The Hanoverian Monument (French: Monument aux Hanovriens) is an 1818 monument constructed on the battlefield of Waterloo in Belgium. [1] It is located not far from the Lion's Mound. The memorial commemorates soldiers of the King's German Legion (KGL), primarily drawn from the Kingdom of Hanover, who were killed during the 1815 battle. Amongst those killed during the fighting was Christian Friedrich Wilhelm von Ompteda. [2]
The Legion had been formed following the French Invasion of Hanover in 1803. [3] The KGL participated in numerous British military campaigns, notably during the Peninsular War. At Waterloo men from the KGL notably defended the strategic farmhouse at La Haye Sainte. Distinctly separate units of the revived Hanoverian Army also took part in the Waterloo campaign. The monument was made out of limestone.
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 Arthur Wellesley, 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.
La Haye Sainte is a walled farmhouse compound at the foot of an escarpment near Waterloo, Belgium, on the N5 road connecting Brussels and Charleroi. It has changed very little since it played a crucial part in the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
The King's German Legion was a British Army formation consisting of expatriate German soldiers which existed from 1803 to 1816. It achieved the distinction of being the only German military force to fight without interruption against the French and their allies during the Napoleonic Wars.
Field Marshal Sir Charles (Carl) August von Alten was a Hanoverian and British soldier who led the famous Light Division during the last two years of the Peninsular War. At the Battle of Waterloo, he commanded a division in the front line, where he was wounded. He later rose to the rank of Field Marshal in the Hanoverian Army.
General Baron Hugh Halkett, GCH, CB, was a British soldier during the Napoleonic Wars and later a general of infantry in the Hanoverian service.
The Lion's Mound is a large conical artificial hill in the municipality of Braine-l'Alleud, Walloon Brabant, Belgium. King William I of the Netherlands ordered its construction in 1820, and it was completed in 1826. It commemorates the spot on the battlefield of Waterloo where the king's elder son, Prince William of Orange, is presumed to have been wounded on 18 June 1815, as well as the Battle of Quatre Bras, which had been fought two days earlier.
The Battle of the Göhrde took place during the War of the Sixth Coalition on 16 September 1813 between French and Coalition troops at Göhrde, Germany. The French troops were defeated and withdrew to Hamburg.
The Waterloo Medal is a military decoration that was conferred upon every officer, non-commissioned officer and soldier of the British Army who took part in one or more of the following battles: Ligny, Quatre Bras and Waterloo.
Konrad Ludwig Georg Baring was an officer in the army of the Electorate of Hanover and the British army's King's German Legion. Some sources also give his name as Baron Georg(e) von Baring.
Colonel Christian Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Ompteda was a Hanoverian Army officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Charles Best was a British army officer of Hanoverian descent who served in the armies of the East India Company, Britain and Hanover from 1781 until the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Colonel Sir Frederick von Wissell was a British Army officer during the Napoleonic Wars.
The Gordon Monument is a neoclassical monument to a slain warrior on the battlefield of Waterloo. The person commemorated is Lt Colonel Sir Alexander Gordon (1786–1815). It was erected in 1817 by the siblings of the deceased who included a future Prime Minister, Lord Aberdeen.
The Waterloo Soldier is the skeleton of a soldier who died during the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. The skeleton is kept at the Memorial of Waterloo 1815.
Freiherr Sigismund Christoph Gustav von Löw von und zu Steinfurth was a Hanoverian Army officer who served in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Lieutenant-General Henry de Hinuber, known in Hanover as Eduard Christoph Heinrich von Hinüber, was a Hanoverian infantry officer who commanded units of the King's German Legion (KGL) while serving in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Hinuber joined the army of the Electorate of Hanover in 1781, and in 1782 travelled to fight in the Second Anglo-Mysore War in India. He was present at the Siege of Cuddalore and continued on in India until 1792. Promoted to major in 1798, Hinuber served until France invaded Hanover and disbanded the army in 1803.
The Invasion of Hanover in 1803 during the Napoleonic Wars saw a French army under Édouard Mortier invade and occupy the Electorate of Hanover in Northern Germany following the breakdown of the Peace of Amiens. Hanover was under the rule of George III in a personal union with Britain, the principal enemy of Napoleon's French Empire. One consequence was the formation of the exiled King's German Legion in British service. Hanover remained under French control until its liberation in 1813.
The Liberation of Hanover took place in November 1813 as part of the War of the Sixth Coalition during the larger Napoleonic Wars. The Electorate of Hanover had been invaded and occupied in 1803 and since then had been divided between the First French Empire and the Kingdom of Westphalia ruled by Napoleon's younger brother Jerome. The historic House of Guelph headed by George III, but by 1813 under the control of the Prince Regent, were restored to their historic territories.