Battle of Waterloo (1815): Wellington, Blücher and Napoleon

The Battle of Waterloo, fought on 18 June 1815 south of Brussels, was Napoleon’s final defeat. The Allied army of the Duke of Wellington held its ridge through a day of French attacks until Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher’s Prussians arrived on the French flank, and in the evening Napoleon’s army collapsed. Four days later Napoleon abdicated, bringing an end to more than twenty years of war between France and Europe.

Background: the Hundred Days

Napoleon had abdicated in April 1814 and been sent to rule the island of Elba. On 1 March 1815 he landed in southern France and, within three weeks, was back in Paris as King Louis XVIII fled. This period became known as the Hundred Days. The powers meeting at the Congress of Vienna declared him an outlaw and prepared to invade France with several armies.

Napoleon decided to strike first. The nearest enemy forces were in present-day Belgium: Wellington’s Allied army of British, Dutch, Belgian, Hanoverian, Brunswick and Nassau troops, and Blücher’s Prussian army. If he could separate and defeat them before the Austrian and Russian armies arrived, he hoped the Coalition might fall apart.

Ligny and Quatre Bras

On 15 June Napoleon crossed the frontier at Charleroi with about 120,000–125,000 men, taking his opponents by surprise. On 16 June he fought two battles. At Ligny he defeated the Prussians, and the 72-year-old Blücher was pinned under his fallen horse for a time. At the crossroads of Quatre Bras, a few kilometres to the west, Marshal Michel Ney fought an indecisive battle against Wellington’s army.

The Prussians retreated north to Wavre rather than east towards their supply lines, which kept them within reach of Wellington. On 17 June Wellington withdrew to a ridge near Mont-Saint-Jean, south of the village of Waterloo, after receiving Blücher’s promise to support him. Napoleon sent Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy with about 33,000 men to pursue the Prussians, and heavy rain fell through the night.

On the morning of 18 June Wellington had about 68,000 men, of whom roughly a third were British, and around 150 guns. Napoleon had about 72,000 men and around 250 guns. Wellington placed most of his troops behind the crest of the ridge, sheltered from French artillery.

In front of his line were three strongpoints: the château and farm of Hougoumont on the right, the farm of La Haye Sainte in the centre, and the farms of Papelotte and La Haye on the left. The French were drawn up on a parallel ridge around the inn of La Belle Alliance.

The battle hour by hour

About 11.30 am. The ground was waterlogged, and Napoleon delayed the start to let it dry for his artillery. The battle opened with an attack on Hougoumont by Prince Jérôme Bonaparte’s division, meant as a diversion. It turned into a day-long struggle that absorbed many French troops, while Guards and German troops held the walls and the burning château.

About 1.30 pm. After a heavy bombardment, General Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d’Erlon’s corps of some 16,000 infantry attacked Wellington’s left centre in dense columns. By then Napoleon had already seen Prussian troops approaching in the distance to the east. Sir Thomas Picton’s division met the attack and Picton was killed, but the French were thrown back by a charge of British heavy cavalry, the Household and Union Brigades. The cavalry rode on too far, were counter-attacked by French lancers and cuirassiers and suffered heavy losses; the Union Brigade’s commander, Sir William Ponsonby, was killed.

About 4 pm to 6 pm. Marshal Ney, believing he saw signs of an Allied withdrawal, launched a series of massed cavalry charges against Wellington’s centre right. The Allied infantry formed squares, which cavalry alone could rarely break. Thousands of French horsemen surged around the squares again and again but, without sufficient infantry and horse artillery support, failed to break them.

From about 4.30 pm. The Prussian IV Corps under Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow attacked the village of Plancenoit on the French right rear. Napoleon had to send the Young Guard, and later battalions of the Old Guard, to hold it. The village changed hands several times.

About 6 pm to 6.30 pm. La Haye Sainte, defended by the 2nd Light Battalion of the King’s German Legion under Major George Baring, fell when the defenders ran out of rifle ammunition. French guns could now fire on Wellington’s centre at close range, and the Allied line came under severe strain.

About 7.30 pm. Napoleon sent forward battalions of the Imperial Guard, his elite reserve, against Wellington’s centre right. They were halted by British Guards and other units, including the Dutch-Belgian division of David Chassé, and taken in the flank by the 52nd Foot under Sir John Colborne. The cry that the Guard was falling back spread through the French army. At about the same time, the Prussian I Corps under Hans Ernst Karl von Zieten arrived to reinforce Wellington’s left.

About 8 pm. Wellington ordered a general advance. Attacked from the front and the flank, the French army disintegrated, though some Old Guard squares retreated in good order to cover the flight. Wellington and Blücher met near La Belle Alliance late in the evening, and the Prussian cavalry led a relentless pursuit through the night.

Key people

• Napoleon (1769–1821), Emperor of the French, commanding in his last battle.
• Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769–1852), commander of the Allied army, who chose and held the position.
• Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher (1742–1819), the Prussian commander, whose decision to march to Waterloo after Ligny proved decisive. His chief of staff, August von Gneisenau, organised the march.
• Michel Ney, Napoleon’s field commander for much of the day; he was executed for treason in Paris in December 1815.
• Emmanuel de Grouchy, whose detached wing fought the Prussian rearguard at Wavre on 18–19 June and did not reach Waterloo.

By the numbers

Consequences

Napoleon returned to Paris and abdicated for the second time on 22 June 1815. Allied armies entered Paris in early July and Louis XVIII returned. Napoleon tried to reach America but, blocked by the Royal Navy, surrendered to Captain Frederick Maitland of HMS Bellerophon on 15 July. The British government sent him into exile on Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

The second Treaty of Paris of 20 November 1815 reduced France to its 1790 frontiers, imposed an indemnity of 700 million francs and placed an Allied army of occupation in northern France until 1818. Waterloo closed the era of the Napoleonic Wars and opened a long period without a general European war.

Myths and facts

• “The Guard dies but does not surrender.” These words were attributed to General Pierre Cambronne as the last Guard squares were surrounded. He later denied saying them, and a far ruder one-word reply attributed to him is also doubtful.
• Wellington won alone. British memory long downplayed the Prussian role. Most historians now agree that Waterloo was an Allied victory in which the Prussian intervention was essential, and Wellington himself relied on Blücher’s promise when he chose to fight.
• A fortune made from early news. A popular story claims the banker Nathan Rothschild made a vast profit by learning of the result before anyone else in London. Historians have found little evidence for it, and it was later spread in antisemitic propaganda.

Legacy

Waterloo became one of the most famous battles in history and a byword for a final, decisive defeat. In Britain it was celebrated with Waterloo Bridge, Waterloo Station and many street and place names. In 1826 the Lion’s Mound, a vast artificial hill topped by a cast-iron lion, was completed on the battlefield by the King of the Netherlands, near the spot where his son, the Prince of Orange, was wounded.

The battle also became a subject for writers and artists, from Victor Hugo’s long description in Les Misérables to countless paintings and later films. The battlefield is a protected landscape, and large re-enactments are held for major anniversaries, notably the bicentenary in 2015.

Timeline

• 1815, 1 March: Napoleon lands in France after leaving Elba.
• 1815, 15 June: The French army crosses into Belgium at Charleroi.
• 1815, 16 June: Napoleon defeats the Prussians at Ligny; Ney fights Wellington at Quatre Bras.
• 1815, 17 June: Wellington withdraws to Mont-Saint-Jean; Grouchy pursues the Prussians.
• 1815, 18 June: Battle of Waterloo; Grouchy fights at Wavre.
• 1815, 22 June: Napoleon abdicates for the second time.
• 1815, 15 July: Napoleon surrenders aboard HMS Bellerophon.
• 1815, 20 November: The second Treaty of Paris is signed.

Why it matters

Waterloo ended Napoleon’s career and the long series of wars that had begun with the French Revolution. It confirmed the settlement of the Congress of Vienna, made Britain and Prussia leading powers of the new Europe, and became a lasting symbol of the moment when one era closed and another began.