"

 Dubious sentence 

""Consequently, Ney now organised a combined arms (infantry, artillery and cavalry) attack on La Haye Sainte, which fell as the defending King's German Legion troops ran out of ammunition. Ney then moved artillery up to the allied centre and began to pulverise the infantry squares.[73]""

This is the final sentence of the French Cavalry attack section.

There seem to be several things wrong with it: first, attacking a building with cavalry is pointless, be they with infantry or not, second, field artillery have little effect on reasonably stout (like Belgian farmhouses) buildings, apart from shells setting them alight (which is what happened to the Chateau de Goumont, to little effect).

I think two events are being conflated here.  

Having become obvious that the cavalry on their own were achieving little, Ney organised a combined arms attack, using Bachelu's Division (Reille's Corps) and the remaining French cavalry in a fit enough state, towards the centre of Wellington's position, this was halted by the Household Brigade cavalry led by Uxbridge (who couldn't break the French infantry formations, and consequently the British cavalry then fell back). Uxbridge then tried to lead the Dutch-Belgian heavy cavalry into the attack but they refused to charge.  Meanwhile, Bachelu's men and their cavalry supports were being hard hit by artillery fire and eventually fell back themselves.  

Simultaneously, or thereabouts, elements of D'Erlon's Corps renewed the attack on La Haye Sainte, and were ultimately successful.

 

If you can reference all of that, be bold and put it in! - 

 Done (I'm bloody, bold and resolute - in Shakespeare's words ;)  ) 

 Artillery 

One omission and one challenge. 

We should say something about Wellington's tactic of having his gun crews seek shelter in the infantry squares during the cavalry attacks. There is also Mercer's account of not doing so because he reckoned if his men ran for the Brunswick squares next to them, the Brunswickers would run too. He gives a great eyewitness account of what happened to cuirassiers when you fired canister at them at point-blank range, too. 

Now the challenge. What's the source for there being only 54 guns in the Grand Battery? French ""batteries"" (field brigades, or companies, perhaps, more correctly) had eight guns. There should have been either 48 or 56, i.e. 6 or 7 batteries, as otherwise it would imply at least one incomplete unit, or that some weapons were detached for some reason. I don't recall any suggestion from elsewhere that that happened. Were there perhaps 54 guns east of the Brussels road?  

Adkin, p. 296, has forty two 6lb, eighteen 12lb cannon, and six 6in and fourteen 5.5in howitzers - eighty pieces of ordnance in total from 10 artillery companies (of 8 pieces each).  This is for the period 1:00 to 1:30 pm.

6th Foot Artillery: 9th, 10th, 11th, 19th and 20th companies

8th                4th company

2nd                7th company

Marines of the Guard Foot Artillery: 2 companies (undifferentiated)

Old Guard Foot Artillery: 6th company.

 

Thanks - and those figures are consistent with what I know of French artillery organisation, i.e. each 8-gun foot artillery company had 6 guns and two howitzers. Your source shows 20 howitzers in total which says they had the howitzers of 10 companies, hence 80 guns - so it ties in. The eighteen 12-pounders would be the guns of three companies and the six 6in howitzers would have been theirs.

I wonder if someone miscounted by adding up just the guns and forgot to include the howitzers? That would get you close to 54 guns. Or perhaps 54 guns is what they had left after the Union Brigade got done with them.  

I vote we change it. At present the article implies that there was a 54-gun battery which covered the entire length of Wellington's position, and that this dilution of fire accounted for its relative ineffectiveness.  

By all means change it.  

Format
In my internet explorer is the formating of the page rather strange. The text begins very late, almost beneath the infobox. Can this be changed, so that the article looks better?  01:36 CEST 6 September 2007  —Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|uns