Battle of Waterloo

Battle of Waterloo
Part of the Waterloo campaign of the War of the Seventh Coalition

The Battle of Waterloo, by William Sadler II
Date18 June 1815 (1815-06-18)
Location
Waterloo, United Kingdom of the Netherlands (present-day Belgium)
50°40′41″N 4°24′44″E / 50.67806°N 4.41222°E / 50.67806; 4.41222
Result Coalition victory
Belligerents
 France
Commanders and leaders
  • Napoleon I
  • Michel Ney[nb 1]
  • Jean-de-Dieu Soult
  • Jean-Baptiste Drouet
  • Honoré Charles Reille
  • Georges Mouton
  • François de Kellermann
  • Édouard Milhaud
  • Duke of Wellington
  • Earl of Uxbridge (WIA)
  • Rowland Hill
  • Thomas Picton †
  • Prince of Orange (WIA)
  • Gebhard von Blücher
  • August von Gneisenau
  • Graf von Zieten
  • Ludwig von Pirch
  • Friedrich von Bülow
Units involved

Army of the North

  • I Corps
  • II Corps
  • VI Corps
  • III Cavalry Corps
  • IV Cavalry Corps
  • Imperial Guard

Wellington's Army

  • I Corps
  • II Corps
  • Cavalry Corps
  • Anglo-Allied Reserves

Blücher's Army

  • I Corps
  • II Corps
  • IV Corps
Strength
72,000–73,000[a]
    • 48,950[5] to 50,600 infantrymen
    • 14,390 to 15,765[5] cavalrymen
    • 8,050 gunners and engineers
      • 7,232 gunners[5]
  • Total: 118,000–120,000
    • 91,000 infantrymen[3]
    • 21,500 cavalrymen[3]
    • 7,500 gunners[3]
Wellington's army: 68,000 soldiers[7][8][nb 4]
    • 31,000[b]
    • 17,000
    • 11,000
    • 6,000
    • 3,000[9]
  • Blücher's army
Casualties and losses
26,000–27,000[nb 5]

15,000 deserted after the battle[14]

220 guns lost[2]		 Total: 24,000[15][nb 7]
Wellington's army:
17,000 killed, wounded, or missing[15][nb 8]
  •  • 3,500 killed
  •  • 10,200 wounded
  •  • 3,300 missing
Blücher's army: 6,604–7,000[f]
  •  • 1,144–1,200 killed
  •  • 4,155–4,400 wounded
  •  • 1,305–1,400 missing
Both sides: ≥7,000 horses dead or wounded[17]
Hundred Days:
Waterloo campaign
390km
242miles
8
Saint Helena
7
Rochefort
6
6 Waterloo
5
5
4
4
3
2
Paris
1
Elba
  Napoleon in command
  Napoleon not in command

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo (then in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, now in Belgium), marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The French Imperial Army under the command of Napoleon I was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of field marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher. The battle was known contemporaneously as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France (after the hamlet of Mont-Saint-Jean) and La Belle Alliance in Prussia ("the Beautiful Alliance"; after the inn of La Belle Alliance).[18]

Upon Napoleon's return to power in March 1815, the beginning of the Hundred Days, many states that had previously opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition to oppose him again, and hurriedly mobilised their armies. Wellington's and Blücher's armies were cantoned close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon planned to attack them separately, before they could link up and invade France with other members of the coalition. On 16 June, Napoleon successfully attacked the bulk of the Prussian Army at the Battle of Ligny with his main force, while a small portion of the French Imperial Army contested the Battle of Quatre Bras to prevent the Anglo-allied army from reinforcing the Prussians. The Anglo-allied army held their ground at Quatre Bras but were prevented from reinforcing the Prussians, and on the 17th, the Prussians withdrew from Ligny in good order, while Wellington then withdrew in parallel with the Prussians northward to Waterloo on 17 June. Napoleon sent a third of his forces to pursue the Prussians, which resulted in the separate Battle of Wavre with the Prussian rear-guard on 18–19 June and prevented that French force from participating at Waterloo.

Upon learning that the Prussian Army was able to support him, Wellington decided to offer battle on the Mont-Saint-Jean[19] escarpment across the Brussels Road, near the village of Waterloo. Here he withstood repeated attacks by the French throughout the afternoon of 18 June,[20] and was eventually aided by the progressively arriving 50,000 Prussians who attacked the French flank and inflicted heavy casualties. In the evening, Napoleon assaulted the Anglo-allied line with his last reserves, the senior infantry battalions of the Imperial Guard. With the Prussians breaking through on the French right flank, the Anglo-allied army repulsed the Imperial Guard, and the French army was routed.

Waterloo was the decisive engagement of the Waterloo campaign and Napoleon's last. It was the second bloodiest single day battle of the Napoleonic Wars, after Borodino. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life".[21] Napoleon abdicated four days later, and coalition forces entered Paris on 7 July. The defeat at Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon's Hundred Days return from exile. It precipitated Napoleon's second and definitive abdication as Emperor of the French, and ended the First French Empire. It set a historical milestone between serial European wars and decades of relative peace, often referred to as the Pax Britannica. In popular culture, the phrase "meeting one's Waterloo" has become an expression for experiencing a catastrophic reversal or undoing.[22][23]

  1. ^ Barbero 2005, p. 91.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g Clodfelter 2017, p. 170.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Bodart 1908, p. 487.
  4. ^ Hofschröer 1999, pp. 68–69.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h Clodfelter 2017, p. 169.
  6. ^ "French Cannon Captured at Waterloo". Age of Revolution. Waterloo 200 Ltd. Retrieved 16 September 2025.
  7. ^ Hofschröer 1999, p. 61 cites Siborne's numbers.
  8. ^ Hamilton-Williams 1994, p. 256 gives 68,000.
  9. ^ Barbero 2005, pp. 75–76.
  10. ^ Hamilton-Williams 1994, p. 256.
  11. ^ Chesney 1874, p. 4.
  12. ^ Bowden 1983, p. 329.
  13. ^ a b c Barbero 2006, p. 312.
  14. ^ Barbero 2005, p. 420.
  15. ^ a b c Barbero 2005, p. 419.
  16. ^ Clodfelter 2017, pp. 169–170.
  17. ^ Dr. Fitzgerald, Liam (25 July 2024). "Waterloo Uncovered: Ten years of archaeology in ten discoveries". CBA. Retrieved 23 August 2025.
  18. ^ Albert Smith, Charles Dickens, William Harrison Ainsworth (eds.) (1851) Bentley's Miscellany, Volume 30, Publisher, Richard Bentley, p. 57
  19. ^ "Battle of Waterloo – The Battles of Quatre-Bras and Ligny | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Archived from the original on 1 December 2022. Retrieved 1 December 2022.
  20. ^ "Battle of Waterloo | National Army Museum". www.nam.ac.uk. Retrieved 15 March 2024.
  21. ^ Wikiquote:Wellington citing Creevey Papers, ch. x, p. 236
  22. ^ Anderson, M. S. (1979). Historians and Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-822548-5. OCLC 185538307.
  23. ^ Ribeiro, Aileen (2002). Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe 1715–1789 (revised ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09151-9. OCLC 186413657.


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