A slight skirmishing between the French tirailleurs and English light troops had continued throughout the morning, but the advance of a division of the second corps, under Jerome Buonaparte, against the post of Hougomont, was the signal for the British artillery to open, and was, in fact, the commencement of the battle of Waterloo. The first gun fired on the 18th was directed by Sir George Wood upon Jerome’s advancing column; the last was a French howitzer, at eight o’clock in the evening, turned by a British officer against the routed remains of that splendid army with which Napoleon had begun the battle. Hougomont[301] was the key of the duke’s position, a post naturally of considerable strength, and care had been taken to increase it. It was garrisoned by the light companies of the Coldstream and 1st and 3rd Guards;[302] while a detachment from General Byng’s brigade was formed on an eminence behind, to support the troops defending the house and the wood[303] on its left. Three hundred Nassau riflemen were stationed in the wood and garden; but the first attack of the enemy dispersed them. To carry Hougomont, the efforts of the second corps were principally directed throughout the day. This fine corps, thirty thousand strong, comprised three divisions; and each of these, in quick succession, attacked the well-defended farm-house. The advance of the assailants was covered by a tremendous cross-fire of nearly one hundred pieces, while the British guns in battery on the heights above, returned the cannonade, and made fearful havoc in the dense columns of the enemy as they advanced or retired from the attack. Although the French frequently occupied the wood, it afforded them indifferent shelter from the musketry of the troops defending the house and garden; for the trees were but slight, and planted far asunder. Foy’s division passed entirely through and gained the heights in the rear; but it was driven back with immense loss by part of the Coldstream and 3rd Guards.[304] At last, despairing of success, the French artillery opened with shells upon the house; the old tower of Hougomont was quickly in a blaze; the fire reached the chapel, and many of the wounded, both assailants and defenders, perished miserably there. But still, though the flames raged above, shells burst around, and shot ploughed through the shattered walls and windows, the Guards nobly held the place, and Hougomont remained untaken.[305] It was computed that Napoleon’s repeated and desperate attacks upon this post cost him eight thousand men. The British lost fourteen hundred.