Napoleon at Waterloo

Dawn of 18 June 1815 found the French Army of the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte seemingly on the verge of its greatest victory. After a mere twelve days of marching and fighting, the French had succeeded in split­ting the Prussian Army under Blucher from Wellington’s Army for what looked to be the decisive battle of the campaign. Along a frontage of 15,000 yards, some 72,000 French troops (many of them veterans of long service) supported by 246 guns faced a motley collection of 68,000 British recruits, Hanoverian and Brunswicker levies, and barely-serviceable Netherlander militia feebly supported by a mere 156 guns. In appraising the possibilities of the situation, Napole­on dismissed the coming battle as ‘an affair of a morning’. He was never more wrong.