Waterloo

Some Notes

Battle of Waterloo

The battle of Waterloo is one of the most analysed, or more accurately over analysed campaigns and battles of all time. In fact we have an incontestable surfeit of accounts of the campaign and battle.

The great military historian J.F.C. Fuller has it largely right when he says:

The Waterloo Campaign has been so thoroughly investigated and criticized that the errors committed in it are apt to appear exceptional and glaring. They were not, they were the usual errors found in most campaigns.1

The chief reasons that the campaign generated such a storm of writing were that it ended the career of one of the greatest of military leaders of all time and further that it brought into conflict the two most capable military leaders of the time. In this case Napoleon and Wellington.