Qualla: Hougoumont

Hougoumont: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. It was the corporal who got his shoulder against the gate. James Graham of the Coldstream Guards, helping a handful of officers shove against the iron-hinged north door of a farm in the Belgian countryside on the afternoon of 18 June 1815, while French soldiers of the 1st Légère pressed from the outside and a French sous-lieutenant named Legros, axe in hand, had already chopped his way in. Get the gate shut, and a small British garrison holds. Leave it open, and Napoleon punches through Wellington's right flank. The Château d'Hougoumont sits below an escarpment near Braine-l'Alleud, a walled compound of house, barns, chapel, and orchard, and for one long day it was the hinge on which the Battle of Waterloo turned. Wellington said so himself, afterward, in plain words: the success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont.

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Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Hougoumont: A Manor with a Mission

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. Before Waterloo, Hougoumont was just a working manor with a long memory. The name traces back to a 1356 mention of the "tenure and house of Gomont" in the seigneury of Braine-l'Alleud, and to a 1358 record in the allodial court of Brabant. By 1777, when Count Joseph de Ferraris d...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hougoumont: Napoleon's Long Diversion

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Paul Hermans, CC BY-SA 3.0. The plan was supposed to be simple. Napoleon would feint at Wellington's right, draw the British reserve toward Hougoumont, and then drive his weight through the centre near La Haye Sainte. Maréchal de Camp Pierre Bauduin led the first French brigade forward in late morning; the ...

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Image: Paul Hermans | CC BY-SA 3.0

Hougoumont: The Well, the Wood, and Victor Hugo

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. In Les Misérables, Victor Hugo describes 300 bodies thrown down a well at Hougoumont. It is one of the most famous images of Waterloo in literature, and it is almost certainly wrong. When Derick Saunders excavated the well in 1985, he found no human remains. What is harder to dis...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Hougoumont: The Gates, Two Centuries On

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage, CC BY-SA 4.0. Hougoumont remained a working farm into the late 20th century, but by 2006 the walls that had once been a clean white had turned a dirty yellow, and the door post on the north gate — the gate — was visibly damaged. Project Hougoumont took up the rescue, backed by the then Duke of...

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Image: User: (WT-shared) Jpatokal at wts wikivoyage | CC BY-SA 4.0