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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank R. Gerald Hughes for his assistance with this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Muir, Wellington, 528.
2. The Anglo-Allied army also counted the Indies Brigade; a Dutch unit formed of troops from the Dutch colonies of East and West Indies (Dutch Antilles, Surinam and present-day Indonesia). The Indies Brigade did not take part to the battle of Waterloo but was positioned as part of the reserve in the town of Halle.
3. William Siborne, The History of the Waterloo Campaign.
4. See, for example, Booth, The Battle of Waterloo. Wellington’s own dispatch announcing the victory lauded the role played by his allies.
5. Fuller, The Decisive Battles, 211–2.
6. Siborne (ed.), The Waterloo Letters.
7. Navez, Les Belges à Waterloo.
8. Boulger, The Belgians at Waterloo.
9. François and de t’Serclaes de Wommersom, La Campagne de 1815 aux Pays-Bas.
10. Pflugk-Harttung, Belle-Alliance.
11. Hofschröer, 1815.
12. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo, 60.
13. For an overview of Napoleon’s return to power, see Austin, 1815; and Braude, The Invisible Emperor.
14. Following Napoleon’s abdication in 1814, Belgium was ceded by France to The Netherlands. In 1830, the Belgian Revolution led to independence and the formation of the modern Kingdom of Belgium in 1831.
15. Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, 136–60.
16. Brett-James, “Waterloo, 1815,” 140.
17. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo, 155.
18. Château d’Hougoumont: a walled farm compound, situated at the bottom of an escarpment near the Nivelles road. It served as one of the advanced defensive positions of Wellington’s army.
19. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo, 268.
20. Andrew, The Secret World, 361.
21. Caulaincourt cited in Fuller, The Decisive Battles, 163. Fuller writes: 'Without Trafalgar there could have been no Peninsular War, and without the Peninsular War it is hard to believe there would ever have been a Waterloo' (Fuller, The Decisive Battles, 95). On the Battle of the Nations (The Battle of Leipzig) of October 1813, see Fuller, The Decisive Battles, 147-55.
22. On this, see Davies, “The Influence of Intelligence on Wellington’s Art of Command”.
23. On Scovell, see Urban, The Man Who Broke Napoleon’s Codes.
24. Parritt, The Intelligencers, 54.
25. Davies, Intelligence and Government in Britain and the United States, Volume 2, 75. While the Peninsula Corps of Guides this was revived in equivalent entities during the Crimean and South African wars, the Intelligence Corps was only founded during the First World War. Even then it was disbanded again in 1929, and only reformed in 1940. On the IC, see Clayton, Forearmed. On Grant himself, see Haswell, The First Respectable Spy.
26. Andrew, The Secret World, 361; and Hofschröer, “Grant’s Waterloo Intelligence“, 163-76.
27. On this, see O’Connell, “Underground alliances and preventive strikes.”
28. Leggiere, “Prometheus Chained, 1813–1815,” 366.
29. See note 16 above.
30. The Voltigeurs companies of each battalion having been detached to form a skirmishing screen ahead of the advancing troops.
31. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo, 288.
32. See Smith, Charge!
33. Parkinson, Hussar General, 239.
34. This approach, i.e. the extensive employment of first-person testimony, was also adopted by Klaus-Jürgen Bremm in his excellent volume, Die Schlacht: Waterloo 1815.
35. Wilkin and Wilkin, Fighting the British, 3–4 especially.
36. On the campaign in Egypt, see the excellent Strathern, Napoleon in Egypt. For the invasion as seen from an Egyptian perspective, see Cole, Napoleon’s Egypt.
37. See Limm, Walcheren to Waterloo.
38. See Kleinman, “Tone and the French Expeditions to Ireland, 1796–1798.”
39. Ibid., 134.
40. For an example of extensive use of first-hand accounts, see Barbero, The Battle; Kershaw, 24 Hours at Waterloo; and Cornwell, Waterloo.
41. Bülow’s IV Corps had left Dion-le-Mont at daybreak to march through Wavre before heading west in the direction of Lasne and then to Plancenoit on extreme right of the French army. Marshal Grouchy only caught up and engaged the Prussian rear-guard in Wavre at 16.00.
42. See Wilkin and Wilkin, Fighting the British, 139–40, for examples of French soldiers’ memoirs and letters.
43. Wilkin and Wilkin, Fighting the British, 139.
44. Held by the National Army Museum in London since 2016. The Grenadier Guards Collection at the National Army Museum, http://www.grengds.com/static.php?content_id=168 (accessed 7 May 2020).
45. Extrapolated from Chambers, The Men of the 1st Foot Guards.
46. Wrongly spelled as Hautain-le-Val in the book.
47. For a more detailed account, see Robinson, The Battle of Quatre Bras 1815; Field, Prelude to Waterloo.
48. See also Franklin, Waterloo – The Struggle for Hougoumont; and Paget and Saunders, Hougoumont.
49. The Guards Division had dispatched its four light companies to join the defence of the farm. The 2nd Brigade’s two light companies occupied the farm buildings while the 1st Brigade’s defended the orchard and wood to the east and south of the farm. After having been replaced by the 800 men of the 1st Battalion of the 2nd Nassau Regiment, the two light companies of the 2nd Guards Brigade returned to the ridge.
50. On this subject, see O’Keeffe, Waterloo. The Aftermath.
51. Irritatingly, while the spelling of Péronne is correct in the text, the chapter title refers to Peronné.
52. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo. For a particularly savage treatment of Captain William Siborne, see the introduction.
53. Op de Beeck, Waterloo: de laatste honderd dagen van Napoleon.
54. Baker-Smith, Wellington’s Hidden Heroes, 3.
55. Abolished in 1813.
56. Haythornwaite, Cassin-Scott, and Chappell, Uniforms of Waterloo, 130–135; and Pericoli, The Armies at Waterloo, 162–3.
57. Baker-Smith, Wellington’s Hidden Heroes, 85.
58. Ibid., 20.
59. Ibid., 76–8.
60. Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo, 147–53.
61. The Prince of Orange’s Chief-of-Staff.
62. Baker-Smith, Wellington’s Hidden Heroes, 180.
63. Dawson, Marshal Ney at Quatre Bras; Dawson, Napoleon and Grouchy; and Dawson, Battle for Paris 1815. His three volumes on French uniforms of the Napoleonic Wars are also excellent source books: Napoleon’s Waterloo Army: Uniforms and Equipment; Napoleon’s Imperial Guard Uniforms and Equipment: The Infantry; Napoleon’s Imperial Guard Uniforms and Equipment: The Cavalry.
64. Note: the term company (compagnie) denoted an administrative unit. The tactical unit was called a platoon (peloton). Each platoon was formed of a company. Half a platoon was called a section. For the sake of clarity, I will keep using the term company.
65. Dawson, Waterloo: The Truth at Last, 59–61.
66. Dawson, Waterloo: The Truth at Last, 59. This is another example of irritating mathematical failure.
67. For more convincing discussion of the strength and location of the Grand Battery, see Project Hougoumont, “The Grand Battery – The Latest Evidence,” https://projecthougoumont.com/the-grand-battery-the-latest-evidence/ (accessed 27 May 2020).
68. On the fight for La Haye Sainte, see Simms, The Longest Afternoon.
69. See Hofschröer, 1815.
70. Wellington, Paris. Letter of 8 August 1815, The Dispatches of Field Marshal, the Duke of Wellington, volume 12, ed. Gurwood, 598.
71. Clausewitz, On War, 117.
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Jeff Bridoux
Jeff Bridoux is Lecturer in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth University, where he teaches military history. He is the author of American Foreign Policy and Postwar Reconstruction (2011) and the co-author of Democracy Promotion: A Critical Introduction (2014). He is lead editor for the University of Exeter Press World Order Series and is currently working on a study of Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. A former soldier in the Belgian army, Bridoux has worked as a battlefield guide at Waterloo and is an avid gamer of the Napoleonic Wars.