Waterloo: The Last Battle of Napoleon

For more than two decades, the wars of revolutionary and Napoleonic France had convulsed Europe. They ended in a single day, on rain-soaked farmland south of Brussels.

The Hundred Days

Napoleon Bonaparte had been exiled to the island of Elba in 1814, but he escaped and returned to France in early 1815, rallying the army and reclaiming power in the episode known as the Hundred Days. [1] The European powers declared him an outlaw and mobilized against him. Napoleon struck first, marching into present-day Belgium to defeat the allied armies before they could combine.

Wellington and Blücher

On 18 June 1815, Napoleon attacked an Anglo-allied army commanded by the Duke of Wellington, drawn up on a ridge near the village of Waterloo. [1] Wellington’s force held through a long day of massed infantry and cavalry assaults, waiting for the arrival of a Prussian army under Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. The ground, soaked by overnight rain, had delayed Napoleon’s opening attack and bogged down his guns.

The tide turns

Through the afternoon the French hammered the allied line but could not break it. In the evening the Prussians arrived in force on the French flank, and a final assault by Napoleon’s elite Imperial Guard was repulsed. [2] The French army collapsed and fled.

The end of an era

Waterloo ended Napoleon’s career for good. He abdicated days later and was exiled to the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. [2] The victory ushered in a long period of relative peace among the great powers of Europe and made “Waterloo” a byword for a final, decisive defeat.