.
Jacques Logie, Waterloo l'évitable défaite, Duculot, Paris, 1984, pp.102-103.
3
Tarlier et Wauters, La Belgique ancienne et modern, Pu: Editions A Decq, Bruxelles,
4
1869 p.104 quoted in Logie.
Logie, Waterloo l'évitable défaite.
5
www.arrazoladeonate.be - http://www.arrazoladeonate.be/verhalen/brussel/gomont/ accessed
6
on 28 July 2016. This is a family-specific website.
In the d’Outremont Collection is a ‘letter patent’ dated 6 August 1662 from the Bishop of
7
Namur to Arrazola de Oñate concerning the consecration of the Chapel being worth 40
‘indulgences’ per year. Seen 14 July 2016.
3
Fig. 2: e Hougoumont tower
house may have looked like this
without the later addition on
the right of the picture. e
barn is to the left.
A hundred years later, the land was mapped by the Austrian general and
cartographer, Joseph Jean François, Comte de Ferraris, for the Austrian Empire
and Hougoumont is depicted. e Ferraris map, dated 1777, has a scale of
1:11,520 and is accompanied by hand-written commentaries relating to
military and economic topics such as rivers, bridges, forests and so on.
8
When Jean-André, the last of the Arrazola de Oñate male line, died childless in
1791, his widow, Anne Eugenie, married the 62-year old Chevalier Philippe
Gouret de Louville, a major in the service of the Austrian Empire, who
subsequently built a town house called ‘Hôtel d’Hougoumont’ in Nivelles, the
regional centre of administration and the largest and most important town in
the area, as well as an important centre of church aairs. Chevalier de Louville
added the courtesy title of Gomont to his name and was subsequently known as
de Louville-Gomont
In 1794, during the ‘War of the First Coalition’ against Revolutionary France,
the belligerents contested much of the land that was subsequently fought over
in the 1815 Belgium Campaign and on 6-7 July 1794, a battle that involved
Hougoumont was fought at Mont-Saint-Jean.
The Ferraris map is available online at www.kbr.be/collections/cart_plan/ferraris/
8
ferraris_nl.html
4
Fig. 3: is extract is om the 1777 Ferraris map showing the Bois
d’Hougoumont to the north astride the Nivelles road, the farm and walled
garden, and the geometric arboretum to the southeast together with the south
wood. e brown areas indicate contours with the lighter brown at the bottom of
the slope. Orientated with north at the top.
It appears that the Chevalier de Louville-Gomont did not live at Hougoumont,
preferring it seems to live in Nivelles. In 1815, the farm was being worked and
managed by Antoine Dumonceau, while the formal garden (le jardin à la
ançaise) and the vegetable gardens were being maintained by Jean-Jospeh
Carlier. It appears that Carlier lived in the house containing the south gate;
Dumonceau may have lived in a house adjoining the manor (logis) but this is
unclear.
9
On 17-18 June 1815, during the ‘War of the Seventh Coalition’ against
Napoleonic France, a major battle was fought at Mont-Saint-Jean (later called
the Battle of Waterloo) between the Anglo-Dutch (under Wellington) assisted
by the Prussians (under Blücher) and the French (under Napoleon).
Hougoumont played an important part as the bastion on the Anglo-Dutch
right.
10
Aer the 1815 battle, Chevalier de Louville-Gomont, then aged 86, could not
raise the funds to restore the château/ferme and sold it and 27 hectares on 7
May 1816 (for 40,000 francs) to the Comte
Francois-Xavier de Robiano, Chamberlain
to the King of the Netherlands, who
‘promised to preserve the remaining
buildings’.
It passed directly to de Robiano’s son who
died in 1882 without male heirs and the
property then passed to François-Xavier’s
gr an d- da ug hter, Al ix de R ob ia no
(1840-1909) who married Comte Charles
Van der Burch. ey were very interested in
the military history of Hougoumont and
collaborated with Colonel Macartney-
Filgate who put up the rst monumental
plaque on the chapel wall. e Van der
Burchs had no children and the estate
passed to Alix’s sister, Marie-Sophie, and
h er h u sb an d , C o mt e é o do r e
d’Oultremont, and then through the male
line to their great-grandson, Comte
Guibert d’Oultremont (b.1956).
At the end of 2003, it was sold to the Intercommunale Bataille de Waterloo 1815
for €1.49 million and plans were made for its conservation and inclusion in
11
the patrimony of the battleeld.
Jean Bosse, in Glanures au fil du temps – Bulletin de l'Association du Musée de Braine-
9
l'Alleud, no. 42, 1999, pp. 1-4.
Alasdair White, The Road to Waterloo, a concise history of the 1815 campaign, White
10
& MacLean, Hoeilaart, 2014.
Acte d’Acquisition d’Immeubles, Dossier No. A-25014/IBAWAT/0028-002.AQ,
11
Répertoire No. Q96/2003 Service Public Fédéral Finances, Belgium.
5
Fig. 4: e original plan that
was prepared and then attached
to the 1816 sale contract. is is
orientated with north at the
bottom.
0n 17 June 2015, the restored buildings were formally opened by HRH
Charles, Prince of Wales, in the presence of royalty from Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg and the descendants of the Duke of Wellington,
Emperor Napoleon and Prince Blücher.
Understanding Hougoumont: the use of the cadastral
maps of 1816 and 1820
During his historical research for this monograph, Project Hougoumont and
the archaeological project ‘Waterloo Uncovered’ , the author accessed a variety
12
of historical data, some of it not in the public domain and being seen for the
rst time. Amongst this was a documentary and artefact collection owned by
Comte Guibert d’Oultremont, the last private owner of Hougoumont, which
has not been fully researched by historians. is collection contains, amongst a
wealth of other documents, two maps of Hougoumont, dated 1816 and 1820,
which are extracts from the Belgian Cadastral and which were prepared for
taxation purposes.
Waterloo Uncovered is a Belgo-British archaeological project led by Dominique
12
Bosquet, Adjunct de la Direction de l’archéologie, Service public de Wallonie, and Prof.
Tony Pollard, Director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of
Glasgow. See www.waterloouncovered.com
6
Fig. 5: e reconciliation handshake between the 9th Duke of Wellington, Prince
Charles Bonaparte, a descendent of Prince Jérôme Bonaparte, and Prince
Blücher von Wahlstatt, a descendant of the Prussian Field Marshal. Photo ꊯ
Reuters, 2015.
Map 1 is the full cadastral map showing the Hougoumont estate in 1816 when
the buildings and 27 hectares were sold by Chevalier Philippe Gouret de
Louville-Gomont to Comte François-Xavier de Robiano, the ancestor of
Comte Guibert d’Oultremont. e legend lists the individual parcels of land
and their area in both the local measurement and the new metric
measurements, and the text explains that the data is based on the testimony of
Dumenceau, the farmer, and Carlier, the gardener. e signature of the
cadastral ocer is illegible. Map 2 is the full cadastral map dated 1820,
prepared when the land usage changed when parcel 3 changed from woodland
to arable.
7
Map 1: Cadastral map dated 12 July 1816 – private d’Oultremont collection.
e map shows the Brussels-Nivelles road to the north (bottom of the map), a
public road with an avenue of trees leading up to the building complex and
another running northeast along the northern boundary.
8
Map 2: Cadastral map dated 30 June 1820 – private d’Oultremont collection.
e orientation of this map has been reversed so that the top of the map is to the
north – compare this with the 1816 map above in which north is at the bottom.
The Belgian Cadastre
The Belgian Cadastre is structurally a personal and fiscal cadastre
based on the French Cadastre established in the early years of
Revolutionary France for the purpose of establishing landownership
(legal entitlement), occupancy, usage and taxation (based on the
assumed productive values). Established in 1808, some 13 years after
the united provinces of Belgium became part of the French
Revolutionary empire in 1795, the Belgian cadastre used the very latest
survey techniques, measurements (both local and the new metric
system) and triangulation protocols, and the maps have proven to be
extremely accurate as one would expect given that taxation is based
on the actual size and usage.
In 1808, when Napoleon sought to finance his wars through land
taxation, the French Cadastre was updated and new cadastres were
established in all départements, both in France and other areas
conquered by the French Revolutionary Army. In Belgium, the work of
creating the cadastre started in 1808, beginning with Brussels and
other cities and their agriculturally rich hinterlands. The French system
of cadastre maps fixed not only the ownership but also the exact
boundaries and usage, using a common land-usage legend that
included all public roads but often not their names; the maps did not
record private roads or farm tracks. The types of boundary to each
parcel of land was also recorded, e.g. hedges, walls, drainage ditches,
rivers, streams, roads and so on. The work of mapping the land for the
Belgium Cadastre was only completed in 1843.
Analysis of the Hougoumont maps
When analysing the maps, care needs to be taken as the 1816 map (Map 1) is
orientated with north at the bottom and south at the top. e 1820 map (Map
2) and the Ferraris map (Map 4) have the more conventional orientation of
9
The key to the taxation principles was that each type of usage –
building, arable, pastoral, orchard, woodland and garden – were all
recorded using a common legend and were taxed at different rates
based on an ‘assumed productive value’ or rental value. Farm tracks
and private access roads were generally not included as they had no
taxable value. Cadastral maps were only updated if the legal status of
the land changed: change of ownership/occupancy or change of land
usage being the principle reasons. A good example of this is the 1820
cadastral map which shows the change in usage for parcel 3 from
woodland on the 1816 map (Map 1) to arable in 1820 (Map 2).
The Hougoumont cadastral maps are from the cadastre covering the
département de la Dyle in the Cadastre de Brabant Meridional. In
October 1814, Willem Benjamin Craan (1776-1848), who had served
the French Empire as Cadastral Surveyor for the département de la
Roer based at Aix la Chappelle (Aachen) in what is now Germany,
was appointed by King Willem I of the Netherlands as the chef de
Cadastre responsible for the département de la Dyle. As the
Hougoumont cadastral map dated 1816 (Map 1) is orientated with
north at the bottom and the extract is signed by someone other than
Craan, it would not be unreasonable to assume that it was actually
prepared prior to 1814, whereas the second map (Map 2), dated
1820, has its orientation reversed to place north at the top of the map,
is signed by Craan and details the change of usage for ‘parcel 3’ from
woodland to arable land (thus attracting a higher ‘assumed
productive value’)
W.B. Craan is best known for his 1816 map of the battlefield that
shows the initial distribution of the belligerent forces compiled from
personal correspondence with surviving officers. Craan’s work pre-
dates that of W. Siborne who undertook similar work in the 1830s.
The two cadastral maps thus provide the first totally accurate large-
scale maps of the Hougoumont estate prepared and drawn to scale
by professional cartographers and engineer/surveyors, and from
which information has been obtained showing land-usage,
dimensions, and distribution of hedging. When the maps was digitally
overlaid onto the Google Earth map it was found to be accurate with
all the mapped features still visible today. The accuracy of the layout
of the hedges also allowed confirmation of locations mentioned in the
documentary record concerning the two military events.
having the north at the top. Both of the latter are included below again for ease
of comparison.
e legend used by Ferraris shows arable and meadow land as both green and
brown-striped areas, woodland as randomly placed trees, and orchards as
regularly spaced trees. e cadastral maps vary slightly from this and arable is
shown as brown stripes and meadow as solid green and if reference is made back
to Map 1 (on page 7), it will be seen that parcel 3, representing the south wood,
appears on Map 2 above as arable and the meadow in parcel 4 as orchard in
Map 2.
e area shaded brown on the Ferraris map represents a lower area or valley
with the darker colour indicating the more severe slope. e area to the north of
the upper le-right depression is a plateau that forms the western end of a ridge
and is shown as woodland (Bois d’Hougoumont). e ridge and the woodland
are nearly 15 metres higher than the lowest point of the depression and
Hougoumont itself is just under 6 metres above the valley oor. As the cadastral
maps do not show contours, this topographical variation cannot be determined
from them.
e rst thing to note is that to the upper le is a long straight road: this is the
main metalled road that links to the village of Mont-Saint-Jean (and then to
Brussels and east to Liege) o the top of the map with the regionally important
city of Nivelles (and then France) o to the bottom le. is was, and still is, a
very important and well-maintained route called the Chaussée de Nivelles. In the
1970s, an autoroute was built parallel to this road, between it and
Hougoumont, and the topography has changed accordingly: the ridge that
contained the Bois d’Hougoumont is now separated from the Chaussée de
Nivelles by a cutting containing the autoroute.
e Bois d’Hougoumont is not shown on the cadastral maps for a very simple
reason: it is on land that was not part of the Hougoumont property for tax
purposes: it belonged to a Monsieur Lefébvre from Brussels. At least ve of the
trees in 2016, date from the 1700s or earlier.
13
Ages have been estimated based on girth at 1.5 metres above the ground, tree
13
species, growing conditions, size of canopy etc; dendrochronological research has not
been undertaken.
10
Fig. 6: Extract om Ferraris 1777.
Fig. 7: Extract om Cadastral 1820.
e main public approach road from the Chaussée de Nivelles runs through the
valley with what Ferraris shows as an orchard on its eastern side. is road,
called Rue aux Loups or Wolf Lane, then runs along the northern boundary of
the property , still in the valley, before it joins the north-south road called
14
Chemin de Braine l’alleud à Plancenoit, (or, in the local vernacular, Chemin des
Trois Tiennes) which runs south to La Belle Alliance. e cadastral map shows
Rue aux Loups as being the boundary of the Hougoumont property and having
a signicant hedge along its southern embankment. ere also appears to have
been a realignment of the northern end of Rue aux Loups, bringing it closer to
the Bois d’Hougoumont, and the old orchard has become a meadow with two
reasonably signicant ponds close to the road. is eld is some 30-40 metres
wide and is called Pré aux (Deux) Etangs (or simply, the ‘meadow with the
(two) ponds’). Today, possibly as a result of the building of the autoroute, a
modern culvert runs down the centre of the eld which is wider and the ponds
have subsequently disappeared — indeed, as has a much bigger pond just
outside the north gate.
15
is latter pond, possibly as much as 15 or 20 metres in diameter, was
centralised in an area just to the south of the Rue aux Loups and below and to
the north of the farm wall in an area designated as the houblonnière (the hop
eld). ere is some evidence that the farmyard drained into this pond and the
pond then drained into Pré aux Deux Etangs. Aer 1815, it is probable that
material from the burnt-out manor (logis) and farm buildings, where not
recycled by the community, was disposed of by burial in this area, as also
happened in 2015 when the builders disposed of a great deal of their
construction detritus by simply dumping it where the pond had been.
To the east of the pond, bordered to the north by the boundary hedge and Rue
aux Loups and to the south by a high, quickset, hawthorn hedge along the
north side of the formal garden , is an extension of the great orchard.
16
Confusingly, some historians call this the ‘small orchard’, a term usually
17
relating more correctly to the area on the south side of the garden wall. On the
garden-side of the hedge, Ferraris shows a linear area designated as vegetable
garden whilst the cadastral map merely records it as garden.
e garden area is bounded on three sides by walls that stood around three
metres high. In addition to the rectangular spaces for vegetables along its
northern side, it contained a formal ‘jardin à la ançaise’ constructed as a
formal rectangular parterre with an étoile parterre occupying the east end. An
unreferenced source indicated that the owner, de Louville-Gomont, was
particularly fond of the garden: however, little is known about what this garden
This is what historians of the Battle of Waterloo have called the ‘sunken way’.
14
Comte Guibert d’Oultremont, the last private owner, remembers the ponds being in
15
existence during his childhood.
The remains of this hedge, now trees of significant height, are still in existence. High
16
hedges were often used in preference to walls as they acted as a windbreak, reducing
turbulence, and producing enhanced growing conditions.
Mark Adkins, The Waterloo Companion, Aurum, London, 2001 for example.
17
11
contained but there are some references to owers, roses, ornamental shrubs
and fruit trees such as oranges and gs. An avenue of hornbeams (probably
carpinus betulus) is thought to have run down the south side near the wall but
these are not shown on the maps. Gardens designed ‘à la ançaise’ are based on
the work of André le Nôtre who laid out the gardens at Versailles between 1662
and 1700 and this style of garden design continued until the mid 18th century
when the new ‘English Garden’ became popular. is suggests that the strictly
geometric garden at Hougoumont was laid out for Chevalier Jean-Jacques
Arrazola de Oñate around 1661 and was well established by the time it was
mapped by Ferraris c1770.
Beyond the end of the garden wall in the eastern-most parcel of land (no. 9 on
Map 1) was the great orchard, which was enclosed by a high hedge, and two
parcels of land (nos. 1 and 2). No.1 is listed as arable land on both the 1816 and
1820 maps, whereas no. 2 is called l’étoile and is listed as pasture in both cases.
When compared to the Ferraris map, these two areas are shown to be a single
geometric, star-shaped area enclosed by a high hedge and laid out as a parterre
with either earth or gravel walkways. Interpreting the Ferraris mapping style
suggests that this parterre area was, in fact, a formal arboretum. Arboretums
reached their highest development in the late 1600s but fell out of fashion in
the 1700s, which may explain the disappearance of the Hougoumont parterre
wood – l’étoile – between 1771 and 1777 (when Ferraris mapped the area) and
12
Fig. 8: is LIDAR (ground penetrating radar) image of Hougoumont clearly
shows the design of the walled garden used rectangles for two-thirds of its length
with an etoile at the east end. is conrms the layout shown by Ferraris and the
cadastral maps. e feature marked ‘pathway' is the Rue aux Loups, while the
area marked ‘ditch' is a natural drainage channel. e four features marked ‘?’ at
the top are brick-edged landscaped features om when this was an ornamental
garden. e feature marked ‘?’ to the middle le is the remains of the deux
etangs. Both the garden and the ponds ceased to exist in the 1960s. Infography ꊯ
D. Bosquet, SPW-DPat, 2015.
1816 when no sign of the design remained except for the name and the
northern hedge which had separated it from the great orchard. e western side
of the étoile does not align with the corner of the formal garden but overlaps the
south wall by 20 metres.
Just to the south of the garden wall is parcel 10 (see Fig. 9). is is listed as
being part of the great orchard in 1820 but is designated as the small orchard (le
petit verger) in 1816, whilst Ferraris shows it very denitely as part of the great
orchard. is is the area designated as the ‘killing ground’ in most descriptions
of the 1815 battle and is bordered to the south by either a ‘not very dense’
hedge and ditch or a dense hedge and shallow ditch if others are to be
18
believed. e land slopes steadily to the west and there appears to have been a
hedge at the eastern end that separates it from the great orchard, about 20
metres short of the corner. At this same spot, the junction of the hedges creates
the opening into the great orchard (see Fig. 9 below).
Next to these parcels of land is parcel 3 which is shown by both Ferraris (1777)
and the cadastral map of 1816 as the Bois de Gomont or ‘south wood’, and on the
1820 map as having been clear-felled (between 1817 and 1820) and designated
as arable land. e entire area slopes down signicantly to the west and south.
e Ferraris map shows a farm road running north to south through the wood
and leading directly to the south gate of the building complex. e wood was a
mixed deciduous woodland and is discussed in more detail below.
At the lower ended of the wood to the south and west, there is a ditch that is
quite deep, at around one metre below the surrounding levels. is carries a
signicant amount of water, especially during the winter months when it
becomes a winterbourne but can be wet throughout the summer. is is the
boundary of the wood and also of the meadow or pastureland that runs around
the south and west of the wood (parcel 4 on the cadastral maps). Ferraris shows
this area as orchard, as does the 1820 map, but it is recorded simply as pasture
on the 1816 map. Given the clay nature of the soil at the bottom of the valley
Büsgen in Siborne quoted in Project Hougoumont Conservation Report (PHCR), Vol. II,
18
p. 66.
13
Fig. 9: An extract om
Map 2 showing in detail
the junction of hedges at the
southeast corner of the
garde n wal l and the
entrance to the great
orchard (upper right).
and around the ditch, it would be understandable if brick-making took place
here and this is borne out by the fact that the name of this meadow is le pré de la
briquetterie, (Brick Kiln Pasture) which suggests it is the eld in which bricks
were made. is is conrmed by the discovery close by of a brick kiln during the
April 2015 ‘Waterloo Uncovered’ research.
19
e nal two parcels of land are nos. 4 and 5, which are located between the
farm buildings and the western boundary represented by the wet ditch
mentioned above. All three maps suggest that no. 5, closest to the wood, was
arable and in use as the garden or paddock utilised by the gardener (la petite
closière du jardinier), while the other parcel, no. 6, is the vegetable garden for
the farmer.
e walled château-farm of Hougoumont – une ferme en
quadrilatère
e maps all agree on the buildings (parcels 11 and 12) – see Fig. 10 above.
ese are physically laid out as a ferme en quadrilatère as described by Michel
Bosquet, D., et al. 2015a, 2015b.
19
14
Fig. 10: Extract om Map 2 showing the Hougoumont buildings with north to
the top.
Anselme in his 1983 book on 17th-18th century vernacular farm architecture.
20
e farm buildings, those extant now and those lost, were erected between
1661 and 1730 by Chevalier Jean-Jacques Arrazola de Oñate as a statement of
his wealth and seigneuriale status, thereby creating a high-prestige, large
agricultural complex surrounding the logis or manor house at its centre and
21
with extensive pleasure gardens and an arboretum – eectively making a
statement that he did not have to obtain revenue from his estate.
22
Physically, the whole complex slopes signicantly to the northwest with a drop
of 4.85 metres between the ground oor of the logis (the residential manor
house) and the north gate, and 2.52 metres between the northeast corner and
the north gate. Parcel 11 is the south or ‘upper’ courtyard and contained the
domestic buildings associated with the residential function of the site.
e long range of buildings to the south contains a low residential building
under a steep pitched and gable-ended roof containing a second oor or attic
and is connected to a two-storey residential complex with rooms over the south
gate – this was the baili’s house originally. ere is an attic here as well,
probably containing servants’ bedrooms.
Ed: Michel Anselme Hesbaye Namuroise (Centre d’histoire de l’architecture et du
20
batiment), pub: Editions Mardaga, 1983.
At 90 x 50 metres, the entire complex is almost twice the average size of a walled farm
21
(normally 50 x 50 m), and with the logis acting as a dividing barrier it really is a ‘statement’
building.
www.arraoladeonate.be, the Arrazola de Oñate family website (accessed 28 July 2016),
22
asserts that when Hougoumont was acquired from Arnold Schuyl in 1661 it was ‘no more
than a barn…with a tower that protruded above the other buildings…’ suggesting that a
residential building of an essentially defensive nature (a tower house, perhaps, see Fig. 2
on page 3) together with a stone barn and some wooden buildings was all that existed
and that Arrazola de Oñate redeveloped the entire site.
15
Fig. 11: e south range viewed om the east side of the manor house. e
chapel is to the right of the picture and the garden wall to the le.
e west end of the range is of similar design to
the other end and appears to have been a cowshed
with a haylo above. ere is some evidence that
23
the range of buildings to the south was the rst to
be built aer the logis or manor house and its
chapel . It is believed that Carlier, the gardener,
24
lived there in 1815.
In the two cadastral maps, the south range is NOT
connected to the west range and appears as an
entrance – the Ferraris map, however, shows it as
connected. is is almost certainly a draing error
by the cadastral as such an entrance is not recorded
in any of the documentary records of the 1815
battle and had it existed, the outcome of the battle
would almost certainly have been dierent. Today,
as it probably was then, this is a curtain wall
against which in more recent times there had been a set of low structures that
were dog kennels but became used as pigsties.
e building at the southern end
of the west range is an agricultural
building that functioned as the
stables for four horses, and
contained a milking parlour for
around four cows and a dairy or
cheese-making area. ere is a
haylo above. ere is now, and
was in 1815, a wide door entering
the back of the building from the
west for horses and personnel
only. Opposite this is a similar
door connecting to the southern
or upper courtyard. At the north
(or lower) end of this building is a cart shed. Below the dairy or cheese-making
room is a cellar used as a cheese store. Built into the wall is a well sha with
access to the well from the courtyard.
Opposite the south/west stables was the logis or manor house, on the south side
of which was a single-storey chapel that was entered via a door from the
courtyard into an internal hall and thence the chapel. As the manor house was
totally destroyed by re during the 1815 battle leaving only the chapel standing,
Anselme describes the order of building a ferme en quadrilatère and suggests that the
23
entrance gate and the range containing it is usually built first to provide immediately useful
buildings.
The chapel was completed by 1662 and consecrated by the Bishop of Namur with
24
Letters Patent dated 6 August 1662 – the original letter is in the private d’Outremont
collection and was seen and translated by the author on 14 July 2016.
16
Fig. 12: e west end of
the south range.
Fig. 13: e south end of the west range
viewed om the manor house.
little is known about its design, although the SPW has conducted an
25
archaeological excavation of the manor house foundations and so the
26
dimensions are known to be approximately 16 metres east to west and 12-15
metres north to south. e house appears to have been built in at least two
phases: the rst to incorporate the original tower house into a 12 x 12 metre
residential building with its attached chapel, and the second external to this
with the addition of a gallery to the south and an additional room to the east
giving the nal dimensions. Given the probable construction period of phase 1
as being the early to mid 1660s, this building was almost certainly two storeys
high with the servants’ rooms in the garrets with attics above. It is probable that
the main part of the building was
the same height as the central
section of the south range and
that a lookout tower or external
staircase adjoined it in the
southeast corner. e location of
the manor house is currently
represented by a raised, grassed,
at-topped mound and the
entire upp er cour ty ard is
cobbled.
Between the manor house and
the east wall of the complex and
adjoining both was a residential
building thought to be used as
the far mer ’s h ou se wher e
Dumonceau lived there in 1815.
Currently, nothing is known
about its design but it was
probably similar to the east wing
of the south range shown in Fig. 11 above.
e northern end of the west range is a ve-bay great barn with an upward
sloping lateral carriageway running north to south. Inside, the central bay has a
break in the threshold to allow sideways unloading onto the threshing oor.
e carriageway exits into the upper (south courtyard) which is some two
metres higher than the entrance.
e north range of farm buildings in the north courtyard were completely
destroyed by re in 1815. ese were almost certainly stables but nothing is
currently known about their design although artists at the time render the ruins
as being two-storeys high under a gable-ended, pitched roof and this might
indicate that it was used as accommodation for farm workers or other sta. e
SPW, or Service public de Wallonie, is the governmental department that oversees all
25
archaeological work in Wallonia.
Willems D., 2015. Un passé réveillé à la ferme d’Hougoumont, Namur, SPW Éditions,
26
Pré-actes des Journées d’archéologie en Wallonie (Rochefort 18-20 novembre 2015),
Série Rapports archéologie, 1, p. 103-105.
17
Fig. 14: is watercolour by James Rouse
was painted in 1816-1817 for Mudford’s
Historical Account of the Campaign in
the Netherlands published in 1817. It
shows the ruin of the manor house aer the
battle of Waterloo which took place on 18
June 1815.
dimensions of the north range suggest that it probably provided stabling for up
to ten horses.
e east range is of similar dimension to the
east wing of the south range as shown in Fig. 11
above and probably resembled it closely in
construction. As with the north range, the east
range was stabling, probably for four dra
horses or six riding horses or coach horses. It
was of high-status as can be seen from the
quality of the highly-engineered drain and
sump found during archaeological work in
2016 – this led from the back half of the
27
stables indicating that the horses were stabled
facing the farmyard. ere is some evidence that
the east range was free standing but connected
to the east wall. e same evidence suggests it
had a pitched roof with hipped ends.
Memoirs of the events of 18 June 1815 indicate
that these stables were shelled in the aernoon
and the hay stored in the haylo was set alight,
completely destroying the roof and interior,
leaving the building a shell.
Logically, a dung heap would have occupied the northeast corner of the north
courtyard, while between the north end of the great barn and the north wall
there was probably an open-fronted structure that would have housed the
workshops of the blacksmith and perhaps the carpenter.
In front of the north and east ranges there would have been a level area or
terrace of two to three metres in width, which would have been cobbled. A
cobbled drain/gully would have led from the drain seen in Fig. 15 to carry its
discharge down to the north gate and then round to the ponds in the valley
bottom. e north courtyard slopes both northwards and westwards creating a
curved prole with a drop of 2.52 metres to the west and 4.85 metres to the
north. It is probable that this curving yard was surfaced with compacted earth.
Near the north wall of the logis, there was a 16-metre deep well with a structure
containing the winding mechanism, above which was a multi-level dovecot. e
wellhead and dovecot survived the 1815 destruction and parts were still
standing in 1904 . e sha had been lled in with detritus from the
28
demolished buildings but it was excavated between 1979 and 1982. No nds of
signicant importance were found.
29
See www.waterloouncovered.com
27
It was still in existence in the early 20th century but was then levelled and has been
28
fitted with a safety grill.
Project Hougoumont Conservation Report (PHCR), Vol. III, page 218.
29
18
Fig. 15: e highly-
engineered drain and
sump running east to
west om inside the east
range stabling.
e manor house formed the southern boundary of the lower or northern
courtyard and it was connected to the southeast corner of the great barn (which
makes up the rest of the west range of buildings) by an arched and gated curtain
wall, the gate of which was wide enough for a cart.
e southern or upper courtyard could thus be entered by vehicle from the
south gate or up a slope from the farmyard (lower courtyard) and also on foot
through the west stables. e farmyard or the northern lower courtyard was
19
Fig. 16: A surveyor’s plan of the chateau-farm buildings, drawn in 1899 but
showing, in paler pink, the buildings destroyed during the battle on 18 June
1815. is plan has been digitally overlaid onto the Google Earth satellite
image and found to be accurate for the remaining buildings but the dimensions
of the lost buildings in the north farm courtyard are possibly 20% too large.
Belgian Military Museum archive.
entered through a large gated entrance in the north wall and from the upper
courtyard. e upper courtyard also provided pedestrian access to the formal
walled garden. Following conservation in 2015, all these entrances are usable,
although for security and touristic experience reasons, access is limited to
pedestrians only through the door in the west wall.
As this was a very high-status building complex, it is very probable that all the
roofs would have been of dark grey (Ardenne) slate. However, in January 1817,
Comte de Robiano, as Chamberlain to King William I of the Netherlands,
wrote to the King seeking war reparations of 59,000 francs for the damage to
Hougoumont but there is no evidence to suggest that anything was paid and
30 31
it appears that de Robiano simply demolished the damaged buildings and re-
roofed the others with cheap local clay/terracotta tiles. is is borne out by the
quantity of slate detritus in the north farmyard uncovered during the 2014
renovations which followed the same principle.
As a working farm, all the external and internal walls of the agricultural
buildings and the external walls of the residential buildings would have been
lime-washed (calcimine), creating a white nish that has antibacterial
properties; it can become yellowish in certain conditions and needs to be re-
lime-washed on a regular basis.
The letter, dated 19 January 1817 and written in French is part of the d’Outremont
30
collection.
…or else he received the money and spent it elsewhere.
31
20
Fig. 17: is black and white print is a modern and rather romanticised
interpretation of what the buildings might have looked like viewed om the
southeast. e south gate is to the upper le, the north gate can be seen on the
upper right/centre and the formal walled garden to the lower right. Artist
unknown.
e use of hedges in the 18th and 19th century landscape
Analysing the cadastral map legends, it becomes clear that there are two types of
boundary hedges identied: a thick and a thin hedge. Descriptions in the
documentary records show that the main boundary hedges, those shown on
Map 1 and Map 2 as surrounding the entire property, were dense/thick,
quickset hedges mainly of hawthorn (crataegus), with European maple (acer
campestris/pseudoplanatus), stunted beech (fagus) and blackthorn (prunus
spinosa) oen up to 2 or 3 metres in height, usually set on a raised dyke or on
the upper side of a deep ditch or road/track as shown in Fig. 18 below.
e other type of hedge,
such as that between parcel
10 (the small orchard or
‘killing zone’ along the
so ut h w al l) an d t he
woodland in parcel 3, were
generally between 1.75
metres and 2 metres, less
dens e and less th ick
although of the same mix
of species, and only a
shallow ditch. is can be
seen in Fig. 19 below.
During the 18th and 19th
centuries there was an
increase in the enclosure of
land. Each enclosure had
to be properly dened in law and was oen marked by the use of a hedge and
ditch. e ditch marked the boundary and the excavated earth was placed on
the inner (enclosed) side as a raised dyke on which a ‘fence’ was placed in the
form of a hedge or, in northern European countries, a dry-stone wall. e
hedge, therefore, appears to have been the responsibility of the enclosing owner.
21
Fig. 18: An example of a mixed boundary hedge
on an embankment. is is on similar soil to
Hougoumont and is located on the other side of
the battleeld at Papelotte, 3 kms to the east.
Fig. 19: is hedge is just 1
metre thick although 3
me tr es hi gh . Ma inl y
hawthorn with a few other
species, it is opaque in mid
summer (this photograph
was taken in June 2016),
completely stock-proof, and
is both a visual and physical
barrier.
Except for the remnants of the hedge above the sunken way to the north of the
great orchard and that between the walled garden (parcel 8) and the strip of
parcel 9 shown in Fig. 20, the Hougoumont hedges have all been grubbed up
and some have been
replaced by wire fences.
is st ems from th e
second half of the 19th
century, when the less
maintenance-intensive
wire fencing – particularly
b a rb e d w i re – f o r
enclosures was adopted,
and the early 20th century,
with the mechanisation of
agriculture.
It is interesting to note the
oset hedge line at the
junction of the hedges at
the southeast corner of
the garden wall in Fig. 9 on page 13. Based on superimposing the cadastral maps
on satellite imagery and
then checking on the
ground, the hedge line sat
on a small dyke of about
10-15 cms in height with
a shallow ditch on the
south side, as can be seen
in Fig 21. A farm track
ran (and still runs) along
the south side, providing a
link between the working
farm buildings and the
great orchard (upper le
of the image) and the
pasture (upper right of the
image). e angle is such
that it would allow a
horse-drawn cart to turn
o the track and into the
orchard.
22
Fig. 20: e 250-year-old remains of the hedge
between the walled garden and the strip of orchard
to the north.
Fig. 21: e area of the oset junction discussed
above. e farm track is clearly visible to the right
with the ditch to its le. e dyke is directly under
the fence line. e fence post to the bottom le is a
little east of where the original hedge line became
oset to the le of the picture. e great orchard,
parcel 9, is to the upper le of the picture.
e southern wood – le Bois de Gomont
It is reasonable to assume that the three large sweet chestnut trees (castanea
sativa), two of which are dead as a result of lightening strikes in the 1980s and
1990s and the third still alive although lightening-damaged, situated some 40
metres south of the south gate of the farm complex, are the remnants of the
south wood that is shown as parcel 3 on the 1816 cadastral map (Map 1) and
through which the French attacked in 1815, probably up the road or track
marked on the Ferraris 1777 map. e smaller, fourth tree was planted by the
8th Duke of Wellington in the 1970s. ese trees were declared the European
Trees of Peace and Memory in 2016.
e documentary evidence suggests that in 1815 this wood was mixed
deciduous woodland and the diameter of the trees was not much greater than
the width of a man. Based on the author’s study of similar woodlands on similar
soils (e.g. see Fig. 23), it becomes apparent that the age of the wood must have
been around 75-150 years. A dendrochronological report on the chestnut
trees suggests a planting date of between 1675 and 1775, with the covering
32
explanation that an estimate had had to be made as the core sample was 30 cms
too short. Taking the evidence together, a planting date of around 1725 seems
about right for the wood as a whole.
Rapport d’Analyse Dendrochronologie – Les Chataigniers de la Ferme d’Hougoumont
32
(Braine-l’Alleud) by Jérôme Eesckhout, Université de Liège, 2005.
23
Fig. 22: e sweet chestnut (castanea sativa) trees at the edge of what was the
south wood. e two on the right are dead, the large one is damaged but alive,
and the one on the le, planted by the 8th Duke of Wellington in the 1970s, is
ourishing. e road through the wood came out between the two trees on the le.
Photo ꊯ Marc Fasol.
We know from the cadastral maps of 1816 and 1820 that at some time between
the two dates the woodland had been clear-felled and the land usage changed to
arable. Chevalier de Louville-Gomont is known to have felled some of the
worst damaged trees but the clear felling was undertaken by the Comte de
Robiano. However, in
1816, James McQueen
33
visited Hougoumont and
reported that the “wood is
intersected with natural
hedges and ditches” and
this is borne out by the
landscape within other
parcels of woodland in the
area. Extensive re-proling
of the landscape has
occurred over the last 200
years as a result of the land
be in g w ork ed us ing
m e c h a n i s e d f a r m
machinery.
e south gate open area
An examination of the at
area 40 metres to the
south of the south gate and
just to the north of the sweet chestnut trees shows that the area covered by
concrete is part of a man-made modication incorporating a lateral sugar-beet
silage pit made of breeze-block to its westward side and producing a large area
of level hard-standing for parking farm vehicles. e area used to slope down to
the west as shown in the late 19th century photograph in Fig. 24 below. is
modication took place in the early 1960s and the earth for its construction
came from the man-made excavation at the west end of the small orchard
(parcel 10).
Quoted in the PHCR, Vol. II, p. 76.
33
24
Fig. 23: is woodland in Hoeilaart, 11 kms away, is
on similar soils and topography to what would have
existed at Hougoumont in 1815. e French
traversed this type of woodland in 1815. Experienced
serving soldiers have estimated that it would have
taken them between 40 and 90 minutes to cover the
400 metres involved against a spirited defence and
under bombardment.
Fig. 24: e south gate of
Hougoumont showing the
sloping ground to the bottom
le – this area has now been
levelled and has a concrete
hard-standing on it. It is
interesting to note that trees of
some considerable age line the
track to the west of the farm.
e northern wood – le Bois d’Hougoumont
is area of woodland is just to the north of the Rue aux Loups (sunken lane)
and ran up and over the end of the ridge and then down to and across the
Chaussée de Nivelles. It covered around 12 hectares and is clearly identied on
the Ferraris 1777 map with a suggested density of 25-35 metres between trees
which is a much lower density than in the south wood and more akin to a
wooded parkland.
e wood does not appear on the cadastral maps of 1816 and 1820 concerning
Hougoumont as by then the wood was owned by a M. Lefébvre who resided in
Brussels. e 1820 map indicates a tree-lined boundary between the wood and
the Rue aux Loups which, based on an analysis of the mapping key, tends to
indicate that the wood still existed in 1820.
e author examined the wood in 2016 and found that the majority of the trees
had been planted within the last 100-140 years, but a close examination of three
specimen trees, all European beech trees (fagus sylvatica), showed them to be
older, each having girths at 1.5 metres above the ground commensurate with
being 250 years old or more. Two other trees were thought to be of similar age.
ese trees would, therefore, have been there at the time of the 1815 battle, thus
indicating that at least some part of the Bois d’Hougoumont existed then.
34
Agricultural usage of the land
Without access to a farm diary or records listing what was being grown where –
something modern farmers maintain in detail but may have been missing in the
late 18th and early 19th centuries – it is dicult to oer anything other than
generalisations. In this region of Brabant-Wallonia, most farms engaging in
35
arable farming would be growing a
mix of the following: wheat, rye,
barley (all of which grew to a height
of 1.5-1.8 metres or 5-6 feet),
turnips, potatoes, grass and clover. In
the 1740s, aer the failure of the
wheat and rye harvests, potatoes had
become an essential crop for
economic and nutritional reasons:
potatoes generate four times that of
grain crops in consumable calories
For more details, see White, A., Dating the Bois d’Hougoumont, White & MacLean,
34
2016 - www.whiteandmaclean.eu
Lisa Rosner and John Theibault, A short history of Europe 1600-1815: search for a
35
reasonable world, Routledge, London, 2015.
25
Fig. 25: e main cereal crops om le-
right – rye, barley, wheat.
per hectare. is reduced the hectarage of cereal crops and pushed up the price
of our, thus increasing the price of bread. In itself this then became a causation
factor for the move within the national diet towards potato-based nutrition and
an associated increase in other root vegetables. A typical crop rotation would
include one or two cereal crops, turnips and potatoes, together with a crop that
actively captured essential plant nutrients from the air and returned them to the
soil, clover being the most common example.
As the population in the late 1700s and early 1800s ate a diet heavy with
vegetables and low on meat, which was expensive, dedicating elds to pasture
was an economic gamble but one that paid o if the farm could support sheep:
this was a double harvest as the eece fed into the clothes manufacturing
process and the mutton (meat from a sheep of more than two years in age) was
used in the human food chain. At the time, the eece was more in demand than
the meat as the economically dominant cloth was wool – a demand that was to
grow signicantly aer the 1783-84 volcanic eruptions in Iceland that impacted
the weather in northern Europe, causing crop failures in cereals and in ax
(linum usitatissimum). Flax, used for making linen, a clothing material that is
harder wearing than cotton (which is not grown in northern Europe) was an
economic staple and, with the crop failures in the late 1700s, wool production
became more important. In these circumstances, there was high economic risk
in raising sheep for meat alone, resulting in there being little demand for lamb
or hogget – one-year-old and two-year-old sheep respectively. Mutton had a
market as older sheep died o or were culled. Sheep did not need dedicated
pasture, except for large ocks, and most farms ran their ock of sheep in the
orchards as a natural method of keeping the grass short.
Dairy products – butter and cheese – were a relatively small-scale agricultural
activity and it seems that up to six milking cows were kept to full the needs of
the Hougoumont community and the thriving cheese-making activity that
seems to have taken place.
Beef was not a normal part of the regular diet of the majority of people as it was
too expensive. In 1808, however, the crossing of Shorthorn bulls with Charolais
cows had produced a genetically modied beast that had a very low fat content
and produced a very ne-grained and lean meat in huge quantities. is type of
animal became the breed known as the Belgian Blue (Blanc Bleu Belge); it is a
very gentle animal and easily managed, and a few of the richer farmers started to
experiment.
Pigs are known to have been kept at Hougoumont as there are reports of
soldiers in 1815 killing and eating pigs at the farm. Although it is currently
unknown whether a formal pannage system of allowing the pigs to roam freely
in the wood in autumn was in existence, it is probable that the farm pigs were
indeed free-range part of the time.
e eld called l’étoile, just to the south of the great orchard, and formally
designated as pasture. is leads to the likelihood that it was kept as a source of
hay for winter-feed; however, to dedicate a large eld to this alone seems
unlikely and it is probable that horses were put out to grass for part of the year.
e total number of horses on the farm is likely to have been signicant whilst
26
the owners lived in the manor house: carriage horses, riding hacks, draught
horses, and children’s ponies all add up to a sizeable number – it is estimated
that there was stabling for around 18 horses.
Hougoumont has very extensive orchards listed and it is very probable that
distributed across these would be apple trees (both for cooking and for eating),
pear, plum, damson, quince and cherry. In addition, nut trees would have been
cultivated and walnut, sweet chestnut, beech and hazel all ourish in this
landscape. Orchards will have been planted in a regular square pattern with
around 12 metres between trees which oen grow to between 5 and 12 metres
in height and have an extensive canopy spread. e large distances between
trees would have enabled horse-drawn carts to get between the trees without
damaging the crop, such vehicles having a signicant size of turning circle, and
also allowed the entire crop to receive sunlight. In other Brabant farms with
similar land dedicated to orchards, the production of cider was of importance as
the water available in the wells was oen not entirely safe to drink – the low
alcohol ciders were a perfect substitute – and this probably applied to
Hougoumont as well.
Within the garden area, the vegetables grown will have included kale, brassicas,
peas, beans of various types, spinach, cabbage and so on. It is very probable that
so fruits will also have been grown: strawberries, raspberries and currants of
various types would all have featured within the extensive gardens at
Hougoumont.
Although Siborne, in acquiring data on which to base his famous 1830’s model
of the battleeld, asked his correspondents for details of crops they
encountered, there is little reliable evidence of what was actually planted around
Hougoumont at the time. Matthew Clay identies that the top of the ridge to
36
the north of Hougoumont was under clover. On page 17 of his account, Clay
also identies that the eld on the rising slope to the west of the farm was a
corneld (as corn is not a crop but a generalised description, this may have been
wheat, rye or barley). He then describes retiring down to the Pré aux Deux
Etangs and seeking cover behind a clover stack, suggesting that this meadow
had been under clover. What was planted in parcels 1 and 2 is unknown but
eyewitness memoirists have indicated that in June 1815 French cavalry were
operating around the area and that at least one artillery piece, a howitzer, was
brought into play in parcel 2. It might therefore be acceptable to assume that
parcel 2 was indeed pasture but the crop in parcel 1 remains a mystery.
e type of crops, the animal husbandry, and the general land usage helps
explain the military events, particularly of 1815, and these are all mentioned in
passing in a number of memoirs and journal entries on which historians have
relied.
Matthew Clay, A Narrative of The Battles of Quatre-Bras And Waterloo; With the
36
Defence of Hougoumont, edited by Gareth Glover, Ken Trotman Publishing, 2006, p.13.
27
e problem of historical documents: memoirs and visual
media
e traditional approach to investigating historical events is to base
underpinning assumptions on the documentary evidence about the event and
this is certainly the way that the history of the Battle of Waterloo has been
developed. In this case, the documentary evidence used has mainly been the
military records (muster rolls, order books, copies of orders, military maps,
etc.), descriptions and memoirs written by participants on both sides of the
conict, and the many sketches, watercolours and oil paintings made shortly
aer the events. However, recent research and developments in the elds of
clinical and behavioural psychology, neuroscience, endocrinology, memory and
the response to stress, calls into question the value of memoirs and reports
written by participants in the events described. It also raises doubts about the
validity of observations recorded by non-participants (i.e. observers). And as to
artists: except for very few, such as Denis Dighton, the royal war artist, and
omas Stoney who were slightly more reliable, their images were highly
romanticised to say the least and simply bizarrely inaccurate on the whole.
28
Between 2004 and 2012, neuroscientist John Coates conducted
research into the biological response to risk-taking, especially in high-
stress environments and described the results in his 2012 book The
Hour Between Dog and Wolf. His principle findings are that people in
high-stress environments, especially those involving risk-taking, have
a distinct biological response involving the endocrine system, which
affects the way their bodies work and how their minds process data to
assess risks and determine actions. The most common physiological
response is well-known as the ‘fight or flight’ adrenal response in
which the hormone, adrenaline, prepares the body for short-term
action. This affects the blood supply to the internal organs, including
the brain, causing non-essential activities to close down while, at the
same time, causing the survival functions to become enhanced.
People in the grip of an extreme adrenal response report the time-
phasing in the brain slowing down so that external events appear to be
happening slower, and their ability to collect and process data (cause
and effect) and to determine what actions to take is speeded up, that
their sight was clearer and that they were more aware of their
surroundings. The adrenal response effect is well understood and this
description will come as no surprise, but what Coates also found was
that this physiological response was occurring before the
cognitive response. In other words, the body was sensing the threat
and taking action before the mind could start processing it.
But perhaps the most interesting result of this response is to the
memory. Subsequently, investigation was made into what research
subjects could actually recall of the events in which they participated
is point has been discussed at some length simply because historians
routinely use eye-witness memoirs as though they were a categorical truth
rather than a ‘version of the truth’; to build a theory of what happened based on
one or even a few stated sources oen results in an incorrect interpretation of
events. is is where archaeology is of major importance as another unbiased
source of data, although interpretation of that data is subject to similar biases to
those aicting interpretation of documentary data. Let’s take an example: in
the heat of battle, the participants will be subject to an extreme adrenal
29
and found that their short-term memory could recall very little and that
their medium-to-long-term memory could recall even less. Indeed, the
recalled memory seldom included the stimulus (the events that created
the response), and the actual elements of the event itself and the
order in which they occurred were retained only in the short-to-
medium-term memory. As time passed, their ability to recall accurately
diminished significantly, leaving a set of memories that had been
processed and often bore very little relationship to the actual event. In
other words, what is recalled from memory is what the mind
believes happened rather than what actually happened. This effect
is often referred to as ‘false memory’.
False memory (rather than the cause of false memory) has also been
recognised for some time and is often compounded by the mind
recording memories of what it thinks ought to have happened:
and this occurs even if the subject is not contaminated by other
sources of data about the event – reading or hearing a report of the
event from someone else, for example. This is the reason why the
police take statements immediately from as many eye-witnesses as
possible without allowing the eye-witnesses to hear what others are
saying. They then tease out the facts from this jumble of data.
As time passes between the event and the recollection of it by
participants who were there, the degree of cognitive processing
distorts the memories even further and various biases creep in, the
main one being that people come to believe that the version of events
that they recall is actually correct because they recall it. This becomes
self-reinforcing until they are unable to accept their original recall was
incorrect (“We come to believe our own myths,” as one academic put it
recently). But the biggest issue with memory recall after time is almost
always that the person recalling the event has been influenced by
other memories (their own and from other people) which have
combined to create a new version of the event. When challenged on
this, the person then becomes subject to the ‘loss aversion’ concept
which Daniel Kahneman, an eminent clinical psychologist, talks about
in his 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow. He concludes that people
will irrationally adhere to what they believe rather than risk
changing to an alternative position, even when what they believe
is demonstrably wrong and the alternative position is in their best
interests. This is one factor behind how incorrect versions of events
become embedded in the collective human cognitive memory.
response and this limits their ability to register and subsequently recall the
situation other than in terms of what actually happens to them. If they then
attempt to record down those events and the order in which they occur, the
result is likely to be inaccurate and the memory is likely to become focused on
what they believe should have happened. If their memoir is not written until
15 or more years later then the veracity of the report must be considered as
being very low. So, looking at Matthew Clay’s memoir , his descriptions of
37
events and the landscape prior to military action are likely to be more accurate
than his description of events during the heat of battle, but both are likely to
contain false memories (especially about time and order of events) given that
his account appears to have been written in 1853, some 38 years aer the events
described.
Other examples abound and it is essential that, to fully understand the events, it
is necessary to cross-reference the memoirs with other data, and to re-interpret
rather than to accept their rather romanticised and editorialised content as
being correct. is is not to say that the memoirs are valueless or wrong, but a
more careful analysis needs to be undertaken. Memoirs written immediately
aer the battle by participants are likely to be more accurate than those written
15 or more years aer the event. It should be noted here that the vast majority
of memoirs concerning Waterloo were written in the early 1830s in response to
the creation of the Siborne model which was completed in 1838. Also, most of
the written material was eventually published in 1891 (76 years aer the events)
and has been ruthlessly exploited as ‘accurate’ by generations of historians ever
since.
Finally, cross-contamination is a very real issue the further from the events the
creation of the documentary evidence takes place. Many authors discussed their
work with other authors who then wrote memoirs and books which
incorporated information gleaned from others, and so oen inadvertently
contaminating their own understanding of events. is causes the creation of a
group-think or ‘authorised’ version, an ocial history, which oen bears little
resemblance to the facts. is is a very real problem when interpreting the
documentary evidence concerning the Battle of Waterloo and particularly as it
relates to Hougoumont.
Hougoumont at war: 1794 …
e château-ferme d’Hougoumont is of primary interest to historians as an icon
and survivor of two military battles that took place there: 6-7 July 1794 and 18
June 1815.
Matthew Clay, A Narrative of The Battles of Quatre-Bras And Waterloo; With the
37
Defence of Hougoumont, edited by Gareth Glover, Ken Trotman Publishing, 2006.
30
e battle of Mont-Saint-Jean on 6-7 July 1794 is part of the War of the First
38
Coalition against the army of the (Revolutionary) French Republic. e two
armies involved were the 60,000+ strong French Armée de Sambre-et-Meuse
under the command of General Jean-Baptise Jourdan, and the 46,000 strong
Armée Impériale Coalisée under the command of Field Marshal Frederick,
Prince of Saxe-Cobourg. e imperial coalition army included the Corps
Hollandais (Dutch Corps) under the command of William V, Prince of Nassau-
Orange, father of the future King William I of the Netherlands in 1815, and
this Corps included three battalions of the royalist Légion émigrés ançais, one
each from the Légion de Damas, Légion de Béon and Légion de Mathieu.
In the evening of 6 July 1794, the Prince of Nassau-Orange ordered the Brigade
commanded by his son, Prince Frederick of Nassau-Orange, into a defensive
position astride the Chaussée de Nivelles, just south of Lillois, having been
pushed back from Nivelles itself by the 12,000 strong French Division under
Lefebvre. At this point, the Dutch position was 4.5 kms southwest from
Hougoumont. During the early morning of 7 July 1794, Prince Frederick re-
deployed to the Mont-Saint-Jean/Waterloo battleeld and the men of the
Légions Béon and Damas were ordered to take possession of Hougoumont and
be ready to defend it. Bernard de Corbehem of the Légion Damas wrote
39
Lucien Cecille, Philippe Charlet and Jean-Jacques Pattyn, Mont-Saint-Jean 6-7Juillet
38
1794: La victoire française à Waterloo, Historic’one Editions, Fontain-L’Evêque, 2015.
Bernard de Corbehem of the Légion de Damas “Dix ans de ma vie ou histoire de mon
39
émigration”, Paris, chez Delaunay libraire au Palais-Royal, 1829, pp. 126-127 quoted in
MSJ by Cecille et al., 2015, ibid, pp. 54-55.
31
En arrivant au château-ferme d'Hougoumont, qui n’était
proprement qu'une vaste et magnique ferme, nous eûmes à
essuyer le feu d'une pièce d'artillerie légère que l'ennemi avait
placé sur la hauteur qui le domine du côte du midi. Je courus, à
cette occasion, un fort grand danger. Comme nous délions, sur
deux de ont, devant le mur de face du corps de logis, et que
nous présentions le côte droit à la pièce dont j’ai parlé, un
boulet, lancé à hauteur de ma ceinture, et passant à environ un
pied devant moi et derrière la le qui me précédait, vint percer
le mur qui était à ma gauche… Aussitôt que la troupe eut délé,
nous embusquâmes le long de la haie qui règne autour de ce
domaine, et nous attendîmes l’ennemi qui ne jugea pas à propos
de venir nous y trouver. Il se retira même quand la nuit fut
venue. Plusieurs jours se passèrent dans cette position où la
cavalerie légère nous inquiétait continuellement par le feu de
son artillerie volante, sans cependant nous attaquer
sérieusement ou nous faire beaucoup sourir… Le château-
ferme d’Hougoumont renfermait un attirail immense
d’agriculture et un qualité considérable de bestiaux, de volailles,
de chevaux, de fourrages, enn d’approvisionnements de toute
espèce, tels que l’exigeait une exploitation de premier ordre dans
un pays extrêmement fertile et bien cultivé….
e re-deploying troops were being harassed by the French under Lefebvre who
actively deployed the artillerie légère (8lb cannon) attached to Sulzmann’s
Brigade on the western side of the ‘ravine’ less than 500 metres from the
Hougoumont farm buildings as can be seen from this translation of Corbehem:
On taking possession of Hougoumont, the French émigrés immediately started
to fortify the place and seeing that the property was “protégée par une forte
muraillle dans laquelle les hommes de Béon et de Damas ont pratiqué des
meurtrières pour la défendre” [clearly the 1815 loopholes were not the rst to
40
appear in Hougoumont’s walls]. From the available material, it appears that the
battle around Hougoumont was primarily a cavalry and artillery action, and
that the French artillerie à pied was used extensively against Hougoumont from
the southwest, west and north, whilst the cavalry seems to have attacked mainly
from the south and east. No material has yet come to light describing the
infantry actions around Hougoumont. e arrival of Dubois’s Division forced
Frederick, Prince of Nassau-Orange, to retire to Braine-l’Alleud. Meanwhile,
around Genappe, Chastre and Gembloux, General Jourdan and the main body
…the property was “protected by a strong high wall in which the men of the Béon and
40
Damas created loopholes for the defence” – author’s translation. Les émigrés à cocarde
noire by Bittard des Portes mentioned in La bataille de Mont-Saint-Jean by Lucien Laudry,
Revue des ambassador, 1938 and quoted in MSJ, Cecille et al., op. cit., p. 56.
32
Upon arriving [from the direction of Braine-l’Alleud and the
Brussels to Nivelles road] at the castle-farm of Hougoumont,
which was itself a vast and beautiful farm, we received re
from a light artillery piece that the enemy had placed on the
height that dominates the south side. I suered, on this
occasion, a very great danger. As we marched along, two
abreast, before the [west] wall in front of the farm, presenting
our right to the cannon which I mentioned, a [cannon] ball,
launched at the height of my belt, and passing about a foot in
front of me and behind the troops who preceded me, drilled
into the wall on my le ... as soon as the troop had assembled,
we took cover along the hedge which surrounds this area
[parcel 5], and we waited for the enemy who decided not to
attack: they even withdrew when night fell. Some time was
spent in this position, disturbed continuously by their light
cavalry and the re from their artillery, without however
being seriously attacked nor them making us suer much.
e castle-farm of Hougoumont contained all the
paraphernalia of agriculture and a considerable quality of
cattle, poultry, horses, fodder, indeed a supply of all species,
such as is required for exploiting a country that is extremely
fertile and well cultivated.
(author’s translation)
of the French army was slowly pushing Saxe-Cobourg’s troops back and by
nightfall on 6 July they were in retreat.
Late on 7 July 1794, the imperial coalition was losing ground steadily and
William V, Prince of Nassau-Orange, and the Dutch Corps, together with the
remaining Austrian troops at Halle were forced to abandon the eld to the
French and retreat to cover Brussels and to perhaps stop the detachments of the
French Armée du Nord from getting there rst. Over to the east, Cobourg had
been pushed back to Corroy-le-Grand, Ramillies and Hottomont but his
troops could not stand.
On 8 July 1794, the French armies were before Brussels and the imperial
coalition army was in retreat towards Leuven. By 24 July 1794, Antwerp had
fallen and on 24 January 1795, Amsterdam was in French hands. e Duke of
York, with the future Duke of Wellington under his command, abandoned the
Austrian Lowlands and the French Revolutionary Empire had been created.
As for Hougoumont, it did not seem to suer too much structural damage
although it was heavily pillaged and damaged, rst by the Austrians under
Cobourg, and then by the Coalition’s Croate Chasseurs and various brigands
41
and refugees from Braine-l’Alleud – no doubt the owner, Chevalier de
42
Louville-Gomont, being an ocer of the Austrian Empire, submitted a claim
for war damages and received some restitution. It seems inevitable that the
French Revolutionary troops also pillaged the property but the evidence from
claims for the pillage of the farms of La Caillou at Vieux Genappe and Neuve
Cour at Lillois makes French reparations unlikely. e buildings at
Hougoumont were repaired and most of the personal property recovered, only
for the whole process to be repeated 20 years later!
… 1815
e Battle of Waterloo on Sunday, 18 June 1815 was part of the War of the
Seventh Coalition against Napoleon and the French Empire. Factoring in the
This is the French term for the Austrian Grenz light infantry.
41
Lucien Cecille, Philippe Charlet and Jean-Jacques Pattyn, Mont-Saint-Jean 6-7Juillet
42
1794: La victoire française à Waterloo, Historc’one Editions, Fontain-L’Evêque, 2015.
33
An interesting and ironic side note: Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke
of Wellington and the Anglo-Dutch commander at Waterloo in 1815;
Jean-de-Dieu Soult, the future Duke of Dalmatia, Marshal of France
and Napoleon’s Chief of Staff at Waterloo in 1815; Michel Ney, the
future Prince of the Moskowa, Marshal of France, and the field
commander at Waterloo in 1815; and Philibert-Guillaume Duhesme,
the Imperial Guard commander defending Plancenoit in 1815, were all
present at or involved in the 1794 campaign and the last three may
even have been at the battle of Mont-Saint-Jean.
starting muster numbers and the losses incurred between 14 June and 18 June,
at the Battle of Waterloo the French had 55,750 men on the eld, the Anglo-
Dutch had 62,225 and the Prussians later arrived with 34,950. e troops
43
started to arrive at the Mont-Saint-Jean/Waterloo battleeld in the aernoon
and early evening of 17 June at about the time that a major thunderstorm broke
over the site. Matthew Clay reports that his regiment, the 3rd Foot Guards,
44
were instructed to bivouac on the end of the ridge above Hougoumont but they
came under artillery attack and the Anglo-Dutch artillery responded. Clay
45
continues by reporting that the 3rd Foot Guards descended the slope to the
‘sunken way’ (Rue aux Loups), scrambled through the hedge and advanced
through ‘a large orchard’ to the shallow ditch that was, according to Clay,
“sheltered by a high bushy hedge-row, which separated us om the enemy, who
were close at hand”. Clay goes on to state that a Field Ocer, whom he identies
as Lord Saltoun of the 1st Foot Guards, visited them frequently throughout the
night. e 1st Foot Guards later clashed with a French patrol here at around
02h00 on 18 June.
Here we have an example of the risk incurred in relying on a source recorded
many years aer the event: Clay, in the 3rd Foot Guards, presents a strong case
for being in the great orchard and spending the night at the southern hedge and
ditch, and yet the vast majority of accounts have this position held by the 1st
Foot Guards under Saltoun with the 3rd Foot Guards being to the west of the
farm. Certainly, Clay then provides a reasonable description of re-deploying in
the morning to the west gardens, which gets him back to where his company
was and this begs the question of whether Clay’s account of being in the
orchard is a false memory or a case of becoming separated from his company in
the dark and inadvertently becoming attached to a company of the 1st Foot
Guards.
is redeployment of the 3rd Foot Guards was part of a general garrisoning of
Hougoumont and all four Light Companies from the Coldstream Guards, plus
others from the 1st and the 3rd Guards were in and around Hougoumont
during the evening of 17 June. A picket was placed at the southern end of the
southern wood and these were reinforced by the 1st company of the Field Jäger
Corps (Brunswick) and 50 men from each of the Light Battalions of the Det
Lüneburg and Det Grubenhagen Hanoverians. Some reports suggest that Lt.
Alasdair White, The Road to Waterloo, a concise history of the 1815 campaign, White &
43
MacLean, Hoeilaart, 2014.
Matthew Clay, A Narrative of The Battles of Quatre-Bras And Waterloo; With the
44
Defence of Hougoumont, edited by Gareth Glover, Ken Trotman Publishing, 2006. Clay
notes that the end of the ridge was clover and no mention of woodland is made – other
descriptions of this area also fail to mention a wooded area, leading many historians to
assume that the Bois d’Hougoumont had actually been cleared prior to 1815.
Clay is emphatic on this point and it is partly corroborated by Lt. Col. Home who talks
45
of alarms in the night but evidence of an artillery skirmish here on 17 June is scarce and
most historians do not record it. The troops most likely affected are the King’s German
Legion but nothing has come to light yet. This could be a case of inaccurate analysis of
sources, but it could equally reflect inaccurate reportage by Clay who is, unaccountably,
often taken as being a reliable eyewitness to the events.
34
Col. Macdonnell, commanding the Light Companies of the Coldstream
Guards, ordered the loopholing of the walls of the farm in preparation for its
defence.
Aer an early morning visit by Wellington, an 800-man contingent of the 1/2
Nassau Regiment was sent from the centre of the Anglo-Dutch line down to
Hougoumont under the command of Captain Moritz Büsgen with orders to
garrison the farm and policies. Orders were also sent for the Guards under
Macdonnell to re-position to the gardens to the west of the buildings (parcels 4
& 5) and those under Saltoun to withdraw to the ridge.
Captain Büsgen deployed two companies of Nassau troops, a total of 270 men,
into the southern wood to assist the 100 Brunswick Field Jäger troops and the
100 Hanoverians, bringing the total number of allied troops in the wood to
470. He also placed one company of 135 troops in the great orchard allowing
Saltoun to withdraw, and a further two companies, a total of 270 troops, in the
formal garden, immediately setting them to loopholing the walls as this had not
been done. A ring platform was also constructed by dismantling the wall
between the southern courtyard and the formal garden and using it for the
troops to stand on. Finally, he allocated his Grenadier Company of 135 men to
garrisoning the buildings, thus allowing Macdonnell’s 200 Guards to take up a
position in the gardens to the west. e area was, therefore, garrisoned by
approximately 1,210 troops: 1,010 mainly German-speaking Nassau, Brunswick
35
Fig. 26: A sketch, probably by Charles Southey who visited Hougoumont with
Edward Nash in October 1815, of the ring platform with representative gures.
Lt. Faireld in his 1836 letter (PHCR, Vol. II, p. 48) thought the rubble came
om the demolition of the wall between the garden and the buildings. e two
gures in the middle are at a loophole. is sketch is in the British Library and
the image is ‘quoted’ in the PHCR, Vol. III, p. 226.
and Hanoverian troops, with the English presence restricted to the 200 troops
under Macdonnell in the gardens to the west of the farm. e entire position
was supported by Webber-Smith’s artillery in the trees at the west end of the
ridge and Ramsey’s battery at the top of the Chemin de Braine l’alleud à
Plancenoit.
Across the valley to the south stood the troops of Baudin’s and Soye’s Brigades
of Jérôme Bonaparte’s 6th Division supported by horse artillery, while further
to the east were troops of Foy’s 9th Division. For the numbers involved, many
historians have adopted the position taken by Adkin , based on Siborne, which
46
uses the pre-campaign muster roll with no allowance for losses incurred
between 14 and 18 June – this would give exaggerated numbers for Baudin:
4,146, Soye: 3,500 and Foy: 5,200 for a total of 12,846.
But Paul Lindsey Dawson in analysing the French returns, found that factoring
in the losses radically changes this as the French had already lost around 25% of
their strength as a result of four days of ghting, including two major battles at
Ligny and Quatre-Bras. Dawson concludes that the most probable maximum
French numbers were 6th Division (Jérôme) (Baudin: 3,090 & Soye: 3,010) a
total of 6,100 and 9th Division (Foy) 3,863 for a total of 9,963. is is still a
47
very signicant number and represents a 8:1 advantage which should still have
resulted in a French victory at Hougoumont. at it did not means that we
must look for the circumstances that caused the French to fail in their
endeavour.
From the French position at an elevation of just under 130 metres above sea
level, the trees along the west wall and in the south wood almost certainly made
it impossible to clearly see the farm buildings themselves as the buildings would
have been at an elevation of 120 metres and the trees standing may have been
10-15 metres high. So, as far as the French were concerned, they were
confronted by a valley with land rising to the ridge and the entire position
thickly covered in trees. eir maps would have informed them that in the
wood was a walled farm but without being able to see it, there was no way their
ocers could assess its strength. Additionally, the artillery, which aimed by line-
of-sight, would have been unable to accurately target the position. It is possible,
however, that the two companies (batteries) of horse artillery positioned to the
west of the farm did have sight of their target and they certainly started an early
bombardment of the farm and engaged in counter-battery re with Webber-
Smith’s battery on the ridge.
e consensus opinion is that the rst shot of the battle was from English
artillery against a column of French infantry of Jérôme Bonaparte’s 6th Division
and that this took place around 11h30. It certainly initiated the rst and most
powerful French attack against Hougoumont. e lead troops were the 3,090
men of Baudin’s 1st Brigade, the 1e Légère and 3e de Ligne, preceded by
skirmishers (tirailleurs). e French artillery opened up an undirected barrage
Mark Adkin, The Waterloo Companion, Aurum, London, 2001.
46
French regimental returns analysed by Paul Lindsey Dawson late 2015 and early 2016,
47
unpublished.
36
and Baudin’s men engaged with the wood’s 470 defenders, advancing along the
north-south track that ran up almost dead straight uphill to the south gate of
the farm (see Fig. 8 on page 14). e broken and uneven ground in the wood,
the drainage gullies, together with the density of the trees and the undergrowth
must have restricted the speed of the advance and the defenders ghting in
loose order as skirmishers forced the French into ghting for every tree. e
English artillery then opened up with both shot and shell so that the rear of the
French formation was subjected to cannonade, thus further slowing the
advance. Many historians consider that the leading French troops would have
reached the northern edge of the wood in about 30 minutes, whereas
experienced modern-day soldiers feel that this is too optimistic and that 45
minutes to an hour is more likely.
As soon as they reached the northern edge of the wood, the defenders (the two
Nassau companies, the two Hanoverian half companies and the Brunswick
Field Jägers) made a rapid retreat with some entering the south gate of the farm,
some spilling around the west wall and the rest retreating eastwards into the
great orchard. As the French reached the edge of the wood they were faced with
the massive walls of the farm
and a high, dense, quickset,
hawthorn hedge which French
accounts claim as completely
obscuring the garden wall
behind it. is brought the
entire French advance to a stop
with the only way forward being
a frontal assault against the
buildings held by the Nassau
grenadiers, a westward anking
m o ve m en t a g a i n s t th e
Coldstream Guards and the
light company of the 3rd
Guards, or to force a passage through the hedge and try and take the wall that
was now defended by around 350 Nassau infantry.
Many of the French, using the hedge for protection, headed east and using the
entrance at the junction of the hedges (see Fig. 9 on page 13) forced their way
into the great orchard where they were faced by the 135 Nassau troops
stationed there together with the remnants of those that had retreated that way.
e French received enlading re from the garden wall on their le and took
heavy casualties, whilst the defenders fought in loose order from tree to tree but
were rapidly pushed back to the sunken way (Rue aux Loups) where they took
up a defensive position. Two companies of the 1st Foot Guards then joined
them and together they pushed the French back and retook the orchard.
To the west, Macdonnell and the Coldstream Guards launched a counter-attack
and drove the French back deep into the wood but were unable to expel them
completely. Büsgen reports that “e Brunswick company, aer bravely helping
repel the enemy and suering heavily, rejoined its corps on the main position”, thus
taking no further part in the defence of Hougoumont.
37
Fig. 27: “…a high, dense, quickset, hawthorn
hedge…”, this one is close to the Butte de Lion.
e distribution of forces at this point is interesting: the 1st Foot Guards held
the great orchard, the Nassau regiment held the garden and farm with the
assistance of the remaining Hanoverians, and the Coldstream and 3rd Guards
held the garden outside the west wall. Opposing them were three times their
number of Baudin’s 1st Brigade 6th Division who were mainly pinned down
behind the hedge between the south wall and the wood.
Attacking the wall was complex. Firstly, the French would have to force the
hedge: this was probably around 70 cms thick, may be two metres high and was
very probably of stock-proof hawthorn making it almost impossible to breach.
Secondly, there was a 30-metre-wide stretch of open ground between the hedge
and the wall which the French would enter slowly (because of the hedge) and
then have to cross in full sight of the defenders ring from behind the two-
metre-high wall or through loopholes. irdly, the wall was too high to escalade
easily without a breach. Finally, the south wall was approximately 200 metres in
length and the east wall about 100 metres: if the Nassau troops – now
reinforced by the defenders from the woods – working in pairs all took a
position along the wall then there would be a musket ring every 1.5 metres.
Not for nothing has this stretch of land been rather aptly called the ‘killing
zone’ by many historians. e obstacle presented by the hedge, the open
ground and the well-defended wall is almost certainly the most signicant
element in the defence of Hougoumont and which led directly to the failure
of the French to take the farm.
At around 12h30, the second French attack was in motion with Soye’s 2nd
Brigade 6th Division (1e and 2e de Ligne) attacking from the west and entering
the wood obliquely behind Baudin’s brigade. is allowed Col. Cubieres from
Baudin’s brigade to lead an attack down the west side of the farm driving the
Guards under Macdonnell back to the north where they entered the lower
courtyard through the north gate, closely pursued by around 30 Frenchmen
under the leadership of a sapper ocer. is resulted in a erce skirmish in
48
which all the attackers were killed and the north gates forced shut and barred by
a small group of ocers and men led by Lt. Col. Macdonnell himself. at this
incident took place, there seems little doubt: it is well recorded and noted,
including by Wellington himself, who attributed the success of the defence of
Hougoumont to the closing of the gate. However, the incident has become
highly mythologised and the ‘facts’ have become blurred by anecdote and
romanticised post hoc description.
During the mêlée that took place around the north gate, French skirmishers
took up position in the Pré aux (Deux) Etangs to the north of the Rue aux
Loups (sunken way) and red on Webber-Smith’s battery in the trees on the end
of the ridge above them. Meanwhile, Clay wrote of being pushed back into the
meadow and taking a position behind a stack of clover. By any standard, this
was a point of extreme danger for the Hougoumont position and three
Sous-Lieut Legros, le enfoncer, described as a huge man, is the name normally
48
associated with this incident which forms an essential element of the mythology of
Hougoumont. There was a 2nd Lt Legros in the 1e Légère but there is no reliable evidence
he was involved in the attack – it is possible, therefore, that he is a composite figure
created by mythology and false memory.
38
companies of Coldstream Guards under Mackinnon and Acheson were sent
down to relieve the pressure. A short time aerwards Woodford brought down
a further four companies in reinforcement. Clay reported that he and his
companion then entered the farmyard to take up position in the manor house.
is is the rst time in the battle for Hougoumont that the farm contained
British troops. At this stage they were in the farm buildings in the lower
courtyard, while the upper courtyard and garden were still held by the Nassau
with the remnants of the Hanoverians. e arrival of nearly 700 Coldstream
guardsmen enabled Büsgen to pull all the Nassau and Hanoverian troops into
the defence of the garden wall where he could be reinforced by the Coldstream
guardsmen, while the main body of Coldstream reinforcements would take over
the defence of the buildings. But before this tactical redeployment could occur,
the south gate was attacked, as a sergeant of No. 1 company 2nd battalion of the
Nassau Regiment wrote in a report to Lt. General Perponcher (2nd
Netherlands Division) :
49
is seems to be the same story oered by Clay except that he reports that it
50
was artillery that broke down the door. In this matter, it appears that the report
by the Nassau sergeant is more likely to be accurate as it was written in October
1815 (rather than in October 1853) and there is no supporting evidence that
the French brought artillery close to the southwest corner of the building,
although we do know that they continued bombarding the building from afar.
e time now appears to be about 14h00 and the 3,863 troops of Foy’s 9th
Division under Jamin and Tissot attacked the great orchard. ey brought up a
howitzer, which they placed in parcel 2 (l’etoile) near the southeast corner of the
garden wall and used it to re at the farm buildings to the west, setting them
alight. Saltoun and the 1st Foot Guards attempted to dislodge the howitzer
51
but were driven back by the French troops of the 93e de Ligne. Lt. Puvis of the
93e de Ligne illustrates the problem created by the southern hedge which
bounded the orchard and was blocking access to the southern wall when he
writes: “We tried in vain to pass through the hedge. We suered enormous
PHCR, Vol. II, p. 24.
49
Clay op. cit., p. 26.
50
The artillery bombardment from the southwest, which had been going on for nearly
51
three hours, failed to do much damage but when this howitzer was brought into play from
the southeast the farm buildings were quickly ablaze.
39
e enemy eventually renewed his attack, and even though
every one of us shot down an enemy, the remainder stormed
forward to the gate, quickly chopped down some trees and
crashed the gate by force. As they stormed into the courtyard,
we had to take refuge in the house, and red at them from
windows, doors and roof [so] that they toppled over each
other; the rest were chased outside with the bayonet.
losses…” . As Clay also describes this hedge as impassable, as do other writers,
52
and none seem to contradict this, it might be safe to conclude the hedge was as
surmised.
On the west side of the farm, the men of the 2e de Ligne, part of Soye’s Brigade,
attacked the west door that led into the stables of the upper courtyard as
described by the commander of the 2e de Ligne, Jean Louis Sarrand , who tells
53
what happened as they emerged from the wood and advanced:
Shortly aerwards Sarrand was incapacitated by a broken le thigh and was
eventually taken prisoner. Meanwhile, Toulouse and his men had apparently
54
entered the stables and engaged in a reght with the defenders in the upper
courtyard and surrounding buildings. Büsgen, writing some 15 years later,
claims as follows :
55
Extrait des Souvenirs historiques de Théobald Puvis, paru dans la Revue historique
52
des Armées, 1997, n° 3, pp. 101-129, quoted by Paul Dawson in a 2015 unpublished
paper entitled Hougoumont – Topography of Defeat.
Molieres and Plainville (2004) Dictionnaire des Braves des Napoléon. Paris: Livre Chez
53
Vous, Vol. 2, p. 894, quoted by Paul Dawson in a 2015 unpublished paper entitled
Hougoumont – Topography of Defeat.
Lieutenant Sylvian Toulouse, b. 7 July 1786 in Bordeaux, served in the 3rd fusilier
54
company of the 2nd battalion of the 2e de Ligne which he had joined on 28 June 1814,
discharged 26 November 1815.
Büsgen in Siborne (WL 106) quoted in PHCR, Vol. II, p. 67.
55
40
… through rolling re up to the loop-holed walls, and broke
open a small side door on the side of the buildings with the
blows from musket butts. I gave the order to the intrepid
Lieutenant Toulouse to enter with sixty men while I
advanced further with my own men to attempt to nd a
second entry point.
e enemy now for the third time made a rash attack, which
was mainly directed at the buildings. Aided by the smoke and
ames, his grenadiers forced their way into the upper
courtyard through a small side door; they were, however,
driven out again by the re from the building windows and
the advance through the lower gate and courtyard of a
detachment of the already mentioned English battalion.
Some intruders were taken prisoner, but seven of our
grenadiers were also captured by the enemy during this
action. is action, which ended about half past three
o’clock, was the enemy’s last serious attempt on the
Hougoumont position; the skirmish re, however, lasted
with hardly an interruption until the end of the battle.
e problem encountered here by historians is one of selection from a limited
number of sources all of which probably did contain false memories. ese of
Büsgen, Clay, et al, from the Allied side, are supported by the Nassau sergeant
writing earlier and their accounts match those of Purvis and Serrand from the
French side in all major respects and so it might be safe to conclude that events
were broadly as described.
As exhaustion and low levels of ammunition amongst the French brought the
battle around Hougoumont to a close, the action elsewhere on the battleeld
now focused on the cavalry attacks launched by Marshal Ney and the
subsequent arrival of the Prussians.
By the time the general advance was signalled around 19h00-19h30, the 3rd
Foot Guards had replaced the 1st Foot Guards and were successfully holding
the great orchard by counter-attacking any incursions. e Guards were then
reinforced by King’s German Legion, Brunswick and Hanoverian units who
helped clear the orchard and the wood and 1411 prisoners were taken. Ensign
Henry Montague, later Colonel-in-Chief of the Scots Guards, claimed that
e battle for Hougoumont and the greater battle of Waterloo was over.
All in all, the mythology that now surrounds Hougoumont has created a very
incomplete picture of the events of 18 June 1815 and has led earlier historians
to create and maintain a distorted account, one that downplays the
contribution of the Nassau and Hanoverian troops, provides an unrealistic and
unbalanced version of the contribution of the English guard regiments, and
underplays the eectiveness of the French. A more careful and detailed analysis
suggests that:
• initially the defenders numbered around 1,200, of which 1,000 were either
Nassau or Hanoverian, and that rose to around 2,500 when the position
was reinforced by the Guards in the mid-aernoon;
• the 1,000+ troops of the Nassau regiment, together with the remnants of
the Hanoverian detachment, garrisoned and held the farm, walled garden
and orchard throughout the attack by Baudin and the 1st brigade of the 6th
Division;
• the Coldstream Guards (Macdonnell) and 3rd Foot Guards (Wyndham)
countered the French advance in the west and the 1st Food Guards
(Saltoun) recovered the orchard;
41
… suddenly a shout arose on all sides, when, we passed out of
the ditch [the ‘sunken way’ or Rue aux Loups] and charged
across the orchard driving the French before us, and passed
another road by the gap at the le corner of the garden wall.
[the junction of the hedges, Fig. 9, page 13] e ditch had
been cut deep, and had been full of water, but when I reached
it, was completely lled with killed and wounded so as to
form a complete bridge.
• Cubiéres (1e Légère) with Soye and the 2nd brigade of the 6th Division
attacked the farm and other buildings, forcing no less than three entries
which were successfully defended against by the Foot Guards (north gate),
Nassau Regiment (south gate) and in combination (west gate);
• the walled garden was defended by the Nassau and Hanoverian troops until
around 13h30 - 14h00 when the Coldstream reinforcements arrived;
• the French artillery to the south and west did little real damage and the
farm was set on re by the howitzer brought down by Foy to the southeast
corner of the walled garden;
• the loopholing of the garden wall was rst done by the French emigres in
the Coalition forces in 1794 and subsequently by the Nassau troops in
1815.
Where are the bodies?
Historians tell us that the Battle of Waterloo was a particularly bloody battle
with a high casualty and death rate. Recent research and calculations give a
56
total of 9,386 dead and 32,192 wounded with the French suering the most.
Adkin , having accessed the Guards’ post-battle muster rolls and having made
57
some educated guesses about the Nassau and Hanoverian losses, concludes that
at Hougoumont the losses (dead, wounded, prisoner and deserted) were 847
and of these perhaps one in four were killed in the eld. is would give an
estimated 210 dead on the Anglo-Dutch side.
Using Paul Dawson’s unpublished research into the French regimental returns,
it can be argued that around 30% of the attackers were either killed or wounded
beyond further duty, which suggests losses at Hougoumont of about 3,000.
Again, taking one in four being killed, this would give perhaps around 640
French killed but Dawson’s research shows only 387 positively identied as such
Alasdair White, The Road to Waterloo, White & MacLean, 2014, pp. 82-86.
56
Mark Adkin, The Waterloo Companion, Aurum, 2001, pp. 342-343.
57
42
Fig. 28: is rather ‘romantic’
and stylised 1816 watercolour by
James Rouse, published by H.
Coburn, Conduit St, London in
18 1 6 s h ow s b od ie s b ei n g
prepared for cremation outside
the south gate. Basically, the
bodies were placed on wood,
covered with more and the whole
lot ignited.
although a further 882 were ‘missing’, a signicant number of which may have
been killed on the battleeld. Care should be taken when considering the
number of dead as recent research has shown that eyewitnesses experienced
enormous trouble in accurately estimating the ‘body count’ of either dead or
wounded, and tended to err on the side of over-estimation. A total combined
death toll of 600-850 would, however, appear appropriate with the vast
majority falling victim to musketry.
Initially, the dead were buried where they fell but over the following days and
months, the bodies were brought together for communal burial and the
documentary record, together with the work of Denis Dighton, the ocial war
artist, and others, indicate that many of the bodies were burned at two main
sites: one to the south of the south gate, (Fig. 28 above), and the other just north
of the large pond in the houblonnière (the hop eld) outside the north gate (Fig.
29 below).
It is very possible that
a burial site is also
loc ate d n ear the
jun cti o n o f th e
hedges outside the
southeast corner of
the garden wall as a
signicant number of
French fell there as
m e n t i o n e d b y
M o n t a g u e ( s e e
above)
43
Fig. 29: is watercolour is by Denis Dighton. e north wall of the farm is
shown in the image with the surviving stables against the east (garden) wall. e
depression in the middle of the image behind the tree is the large pond in the
houblonnière or hop eld and the brick entrance in the near slope is probably an
overow drain for it. e gure on the extreme ont le appears to be holding up
a uniform recovered om a body and the dark mound that is smoking in the
bottom le has bones protruding om it and represents a pyre for the bodies
collected om the north of the farm. e other gures are recovering more bodies.
Fig. 30: e two red circles
on the le are sites known to
have had cremation pyres as
illustrated in Figs. 28 & 29,
whereas the one on the right
is a matter of log ical
d e d u c t i o n b u t n o
archaeological evidence has
yet been uncover e d to
support this.
Hougoumont in an uneasy peace – 1815-2015
Chevalier de Louville-Gomont sought war reparations but whatever he was
oered was insucient to allow for repair or rebuilding. Unable to restore the
property, the 86-year-old de Louville-Gomont decided to sell and on 7 May
1816 the formal conclusion of the sale to Count François Xavier Jean-Marie de
Robiano was recorded and the extract from the cadastral (Map 1 on page 7)
dated 12 July 1816 shows that the land records had been updated. e sale price
was 40,000 francs, which is estimated as being worth 385,000 euros today.
58
Another event in 1815 was to have a huge impact on Hougoumont aer the
battle. In April 1815, the volcanic Mt Tambora in Indonesia had erupted in one
of the largest eruptions in the last 10,000 years, initiating a catastrophic global
climate deterioration with worldwide temperatures falling by 0.4-0.7ºC,
creating what became known as the ‘Year without a Summer’ in 1816 and
ushering in what Gillian D’Arcy Wood called a
59
Wood goes on to explain that with up to 130 days of rain in 1816, the crops
failed across Europe, resulting in major food shortages, and the rural poor
ocked to the towns and cities in desperation. In Belgium, cool summer
temperatures and heavy winter rain caused the 1816 and 1817 harvests of
potatoes, wheat and oats to fail and the worst famine of the 19th century was
only just averted. Riots broke out, oen brutally repressed, across the whole of
Europe. Typhus, a disease closely correlated with famine and poverty, became
epidemic from 1816-1819 and it is estimated that 200,000 people across the
continent died, either of starvation or typhus. Conditions and harvests did not
return to ‘normality’ until aer 1818. It is interesting to note that, despite the
deteriorating weather, some memoirs by visitors recorded that the piles of ash
from the burning of the bodies still existed in 1816 and even later.
60
According to the Banque de France, one gold franc in 1800 contained 290.32 mg of
58
fine gold. On 22 October 2015 gold was valued at €33.17/g making a one-franc gold
piece worth €9.63.
Gillian D’Arcy Wood, 1816, The Year without a Summer, BRANCH: Britain,
59
Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, Ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Extension of
Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net. Web. [accessed 22/10/2015]
For example, the Edinburgh Horticultural Society visiting in the summer of 1816
60
reported that locals “…pointing to a circular heap of earth mixed with ashes, resembling
the remains of a great bonfire, called to us, “Voyez, Messieurs les Anglais, là, six cents
Français furent brulés tous ensemble”. PHCR Vol. III.
44
… three-year period of severe climate deterioration of global
scope … With plummeting temperatures, and disruption to
major weather systems, human communities across the globe
faced crop failures, epidemic disease, and civil unrest on a
catastrophic scale.
In this catastrophic economic and agricultural crisis, de Robiano, having
written in January 1817 to his monarch, Willem I of the Netherlands,
requesting 59,000 francs (568,170 euros today) in war reparations and receiving
nothing, started the clear felling of the south wood. e entire wood had been
felled, cleared and ploughed into arable land by 1820 with a formal change of
usage from woodland to arable land recorded by the cadastral (see Map 2 on
page 8). With no reparations forthcoming from the state, de Robiano then
made no attempt to re-build or restore any of the buildings along the north and
east walls of the farm complex, nor did he attempt to rebuild the destroyed
manor house. He simply repaired the other farm buildings, including the great
barn and the buildings around the upper courtyard, and roofed them mainly in
cheap local terracotta tiles rather than expensive Ardenne slate.
In 1819, once the impact of the Mt Tambora eruption had waned, harvests
returned to some form of normality and there are reports that potatoes, wheat,
oats and rye grew abundantly in the land that now contained so much animal
matter and fertile deposit in the form of blood and dead bodies. But the return
to rural fecundity and tranquillity was not to last.
In 1830, the mainly Catholic United Belgian Province of the Netherlands
rebelled against their Protestant overlords and what they saw as the despotic
rule of Willem I of the Netherlands. On 25 August 1830, bloody riots erupted
and Brussels became ungovernable, forcing the Crown Prince, Willem of
Orange (later Willem II of the Netherlands), to leave the city. e Crown
Prince negotiated with the burghers of Brussels and recognised the need for a
major reform but his father rejected this and sent in troops to retake the city –
this resulted in bloody street ghting from 23-26 September with the burghers
in the ascendant, forcing the army to withdrew northwards. On 4 October
1830, a declaration of independence was made and, on 20 December 1830, a
conference in London brought together the ve major European powers of
Austria, Great Britain, France, Russia and Prussia, each of whom recognised the
outcome of the revolution and ‘permanently g uaranteed Belgian
independence’. On 4 June 1831, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg was chosen
61
as the new state’s ruler and he took the oath of oce on 21 July 1831.
62
King Willem I of the Netherlands refused to accept the situation and invaded
Belgium in August 1831. e Dutch had some initial success before France
stepped in and a French army under Marshal Gérard brought order to the
country, nally forcing the Dutch out in December 1832. e Dutch formally
accepted the situation seven years later and signed the London Treaty in 1839.
e Belgian Revolution had an immediate impact on the fortunes of
Hougoumont as its owner, François Xavier Jean-Marie de Robiano, took the
opportunity to advance his position and became a member of the revolutionary
It was the German Kaiser’s breach of the final 1839 version of this declaration and
61
guarantee that was the reason why WWI started when the Germans invaded Belgium in
1914.
21 July is, as a result, Belgium’s National Day on which there are parades, a military
62
display and a public holiday.
45
1830-1831 National Congress. en, with the formation of the new Belgian
State, he became the Provincial Governor of Antwerp before becoming a
Senator, a post he held until his death in 1836. As a full-time politician in a new
state, de Robiano devoted almost all of his time to his new career, thereby
enriching himself, and establishing his relatives as one of the leading families of
the post-revolutionary Belgium.
It seems that de Robiano, having got a farm tenancy agreement in place, simply
allowed the Hougoumont buildings to deteriorate and the ruins of the manor
house to collapse over time. In 1835, only the lower parts of the manor house
walls remained standing and even these had gone by 1838 with only the lower
section of the tower, which had stood on the southeast side of the house and
abutting the chapel, remaining along with the chapel itself. In 1860, the farm
was again subject to re but there is little evidence of what was burnt.
Photographs published in 1905 show that very little of the tower remained and
only the bottom two to three metres of the dovecot over the farmyard well were
visible.
All in all, a vast quantity of burnt wood and a huge volume of brick and stone
were removed from the farm complex, possibly as much as 40% of the
construction materials of the entire place. e wood would have been used for
fuel, initially to burn the bodies but aerwards for heating. e masonry, on the
other hand, was almost certainly ‘recycled’ into the building of homes as the
nearby towns of Braine-l’Alleud and Mont-Saint-Jean were expanded. However,
that which was not utilised in either of these ways would have been buried on
the property and this has been conrmed by the excavations carried out by
Waterloo Uncovered in 2015.
63
With the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution taking the money and
attention away from agriculture and the benign indierence of its absentee
landlord, Hougoumont reverted to being a small farm of declining importance.
With Belgian GDP (gross domestic product) rising by 1.1% in the period
1820-1850 compared to 1% for Britain, 1.1% for France and <1% for the rest
64
of the region, the country had a rapidly industrialising and urbanising
population that created a food supply crisis in which supply was barely
matching demand. Agriculture was of growing importance but investment into
agricultural development was low and, lacking evidence to the contrary, it
seemed that Hougoumont was no exception. e formal garden had now
become overgrown and heavily wooded by the late 1840s and it seems probable
that the orchards became less productive with ageing trees and reduced
demand.
What was in demand were cereals, for bread, and potatoes, which by the
beginning of the 1840s accounted for some 14% of Belgian arable land. en,
in 1845, came the rst wave of phytophthora infestans or potato blight.
Just as the detritus of the 2013-2015 renovation was similarly buried where the pond in
63
the hop field had been.
Eric Vanhaute et al., The European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative
64
perspective, University of Ghent, 2006.
46
is infection reduced the potato yield by 87%, a devastating amount that led
to an estimated 40-50,000 deaths in Flanders and northern Wallonia. is was
coupled with a dramatic drop in rye yield (-50%) and a less severe drop in wheat
yield (-10%). In other northern European countries, notably Ireland where one
million deaths occurred and over two million people emigrated, famine and
severe food shortages occurred and this continued until 1849 and later.
By 1870, the Hougoumont formal garden had been cleared and turned into
pasture but photographic images of the period show the wall still in place,
although in a severely degraded condition externally, with much of its height
gone – one photograph shows the wall barely taller than 1.75 metres. e
loopholes, a prominent feature of earlier watercolours, paintings, sketches and
early photographs, do not appear in photographs from the turn of the century,
suggesting that the wall had, by this time, been rebuilt.
An examination of the wall in
2015, which included measuring
the height, the width and the
distance above the ground of
each loophole, together with a
survey of their position in the
wall suggests that the current
lo op ho le s had n ot be en
constr uc ted for def ensi ve
purposes as was commonly
thought; the spacing would have
been more regular and the
height above the inside ground
would have been more similar
(they range from 77 cms to 162
cms with an average height
above the inside surface of 114
cms).
Figure 31 shows the south
wall from the southeast
corner (great orchard) and
appe ars fr om i ts t yp e,
graininess and colour to date
from the immediate post
WWII era; it can be seen that
all the trees inside the garden
have been felled. is is
indicative of the 1939-1945
period when rewood was in
short supply, especially at the
end of war – replacement
p la nt in g wa s g en er a ll y
47
Fig. 31: Hougoumont’s south wall looking up
into the ‘killing zone’ – the remnants of the
hedge are on the right. is picture is om a
collection om around 1904, many of which
became postcards.
Fig. 32: e south wall circa 1950s. Photo ꊯ
Ian Knight
restricted to the 1950s and in the case of the Hougoumont garden, it was 1965
before this happened.
Notice should be taken of the fact that there are no distinctive loopholes
framed by white stone, except for perhaps one, and that the three dark
rectangular areas near the corner may be re-lled loopholes.
Figure 32, below, taken around 2010, shows that the trees in the garden have
grown and the dark patches in the wall, which broadly match those in the black
& white photograph in Fig. 14 and could well be bricked-up loopholes, do not
seem to accord with the
current loopholes. Neither
photo graph shows much
evidence of loopholes and yet
there are 17 in this wall today.
Other old photographs show
signs of signicant rebuilding
of the wall and as recently as
2015 extensive lengths of wall
have had to be completely
rebuilt. It is almost certain,
therefore, that the entire wall
has been rebuilt and the loopholes seen today are 20th and 21st-century
additions for touristic purposes. Close inspection shows that the majority of
the bricks used are of quite recent manufacture, although some from 1815 still
exist. Anecdotal evidence from Comte Guibert d’Oultremont suggests that the
southern half of the east wall (seen to the right of Fig. 32) was completely re-
built by the Belgian military in the 1960s.
e year 1870 saw Belgium once again in the unfortunate position of being
involved in a war between greater powers: in this case, the Franco-Prussian War.
Fortunately, neither Germany nor France wished to risk involving Great
Britain, which insisted that the 1839 London Treaty still held and that they
would become involved to protect Belgian independence. e result was that
although the Belgian Army stood to arms until 1871, no ghting occurred on
Belgian soil.
In 1882, Charles Buls, Mayor of Brussels, proposed providing a site at the Evere
Cemetery in Brussels in which to inter the British ocers and NCOs (non-
commissioned ocers) whose graves were then in a variety of locations in and
around Brussels and Waterloo. is revived interest in the events of 1815 and in
1888 a prestigious subscription fund was launched in Britain to raise the
necessary money. e design of the monument was entrusted to a Belgian artist,
Jacques de Lalaing, and the monument was unveiled on 26 August 1890.
Seventeen corpses were transferred there and reinterred.
65
See http://napoleon-monuments.eu/Napoleon1er/1815WaterlooEvere_EN.htm for a set
65
of excellent photographs of the memorial and further information.
48
Fig. 33: e south wall om the same place as
Fig. 32 but around 60 years later. Photo ꊯ
Wade Krawczyk
e dedication of the memorial acted as a spur to a general revival of interest in
all things relating to the battle and, combined with the ease of travel with the
spread of railways, greater discretionary disposable income, and the general, if
illusionary, geopolitical calm, tourists began reappearing in signicant numbers
on the battleeld and at Hougoumont. e renewed interest in events 100 years
previously resulted in Col. Edward J.P.F. Macartney-Filgate of the Royal Irish
Ries working closely with Comte Charles van der Burch and his wife Alix de
Robiano, granddaughter of François Xavier de Robiano, the then owners, to
place a plaque on the wall of the chapel at Hougoumont in 1907 to
commemorate the Guards who fought there. e plaque was inaugurated in the
presence of the British Ambassador, Sir Arthur (Henry) Hardinge.
66
Over the following 100 years, many other plaques and memorials have been
erected and placed at Hougoumont. With the plaque erected by the Grand
Duke of Luxembourg (Hereditary Duke of Nassau) in 2015, just about all the
units that fought there (including the French) were now commemorated.
e story of Hougoumont in the 20th century is one of any other farm in the
fertile region of Wallonia but with the added twist that it saw German and
British troops in World War Two, Belgian troops at various times and is now
the centre of a robust tourist industry based around the events of 1815. In this
latter capacity it plays host to the bivouac for the volunteers who re-enact the
Battle of Waterloo on frequent occasions.
Hougoumont remained a tenanted working farm into the 21st century but it
had been in steady decline over a long period as a result of absentee landlords
who had little interest in farming, a lack of investment for modernising the
facilities or the farming techniques, and no interest from the Belgian authorities
in the patrimony of the battleeld. When the last tenant farmer retired in 2002,
he le behind an ineective farm with decaying buildings that no one wanted
to take over. Eventually the owner, Comte Guibert d’Oultremont, decided to
sell it to the newly interested regional authority, which bought it and 11
hectares from him for €1.49 million and allowed it to deteriorate dangerously
until it had to be fenced o as a matter of public safety. e farming rights were
taken up by other local farmers and the farm complex became an eyesore.
In due course, with the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo on the horizon, a
proper basis for Hougoumont, and the rest of the battleeld patrimony, was
established, some €3.5 million was raised by Project Hougoumont and the
67
renovation carried out. e château-ferme d’Hougoumont, re-born, was
ocially opened to the public on 17 June 2015 in the presence of HRH Prince
Charles, Prince of Wales, and e Duchess of Cornwall, Princess Astrid of
Belgium, the Grand Duke and Duchess of Luxembourg, Prince Pieter-
Christian of the Netherlands, the Duke of Wellington, Prince Blücher, Prince
Charles Napoleon and many other dignitaries.
There is an interesting article, in French, about this at http://www.freepub.be/doc/
66
La_plaque_des_Foot_Guards.pdf
www.projecthougoumont.com
67
49
Hougoumont uncovered
In late 2014, an agreement was established between the SPW , who are
68
responsible for all archaeological investigations in Wallonia, and a group of
British archaeologists seeking to conduct archaeological investigations on the
Battleeld of Waterloo, which resulted in the formation of the Belgo-British
‘Waterloo Uncovered’ project . e Archaeological Directors for project are
69
Prof. Tony Pollard, Director of the Centre for Battleeld Archaeology at the
University of Glasgow, and Dominique Bosquet of the Service public de
Wallonie.
It was decided that the initial focus would be on Hougoumont and the project,
which now included the University of Ghent, used advanced geophysical
investigative techniques, LIDAR, and detailed historical research before
opening test trenches in April 2015. Having established the eectiveness of
their approach, a major dig was conducted in July 2015 and again in 2016. e
results can be found on the ‘Waterloo Uncovered’ website and in ocial
publications .
70
www.wallonie.be/fr/guide/guide-services/1133
68
www.waterloouncovered.com
69
See Bosquet D., Pollard T., De Smedt Ph., Evans M., Eve S., Foinette Ch., Mollo T.,
70
Van Meirvenne M & White A., 2015a. Le projet “Waterloo Uncovered” : quand
l’archéologie revisite l’histoire, Namur, SPW Éditions, Les Cahiers Nouveaux, p.88-91 and
Bosquet D., et al, 2015b. Le projet “Waterloo Uncovered” : quand l’archéologie revisite
l’histoire, Namur, SPW Éditions, Pré-actes des Journées d’archéologie en Wallonie
(Rochefort 18-20 novembre 2015), Série Rapports archéologie, 1, p. 151-154 together
with www.waterloouncovered.com
50
Alasdair White
Alasdair White is a behavioural economist, business school professor and
historian, a member of Project Hougoumont, a battleeld expert with 20 years
of guiding experience, and the author of four books about the Battle of
Waterloo and the 1815 Belgium Campaign. He is the historical consultant to
the Belgo-British ‘Waterloo Uncovered’ archaeological project and lives a few
hundred metres from the Battleeld of Waterloo itself. He is a Fellow of the
Higher Education Academy in the UK and a Fellow of the International
Napoleonic Society.
His publications include:
Managing for Performance – Piatkus Books, 1995
Continuous Quality Improvement – Piatkus Books,1996
e Essential Guide to Developing Your Sta – Piatkus Books, 1998
From Comfort Zone to Performance Management – White & MacLean, 2008
Shadows (writing as Alex Hunter) – White & Maclean, 2009
Managing Academic Performance – White & MacLean, 2011
Retribution (writing as Alex Hunter) – White & MacLean, 2014
June 1815: e Belgium Campaign (with Marc Fasol) – Renaissance du Livre,
2014
e Road to Waterloo – White & MacLean, 2014
Dancing in the Time of War – White & MacLean, 2015
Napoleon and the Belgium Campaign – De Rouck, 2015
51
Index of Figures and Maps
Page
Number
Figure
Number
Description/Caption
Page 1
Fig. 1
Satellite image of Hougoumont and its policies, orientated with north at
the top. Google Earth server, 1 October 2015.
Page 3
Fig. 2
e Hougoumont tower house may have looked like this without the later
addition on the right of the picture. e barn is to the le.
Page 4
Fig. 3
is extract is from the 1777 Ferraris map showing the Bois
d’Hougoumont to the north astride the Nivelles road, the farm and walled
garden, and the geometric arboretum to the southeast together with the
south wood. e brown areas indicate contours with the lighter brown at
the bottom of the slope. Orientated with north at the top.
Page 5
Fig. 4
e original plan that was prepared and then attached to the 1816 sale
contract. is is orientated with north at the bottom.
Page 6
Fig. 5
e reconciliation handshake between the 9th Duke of Wellington, Prince
Charles Bonaparte, a descendent of Prince Jérôme Bonaparte, and Prince
Blücher von Wahlstatt, a descendant of the Prussian Field Marshal. Photo
ꊯ Reuters, 2015.
Page 7
Map 1
Cadastral map dated 12 July 1816 – private d’Oultremont collection. e
map shows the Brussels-Nivelles road to the north (bottom of the map), a
public road with an avenue of trees leading up to the building complex and
another running northeast along the northern boundary.
Page 8
Map 2
Cadastral map dated 30 June 1820 – private d’Oultremont collection. e
orientation of this map has been reversed so that the top of the map is to
the north – compare this with the 1816 map above in which north is at
the bottom.
Page 10
Fig. 6
Extract from Ferraris 1777.
Page 10
Fig. 7
Extract from Cadastral 1820.
Page 12
Fig. 8
is LIDAR (ground penetrating radar) image of Hougoumont clearly
shows the design of the walled garden used rectangles for two-thirds of its
length with an etoile at the east end. is conrms the layout shown by
Ferraris and the cadastral maps. e feature marked ‘pathway' is the Rue
aux Loups, while the area marked ‘ditch' is a natural drainage channel. e
four features marked ‘?’ at the top are brick-edged landscaped features
from when this was an ornamental garden. e feature marked ‘?’ to the
middle le is the remains of the deux etangs. Both the garden and the
ponds ceased to exist in the 1960s. Infography ꊯ D. Bosquet SPW-DPat,
2015.
Page 13
Fig. 9
An extract from Map 2 showing in detail the junction of hedges at the
southeast corner of the garden wall and the entrance to the great orchard
(upper right).
Page 14
Fig. 10
Extract from Map 2 showing the Hougoumont buildings with north to
the top.
Page 15
Fig. 11
e south range viewed from the east side of the manor house. e chapel
is to the right of the picture and the garden wall to the le.
52
Page
Number
Figure
Number
Description/Caption
Page 16
Fig. 12
e west end of the south range.
Page 16
Fig. 13
e south end of the west range viewed from the manor house.
Page 17
Fig. 14
is watercolour by James Rouse was painted in 1816-1817 for Mudford’s
Historical Account of the Campaign in the Netherlands published in 1817.
It shows the ruin of the manor house aer the Battle of Waterloo which
took place on 18 June 1815.
Page 18
Fig. 15
e highly-engineered drain and sump running east to west from inside
the east range stabling.
Page 19
Fig. 16
A surveyor’s plan of the chateau-farm buildings, drawn in 1899 but
showing, in paler pink, the buildings destroyed during the battle on 18
June 1815. is plan has been digitally overlaid onto the Google Earth
satellite image and found to be accurate for the remaining buildings but
the dimensions of the lost buildings in the north farm courtyard are
possibly 20% too large. Belgian Military Museum archive.
Page 20
Fig. 17
is black and white print is a modern and rather romanticised
interpretation of what the buildings might have looked like viewed from
the southeast. e south gate is to the upper le, the north gate can be seen
on the upper right/centre and the formal walled garden to the lower right.
Artist unknown.
Page 21
Fig. 18
An example of a mixed boundary hedge on an embankment. is is on
similar soil to Hougoumont and is located on the other side of the
battleeld at Papelotte, 3 kms to the east.
Page 21
Fig. 19
is hedge is just one metre thick although three metres high. Mainly
hawthorn with a few other species, it is opaque in mid summer (this
photograph was taken in June 2016), completely stock-proof, and is both a
visual and physical barrier.
Page 22
Fig. 20
e 250-year-old remains of the hedge between the walled garden and the
strip of orchard to the north.
Page 22
Fig. 21
e area of the oset junction discussed above. e farm track is clearly
visible to the right with the ditch to its le. e dyke is directly under the
fence line. e fence post to the bottom le is a little east of where the
original hedge line became oset to the le of the picture. e great
orchard, parcel 9, is to the upper le of the picture.
Page 23
Fig. 22
e sweet chestnut (castanea sativa) trees at the edge of what was the south
wood. e two on the right are dead, the large one is damaged but alive,
and the one on the le, planted by the 8th Duke of Wellington in the
1970s, is ourishing. e road through the wood came out between the
two trees on the le. Photo ꊯ Marc Fasol.
Page 24
Fig. 23
is woodland on similar soils and topography to what would have existed
at Hougoumont in 1815. e French traversed this type of woodland in
1815. Experienced serving soldiers have estimated that it would have taken
them between 40 and 90 minutes to cover the 400 metres involved against
a spirited defence and under bombardment.
Page 24
Fig. 24
e south gate of Hougoumont showing the sloping ground to the bottom
le – this area has now been levelled and has a concrete hard-standing on
it. It is interesting to note that trees of some considerable age line the track
to the west of the farm.
Page 25
Fig. 25
e main cereal crops from le-right – rye, barley, wheat.
53
Unless otherwise stated, all photographs are ꊯ Alasdair White. e old
watercolours, maps and other graphics illustrated are in the public domain but
where possible, the source has been quoted.
Page
Number
Figure
Number
Description/Caption
Page 35
Fig. 26
A sketch, probably by Charles Southey who visited Hougoumont with
Edward Nash in October 1815, of the ring platform with representative
gures. Lt. Faireld in his 1836 letter (PHCR, Vol. II, p. 48) thought the
rubble came from the demolition of the wall between the garden and the
buildings. e two gures in the middle are at a loophole. is sketch is in
the British Library and the image is ‘quoted’ in the PHCR, Vol. III, p. 226.
Page 37
Fig. 27
“…a high, dense, quickset, hawthorn hedge…”
Page 42
Fig. 28
is rather ‘romantic’ and stylised 1816 watercolour by James Rouse,
published by H. Coburn, Conduit St, London in 1816 shows bodies being
prepared for cremation outside the south gate. Basically, the bodies were
placed on wood, covered with more and the whole lot ignited. Note the
loopholes in the garden wall and the walls and roofs of the buildings.
Page 43
Fig. 29
is watercolour is by Denis Dighton. e north wall of the farm is shown
in the image with the surviving stables against the east (garden) wall. e
depression in the middle of the image behind the tree is the large pond in
the houblonnière or hop eld and the brick entrance in the near slope is
probably an overow drain for it. e gure on the extreme front le
appears to be holding up a uniform recovered from a body and the dark
mound that is smoking in the bottom le has bones protruding from it
and represents a pyre for the bodies collected from the north of the farm.
e other gures are recovering more bodies.
Page 43
Fig. 30
e two red circles on the le are sites known to have had cremation pyres
as illustrated in Figs. 28 & 29, whereas the one on the right is a matter of
logical deduction but no archaeological evidence has yet been uncovered
to support this.
Page 47
Fig. 31
Hougoumont’s south wall looking up into the ’killing zone’ - the remnants
of the hedge is on the right. is picture is from a collection from around
1904, many of which became postcards.
Page 47
Fig. 32
e south wall circa 1950s. Photo ꊯ Ian Knight
Page 48
Fig. 33
e south wall from the same place as Fig. 32 but around 60 years later.
Photo ꊯ Wade Krawczyk
54
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Anselme, Michel, Ed, Hesbaye Namuroise (Centre d’histoire de l’architecture et du batiment),
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Bosse, Jean, in Glanures au l du temps – Bulletin de l'Association du Musée de Braine-l'Alleud,
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M & White A., 2015a. Le projet “Waterloo Uncovered” : quand l’archéologie revisite l’histoire,
Namur, SPW Éditions, Les Cahiers Nouveaux
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_t-20030409-Z0N100.html and other sources
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55
Rosner, Lisa and eibault, John, A short history of Europe 1600-1815: search for a reasonable
world, Routledge, London, 2015.
Siborne, William, Waterloo Letters
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Vanhaute, Eric, et al., e European subsistence crisis of 1845-1850: a comparative perspective,
University of Ghent, 2006
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MacLean, Hoeilaart, 2014
Willems D., Braine-l’Alleud/Braine-l’Alleud : investigations archéologiques à l’emplacement de
l’ancien chateau d’Hugoumont Chronique de l’archéologie wallonne, 23, p. 32-35, 2015.
Willems D., Un passé réveillé à la ferme d’Hougoumont, Namur, SPW Éditions, Pré-actes des
Journées d’archéologie en Wallonie (Rochefort 18-20 novembre 2015), Série Rapports
archéologie, 1, p. 103-105, 2015.
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maintains memorials and monuments in Belgium commemorating the Napoleonic period
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56