It is a Walloon fortified farm of brick and stone, with its closed courtyard, chapel, orchard and wood, set forward of the allied right. Wellington placed there companies of the Guards and Nassau troops: as long as Hougoumont held, the French army could not turn his right wing without exposing itself.
The attack began around eleven and never stopped. Towards midday a group of Frenchmen led by Sous-lieutenant Legros, nicknamed the Smasher, forced the north gate and got into the courtyard; Colonel Macdonell and a handful of men shouldered the gate shut and killed every attacker inside except an eleven-year-old drummer. The farm burned in the afternoon but did not fall.
What was meant as a diversion absorbed the whole day and part of Reille's corps: fourteen thousand men committed to a secondary objective. Wellington would later write that the success of the battle had turned on the closing of the gates of Hougoumont.
The site nearly vanished. Ruined and gutted, it was saved by an international project launched in 2011: the chapel, the barn, the walls and the orchard were restored and the place reopened in 2015 for the bicentenary, with a visitor route and a memorial to the soldiers. It is the point at Waterloo where one best understands what close combat in 1815 actually was.
