The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18 June 1815, near Waterloo. A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition. One of these was a British-led coalition consisting of units from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, under the command of the Duke of Wellington. The other was composed of three corps of the Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher. The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. The battle was contemporaneously known as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean (France) or La Belle Alliance.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
Field Marshal FitzRoy James Henry Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan,, known before 1852 as Lord FitzRoy Somerset, was a British Army officer. When a junior officer, he served in the Peninsular War and the Waterloo campaign, latterly as military secretary to the Duke of Wellington. He also took part in politics as Tory Member of Parliament for Truro, before becoming Master-General of the Ordnance.
The King's German Legion was a British Army unit of mostly expatriated German personnel during the period 1803–16. The legion achieved the distinction of being the only German force to fight without interruption against the French during the Napoleonic Wars.
General Sir George Scovell, was a member of the quartermaster's staff of the British Army in Iberia during the Peninsular War.
The Battle of Talavera was fought just outside the town of Talavera de la Reina, Spain some 120 kilometres (75 mi) southwest of Madrid, during the Peninsular War. At Talavera, a British army under Sir Arthur Wellesley combined with a Spanish army under General Cuesta in operations against French-occupied Madrid. The French army withdrew at night after several of its attacks had been repulsed.
A carabinier is in principle a soldier armed with a carbine. A carbiniere is a carabiniere musket or rifle and was commonplace by the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. The word is derived from the identical French word carabinier.
Lieutenant General Richard Hussey Vivian, 1st Baron Vivian, known as Sir Hussey Vivian from 1815 to 1828 and Sir Hussey Vivian, Bt, from 1828 to 1841, was a British cavalry leader from the Vivian family.
The Light Division was a light infantry division of the British Army. Its origins lay in "Light Companies" formed during the late 18th century, to move at speed over inhospitable terrain and protect a main force with skirmishing tactics. These units took advantage of then-new technology in the form of rifles, which allowed it to emphasise marksmanship, and were aimed primarily at disrupting and harassing enemy forces, in skirmishes before the main forces clashed.
This is the complete order of battle for the four major battles of the Waterloo campaign.
The Coalition forces of the Napoleonic Wars were composed of Napoleon Bonaparte's enemies: the United Kingdom, the Austrian Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, Kingdom of Spain, Kingdom of Naples, Kingdom of Sicily, Kingdom of Sardinia, Dutch Republic, Russian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, Kingdom of Portugal, Kingdom of Sweden, and various German and Italian states at differing times in the wars. At their height, the Coalition could field formidable combined forces of about 1,740,000 strong. This outnumbered the 1.1 million French soldiers. The breakdown of the more active armies are: Austria, 570,000; Britain, 250,000; Prussia, 300,000; and Russia, 600,000.
The Brunswick Ducal Field-Corps, commonly known as the Black Brunswickers in English and the Schwarze Schar or Schwarze Legion in German, were a military unit in the Napoleonic Wars. The corps was raised from volunteers by German-born Frederick William, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (1771–1815). The Duke was a harsh opponent of Napoleon Bonaparte's occupation of his native Germany. Formed in 1809 when war broke out between the First French Empire and the Austrian Empire, the corps initially comprised a mixed force, around 2,300 strong, of infantry, cavalry and later supporting artillery.
The British Army during the Napoleonic Wars experienced a time of rapid change. At the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, the army was a small, awkwardly administered force of barely 40,000 men. By the end of the period, the numbers had vastly increased. At its peak, in 1813, the regular army contained over 250,000 men. The British infantry was "the only military force not to suffer a major reverse at the hands of Napoleonic France."
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.
The British Army during the Victorian era served through a period of great technological and social change. Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837, and died in 1901. Her long reign was marked by the steady expansion and consolidation of the British Empire, rapid industrialisation and the enactment of liberal reforms by both Liberal and Conservative governments within Britain.
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,, was one of the leading British military and political figures of the 19th century. Often referred to solely as "The Duke of Wellington", he led a successful military career in the Indian subcontinent during the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War (1798–99) and the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805), and in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).
The Battle of Arzobispo on 8 August 1809 saw two Imperial French corps commanded by Marshal Jean-de-Dieu Soult launch an assault crossing of the Tagus River against a Spanish force under José María de la Cueva, 14th Duke of Alburquerque. Alburquerque's troops rapidly retreated after suffering disproportionate losses, including 30 artillery pieces. El Puente del Arzobispo is located 36 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Talavera de la Reina, Spain. The action occurred during the Peninsular War, part of a larger conflict known as the Napoleonic Wars.
The Corps of Mounted Guides was raised in Portugal on 26 September 1808 to act as guides and orderlies to the British generals and their staff.
The Royal Waggon Train was the name originally given to the Supply and Transport branch of the British Armed Forces, which would eventually become the Royal Logistic Corps.
A battalion of detachments is a term used to refer to battalion-sized units of the British Army formed from personnel drawn from several parent units. They were used to temporarily collect together detached companies or individual stragglers into more manageable-sized formations for logistics purposes or to provide additional fighting forces. Two longer-term battalions were raised by Arthur Wellesley in 1809 for service in the Peninsular War. These comprised stragglers left behind following the British withdrawal at Corunna and saw action in the Oporto and Talavera campaigns before they were disbanded and the men returned to their regiments. Though effective on the battlefield criticism was made of their discipline in camp and on the march and there was concern over the impact on manpower in their parent regiments. Other battalions of detachments were later formed in the field from British and foreign units in the peninsula and during the Walcheren Campaign. Three units of British line infantry were formed from depots in England in 1814 but saw no action before the hostilities ceased after the Treaty of Paris. Similar units were employed as late as the 1857 Indian Mutiny.
United Kingdom