Battle of Waterloo 1815: Complete Field Guide — Politics, Ground, Order of Battle & Timeline // Log 006

Waterloo, 18 June 1815. The battle is often compressed into a familiar sequence: Napoleon attacks, Wellington holds, Blücher arrives and the Imperial Guard breaks. That is accurate as an outline and almost useless as an explanation.

I served 12 years with The Royal Welsh as a mortarman, including operational service in Afghanistan and firing multiple operational fire missions. That makes me instinctively look at Waterloo through ground, observation, arcs, masking, artillery effect, ammunition and the relationship between troops on the forward slope and the weapons supporting them from behind. I was not at Waterloo; lived experience is the lens through which I interrogate the evidence, not a substitute for it.

The political context: why Europe was fighting Napoleon again

Napoleon had abdicated in 1814 and been exiled to Elba while the victorious powers gathered at the Congress of Vienna to reconstruct the European political order. In February 1815 he escaped, landed in France and rapidly returned to power during the period remembered as the Hundred Days.

His return did not simply restart an old personal feud with Britain. Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia regarded the restored Napoleonic regime as a threat to the settlement they were negotiating at Vienna and renewed their coalition. Napoleon therefore faced a strategic clock: major coalition armies were mobilising, and his best chance was to strike the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies in the Low Countries before the coalition could concentrate overwhelming force.

The political objective drove the operational plan. If Napoleon could defeat Wellington and Blücher separately, he might destabilise the coalition, protect Paris and improve his diplomatic position. Wellington and Blücher had the opposite strategic requirement: remain mutually supporting long enough for the wider coalition to bring its weight to bear.

Events leading to Waterloo: 15–17 June

15 June: Napoleon crossed the River Sambre and drove into the gap between the Anglo-Allied and Prussian armies. The manoeuvre was designed to separate them before either could fully concentrate.

16 June — Ligny: Napoleon defeated Blücher’s Prussians. The defeat was severe but not destructive. Crucially, the Prussians withdrew north towards Wavre rather than east away from Wellington.

16 June — Quatre Bras: Marshal Ney failed to dislodge Wellington from the crossroads. When news of the Prussian defeat became clear, Wellington also had to withdraw or risk being turned.

17 June: pursued in heavy rain, the Anglo-Allied army fell back to the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge south of Waterloo. Blücher promised support. Wellington chose to stand there because he expected the Prussians to reach him.

The battlefield: a shallow ridge with enormous tactical value

Wellington deployed along the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge. It is not dramatic high ground. That is precisely the lesson. A few metres of relief were enough to hide much of the Allied infantry from French observation and reduce the effect of artillery fire.

Three advanced positions mattered disproportionately:

• Hougoumont on the Allied right — walls, woods and buildings turned a farm complex into a tactical anchor.
• La Haye Sainte in the centre — close to the Brussels road and directly in front of Wellington’s centre.
• Papelotte/La Haye/Smohain on the Allied left — positions that also helped secure the route by which Prussian forces would approach.

The ground had been soaked by rain. Mud did not “win Waterloo”, but it slowed movement, complicated artillery handling and reduced the efficiency of round-shot ricochet. From a mortarman’s point of view, that matters: fire support is never separate from the physical ground on which guns, limbers, horses and ammunition have to work.

Order of battle

Anglo-Allied Army — Duke of Wellington

Wellington had roughly 68,000 men and 156 guns at Waterloo. It was a genuinely multinational army, combining British troops with Dutch-Belgian, Hanoverian, Brunswick and Nassau contingents.

• I Corps: Prince of Orange — formations on the central and left portions of the position.
• II Corps: Lieutenant-General Lord Hill — important formations on and behind the right.
• Reserve: formations held under Wellington’s direct control, including experienced British units.
• Cavalry: commanded by the Earl of Uxbridge, including the Household and Union heavy cavalry brigades and light cavalry formations.
• Artillery: British, King’s German Legion and allied batteries distributed across the ridge and reserve positions.

French Army of the North — Napoleon

Napoleon had approximately 72,000 men and 246 guns on the field after detaching Marshal Grouchy with about 33,000 men to pursue the Prussians.

• I Corps: General Jean-Baptiste d’Erlon — principal infantry attack against the Allied left-centre.
• II Corps: General Honoré Reille — responsible for the western sector and attacks around Hougoumont.
• VI Corps: General Georges Mouton, Comte de Lobau — reserve later committed against the arriving Prussians.
• Reserve cavalry: powerful cuirassier, dragoon and other cavalry formations; Marshal Ney directed the major cavalry assaults.
• Imperial Guard: Napoleon’s elite reserve under senior Guard commanders, committed late in the battle.

Prussian Army — Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher

The Prussian army had been badly hit at Ligny but remained operational. About 48,000 Prussians reached or were committed around Waterloo during the battle.

• IV Corps: General Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow — the first major Prussian formation to arrive, attacking towards Plancenoit.
• II Corps: General Georg Dubislav von Pirch — reinforced the pressure on Napoleon’s right.
• I Corps: General Hans Ernst Karl von Zieten — moved towards Wellington’s left and helped stabilise the Allied line late in the day.
• III Corps: General Johann von Thielmann — fought Grouchy around Wavre, helping prevent the detached French force from intervening at Waterloo.

Key personalities

Chronology: 18 June 1815

Morning: both armies form up. Napoleon delays the main attack until the saturated ground has improved. Wellington keeps much of his infantry behind the crest.

About 11.30am — Hougoumont: Reille’s corps attacks the wood and chateau. What begins as a diversion becomes a battle within the battle, consuming French troops throughout the day. The Allies retain the chateau.

Early afternoon — grand battery and d’Erlon: French artillery opens against Wellington’s left-centre. D’Erlon’s I Corps advances, drives back parts of the forward Allied line and crests the ridge, where infantry fire and a British heavy-cavalry counter-attack break the assault.

After the counter-attack: the Household and Union brigades inflict severe damage but overextend. French cavalry counter-attacks and the British heavy cavalry suffers heavily.

Mid-afternoon — Prussians appear: Bülow’s IV Corps approaches Napoleon’s right. Napoleon has to divert Lobau’s VI Corps and later Guard troops towards Plancenoit. The battle is now two connected fights: the attempt to break Wellington and the attempt to stop the Prussians rolling up the French flank.

Afternoon — mass cavalry attacks: Ney commits repeated cavalry assaults against Wellington’s centre-right. Allied infantry forms squares. French cavalry can reach and surround them but cannot break the formations without sufficient coordinated infantry and artillery exploitation.

About 6pm — La Haye Sainte falls: French troops finally capture the central farm after its King’s German Legion defenders run short of ammunition. French guns and skirmishers can now press close to Wellington’s centre. This is one of the most dangerous moments for the Allied line.

Late afternoon/evening — Plancenoit: Prussian attacks intensify. Napoleon commits substantial forces to keep his right from collapsing.

About 7pm — Imperial Guard: Napoleon launches Guard battalions against Wellington’s centre. Allied infantry rises from behind the ridge and delivers close-range fire. The Guard attack fails.

Evening — French collapse: the repulse of the Guard, continuing Anglo-Allied pressure and the Prussian advance trigger a general French retreat. Prussian cavalry pursues through the night.

Contemporary voices

“Hard pounding this, gentlemen; let’s see who will pound longest.”

Wellington’s battlefield remark captures the attritional character of the day better than the later image of a single decisive manoeuvre.

“Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

Wellington’s reflection after the battle is worth retaining because it restores the human cost to an event usually discussed as a strategic triumph.

Contemporary accounts from infantry, cavalry and artillerymen repeatedly describe smoke, mud, horses, wounded men and the difficulty of seeing anything beyond a small part of the battlefield. That is an important corrective to the bird’s-eye map.

What I notice through a mortarman’s lens

Observation and masking: Wellington’s reverse-slope deployment did not make French artillery irrelevant; it made the target harder to observe and reduced the effect of direct fire. The same basic relationship between crest lines and supporting fire survives into modern indirect-fire work.

Strongpoints consume time: Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte were not merely landmarks. They fixed troops, shaped fields of fire and forced commanders to make repeated decisions about reinforcement.

Fire and manoeuvre have to arrive together: the French cavalry attacks demonstrate what happens when one arm achieves contact without the complementary infantry/artillery effect needed to exploit it.

Ammunition is tactical: La Haye Sainte became untenable when ammunition ran short. That is the sort of detail a strategic map can hide completely. A position can be excellent until the system feeding it fails.

Coalition warfare is a communications problem: Waterloo was won by two armies coordinating under enormous uncertainty. Blücher’s promise to support Wellington mattered only because Prussian staff work turned intent into movement after Ligny.

Casualties and outcome

National Army Museum figures place French losses at nearly 40,000 killed, wounded or captured, with the Anglo-Allied and Prussian forces suffering about 22,000 casualties. Exact totals vary by source and by whether losses from the surrounding campaign are included.

Waterloo destroyed Napoleon’s immediate military position. He abdicated again within days, and coalition forces entered Paris in July. The battle therefore mattered both tactically and politically: it ended the Hundred Days and allowed the Vienna settlement to proceed without a restored Napoleonic France contesting it by force.

Continue the Waterloo story

Use the Battle of Waterloo map guide for a fast visual route through Mont-Saint-Jean, Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, Plancenoit and the main attack axes, or return to the Waterloo 1815 research hub for the political road, Hundred Days campaign and commander biographies.

For the commercial and deeper pre-modern continuation, Waterloo now hands across to our companion brand Iron Regiment — Waterloo 1815: How the Battle Unfolded, then into the Revolution & Empire / Waterloo collection. Gallus remains the route onward into later nineteenth-century and modern military history.

Sources & further research

• National Army Museum — Battle of Waterloo
• National Army Museum — 1817 plan of Ligny, Quatre Bras and Waterloo
• National Army Museum — Wellington biography
• The Napoleon Series — Anglo-Allied order of battle
• The Napoleon Series — French order of battle
• Wikimedia Commons — public-domain battle map
• Andrew Roberts, Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last Gamble; David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon; Peter Hofschröer, studies of the Waterloo campaign.

Orders of battle and casualty figures at Waterloo differ between sources depending on effective strengths, detachments and when units are counted. I use rounded figures and keep the army present at Waterloo separate from forces operating elsewhere in the campaign.