The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo, marking the end of the Napoleonic Wars. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led force with units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The other comprised three corps of the Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher; a fourth corps of this army fought at the Battle of Wavre on the same day. The battle was known contemporarily as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France and La Belle Alliance in Prussia.
The Battle of Ligny, in which French troops of the Armée du Nord under the command of Napoleon I defeated part of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher, was fought on 16 June 1815 near Ligny in what is now Belgium. The result was a tactical victory for the French, but the bulk of the Prussian army survived the battle in good order, was reinforced by Prussian troops who had not fought at Ligny, and played a role two days later at the Battle of Waterloo. The Battle of Ligny was the last victory in Napoleon's military career.
The Hundred Days, also known as the War of the Seventh Coalition, marked the period between Napoleon's return from eleven months of exile on the island of Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815. This period saw the War of the Seventh Coalition, and includes the Waterloo Campaign and the Neapolitan War as well as several other minor campaigns. The phrase les Cent Jours was first used by the prefect of Paris, Gaspard, comte de Chabrol, in his speech welcoming the king back to Paris on 8 July.
Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d'Erlon was a Marshal of France and a soldier in the Grande Armée during the Napoleonic Wars. He notably commanded the I Corps of the Army of the North at the Battle of Waterloo.
The Battle of Quatre Bras was fought on 16 June 1815, as a preliminary engagement to the decisive Battle of Waterloo that occurred two days later. The battle took place near the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras and was contested between elements of the Duke of Wellington's Anglo-allied army and the left wing of Napoleon Bonaparte's French Armée du Nord under Marshal Michel Ney. The battle was a tactical victory for Wellington, but because Ney prevented him going to the aid of Blucher's Prussians who were fighting a larger French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte at Ligny it was a strategic victory for the French.
The Battle of Ulm on 16–19 October 1805 was a series of skirmishes, at the end of the Ulm Campaign, which allowed Napoleon I to trap an entire Austrian army under the command of Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich with minimal losses and to force its surrender near Ulm in the Electorate of Bavaria.
The Battle of Wavre was the final major military action of the Hundred Days campaign and the Napoleonic Wars. It was fought on 18–19 June 1815 between the Prussian rearguard, consisting of the Prussian III Corps under the command of General Johann von Thielmann and three corps of the French army under the command of Marshal Grouchy. A blocking action, this battle kept 33,000 French soldiers from reaching the Battle of Waterloo and so helped in the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
The Waterloo campaign was fought between the French Army of the North and two Seventh Coalition armies, an Anglo-allied army and a Prussian army. Initially the French army had been commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, but he left for Paris after the French defeat at the Battle of Waterloo. Command then rested on Marshals Soult and Grouchy, who were in turn replaced by Marshal Davout, who took command at the request of the French Provisional Government. The Anglo-allied army was commanded by the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian army by Field Marshall Graf von Blücher.
This is the complete order of battle for the four major battles of the Waterloo campaign.
General Count Jean Rapp was a French Army officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars and twice governor of the Free City of Danzig. He served as Aide-de-camp to French Generals Louis Desaix and later Napoleon Bonaparte, whose life he saved on multiple occasions.
Souffelweyersheim is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department, Alsace, Grand Est, northeastern France, and is part of metropolitan Strasbourg.
The Battle of Issy was fought on the 2 and 3 July 1815 in and around the village of Issy, a short distance south west of Paris. The result was a victory for Prussian General von Zieten over a French army commanded by General Dominique Vandamme.
Hans Ernst Karl, Graf von Zieten was an officer in the Prussian Army during the Napoleonic Wars.
On 1 March 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his imprisonment on the isle of Elba, and launched a bid to recover his empire. A confederation of European powers pledged to stop him. During the period known as the Hundred Days Napoleon chose to confront the armies of Prince Blücher and the Duke of Wellington in what has become known as the Waterloo Campaign. He was decisively defeated by the two allied armies at the Battle of Waterloo, which then marched on Paris forcing Napoleon to abdicate for the second time. However Russia, Austria and some of the minor German states also fielded armies against him and all of them also invaded France. Of these other armies the ones engaged in the largest campaigns and saw the most fighting were two Austrian armies: The Army of the Upper Rhine and the Army of Italy.
The Army of the Rhine was formed in December 1791, for the purpose of bringing the French Revolution to the German states along the Rhine River. During its first year in action (1792), under command of Adam Philippe Custine, the Army of the Rhine participated in several victories, including Mainz, Frankfurt and Speyer. Subsequently, the army underwent several reorganizations and merged with the Army of the Moselle to form the Army of the Rhine and Moselle on 20 April 1795.
During the Hundred Days of 1815, both the Coalition nations and the First French Empire of Napoleon Bonaparte mobilised for war. This article describes the deployment of forces in early June 1815 just before the start of the Waterloo Campaign and the minor campaigns of 1815.
Ludwig Georg Thedel Graf von Wallmoden was an Austrian General of the Cavalry, best known for his training of light infantry and the refinement of the Tirailleur system. As a grandson of George II of Great Britain and first cousin of George III, he is perhaps the only individual from that generation to have been photographed, within the broader British royal family.
The Lines of Weissenburg, or Lines of Wissembourg, were entrenched works — an earthen rampart dotted with small outworks — along the river Lauter. They were built in 1706 and lasted into the 19th century.
After the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo and the advance on Paris by the Coalition armies during the months of June and July 1815, although they besieged and took some towns and fortresses as they advanced, they bypassed many of them and detached forces to observe and reduce them. The last of the French fortresses did not capitulate until September of that year.
The Corps of Observation of the Vendée was a field formation of the French Imperial Army, which took part in the 1815 Vendéen Revolt, one of the minor campaigns of the Hundred Days. Following the end of the War of the Seventh Coalition, the corps was disbanded.
French Empire 
Crown Prince of Württemberg [1] 
