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. The battle was known contemporarily as the Battle of Mont Saint-Jean in France or La Belle Alliance in Prussia.
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish statesman, soldier, and Tory politician 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.
The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1815) and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres; the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.
General Antoine Drouot, Comte Drouot was a French officer who fought in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a major central London terminus on the National Rail network in the United Kingdom, in the Waterloo area of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is connected to a London Underground station of the same name and is adjacent to Waterloo East station on the South Eastern Main Line. The station is the terminus of the South West Main Line to Weymouth via Southampton, the West of England main line to Exeter via Salisbury, the Portsmouth Direct line to Portsmouth Harbour which connects with ferry services to the Isle of Wight, and several commuter services around west and south-west London, Surrey, Hampshire and Berkshire.
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.
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.
The 6th Division is an active division of the British Army, which has been raised numerous times as needed over the last 200 years. It was first established by Lieutenant-General Arthur Wellesley in 1810, for service in the Peninsular War as part of the Anglo-Portuguese Army. Over the following four years, the division took part in numerous battles and sieges. Notably, on 22 July 1812, the division was heavily engaged during the Battle of Salamanca and suffered the most casualties of any allied formation in that battle. Following the invasion of France, the formation played a prominent role in the 1814 Battle of Toulouse where it assaulted and seized numerous French redoubts protecting the city. While successful, the formation suffered heavy losses from the fighting. This battle marked the end of the Peninsular War and the War of the Sixth Coalition, and the division was broken-up. It was reformed and active for most of the following year, during the War of the Seventh Coalition; held in reserve at the beginning of the Battle of Waterloo, it was committed in the evening to bolster the centre-left of the British line and suffered heavy casualties in the process.
Château d'Hougoumont is a walled manorial compound, situated at the bottom of an escarpment near the Nivelles road in the Braine-l'Alleud municipality, near Waterloo, Belgium. The site served as one of the advanced defensible positions of the Anglo-allied army under the Duke of Wellington, that faced Napoleon's Army at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815.
The II Corps was an army corps of the British Army formed in both the First World War and the Second World War. There had also been a short-lived II Corps during the Waterloo Campaign.
Miguel Ricardo de Álava y Esquivel was a Spanish General and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Spain in 1835. He was born in the Basque Country, at Vitoria-Gasteiz, in 1770. Álava holds the distinction of having been present at both Trafalgar and Waterloo, fighting against the British at the former and with them at the latter.
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.
"Waterloo" is the first single from the Swedish pop group ABBA's second album of the same name, and their first under the Atlantic label in the US. This was also the first single to be credited to the group performing under the name ABBA. The title and lyrics reference the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, and use it as a metaphor for a romantic relationship. The Swedish version of the single was backed with the Swedish version of "Honey, Honey", while the English version featured "Watch Out" on the B-side.
This is the complete order of battle for the four major battles of the Waterloo campaign.
The Battle of the Katzbach on 26 August 1813, was a major battle of the Napoleonic Wars between the forces of the First French Empire under Marshal MacDonald and a Russo-Prussian army of the Sixth Coalition under Prussian Marshal Graf (Count) von Blücher. It occurred during a heavy thunderstorm at the Katzbach river between Wahlstatt and Liegnitz in the Prussian province of Silesia. Taking place the same day as the Battle of Dresden, it resulted in a Coalition victory, with the French retreating to Saxony.
The Battle of La Suffel was a French victory over Austrian forces of the Seventh Coalition and the last French pitched battle victory in the Napoleonic Wars. It was fought on 28 June 1815 at Souffelweyersheim and Hoenheim, near Strasbourg.
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.
Châteaux Frischermont or Fichermont in the Belgian municipality of Lasne is now a ruin. At the start of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 it was garrisoned by Dutch soldiers on the easternmost flank of Wellington's defensive line.
