The two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo rapidly approaches, a battle that has probably had more written about it than any other in history and yet it seems that the more we study this battle, the less we actually understand it. This conundrum has arisen due to many factors and has caused us to grow up with a very distorted version of the battle and of the whole campaign.
History it is often said is written by the victors, it therefore becomes very complicated when four countries claim the victory!
The British rapidly claimed the lion’s share of the victory and early reports which praised equally the Prussian effort, quickly changed into a claim that although the Prussians had started to arrive, the British had won the battle before they broke out of Plancenoit, hence had won it alone.
The Prussians were soon to recognise this downgrading of their involvement and were soon making counter claims regarding Wellington’s slow reactions to the news of invasion, his failure to support the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny and that Wellington would have lost without Prussian intervention because it was they who had broken through the French lines to ensure victory.
The Dutch/Belgians (the Kingdom of the Netherlands incorporating both countries at this time) received a poor press from the British and were roundly accused of being cowards and many being secretly in league with the French. However in their defence, they pointed to the fact that it was their troops who had staunchly held Quatre Bras long enough for Wellington’s forces to deploy there, that they initially had more troops in Hougoumont defending that vital farmhouse than there were British troops, and that their troops were vital in defeating one of the attacks of the French Imperial Guard which signalled the end of the battle.
But the waters were further muddied by both opposing parties in France. The Royalists sought to besmirch Napoleon’s reputation, with every failing of the entire campaign being assigned to him personally, whereas Napoleon and his supporters sought to absolve him of any blame, blaming every failing on his poor marshals.
It can therefore be readily understood that throughout Europe different versions of the Waterloo campaign were heard, indeed even today many Germans believe that Waterloo was a German victory and that Wellington has usurped their rightful laurels.
But beyond the claims and counter claims of these various factions a new and very powerful influence also began to work upon the history of the campaign. The Battle of Waterloo led to a veritable explosion of material in both the press and in popular literature. Because of improved literacy levels huge numbers of both officers and rankers wrote home with their version of the battle which merely fuelled an increased appetite for even more. Soon anthologies of these accounts were in print, such as The Battle of Waterloo By a Near Observer, which ran through no less than 10 editions in three years. The field of Waterloo soon became a place of pilgrimage and as the relics of war soon sold out, locals found a good living as tour guides. But such guides, with no real knowledge of the struggle, gave a very distorted and confused version of events which in turn distorted the story sent home by the numerous visitors.
Amongst this avalanche of visitors were numerous artists, poets and novelists, who all penned their own versions, amongst the most illustrious visitors were Turner, Southey, Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott.
But the man who undoubtedly exerted the greatest influence by far, unfortunately mostly detrimental, to the understanding of Waterloo is undoubtedly Victor Hugo. Hugo stayed on the battlefield and visited every corner of it and recorded all of the stories and myths propagated by the locals in a section of his great work Les Miserables. Unfortunately, such a successful and well read book has therefore had a devastating effect on the public imagination and many of his statements have now become part of the official narrative of the battle. The French wounded being mercilessly tossed into the well of Hougoumont, the dreadful chasm which the French cavalry fell into during their great charges, the final stand of the Old Guard, are all myths perpetrated by him and now believed by millions.
But it is now high time that the history of this battle is corrected and rewritten with all of the new information that has been uncovered over the last decade. Almost unbelievably, over 500 eyewitness accounts of the battle have been published or translated for the first time into English in the last ten years and the information gleaned has altered our understanding of many aspects of the battle, sometimes very radically. It is therefore hoped that when the media pick up the story, as they surely will for a short period in June 2015, they do not simply regurgitate the tired old discredited story, but embrace the new evidence to re-educate the masses and help generate a resurgence in popular interest in one of the most fascinating periods in history.
Gareth Glover is a fifty four year old ex Royal Navy officer who has studied the Waterloo campaign for nearly forty years. He is now acknowledged as the foremost authority on Waterloo material held within the British archives and has published over forty books of previously unpublished or very rare soldiers’ memoirs. He has recently published his critically acclaimed revised history of the Waterloo campaign, entitled Waterloo, Myth and Reality and The History Press will publish his sumptuously illustrated book Waterloo in 100 Objects in April 2015.