smash through the centre once he had pounded it with his massed artillery. It didn’t work out like that, though, and instead Hougoumont soaked up thousands of French troops, while the line just about held against every infantry and cavalry attack thrown against it.
The story of Hougoumont has been told many times in history books, which today could fill an entire library, but archaeology has brought fresh insight, and provided new perspectives on what was almost a battle within a battle. Excavation of the remains of buildings in the north courtyard, which were burnt out during the fighting and later demolished, has provided a more accurate impression of the space as it existed in 1815. The barn near the north gate was wider than contemporary plans indicate, and its western gable wall, in conjunction with the end of the barn running along the western side of the yard, created a narrow bottleneck just inside the north gate. It was in this confined space that French troops found themselves after breaking through the gate in one of the most famous incidents of the battle. Many were probably cut down here by concentrated musketry before they had chance to move into the main part of the courtyard.
The gates were famously closed by British Guardsmen, and it is the Coldstream Guards that usually take the credit for this action, which Wellington himself said saved the day. The regiment’s presence was highlighted by the discovery of one of their buttons in the charred debris of the building during excavation in 2017, a find that delighted the Coldstream Guards working as part of the team. However, a more balanced picture was provided in 2019, when not only were more Coldstream buttons recovered, but also a number of Scots Guards buttons, the presence of both probably indicating tunics that had been removed, possibly from men injured during the fighting, and abandoned in the building, which before the end of the day suffered the ravages of fire.
Archaeology at Hougoumont has also shed light on the nature of the French attack against the southern wall of the garden, which had loopholes for muskets inserted into it by the defenders. Here, in an area of open ground that had to be crossed by the French before they reached the wall, metal-detector survey has provided a detailed picture of both the attack and defence. Fortunately for archaeologists, it is possible to distinguish between the two, as French musket balls are slightly smaller than the most common calibre of Allied musket shot, fired from the Brown Bess. Concentrations of musket balls have indicated where attacks were made, with some of the French shot distorted from impact and ingrained with brick dust. Survey on the other side of the wall has demonstrated that some of the French got over it, and were then probably killed in a desperate firefight in the garden. This is an incident entirely missing from British
ABOVE Metal-detecting in the killing ground just beyond the southern wall (visible in the background) of the garden at Hougoumont. Recovery was maximised by removing spits of soil and then detecting the freshly exposed surfaces. LEFT In this image, the metal-detected areas in the killing ground and garden show how different types of musket balls provide a picture of the fighting. Since this distribution plan was created in 2016, further areas have been surveyed.
32
CurrentWorldArchaeology
Issue 100