Battle of Waterloo

• 1. Introduction

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  On Sunday the 18th of June 1815, near a small Belgian village called Waterloo, Napoleon I fought his last battle. By the time the guns fell silent that evening, roughly a century of near-constant European warfare would begin its long unraveling, and a phrase would enter everyday language that endures to this day: "meeting one's Waterloo," meaning a catastrophic and final undoing.

  Wellington, who commanded the British-led coalition forces that day, later called it "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." He was not being modest. For several hours that afternoon, at a farmhouse called La Haye Sainte and a chateau called Hougoumont, the outcome genuinely hung in the balance. Napoleon was at times winning. And then, all at once, he was not.

  How did a battle that Napoleon nearly won become the decisive end of his empire? What roles did a fire in a Belgian town, an overheard conversation at an inn, and a cavalry charge that went too far play in shaping those hours? And why did the Prussians, who had been defeated just two days earlier, arrive in time to tip the scales?

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• 2. The Stakes of June

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  On the 13th of March 1815, six days before Napoleon even reached Paris, the powers assembled at the Congress of Vienna had already declared him an outlaw. Four days after that declaration, the United Kingdom, Russia, Austria, and Prussia mobilised their armies. Napoleon's return from exile had triggered the formation of the Seventh Coalition almost before he had set foot in his capital.

  Napoleon understood his position clearly. Critically outnumbered in the long run, his only viable path was to strike before the coalition could fully assemble. By June he had raised a total army strength of around 300,000 men, but the force actually at his disposal near Waterloo was less than a third of that figure. What those men lacked in numbers they compensated for in experience and loyalty.

  His strategic goal was bold. If he could destroy Wellington's and Blücher's armies south of Brussels before they were reinforced, he might push the British back to the sea and knock Prussia out of the war entirely. That would buy him time to recruit, train, and then turn his armies eastward against the Austrians and Russians. He also calculated that a French victory might inspire French-speaking sympathisers in Belgium to rise in his favour.

  To keep Wellington off balance, Napoleon spread false intelligence suggesting that the British supply chain from the English Channel ports would be cut. Wellington, whose initial dispositions were oriented toward a threat from the southwest, took the bait long enough to matter. Only very late on the night of the 15th of June was Wellington certain that the French crossing near Charleroi was the main thrust.

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• 3. Two Days Before Waterloo

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  In the early hours of the 16th of June, Wellington received a dispatch at the Duchess of Richmond's ball in Brussels. He was shocked by the speed of Napoleon's advance. He hastily ordered his forces to concentrate at the crossroads of Quatre Bras, where Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar was holding a fragile position against Marshal Ney's left wing.

  The crossroads very nearly fell before Wellington arrived. General Constant de Rebeque, commanding a Dutch division, had disobeyed Wellington's orders to march toward Nivelles and instead held the crossroads, sending urgent messages to rally reinforcements. Had he followed orders, Quatre Bras would almost certainly have fallen to the French, opening a fast road south to support Napoleon's attack on the Prussians.

  Wellington eventually arrived, took command, and drove Ney back, securing the crossroads by early evening. But it was too late to help the Prussians. That same day, at the Battle of Ligny, Napoleon defeated Blücher. The Prussian centre gave way under heavy French assaults. Critically, however, the Prussians did not retreat east along their own supply lines. Instead they fell back northward, parallel to Wellington's line of march, remaining within supporting distance and in communication with him throughout.

  On the 17th, Wellington withdrew northward to a defensive position he had personally reconnoitred the previous year: the low ridge of Mont-Saint-Jean, south of the village of Waterloo and the Sonian Forest. Napoleon, making a late start, joined Ney at Quatre Bras at 13:00 only to find the position already empty. The French pursued, but bad weather, mud, and Wellington's head start meant there was no substantial engagement. As the 17th drew to a close, Wellington was in position. Blücher's army was gathering around Wavre, about 8 miles to the east.

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• 4. The Armies at Dawn

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  Napoleon's Armée du Nord at Waterloo numbered around 74,500 men: roughly 54,000 infantry, 15,800 cavalry, and 8,775 artillery personnel serving 254 guns. He had not used conscription for this 1815 campaign. His troops were mostly veterans, fiercely devoted to their Emperor. The cavalry was particularly formidable, including fourteen regiments of armoured heavy cavalry and seven regiments of versatile lancers armed with lances, sabres, and firearms.

  One critical weakness ran through the French structure. As the army took shape, officers were allocated to units as they presented themselves for duty, meaning many soldiers were commanded by officers they did not know and often did not trust. Some of those officers had little experience working together. Support between units, when tested, was often not forthcoming.

  Wellington commanded 74,326 men: about 53,600 infantry, 13,400 cavalry, and 5,600 artillery operating 156 guns. Of these, just under 28,000 were British, another 7,600 came from the King's German Legion, with Dutch-Belgian, Nassauer, Hanoverian, and Brunswick forces making up the remainder. Wellington himself had described his force as "an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced Staff." The British battalions were undermanned, though the French battalions averaged 145 fewer muskets than the British equivalent.

  The Prussians brought around 48,000 men to the Waterloo battlefield, arriving in stages across the afternoon. Their army was in the midst of reorganisation, with many Landwehr militia regiments arriving untrained and unequipped. Their saving grace was a professional general staff trained across four dedicated schools to work to a common standard. That system had allowed three-quarters of the Prussian army to concentrate for battle with just 24 hours' notice before Ligny. After the defeat at Ligny, the same staff organisation allowed the army to realign its supply train, reorganise, and intervene decisively at Waterloo within 48 hours.

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• 5. Hougoumont and the Hidden Pivot

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  Historian Andrew Roberts has noted that no one is absolutely certain when the Battle of Waterloo actually began. Wellington recorded that at "about ten o'clock" Napoleon commenced a furious attack on Hougoumont; other sources place the opening assault around 11:30.

  Hougoumont was a large, well-built country house on the extreme right of Wellington's line, initially hidden among trees and supplied along a sunken covered lane the British called "the hollow-way." Napoleon's plan was for Jerome's division to make an initial feint attack on it, expecting Wellington to send reserves to protect his flank and communications. Instead, Hougoumont consumed French resources all day.

  The most dramatic moment came early. Sous-Lieutenant Legros, a French officer, broke open the north gate of the house with an axe. A party of French troops poured into the courtyard. The Coldstream Guards and Scots Guards rushed to close the gate against the stream of men still entering. In the fierce melee that followed, the gate was shut. Every Frenchman trapped inside the courtyard was killed.

  Fighting raged around Hougoumont for the rest of the day. Napoleon personally ordered the house shelled to set it on fire, destroying all of it except the chapel. Napoleon directed 33 battalions, totalling around 14,000 troops, toward Hougoumont and its surroundings over the course of the afternoon. Wellington, for his part, committed 21 battalions, or around 12,000 troops, to keeping the hollow-way open for supplies and reinforcements. Wellington later stated that "the success of the battle turned upon closing the gates at Hougoumont."

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• 6. The Cavalry's Fatal Hour

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  At around 13:15, Napoleon spotted the first Prussian columns near the village of Lasne-Chapelle-Saint-Lambert, 4 to 5 miles away. He estimated they were about three hours march from his right flank. He sent a message to Marshal Grouchy, who had been ordered to pursue the Prussians toward Wavre, telling him to head for Waterloo. Grouchy's subordinate Gérard urged him to "march to the sound of the guns." Grouchy followed his written orders instead, and the message ordering him to move toward Napoleon would not actually reach him until after 20:00.

  A little after 13:00, d'Erlon's I Corps attacked in huge columns, some 14,000 men across a front of about 1,000 metres. By two o'clock in the afternoon, as the French line pressed the British back along the Ohain road, Napoleon was winning the battle. Baron von Müffling, the Prussian liaison officer with Wellington, reported that after 3 o'clock the Duke's situation had become critical unless Prussian reinforcement arrived soon.

  At the crucial moment, Lord Uxbridge ordered his two brigades of British heavy cavalry to charge from behind the ridge. The Household Brigade and the Union Brigade, together around 2,000 effective sabres with Uxbridge himself at their head, swept downhill. The charge was spectacular. The Royal Dragoons captured the eagle of the 105th French regiment. The Scots Greys seized the eagle of the 45th regiment. These would be the only two French eagles taken by the British during the entire battle.

  But the cavalry could not stop. Officers lost control of their men. The Scots Greys and the rest of the Union Brigade found themselves blown and disordered before the main French lines. Napoleon ordered a counter-attack by cuirassier brigades and Jaquinot's lancer regiments. General William Ponsonby, commanding the Union Brigade, was captured. A party of Scots Greys tried to rescue him. The French lancer who had taken Ponsonby killed him, then killed three of the Scots Greys who had come to his aid. The official recorded losses for the two heavy cavalry brigades were 1,205 troopers and 1,303 horses.

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• 7. La Haye Sainte Falls

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  The farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, garrisoned by 400 light infantry of the King's German Legion, had held the centre of Wellington's line for most of the day. At approximately the same time as Ney's combined-arms assault on the centre-right, rallied elements of d'Erlon's corps renewed the attack on the farmhouse. This time they succeeded, partly because the King's German Legion's ammunition had run out.

  With La Haye Sainte taken, French skirmishers and horse artillery moved within 60 yards of the very centre of the Anglo-allied army. French artillery began firing canister at close range into the infantry squares. The 30th and 73rd Regiments suffered such heavy losses they had to merge to form a viable square. Wellington had the colours of the 33rd Regiment and all of Halkett's brigade sent to the rear for safekeeping, a measure historian Alessandro Barbero described as "without precedent."

  Colonel Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von Ompteda was ordered to lead a single battalion of the KGL back down the slope to recapture the farmhouse. He obeyed. French cuirassiers fell on his open flank, killed him, destroyed his battalion, and took its colour. A French battery advanced to within 300 yards of a Nassau square, causing heavy casualties. When the Nassauers tried to drive off the battery, cuirassiers rode them down.

  Wellington himself was trapped inside an infantry square. The 27th Foot, the Inniskillings, lost two thirds of their strength in the three or four hours after La Haye Sainte fell, pinned in square formation under French fire, unable to break formation because of the cavalry surrounding them. Wellington later wrote of waiting for the Prussians: "The time they occupied in approaching seemed interminable. Both they and my watch seemed to have stuck fast."

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• 8. The Guard Breaks

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  Bülow's Prussian IV Corps was the first to arrive in strength, with General Bülow noting at 16:30 that the way to Plancenoit lay open. The village of Plancenoit sat directly behind the French right flank and threatened Napoleon's only line of retreat. Napoleon sent Lobau's corps to stop Bülow, then dispatched all eight battalions of the Young Guard to reinforce Lobau. The Young Guard counter-attacked, secured Plancenoit, and were then counter-attacked and driven out again. Napoleon sent two battalions of the Middle and Old Guard into Plancenoit to hold the position.

  As the Prussian pressure on the French right intensified, Napoleon gambled everything on a final assault by the senior infantry battalions of the Imperial Guard, his most feared reserve. Wellington's infantry responded by forming squares across the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge. Captain Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery, commanding six nine-pounders, kept his battery firing through the attacks because he judged the Brunswick troops on either side of him too shaky to hold if he withdrew to shelter. He described the effect: "Nearly the whole leading rank fell at once; and the round shot, penetrating the column carried confusion throughout its extent."

  With the Prussians breaking through on the French right and the Imperial Guard repulsed by the Anglo-allied line, the French army disintegrated. The rout was total. Napoleon abdicated four days after the battle. Coalition forces entered Paris on the 7th of July. The defeat at Waterloo ended the First French Empire and set what historians have called a historical milestone between serial European wars and the decades of relative peace that followed, often referred to as the Pax Britannica.

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