A ball in Brussels on the eve, interrupted by news that the French had crossed the frontier (15 June 1815)
Byron described it in Childe Harold: 'There was a sound of revelry by night.'
History · Revolutions & empires
The Battle of Waterloo
18 June 1815
The end of the Hundred Days and of Napoleon's career
Napoleon, back from Elba, marched north to beat the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies before they could combine. On a Sunday in June, south of Brussels, Wellington held a ridge all day against French assaults while Blücher's Prussians fought their way onto the French right flank. The Imperial Guard's final attack was repulsed at dusk and the French army disintegrated. Napoleon abdicated four days later and died in exile on St Helena.
How to spot them
- ▸A ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean south of Brussels, with a walled farm on the right and another astride the highway
- ▸A duke who never lost a battle facing an emperor for the first and only time
- ▸Prussians under an old field marshal arriving from Wavre in the late afternoon
- ▸A duchess's ball in Brussels on the eve; a mound topped by a lion raised afterwards
What happened
Two actions fought on the same day two days before, at a crossroads and at Ligny (16 June 1815)
Ligny was Napoleon's last victory; Blücher was ridden over by cavalry but rejoined his army.
A walled château and orchard on the allied right, held all day by the Guards
Wellington said the outcome turned on the closing of its north gate.
A farmhouse astride the Brussels highway whose King's German Legion garrison ran out of ammunition
Its fall in the late afternoon nearly broke the allied centre.
Marshal Ney's massed cavalry charges against unbroken infantry squares (18 June 1815)
Ney had five horses killed under him; he was executed for treason in December 1815.
'La Garde recule' — the repulse of the Emperor's last reserve at dusk
The Middle Guard's failure triggered the collapse of the whole French army.
A 43-metre artificial mound crowned by a cast-iron lion, raised on the battlefield in the 1820s
Built where the Prince of Orange was wounded; Wellington is said to have complained it had spoiled his battlefield.
Quick-fire facts
- •Fought on 18 June 1815 near Waterloo, then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and now in Belgium
- •Wellington commanded a multinational Anglo-Allied army; Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher led the Prussians
- •Marshal Grouchy, detached with about a third of the French army, failed to prevent the Prussians reaching the field
- •Wellington called it 'the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life'
- •'Up, Guards, and at them!' is the traditional version of his order to the Foot Guards, though he later doubted the wording
- •Napoleon abdicated on 22 June, surrendered to HMS Bellerophon in July and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821
- •The Second Treaty of Paris, signed on 20 November 1815, formally ended the war
- •Wellington's horse was Copenhagen; Napoleon's favourite mount was Marengo
- •Teeth taken from the dead were sold as dentures and became known as 'Waterloo teeth'
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Sources
- National Army Museum — The Battle of Waterloo
- Fondation Napoléon — History of the Two Empires: the Hundred Days