Battle of Waterloo

OK, this is something we all learn about at school, but until you've been there, I don't think you can have any idea what was involved.

The main battle was fought on 18 June 1815 and we all know that the Duke of Wellington's army beat Napolian's, but did you know:

The battle was waged three miles south of the town of Waterloo in the villages of Braine-l’Alleud and Plancenoit along the Mont Saint Jean Ridge. While the French referred to the military clash as the “Battle of Mont Saint-Jean,” it became known in most of the world as the “Battle of Waterloo” because the Duke of Wellington, who led the victorious forces, made his headquarters in the village of Waterloo. Napoleon never set a foot in Waterloo.

This was the coaching house Wellington stayed in the night before the battle. It's now a museum and has many interesting artifacts inside though it's not very big and when I was there the builders were in doing some restoration work.

Napolian stayed at a farm house about 8 km to the south. It is also a museum and is even smaller than Wellington's museum but still worth seeing if you want to get an overall view of the battle.

The most impressive museum is the new underground one at the Lion's Mound to the south of Waterloo, where the actual battle took place. The mound was built a few years after the battle and is well worth walk up to see the surrounding landscape.

The round building is the Panorama and contains a 360 degree painting of the battle field. Very impressive...

The main museum, as I said is underground and is vast, containing more than you can hope to take in. So, give it a go but get there early to avoid the bus loads of tourists and try to work out how to use the audio tape before you start!

Did you know heavy rain fell upon the region around Waterloo on the night before the battle. Napoleon’s artillery was among his greatest strengths, but the French emperor feared that the soggy and muddy conditions would bog down the advance of his men, horses and heavy guns. Hoping that the ground would dry, Napoleon waited until midday to launch his attack. The delay would prove costly as it ultimately allowed Blucher’s Prussian army to join the fight before the French could defeat Wellington’s forces.

You probably know, the Duke of Wellington was British, but the army he led into battle was a multi-national force. British troops represented only one-third of Wellington’s army, and the majority of those soldiers were Irish, Welsh and Scottish. (Wellington himself was born in Ireland and of Anglo-Irish ancestry.) Approximately half of Wellington’s forces hailed from German states, and Dutch and Belgian soldiers fought in sizable numbers as well. In addition to Wellington’s army, more than 50,000 Prussians under Marshal Blucher arrived at the battlefield in the late afternoon and turned the tide of the fight.

Following the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon returned to Paris, where he was forced to abdicate on June 22, 1815. He fled to the coastal city of Rochefort, from where he likely intended to sail to the United States, which had just concluded its own war with Great Britain. “You must have heard of the new misfortune of the emperor,” wrote one of Napoleon’s relatives to another in the wake of his abdication. “He’s going to the United States, where we shall all join him.” British ships, however, had blockaded Rochefort, and the former emperor did not want to risk the potential embarrassment of being caught hiding on board a vessel. With his passage to the United States blocked, Napoleon surrendered to a British warship on July 15, 1815, and three months later he was exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena, where he lived out his final six years until his death in 1821. Napoleon’s brother Joseph, the deposed king of Spain, was able to make safe passage to the United States from another French port and lived in New Jersey for 15 years. Fleeing Bonapartists also established the short-lived Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama as a safe haven.

Within hours of the battle’s end, locals employing pliers as well as small hammers and chisels began to remove the front teeth from tens of thousands of soldiers lying dead on the battlefield. With demand for human teeth high, the looters sold the pilfered teeth to dethem into dentures. According to England’s National Army Museum, English dentists did nothing to conceal their sources, advertising the dentures as “Waterloo teeth” or “Waterloo ivory.” Even by the time of the Civil War, English dentists continued to do a brisk trade importing the teeth of fallen soldiers, still referred to as “Waterloo teeth.”Napoleon Bonaparhe peace treaty agreed to between France and the European powers in November 1815 reduced the size of French territory and required the defeated country to pay an enormous indemnity over the course of five years. In recognition of his servic, eParliament awarded the Duke of Wellington 200,000 British pounds, equivalent to 15 million British pounds today, according to the Royal Engineers Museum.