The Bremervörde Battalion of Hew Halkett's Hanoverian Militia Brigade

 

Lt Col Frederich Von Schulenberg’s Bremervörde’s Battalion is now complete.  

At Waterloo, Halkett commanded four battalions of Hanoverian landwehr. These units were organised into the 3rd Hanoverian Brigade of Clinton's 2nd Division. Halkett's brigade was held in reserve on the right flank for most of the battle. After the defeat of the Imperial Guard, Wellington sent Halkett to pursue the disintegrating French forces. He is remembered for capturing General Cambronne.

After Waterloo, Halkett stayed in the Hanoverian service. He rose to be a general and inspector-general of infantry. He led a Federal Army Corps in the Prussian-Danish War of 1848, and defeated the Danes at the battle of Oversea.

His brigade account of the day is as follows:

"Towards 12 noon on 18 June the enemy began the battle with a vigorous attack at the right flank on the Hougoumont farm and its small wood. Around two o`clock our brigade was ordered to advance in deployment column, but after moving forward about 300 to 400 paces, it had to return to its previous position. Apparently a dangerous situation involving our forward lines had been brought under control without our assistance. At about half past three o`clock, our cavalry posted on the left flank of the main line had been driven back, and our brigade was therefore forced to immediately form square. When soon thereafter our cavalry had reformed and taken up its former position, we stood again in line, the apparent danger having been averted.

At around five o`clock the vanguard of the Prussians arrived and, as it seemed, drove into the enemy’s right flank. After six o`clock the Prussians received reinforcements, and now the entire line of the English army advanced in pursuit of the fleeing enemy. The brigadier, Major General Halkett, now took the Osnabrück and Salzgitter Battalions under his personal command, and put the remaining two battalions to the disposition of Lieutenant Colonel von der Schulenburg, (now deceased). The Bremervorde and Quackenbruck Battalions were then separated from the two already mentioned ones and advanced to the height of the Hougoumont farm without meeting an enemy. During the night from 18 to 19 June, they camped on the battlefield near the border of the small wood at Hougoumont. On the next morning they united again with the other two battalions.

Since we were part of the reserve, we did not become involved in a fire fight. But during 18 June our brigade was exposed to an almost continuous heavy cannonade, from which our battalion lost two officers and, I believe, sixteen men, most of whom from my own company, namely one officer and ten men.

Without doubt, the number of killed and wounded would have been much higher, had not the earlier rainy weather softened the soil, so that the canon balls etc. had lost much of their lethal force that these could have kept by bouncing off a hard soil surface."

Like the last one, this square was worked on by my team colleague in Australia who has agreed to complete the whole of Hew Halkett's Brigade.  I hope you would agree that he has done a fine job.

The square is shown here with its sister battalion:

Von Schulenburg, the commander of the Bremerorde Battalion at Waterloo had many military descendants, one of whom took part in the Stauffenburg plot to assassinate Hitler in 1944.

Other conspirators included Helmuth von Moltke, Johaness Popitz, Ulrich Hassell, Ludwig Beck and Carl Goerdeler met at the home of Peter, Graf Yorck von Wartenburg, names redolent of more honourable times for Germany's military.  As with so many of his co-conspirators, von Schulenburg was brutally murdered on the orders of Hitler.