Below is from Robert Kershaw's "24 Hours At Waterloo". He is describing Marshal Neyes' fatal cavalry charge. Having overrun Wellington's artillery, the French heavy cavalry pursued British gun crews and their protection over the crest of the ridge only to be confronted by infantry regiments formed into formidable squares.
"It was a well-known and scientifically proven fact that it is not in the nature of horses to ride roughshod over human beings, particularly if they are shouting and stabbing from behind a phalanx of bayonets. The only recourse was to get so close that if the horse went down, the momentum of the fall might collapse a small part of the square. Dying horses, thrashing around, made it impossible for infantry to remain in line, which was why horses were immediately and ruthlessly dispatched with shot and bayonet when it occurred. Both man and horse baulked short of these squares. One British witness described the impossibility of directing a horse ‘against the terrible face of the infantry square, more resembling a living volcano than any phalanx of human intervention.’ The impetus of the charge could not be maintained. ‘The animal becomes bewildered with terror, and wheeling round, in spite of rein and spur, rushes from the unequal conflict.’ Both man and horse instinctively recoil from death."
Robert Kershaw, 24 Hours At Waterloo, 18 June 1815: Eyewitness Accounts From the Battle. Casemite Publishers (2014) p. 234.
This is a great read. We think warfare today is nasty business but it pales in comparison to the sheer brutality of early 19th century large scale face-to-face combat.
