Battle of Waterloo

Two armies waited in Belgium: one hundred thousand Anglo-Dutch under Wellington, one hundred and twenty thousand Prussians under Blücher. Napoleon, with one hundred and twenty-five thousand men, meant to insert himself between them. On 16 June he beat Blücher at Ligny while Ney held Wellington at Quatre-Bras, but the Prussians withdrew north instead of east: they stayed in contact. Grouchy, sent after them with thirty-three thousand men, lost them.

The night's rain had soaked the fields; the Emperor waited until half past eleven to engage, giving Blücher time to arrive. The diversionary attack on Hougoumont tied down whole divisions; d'Erlon's assault on the centre was broken by the British heavy cavalry. Around four o'clock Ney launched nearly nine thousand horsemen against the Allied squares without infantry support: they wore themselves out on them.

La Haye-Sainte finally fell around six, but Bülow's Prussians were already at Plancenoit. About half past seven the Guard climbed towards the ridge and fell back: the cry "The Guard is retreating!" carried the army away. The rout was total; the squares of the Old Guard covered the retreat.

Some forty thousand French dead and wounded, twenty-two thousand for Wellington, seven thousand for Blücher — in a single day over five square kilometres. Napoleon was back in Paris on 21 June; he abdicated on the 22nd.

Waterloo closed twenty-three years of continental war and fixed for a century the balance willed by the Congress of Vienna. The name has become, in nearly every language, a synonym for final defeat.