Battles and Campaigns
Battle of Waterloo
1815, Napoleonic Wars
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The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815 near the village of Waterloo, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and now in Belgium, and it brought the Napoleonic Wars to a close. Napoleon Bonaparte, newly returned to power in France for the Hundred Days, attacked an Anglo-allied army under the Duke of Wellington and drove it back through a day of heavy assaults, but Wellington's line held. In the evening a Prussian army under Gebhard von Blucher arrived on the French right flank, and the combined coalition forces routed Napoleon's army. Wellington himself later described it as the closest-run contest of his career.
Facts
LocationNear Waterloo, in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (present-day Belgium) 1 OutcomeCoalition victory. Napoleon's army was routed; he abdicated for the second time four days later, ending the Napoleonic Wars. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
The Grand Battery opening barrage at Waterloo in 1815 failed to break Wellington's reverse-slope-sheltered center.
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Open Questions (1 open question)
How decisive was the Prussian army's arrival at Waterloo compared to Wellington's own defense earlier in the day?
Wellington's own army absorbed repeated French assaults for hours before the Prussians reached the field in strength, and accounts differ on whether the Anglo-allied line was already close to breaking the French attack on its own or whether the outcome was decided by the Prussian flank attack that followed. Both readings are represented in the historical record and neither has settled into a single accepted account.
What would resolve this A reconstruction of French troop cohesion and casualty timing precise enough to show whether the French army was already breaking before the Prussian attack struck its flank.
Military historyWikipedia: Battle of Waterloo
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