Crisis and the French collapse

Between 5:00 and 5:30 pm Ney depleted the remaining strength of his cavalry in desperate attempts to pierce the British front. At 6:00 pm, after the final cavalry attack, Ney finally ordered forward the 6,000 infantry who had been standing idle less than a mile from Wellington’s front. They were met by heavy artillery and small arms fire and were soon driven back with 25 percent losses. In response to fresh orders, Ney finally captured La Haye Sainte. A battery brought up to the farm began to take a deadly toll on the British centre just 300 yards (270 metres) away. Three of the depleted divisions that had launched the first main assault of the battle advanced to the ridge, where a desperate hand-to-hand struggle ensued. The decisive hour of the battle had arrived. The French had to overcome Wellington’s army before the arrival of another Prussian corps tipped the balance of forces against them. Wellington’s reserves were almost exhausted: heavy casualties and a wave of desertions left the centre virtually open to any intensification of the tired French attack. On Wellington’s extreme left the French had captured Papelotte for the second time, and to the right bitter fighting continued at Hougoumont. Until Hans Ernst Karl von Zieten’s I Corps, then near Ohain (3 miles [5 km] away), arrived, the duke had no reinforcements. Ney noticed the wavering of Wellington’s depleted centre and sent a request to the emperor for a small infantry reinforcement. Napoleon refused for the time being to give him any of the 14 Guard battalions that were being held in reserve. He was too preoccupied by his right flank—where Duhesme had just been driven out of Plancenoit by the Prussians—to appreciate the crisis in the allied centre. Two battalions of the Old Guard were ordered to Plancenoit, which they captured, pursuing the Prussian defenders 600 yards (550 metres) to the east, and Duhesme and the Young Guard reoccupied Plancenoit.

A little after 7:00 pm, his flank now secured, Napoleon turned to the main front. Although he had ordered six battalions of the Guard to join Ney only a few minutes after the recapture of Plancenoit, Wellington had been given 30 minutes’ respite to reorganize his defenses. Zieten had at last come up on the British left, freeing infantry and cavalry to shore up Wellington’s threatened centre. Wellington then cleared the exhausted French from the ridge before they could be reinforced by the Guard and silenced the battery at La Haye Sainte. Instead of taking the shortest route up the Brussels road, which offered considerable cover, Ney led the five battalions that took part in the assault across the unprotected slopes. Five battalions, even of such excellent and determined troops, could not hope to prevail for long against the numbers of men and guns which lay in their path. The flight of the survivors of the assault was the signal to the troops in their rear and on their right that the battle was lost, and a wholesale and disorganized withdrawal began. The Prussians had concentrated overwhelming numbers at Papelotte, and on the French right wing the retreat became a rout. At about 8:15 pm, 15 minutes after the defeat of the Guard, Wellington ordered a general advance. Tremendous confusion was created in the area around La Belle Alliance, where the bulk of the French army was driven by the converging British and Prussian offensives.

At 9:15 pm Blücher and Wellington met in front of La Belle Alliance, greeting each other as victors. It was decided that the Prussians should continue the pursuit. Blücher halted with Bülow’s corps at Genappe, some 5.6 miles (9 km) to the southeast, from which dense crowds of fugitives had been driven. With 4,000 men, Gneisenau conducted the chase as far as Frasnes (11 miles [18 km] south of the Waterloo battlefield), driving hordes of panic-stricken French before him. The overwhelming victory had been won at heavy cost. Wellington’s casualties were 15,000, and Blücher’s were about 8,000. Napoleon lost 25,000 men killed and wounded and 9,000 captured.

Abandoning his broken army, Napoleon returned to Paris on the morning of the June 21 and abdicated the following day. On July 5 and 6 the French army began a reluctant march south of the Loire River, where it was later disbanded. The allies entered Paris on July 7, and Louis XVIII was restored the next day. Napoleon journeyed to the west coast, and, when he found his plans for escape to the United States frustrated by a British naval squadron, he surrendered himself to the commander of the HMS Bellerophon on July 15. He spent the remainder of his life in exile on the island of St. Helena.