Waterloo: An Empire Ends: The Last Battle of Napoleon
1815 · event
On a rain-soaked field in Belgium, Napoleon's final gamble collapsed. In one afternoon, tens of thousands fell and the map of Europe was redrawn for a century. Victory and loss on the same field, depending on which side your great-great-grandfather stood.
It rained all night before the battle, and the mud decided as much as the muskets, Napoleon delayed his attack until midday so the ground could dry, and those lost hours let the Prussians arrive.
Wellington called it "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life." By nightfall, 47,000 men lay on a field of eight square kilometres. Europe would not see a war of that scale again for ninety-nine years, and the word "Waterloo" became a synonym for final defeat in every language.