duke of wellington

War Classics – Wellington in the Peninsula

Nick Spenceley recalls one of the great works of military history.

Sir Arthur Wellesley 1st Duke of Wellington

The Past

This week: Waterloo Uncovered

It is regarded as one of history's greatest battles, the moment that brought the Napoleonic era to its end, and a triumph that ushered in four decades of peace in Europe. But Waterloo was no easy victory. Instead, as the Duke of Wellington wrote to his brother William, "It was the most desperate business I ever was in."

The Past

Waterloo Quiz

From which island did the exiled Napoleon escape in February 1815, setting off the chain of events which led to the Battle of Waterloo?

Below Wellesley’s army on the march in the Peninsula.

Wellington’s lessons in failure

‘The art of victory is learned in failures.’ It might have been said by Wellington (though in fact it was said by South American revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar). Stephen Roberts explains why.

WATERLOO RE-ENACTMENT

The bicentenary of what became known in Britain as the Battle of Waterloo has been marked by an outburst of commemorations, central to which was an enormous re-enactment that took place at the battlefield on 19 and 20 June 2015.

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

Historian of military medicine Mick Crumplin takes us into the grisly world of Napoleonic-era casualty treatment.