The Darker Side of Victory: Wellington’s medical service at Waterloo

It was not until about 8.30pm on the 18 June 1815 that the crash of gunfire and musketry, the neighing of horses, and the shouts and cries of thousands of men died down. This Sunday evening had ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s last desperate attempt to defeat the Allied powers (Britain, Prussia, the German states, and the Dutch/Belgians).

Left background The dead, dying, and wounded lay far thicker on the field of Waterloo on the evening of 18 June 1815 than on the Somme on the evening of 1 July 1916 around 55,000 of them across some four square miles. John Heaviside Clark’s famous depiction, based on sketches done on the battlefield, captures the scale of it. left FOREGROUND A British assistant surgeon of infantry in Waterloo-period uniform. — The dead, dying, and wounded lay far thicker on the field of Waterloo on the evening of 18 June 1815 than on the Somme on the evening of 1 July 1916 around 55,000 of them across some four square miles. John Heaviside Clark’s famous depiction, based on sketches done on the battlefield, captures the scale of it. Image: Alamy Photo: Sam Faulkner (courtesy of N Shaw).

It had happened on the plains of what is now the Province of Brabant, in Belgium, just 11 miles south of Brussels. Around 55,000 dead, dying, and wounded men and thousands of injured horses lay across an area of little more than four square miles. The density of casualties per mile of front far exceeded that suffered by the British Army on the first day of the Somme in 1916.

It was the end of a 23-year-long war against Republican and Napoleonic France (1792-1815). This war had taxed Britain dearly, both financially and in human lives. The total bill was £1.6 billion, leaving a national debt of around £544 million. The human loss, at around 2.5-3% of the population, was proportionately higher than that of 1914-1918.

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