Waterloo, Belgium

• 1. Introduction

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  Waterloo, Belgium, is a small municipality of roughly 29,700 people tucked just south of Brussels, covering a little over 21 square kilometers of Walloon countryside. Its name was written down for the first time in 1102, designating a hamlet on the edge of the Sonian Forest. Nine centuries later, the name Waterloo still carries a weight far exceeding its modest size. On the 18th of June 1815, the First French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte met the allied forces of seven nations on fields just outside this town, and the outcome changed the course of European history.

  But the story of Waterloo is not only a single afternoon of cannon fire. What kind of place had existed here for centuries before that battle? What transformed a medieval waystation for coal merchants into one of the wealthiest towns in Wallonia? And why does Waterloo today house the European headquarters of Mastercard, several international schools, and the former residence of a Belgian royal family? The road from a hamlet sheltering bandits to a cosmopolitan enclave near Brussels is longer and stranger than the battle alone suggests.

• 2. Crossroads and Coal

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  In 1102, Waterloo was described not as a town but as a point on a map: the limit of the Sonian Forest, along the road linking Brussels to Genappe and a coal mine to the south. Travelers and merchants, particularly those hauling coal north, needed a place to rest and guard against bandits. Waterloo was that place. The crossing at the heart of the old hamlet survives today as the intersection of the Chaussee de Bruxelles with the Boulevard de la Cense.

  The political world around this waystation shifted over centuries. Waterloo sat inside the Duchy of Brabant, created in 1183 with Leuven as its capital. Brussels took that capital role in 1267 and later became the capital of the Burgundian Netherlands in 1430. Waterloo moved with its rulers, not always willingly.

  By the late 18th century, the region was under the Holy Roman Empire. The 1789 French Revolution sent tremors through the area, and reform attempts designed to quiet enlightenment-inspired unrest failed. In 1794, French forces invaded and swept away the region's Ancien Regime, dismantling monasteries, their records, and the privileges of the nobility in one blow.

  Before French rule, Waterloo was split into two distinct pieces: Grand-Waterloo, tied to the parish of Braine-l'Alleud under the Bishopric of Namur, and Petit-Waterloo, linked to Sint-Genesius-Rode under the Bishopric of Mechelen. The French reorganized this into a single municipality, pulling together Petit-Waterloo and three former hamlets: Grand-Waterloo, Joli-Bois, and Mont-Saint-Jean. The population at the time of this reorganization stood at 1,571 in 1801, a figure that would more than double to 3,202 by 1846.

• 3. The Battle of 1815

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  On the 18th of June 1815, the armies of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Seventh Coalition clashed in fields just outside Waterloo. The coalition's forces drew from Prussia, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau. Two commanders led the allied side: the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal von Blucher.

  Napoleon's defeat here ended the War of the Seventh Coalition and sealed his fate as a ruler. The battle did not take place in Waterloo proper but near it, which is why the town's name, rather than any other local place-name, became permanently attached to this moment in European memory.

  One of the most visited reminders of that day stands at the spot where a musket ball struck William II of the Netherlands in the shoulder during the fighting, knocking him from his horse. A massive earthen mound was raised on that ground after the battle and topped with a stone pedestal bearing a lion statue, its gaze directed toward France. Visitors can climb the 226 steps to reach the top and look out over the battlefield itself.

  Near the Lion's Mound, other memorials cluster: the Battle Panorama Mural, the Wellington Museum, and the Roman Catholic Church of St. Joseph, where Wellington is said to have prayed before the battle. British and Dutch plaques remembering the fallen now line its interior walls.

• 4. The Argenteuil Estate

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  In 1831, Ferdinand De Meeus, a member of the Belgian nobility, acquired roughly 250 hectares of land in the Sonian Forest and gave the estate the name Argenteuil. The first Chateau d'Argenteuil was built in 1835, destroyed by fire in 1847, and rebuilt between 1856 and 1858 using a design by Belgian architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar. The surrounding lands were laid out by Edouard Keilig.

  In the 1920s, the De Meeus family incorporated the estate into a company called Domaine d'Argenteuil SA. In 1929 they sold 145 hectares of that land to American businessman William Hallam Tuck. Tuck and his Belgian wife, Hilda Bunge, hired New York architect William Delano to design a second major residence on the grounds, the Chateau Bellevue, which became known informally as the Chateau Tuck.

  The Chateau d'Argenteuil passed to a community of Carmelite Sisters in 1940, exchanged for their properties in Uccle, Brussels. The sisters found it unsuitable and left in 1947. The Belgian government took ownership in 1949, and in 1950 used it to relocate a French-speaking all-female normal school from Laeken, the site being prepared for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. The chateau's bedrooms were converted into dormitories for boarders. Later government school buildings were added on the grounds.

  In 1990, the Scandinavian School of Brussels, known as Queen Astrid School, purchased the chateau and moved in by 1992. From September 2016, the European School of Bruxelles-Argenteuil joined them on the same site. Today Argenteuil also hosts the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel and Den norske skolen i Brussel, making this former noble estate one of the more unusual concentrations of international education in Belgium.

• 5. Royalty, Diplomacy, and a Singing Nun

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  The Chateau Bellevue followed its own separate path after 1949. The Belgian government acquired it that year, originally intending it for the national rail company, the SNCB. In 1958 it served as lodgings for distinguished visitors to the Brussels World's Fair. From 1961 onward it became the official residence of King Leopold III and his wife Princess Lilian, a role it held until her death in 2003. During European debates about a proposed constitution, there were discussions about converting the chateau into a residence for a potential President of the European Union, a position that was being proposed but never fully established as envisioned. The Belgian government sold the Chateau Bellevue in September 2004.

  In September 1959, a young woman named Jeannine Deckers joined the Missionary Dominican Sisters of Our Lady of Fichermont, headquartered in Waterloo. She took the name Sister Luc-Gabrielle, and would later become internationally known as The Singing Nun.

  More recently, on the 2nd of February 2018, Waterloo confirmed that Carles Puigdemont, the former president of Catalonia, had rented a villa in the commune and intended to establish his official residence there.

  In 1960, Count Ludovic de Meeus d'Argenteuil sold thirty hectares of the remaining Argenteuil estate to the Dames de Berlaymont, a religious community forced to vacate Brussels after their properties were acquired by the Belgian state to build a European Commission headquarters. The nuns established a convent and boarding school on those Waterloo grounds, adding another layer to the town's long relationship with European institutions displaced from the capital.

• 6. A Town in Full

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  Waterloo today is divided into six districts: Faubourg Ouest and Faubourg Est straddling the Chaussee de Bruxelles, Chenois to the west of the railway, Centre, Joli-Bois to the south, and Mont-Saint-Jean to the north of the battlefield. Nearly a fifth of the registered population, some 5,640 residents, hold non-Belgian nationality. Many work for institutions or companies in Brussels, which functions as a political hub of the European Union. The largest non-Belgian groups by nationality are French, Italian, British, American, and Swedish.

  Waterloo is home to the European headquarters of Mastercard. The commercial strip called Petit Paris runs along the Chaussee de Bruxelles, which changes its name to Chaussee de Waterloo, or Waterloosesteenweg in Dutch, once it crosses north into the Brussels area. The town also carries the Watducks Hockey Club, which won the European Hockey League in 2019, and ASUB Waterloo, one of Belgium's more successful rugby union clubs.

  Waterloo railway station opened on the 1st of February 1874, alongside the line connecting the town to Brussels. An extension south to Nivelles and Luttre followed on the 1st of June 1874, allowing onward travel to Charleroi. Trains on the Nivelles-to-Aalst line stop here at least once per hour in each direction today, with additional non-stopping services to Brussels during peak periods.

  The town's twin-city relationships span four continents, linking Waterloo to Nagakute and Sekigahara in Japan, Rambouillet in France, Waterloo in Quebec, and Differdange in Luxembourg. Sekigahara, like its Belgian counterpart, is known as the site of a decisive battle, making the pairing something more than symbolic.