An allied army under Wellington and a Prussian army under Blücher won the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 18151, ending Napoleon's return to power in the fields south of Brussels. By nightfall the emperor was finished for good, and the map of Europe was set for a generation.
For twenty-three years the wars that carried Napoleon2's name had rolled across Europe. On a single Sunday in the fields south of Brussels, they ended. Waterloo was not the largest battle of the age, nor the most elegant, but it was the most final: by nightfall an emperor was finished and a continent's map was set for a generation.
The battle from both sides
Two perspectivesWellington's Anglo-allied army held a ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean with one aim: to withstand Napoleon's attacks long enough for the Prussians under Blucher to arrive. Through the day the line absorbed massed infantry assaults, the storm around La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont, and the great French cavalry charges, forming squares that the horsemen could not break. As the Prussians pressed onto the French right flank, Napoleon gambled his elite Imperial Guard on a final assault; when it was thrown back, the French army broke. The victory ended Napoleon's Hundred Days and his career, and opened a European peace that held for decades.
Napoleon, back in power for the Hundred Days, had to destroy Wellington's army before the Prussians could join it. He attacked the ridge head-on, hoping to shatter the allied centre in an afternoon. His troops stormed La Haye Sainte and fought all day for the orchards of Hougoumont at heavy cost, and Ney's cavalry swept the plateau, but the allied squares held and the assaults were uncoordinated. Blucher's Prussians, whom Napoleon believed beaten at Ligny, arrived on his flank and drained his reserves. His last throw, the Imperial Guard, was repulsed, and the army that had never been broken dissolved in rout. Waterloo ended the Empire and sent Napoleon to final exile on Saint Helena.
The Hundred Days
Exiled to the island of Elba in 1814, Napoleon slipped his guard, landed in France in March 18152, and marched on Paris gathering soldiers as he went. Within weeks he ruled again. The powers that had beaten him, Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia, declared him an outlaw and began massing armies. Napoleon knew he could not fight them all at once, so he struck first into Belgium, hoping to smash the British and Prussian forces there before the others arrived.
The ridge at Mont-Saint-Jean
The Duke of Wellington chose his ground carefully: a low ridge near the village of Waterloo, where he could hide troops on the reverse slope1 and anchor his line on fortified farmhouses. Overnight rain turned the fields to mud, and Napoleon delayed his attack for hours to let the ground dry3, hours that would cost him dearly. Wellington had a promise to lean on. The Prussian commander Gebhard von Blücher, beaten two days earlier at Ligny, had sworn to march to his aid.4
Squares against cavalry
The French threw themselves at the ridge all day. The fortified farms of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte became meat-grinders that swallowed thousands. In the afternoon Marshal Ney launched wave after wave of cavalry against Wellington's infantry, who formed hollow squares, a wall of bayonets on every side that horses will not charge. The squares held, bleeding but unbroken1, as the horsemen broke around them like surf on rock.
Blücher keeps his word
Through the afternoon, dark columns appeared out of the woods to the east: the Prussians, arriving as promised. They fell on Napoleon's right flank at the village of Plancenoit3, forcing him to peel off troops he could not spare. The battle Napoleon needed to win quickly was now a battle of two armies against one, and the clock had run out.
The Guard turns back
As a last throw, Napoleon sent forward his Imperial Guard, the veterans who had never been beaten. They climbed the ridge into concentrated musket and cannon fire and, for the first time, recoiled. When the cry went up that “La Garde recule”, the Guard is falling back, the French army lost its nerve and collapsed into rout5. Wellington waved his hat and the whole line advanced.6
The map that followed
Perhaps 50,000 men fell on that small stretch of ground. Napoleon abdicated for the last time and was shipped to Saint Helena, a rock in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. The victors redrew Europe at the Congress of Vienna and built an order that held off general war for decades. “Waterloo” entered a dozen languages as the word for the defeat you do not come back from.