Dan Snow's History Hit - Voices of Waterloo
Episode Date: June 18, 2021206 years ago today, 60,000 men were slaughtered in the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte's French army was finally defeated by an almighty coalition of troops from the United Kingdom, the Nether...lands, Hanover, Brunswick and Nassau, led by the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher. In this archive episode Zack White, who set up Voices of the Battlefield, an oral history project featuring 41 readings of eyewitness testimony from the campaign, joins the podcast. Dan and Zack discuss the battle and hear accounts, ranging from a 10 year old triangle player remembering the chaos of the battlefield to Wellington's own remorse at the horrific bloodshed ], of what happened that fateful day.If you want even more Waterloo content you can listen to The Battle of Waterloo with Peter Snow or watch History Hit's film Austerlitz: Napoleon's Greatest Victory about Napoleon's greatest victory ten years earlier.
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Welcome, everybody, to Dan Snow's History.
This episode is first broadcast on the 18th of June.
Now, the 18th of June is one of the many anniversaries that we talk about in this podcast.
The anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
When I was a kid, my dad told me stories about history.
And I did that with my kids now.
Their favourites at the moment, Boudicca, Joan of Arc,
Down Busters, The Alamo.
It's like an eclectic collection.
Anyway, my dad used to tell me stories.
And they probably reflected, as do mine,
they reflected his upbringing in a British boarding school in the 1950s.
Their staples were Wolfe in Quebec,
the Black Hole of Calcutta, Gordon and Cartoon, Trafalgar, Waterloo. She used to share those
stories with me. And I remember I found Waterloo so compelling. It was a remarkable battle,
the end of a military career of one of history's greatest soldiers, generals and statesmen,
Napoleon Bonaparte.
A battle that for hours and hours on that long June day looked like it could have gone either way. A battle that pitted Napoleon's veterans against a polygot allied force, some veteran
British units from the Peninsular War allied with Dutch and what we'd now call Belgian troops and the Prussians making their
dramatic late afternoon arrival Napoleon's eastern flank to crash into Napoleon's army
and possibly deny him the victory that would have opened the road to Brussels and perhaps
driven a wedge through the grand coalition facing him. We will never know. Because on the evening of the 18th of June, Napoleon's
final gamble, an attack by the Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard, who had never broken in the face
of an enemy before, came face to face at the top of that infamous ridge with the British guards,
exchanged musketry, and the French broke and ran back down the hill. It was the end for Napoleon.
He got in his carriage, escaped the battlefield,
and he would abdicate a few days later.
And I remember when I was a kid, my dad would say to me,
we'll go to the 200th anniversary.
And I said, 2015?
I found it extraordinary.
I'd even be alive that long.
I'd be in my late 30s.
The whole idea was hysterical.
Well, 2015's come and gone, folks.
2015's come and gone.
In fact, we're closer
now to 2025. But my dad and I did get that reenactment, and it was a very special experience.
I also, that summer, started a podcast. I started this podcast, Antinous History, here. And the
first guest I had on was my dad, and we told the story of the Battle of Waterloo together.
That episode's been repeated a couple of times, and it's been story of the Battle of Waterloo together. That episode has been repeated
a couple of times and it's been listened to by lots of you and I'm very grateful for that.
On this anniversary of Waterloo I want to repeat another episode I've done on the battle. It
features historian Zach White. He has set up the Voices of the Battlefield campaign. It's an oral
history project featuring 41 recordings of eyewitness testimony from the campaign.
So in this podcast, I talked to Zach and then we listened to a couple of the accounts from the 10-year-old triangle player who was on the battlefield to Wellington's own remorse at the
horrific bloodshed. I really enjoyed recording this episode with Zach and I hope you enjoy
listening to it. If you want to watch our documentary about the Battle of Waterloo,
it's available at historyhit.tv. Lots of wonderful historical content there. A lot of it planned to dovetail with the audio content
we put on this podcast. So please head over to historyhit.tv and check out our Waterloo
documentary. And actually, there's a Battle of Auslitz documentary on there as well,
if you're a real Napoleon fan. You want to check out the highs and lows in Napoleon's career?
They're all there. 10 years apart, 1805, 1815,
a long 10 years. In the meantime, everyone, here's Zach White with his wonderful oral history. Enjoy.
Zach, thank you very much for coming on the podcast.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
June 2015, it all began with the first ever history hit podcast, The Battle of Waterloo. So it's really good to be discussing it again,
but with a bit of a difference. You've picked out some primary sources, some oral history,
and it'd be good to hear those and then discuss them. Battle of Waterloo, June 1815,
Napoleon's final battle, thought to be one of the most decisive battles in history.
Explain to me briefly what Napoleon was hoping to achieve by engaging with the Allied army on Waterloo to south of Brussels.
Well, Waterloo is quite an odd battle in the sense that it should never really have happened,
because in 1814, Napoleon had been beaten by the Sixth Coalition, had been exiled to the
island of Elba, but very quickly got bored. And as the Allies started to
squabble amongst themselves, as they no longer had that kind of unifying purpose of fighting
Napoleon, Napoleon saw his opportunity really to come back. He knew that the Bourbon monarchy,
which had been restored on the French throne, was deeply unpopular. and he saw an opportunity to sort of divide and rule his opponents. And so
he returned in March 1815. The army flocked to him, although there's a lot of debate about whether
or not the civilians really wanted him to return. And with Napoleon back on the throne,
the coalition allies had a unifying purpose again, and they unilaterally agreed that they would not
conclude a separate peace with Napoleon until he had been comprehensively defeated which left
Napoleon with a problem because he knew that he couldn't beat off the forces of Austria, Prussia,
Britain and Russia and so he had to find a way to right the balance back in his favour. And the best way to do that was to strike at two armies, which were based in Belgium,
an Anglo-Dutch force under Wellington and a Prussian force under Blucher,
which he did in this really daring move on the 15th of June,
where he launched his army down a gap between the Anglo-Dutch army and the Prussian army,
because he looked at their lines of communication and realised that they ran in opposite directions to one another.
And because of that, he intended to use his army as a battering ram, sort of to try and smash
through two gates and force these two armies to swing backwards away from each other so that he
could defeat each one in turn. And it very nearly worked. On the 16th of June, there are two
twin battles in effect at Kachabra, which is Wellington's battle, and Ligny, which is Blucher's
battle against Napoleon. And Napoleon won at Ligny, but didn't manage to crush the Prussians
as he'd intended. And because of that, Wellington was able to pull back towards
Waterloo. The Prussians under Blucher had pulled back towards Verve. And Wellington and Blucher
had an agreement that if Wellington stood at fort at Waterloo, the Prussians would march to his aid.
And so Wellington stood in fort, and it turned into a really horrendous bloodbath in a very
confined area that's barely three miles wide and a mile
between the Anglo-Dutch and French positions. It's estimated that anywhere between 40 and 60,000 men
died and the estimates on numbers are just crazy in terms of disparities. It was a really drawn out
affair. Wellington described it as the closest run thing that he ever saw. It started with an artillery barrage on the British position
that began at 1130. There's a very well-known, almost siege confined within the right flank of
the Allied position of Hougoumont, a farm chateau, where the Dutch force alongside the British guards
defended this vital forward position against relentless attack all day.
About one o'clock, Napoleon launched what was meant to be his main sort of hammer blow
on the Allied centre, sending forward an entire corps under Derlon, about 12,000 men,
to just smash their way through the Anglo-Dutch lines. And it came very close to working.
Zach, I want to stop you there because I can see you've got these wonderful oral accounts and there's one that actually refers to Derlon's attack.
So let's go through the battle now.
You've given us the background.
Let's go through looking at these accounts.
You want to start with the one from Eamon O'Keefe
from Merton College, Oxford,
is reading an account by John Scott,
who was a triangle player in the Black Watch.
Quickly, tell me what a triangle player is
and also just tell people about the regiment that is the Black Watch. Quickly tell me what a triangle player is and also just tell people about the regiment that is the Black Watch. The Black Watch is an iconic Scottish unit,
has a brilliant pedigree of holding its own and was a really trusted unit from Wellington. A
triangle player was exactly what it sounds, a musician. This lad was only about 11 or 12 at the
time and his role was to play the triangle within the regimental band.
And a lot of bandsmen were, as Eamon's work has shown, actually used not to play music during battles to try and drown out the cries of wounded,
but instead were there to act as stretcher bearers, to carry the wounded away.
But this 11-year-old clearly couldn't carry anyone away, so he was just sort of left to his own devices over the course of the battle.
Right, let's hear from him now.
I was brought up in the army and was in Belgium in June 1815. What I had to do was play the
triangle. I was in the Black Watch, but my arms weren't much, just a pistol and a small
sword. Quatre bras was a good deal worse than Waterloo in my opinion.
My father spoke Gaelic as well as English, and a lot of the Black Watch spoke Gaelic.
But Wellington said he would not have it, for by the living God he would have every man speak English.
After the Battle of Quatre Bras, we got a rest, and then we had to march to Waterloo.
About 11 o'clock on the night of the 17th of June, it commenced to rain heavily. The rain poured as
hard as it could, and what a night that was. It was in a potato field we were in, but I wrapped
my cloak around me and got a good sleep. I remember I lay just on the side of a little bank,
and the water was running down on both sides of me,
while in the morning there were two inches of mud around us.
At daylight, we were up, and each of us got a glass of rum and a ship's biscuit.
As for the battle, I remember very little.
It was nothing but fighting and excitement. All day long the fighting went on, but the smoke hung so thick around us that we could
see little. There was nothing but firing and shouting on all sides. I was not frightened. I was
too excited for anything. I played my triangle and shouted Scotland forever till I was hoarse and could
scarcely speak a word. I never got a scratch, but I think it must have been my height that saved me.
I was so little that I had not much risk to run. So there we go. That was Eamon O'Keefe from
Merton College Oxford reading John Scott's words. Interesting to remind ourselves, well, first of all, it was an allied army. So there's lots of German units, Dutch,
we'd now call Belgian. But even within the British army, there was a huge preponderance of Irish and
Scottish troops, weren't there? There absolutely were. A chap called Jim Deary at Maynooth University
in Ireland has been doing some brilliant work on this and he's found that even within the regiments
that were named as English regiments there were about a third of troops who were recruited from
Ireland so in many respects there's this huge Irish contingent and it's really interesting to
hear the extract pick up on the use of Gaelic which was obviously a language of Ireland, but also a language of Scotland,
and that kind of attempt to suppress that. And it's really interesting how that reflects
how Waterloo is used later on to kind of forge this British identity around the fact that soldiers
from all four nations within the United Kingdom had fought and served a distinction in the
Napoleonic Wars. And there's a lot of mutual
respect between English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish troops about the fact that they can completely
depend on one another to fight as hard as they need to do. Also he mentions the conditions tonight
for the battle I mean it was famously miserable wasn't it and one of the reasons Napoleon
lost was because of the thick mud so he couldn't get his guns in order but it sounds in fact a
grim couple of days in the lead up to battle it was a really grim night and it's interesting what
you say about the mud because that's one of the things that i've been asking people as part of
this water you remembered program that i've put together about the role that the mud did or didn't
play and there's a lot of debate about whether or not the ground could have dried out anymore
within that couple of hours because for those who haven't been to the battlefield not the ground could have dried out anymore within that couple of hours.
Because for those who haven't been to the battlefield itself, the ground is clay.
And so it just retains the moisture.
And if it's rained the night before and you go walking on the battlefield,
you find it just cakes to your shoes, regardless of what time of the day.
So it's a really interesting point that you raised there about that debate on the mud.
But the conditions were awful.
John Scott seems to be one of the lucky ones in that he got some food.
And when you read a lot of accounts from the British troops during this period,
actually what they do the night before is they go in search of plunder.
And they plunder the locals of food and so on to be able to eat the night before the battle.
And the officers just turn a blind eye to it because they know their men have got to eat
to have the strength to fight the next day.
Extraordinary, isn't it some units suffer casualties that wouldn't have been out of place in the wars 100 years later so a firepower revolution was taking place it was
incredibly dangerous to be on the battlefield and yet there's still a kid playing a triangle in the
middle of the whole thing such an interesting contrast. Kind of funny because it's so ridiculous
to me in the middle of all of this carnage and
the extract really brings together how disorientating it was with all of the smoke from
the musket fire, the screams of the wounded. You've got this little 11 or 12 year old who's
banging his triangle as hard as he can, just squilling Scotland forever at the top of his voice.
You must wonder what the soldiers thought about this little one in their midst,
putting himself in danger completely pointlessly,
and whether they just kind of were too busy to worry about him
or whether he was actually helping in his own way by boosting their morale.
Can we talk about Nick Lipscomb's now, his reading of Thomas Creevey's recollection?
Because I want to talk about Wellington before the battle. Can we have a listen to that? Absolutely.
Will you let me ask you, Duke, what you think you will make of it?
He stopped and said in the most natural manner, by God, I think Blucher and myself can do the thing.
can do the thing. Do you calculate, I asked, upon any desertion in Bonaparte's army? Not upon a man,
he said, from the colonel to the private in a regiment, both inclusive. We may pick up a marshal or two, perhaps, but not worth a damn. What do you reckon, I asked, upon any support
from the French king's troops at a lost? This is a French
King Louis XVIII, of course, who in fact was with his guard some 15 miles west of Brussels.
Oh, said Wellington, don't mention such fellows. No, I think Blucher and I can do the business.
And then, seeing a private soldier of one of our infantry regiments enter the park,
Seeing a private soldier of one of our infantry regiments enter the park,
gaping at the statues and images.
There, he said, pointing at the soldier.
It all depends on that article, whether we do the business or not.
Give me enough of it and I am sure.
Well, that was Thomas Creevey.
What was he doing near the Battle of Waterloo?
Well, Creevey was a Whig politician and he went to Brussels because of the ill health of his wife.
And so it was kind of by chance that he found himself in Brussels.
They'd gone there for a change of air.
And Napoleon's return meant that suddenly Brussels was a much more dangerous place to be than it had previously been. But they stayed over the course of the build-up of troops in Belgium prior to Waterloo.
And he met Wellington on two occasions,
immediately before, well, shortly before the battle,
and then immediately afterwards.
It's a fantastic quote that Nick reads the whole extract in full
in the Waterloo Remembered Voices from the Battlefield series.
This quote shows so much about Wellington's mindset
because it's a bit of a political dig in the section immediately before what we've just
heard. And it also says so much about his belief in the British troops that, come what may, if he's
got enough of them, he absolutely knows that he could defeat Napoleon. He is rude, though, about
the other nations. I mean, this is a coalition army. And actually, Waterloo, the Dutch troops at Waterloo, often overlooked,
play an extraordinarily important role throughout the battle,
particularly at the end, don't they, of the advance of the Imperial Guard?
They absolutely do.
What people often miss is the fact that Waterloo isn't Britain versus France.
I was speaking to a member of the Waterloo Uncovered team,
an army veteran called Ben Mead, who likened the Allied victory at Waterloo to being a sort of 19th century version of NATO in the sense that, as you say, it's a coalition victory.
And Wellington's army is only made up of a third of British troops. A third of the force is British. And the rest, as you say, are Dutch, Belgian, some King's German Legion troops in there
and some Brunswickers. They play a really crucial role and I think in a sense it says a lot about
what Wellington believed the men could really do when it came to it that he placed King's German
Legion troops in La Haysante, one of the really important forward positions just in front of the
Allied centre and there were also Dutch troops fighting alongside the British guard at Hougoumont in La Haysante, one of the really important forward positions just in front of the Allied Centre.
And there were also Dutch troops fighting alongside the British Guard at Hougoumont.
So for all that he was rude about other nations' troops at times,
when it really came down to it, he must have known that they would stand and fight and do the job,
because he wouldn't have put them in some of the most crucial positions of the entire battle.
You're listening to Dan Snow's History. It's the 206th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
We're talking about that battle more after this.
This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas and the courage to stand alone.
Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.
You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny.
You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you.
Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.
when I'm done with you.
Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.
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I want to go back now because let's get the fighting underway. We've heard from the triangle player. We've heard from Wee John Scott.
Let's hear from Jacques-Francois Martin, who takes part in the first big infantry assault. Kind of quite
a blunt instrument, really, just a massive infantry assault on the Allied left sort of wing of the
Allied line, I suppose you'd say. We've got Andrew Field here, a historian specialising on the French
perspective. So he's reading about Jean-Francois Martin. Can you set this one up for us?
Yeah, so this is that initial hammer blow. It's meant to be Napoleon's main attack, actually. It's meant to end the whole battle in one decisive move. And he sends an entire corps under being able to soak up the punishment of artillery fire and musket fire and keep on coming.
And that kind of unnerving effect is meant, and in many cases is very successful, at just pushing back whatever stands in its way.
It sort of got this irresistible momentum to it.
It had never worked, interestingly, against British troops over the course of the Peninsular War between 1808 and 1814, but it had worked across Europe.
And so Napoleon tried it again. I have to say it came very close to winning. When you read the
accounts, it's very clear that the Anglo-Dutch army in the centre was starting to shake. It was
starting to pull back in the face of this onslaught. Picton was killed, wasn't he? The local,
the man on the spot, the commander of the troops on the spot was killed? He was. One of Wellington's most trusted commanders had served with him all the way through the Peninsular War.
Quite a controversial figure, not necessarily a particularly nice person to know, but an utterly
dependable commander, quite impetuous at times, but somebody that Wellington completely trusted,
and he was very pleased to have Picton with him at waterloo and as the allied center begins to buckle there's
a very famous incident the charge of the household and union heavy cavalry brigades the vast majority
of the allied heavy cavalry just sweeps in at the absolute perfect moment because this french column
has just crossed through a hedge there they've
been shaken they're slightly unsettled by the fact that they're out of formation and just as they're
trying to reform for that final push in the sweep the British heavy cavalry from all sides and they
shattered the entire corps it just takes that entire unit out of the battle for hours one of
the best uses of cavalry in British history but quickly tipped over into one of the worst.
Let's hear from Jacques-Francois Martin.
We were in column at the moment the order arrived
to climb the position and to seize with the bayonet
the English batteries and anything else that offered resistance.
The ridgeline bristled with their cannon
and was covered with their troops.
It appeared impregnable.
No matter, the order had arrived, the charge was beaten,
the shout of Vive l'Empereur came from every mouth,
and we marched ahead in close ranks, aligned as if on a parade.
I can attest to the fact that at this critical moment
I did not see a single cowardly thought painted on the faces of our soldiers.
The same ardour, the same gaiety shone there as before. However, the shot had already killed
many and this promised that the carnage would be terrible when we arrived on their guns.
Death crept upon us from every side. Entire ranks disappeared under the case shot, but
nothing could stop our march. It continued with the same order as before, with the same precision. The dead were immediately replaced
by those who followed. The ranks, although becoming thinner, remained in good order.
Finally, we arrived on the height. Now we could reap the reward of such bravery. Already
the English began to give way, already their guns retired at the gallop.
A hollow road lined with hedges was the only obstacle which still separated us from them.
Our soldiers did not wait for the order to cross it. They rushed over it, jumped over the hedges
and broke ranks to run on against the enemy. Fatal carelessness. We were forced to get them back into order. We held them back in order to
rally them. At the moment that I succeeded in pushing one of them back into the ranks, I saw
him fall at my feet from a sabre blow. I turned around quickly. The English cavalry had charged
us from every direction and we were cut to pieces. I only had time to force myself into the crowd
to avoid the same fate. That was Andrew Phil reading Jacques-Francois Martin, his account
describing that big attack in the early afternoon. Pretty extraordinary account that one, isn't it?
It's incredibly vivid and I think it's a really good way to start to reflect on the human toll
because that's what's so fantastic about studying
the Napoleonic Wars that you've got so many very honest quite moving and touching eyewitness
accounts from Waterloo but from the entire conflict due to increases of literacy and so on
during this period and this gives us a really clear sense of the raw fear that must have gone through that entire unit
as they saw what was coming at them and just knew that there was nothing they could do.
And it says so much about their reaction that Jacques Francois's only defence in this situation
is to just throw himself into the desperate huddle and hope that he doesn't get hit by a sabre blow.
And then the British cavalry overreach, They charge off towards the French guns,
and they in turn are counterattacked,
and it's a bit of a disaster for the British cavalry in the end there.
So the battle moves on.
It starts to focus, as you mentioned earlier on,
over on the western flank of the ally, of the battlefield,
but also another big solid sort of farmhouse building,
La Haissante, right in the middle,
a huge anchor for the Allied army.
And we've got another reading from Hayley
Stewart here from the University of North Texas. She's got Major George Bering, the famous major
who was serving with the King's German Legion. Who was Bering and who were the King's German Legion?
Bering was one of the more senior commanders within La Haison on the day. This is a beautiful
account that we're about to hear. And the King's German Legion has a really interesting history that I explored with Hayley in a specific interview on the KGL and
their role within Waterloo. They were raised in Hanover when Napoleon moved into Hanover and
people didn't want to be kind of drawn into Napoleon's armies. They wanted to
serve with the British. They're another unit that has this really dependable reputation.
Admittedly, that unit became kind of watered down
as they weren't able to source new recruits from Hanover.
And so they had to make up the numbers with deserters
in some cases from the French army.
But nonetheless, another unit that could be utterly trusted
to hold the line and has a great reputation
and was really respected by the British troops,
which is quite rare because quite often the British rank and file were
quite scathing about other nations, particularly the Spanish and sometimes the Portuguese.
Let's hear from Hayley now.
Many of the men, although covered with wounds, could not be brought to retire.
So long as our officers fight and we can stand, was their constant reply, we will not stir from the spot.
It would be injustice to a skirmisher named Frederick Lindau if I did not mention him.
Bleeding from two wounds in the head and carrying in his pocket a considerable bag of gold he had taken from an enemy officer,
he stood at the small back barn door and from thence defended the main entrance in his front.
at the small back barn door and from thence defended the main entrance in his front.
I told him to go back as the cloth about his head was not sufficient to stop the strong flow of blood. He however, as regardless of his wounds as of his gold, answered, he would be a scoundrel
that deserted you so long as his head is on his shoulders. That was Haley Stewart from the
University of North Texas reading out Major George Baring's account.
The steadfastness of the rank and file really comes through there.
And La Hage-Sanct was a brutal fight that went on all day and swung both ways.
Wellington was very rude about his own troops.
They were the scum of the earth, he said,
and they were drawn from the lowest socioeconomic groups
in late 18th, 19th century Britain and Ireland.
Why did they fight, and in this case, you know, Germans,
you know, probably fairly tenuous connection to, by this stage, the British king.
Why do they fight so hard at Waterloo?
I mean, it's just ferocious.
They absolutely do.
I think it says so much about the KGL, particularly at La Haison,
that the reason that the farm falls is actually because they've run out of ammunition.
They can't get the ammunition for their guns guns partly because the farm ends up being slightly
cut off and they don't pull out when they've got a couple of rounds left they wait until they've
fired every last shot and they fight their way out with bayonets which says so much about their
tenacity in terms of why do they fight this is another really big, fascinating topic and something that I've been interested in for years.
And I think it comes down to a few things.
One is camaraderie between their comrades,
that actually as a unit and particularly as a mess,
they trust one another to keep fighting
because they know that their collective survival
depends on everybody doing their bit.
In terms of loyalty,
there's certainly a degree of loyalty to the unit and the unit's history. Personally, I don't really
believe that there was any devotion to king and country. I know a lot is made of that. But
during this period, the idea of these men without any real rights being invested in some kind of
political system, there isn't really any sense
that from what i've read at least that they fight for their king they fight for each other and they
fight for the reputation of their unit well we see the sort of climax the battle arriving
after la haie sainte falls napoleon laurier's imperial guard up the hill they are greeted by
a barrage of musketry from the british and some Dutch troops and they break and the battle is over. The French army retreats in chaos. Let's hear again from Nick Lipscomb,
who's a historian, reading Thomas Creevey's recollections. Creevey, if you remember,
was the Whig politician. Zach has been told about it. He was in Brussels.
And this is when he talks about what he thinks Wellington was thinking after the battle.
The first thing I did, of course, was to put out my hand and congratulate him upon his victory.
He made a variety of observations in his short, natural, blunt way,
but with the greatest gravity all the time,
and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy.
It has been a damned serious business, he said. Blucher and I have lost
30,000 men. It has been a damn nice thing, the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.
Blucher lost 14,000 on Friday night and got so damnably licked I could not find him on Saturday
morning, so I was obliged to fall back to keep up my
communications with him. Then, as he walked about, he praised greatly those guards who kept the farm,
meaning Hougamont of course, against the repeated attacks of the French, and then he praised all
our troops, uttering repeated expressions of astonishment at our men's courage.
He repeated so often, it's being so nice a thing, so nearly run a thing, that I asked him if the
French had fought better than he had ever seen them do before. No, he said, they've always fought
the same, since I first saw them at Vimera. Then he said, by God, I don't think
it would have done if I had not been there.
So, Zach, Wellington was quite sombre, not just from this creepy account, we know from
his other writing and the other things he said, you know, he was not euphoric after
that victory, was he?
Not at all. Wellington was really deeply affected
by Waterloo but I think he also was deeply affected on other occasions when there had been
these absolute bloodbath style battles. After the siege of Baderhof in 1812 which was a really
horrific assault on some really well defended breaches into the city it's estimated about
4 000 men were killed in a really confined space he walked the breaches and was found
weeping by picton who we mentioned earlier and picton had no clue what the matter was with
wellington he turns around and says what's wrong with you and wellington realized that he couldn't
actually explain the situation to picton because he didn't get it. But essentially he was crying because he'd seen so many of his men killed.
And for all that Wellington was very rude about his men, calling them the scum of the earth, as you say, and did so on multiple occasions, he certainly didn't like them.
He recognised their dependability and he was never one to waste his men's lives.
waste his men's lives and I think that comes across particularly in this account from Creevey where he could see the devastation that had been caused to his army and knew that that victory had
been bought with their blood and I think it also affected him a lot that his staff officers the
vast majority of his staff officers were killed in the battle so the people that he had the closest
relationship with were also killed and there's a very moving letter that he wrote to Lord Aberdeen informing him of the death of his brother, Alexander Gordon, who had been a senior member of Wellington staff.
That is just this outpouring of emotion that really reflects that what Creevey saw wasn't a one-off.
Wellington was deeply moved, deeply shaken by what had happened at Waterloo.
Wellington was deeply moved, deeply shaken by what had happened at Waterloo.
In fact, you mentioned that letter.
I think you've got Karen Robson, head of the Special Collections Department at Southampton University,
the home of the Wellington papers.
What a great university, my local university, obviously, unbiased.
Let's get her reading out Wellington's letter to Lord Aberdeen,
informing of the death of his brother, Alexander Gordon.
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You will readily give credit to the existence of the extreme grief
with which I announce to you the death of your gallant brother.
In consequence of a wound received in our great battle of yesterday.
He had served me most zealously and usefully for many years and on many
trying occasions but he had never rendered himself more useful and had
never distinguished himself more than in our late actions. He received the womb which occasioned his death
when rallying one of Brunswick's battalions which was shaking a little and he lived long enough to
be informed by myself of the glorious results of our actions to which he had so much contributed by his active and zealous assistance.
I cannot express to you the regret and sorrow with which I look round me,
and I contemplate the loss which I have sustained, particularly in your brother.
The glory resulting from such actions so dearly
bought is no
consolation to me
Well that was
Karen Robson at Southampton University
I never quite know if Wellington
know whether he's grieving, he says how awful
it is, war's such a terrible thing and then refers
to this kind of little aristocratic cadre of
friends that have been killed, I never quite know whether he's also
referring to the serried ranks of corpses drawn from across the allied army as well. What do
you think about that? I have exactly the same question about it because in one sense he's
writing to Lord Aberdeen about the death of his brother and so he would kind of focus on his
closest friends and relations. But I think with Wellington,
there was always a sense that he didn't like to lose men unnecessarily. And a lot of the point
about Waterloo is that he sat on the defensive waiting for the Prussians to arrive. And the
reason that the entire French army collapses after the failure of the Imperial Guard Assault
is because the Prussians came crashing in on the French right
flank at roughly the same moment they'd been vicious fighting around Plants Noirs for a lot
of the afternoon and it all kind of comes together this is speculation but I do wonder if Wellington
disliked the fact that he just had to sit there and wait and soak up the punishment and knew there
was nothing he could do until the Prussians arrived and until the balance tipped in his favour. But yeah, it's a really interesting point that you make about how it's
not clear quite who he's mourning. But although he was definitely mourning the loss of his close
friends, I think he also mourned the loss of so many of his army as well. Yeah, I know I've done
a classic British mistake there of forgetting to mention the Prussians. Guilty as charged.
I know Wellington's
famous quote is that nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Unlike Napoleon who marched around the field of Austerlitz. I want a big grin on his face.
Let's find out now. I mean, I think you do also forget the feeling in Brussels, the civilians in
Brussels, because Napoleon's army didn't have a fantastic reputation when they marched into a
hostile town and city. Let's go with Christine Hughes Petrone. She is a historian and she's got
Thomas Healy's account of panic among the civilians of Brussels. Of course they were hearing rumours
all day weren't they? Let's hear from her now. The fleeing hussars were closely followed by a group of mounted women.
They were well mounted, riding astride on men's saddles.
They had on boots and trousers like dragoons and wore a gown overall with small round bonnets on their heads.
They rode well, for their horses' feet made the fire fly out of the pavement.
I never shall forget them, for they horses' feet made the fire fly out of the pavement. I never shall forget them,
for they galloped on straight forward, and if the devil had been in the way, they would have went over him. Fancy the quantity of baggage that follows a regiment of soldiers in England,
say 600 or 700 men, and then fancy the baggage, hospital wagons, ammunition carts and wagons, officers,
baggage animals, etc., etc., belonging to an army of 70,000 men, besides the roads full of soldiers
advancing and wounded leaving the field. Every road leading to the field crammed up with all the above requisites of the army
and then all in a moment
the word comes like wildfire
crying the British are beaten
retreat, retreat
the whole of this mass wheels round immediately
and begins to gallop
but of course cannot proceed
for at about every 30 or 40 yards
a concussion takes place. And there they
all are down together, at one spot on the road, above 20 horses were killed, and of course the
men shared the same fate. Right, that was Christine Huth-Trenet, a historian specialising in these
primary accounts of Waterloo. I mean, it's one thing to be on the battlefield, but it wasn't much better to be 20 miles to the north or whatever it was, 15 miles to the north in Brussels, because he would have been very vulnerable to what was going on down south and unable to do anything about it.
You know, in some ways, I wonder if, although it's not as bad as being there and risking your life from all the flying bullets and cannonballs and so on. In a way, it's sort of worse
because not only is there nothing you can do about it, but you're hearing all of these rumours.
And there's a really famous incident that causes panic amongst the population, partly because
Brussels has a significant British expat community, and they didn't particularly want to be caught up
in Napoleon's troops sweeping into Brussels.
But there was genuine panic when some hussars from the Duke of Cumberland's regiment fled from the battle.
And they streamed into the city claiming that the French were on their heels.
And actually, it was a load of rubbish.
And people have been quite harsh about that unit.
But actually, it's more like a yeomanry unit.
They're sort of volunteers.
They probably shouldn't have been anywhere near the battle anyway.
They weren't really up to the task.
But it causes this huge panic and people's kind of streaming into the streets and causes absolute chaos as people try and get away
because they are fearful of the consequences of this victorious French army.
Terrifying stuff.
Well, thank you so much for that.
That's a wonderful collect. I hadn't heard of some of those before. So thank you for Well, thank you so much for that. That's a wonderful
collection. I hadn't heard of some of those before. So thank you for bringing those to my attention,
everyone listening. Where can people get to grips with this project and hear more of these sources?
Sure. So it's part of a big fortnight long project called Waterloo Remembered, which is being hosted
on a podcast that I run called The Napoleonicist. There's no competition for history here, of course, so don't worry.
And it came out of the fact that we can't come together
to commemorate Waterloo like we normally would
because of the coronavirus situation.
And so across 14 days, I've got interviews
with a large number of experts from across the world,
10 in total, talking about all aspects of the battle,
things from the legacy of Waterloo to things like Waterloo Uncover, which is this brilliant project,
a charity that seeks to provide rehabilitation for armed forces veterans, carrying out archaeological digs on the battlefield itself,
and a range of other things. I've also particularly emphasised the forgotten role of Prussians,
King's German legions, and so on. So quite a big mix in there. But I really wanted to emphasise
the human element within this project, because for me, it's always been about the human toll
of war, whether it's on civilians or on soldiers. And so I put out a call initially on social media,
asking for people to read extracts from this period that really
resonated with them thinking i'd get i don't know 15 and in the end 41 people responded so we've got
one for every five years since the waterloo battle that's going to air from the 15th to the 18th the
program as a whole kicks off on the 5th of june there'll also be live tweets via my Twitter account at Z White History. But the
really great thing about this is that the Waterloo Association have said that they will support the
project by live streaming a memorial service at 11 o'clock on the 18th via their YouTube page.
So all you need to do is search Waterloo Association on YouTube and that service will
start at 11 o'clock. And then as part of that, at the end, we're asking people to just hold a one minute silence at 11.30, which is the moment that the
battle began with that great opening of the artillery barrage on the Anglo-Dutch lines.
But I'm also quite keen for people to get involved themselves, because this should be an interactive
process. Remember, it isn't just about people telling you what you need to remember. It should
be about people sharing their own thoughts.
So there is a room in the forum of my website, the NapoleonicWars.net, that has the full schedule across the 14 days, the 5th of June all the way through to the 18th, where they can find all of the details.
But also crucially ask their questions, discuss points that are raised in the interviews and share their thoughts on why Waterloo matters.
Share perhaps photos of their
experiences of visiting the battlefield. If they have veterans grave from Waterloo nearby, perhaps
they can go and visit that grave, obviously taking care to socially distance in the process
and share those thoughts, whether it's through the forum at thenapoleonicwars.net
or just on social media. So Twitter using the hashtag WaterlyRemembered
so that we can all kind of
come together in this conversation
to remember the sacrifice
of so many men
during that campaign.
Well, thank you very much,
Zach White.
Ambitious, big Waterloo anniversary plan.
So congratulations to you
and your whole team
and your network of historians.
So thank you for coming on the pod.
It's been a pleasure.
Thanks for having me. I feel we have the history on our shoulders.
All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country,
all were gone and finished.
I've got just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make
a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great
podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to
wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it,
if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour.
Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things,
and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.
This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone.
Including a pioneering surgeon
who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.
You know, he would look at these men and he would say,
don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us
when I'm done with you.
Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes.
Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.