12 Aug 1815 Jahr - Battle of Waterloo

Beschreibung:

near Waterloo in Belgium

part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands at the time.

Napoleon defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition

British-led coalition

under the command of the Duke of Wellington


and a Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal von Blücher

***************************
The battle marked end of the Napoleonic Wars.
****************************

Upon Napoleon's return to power in March 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition



Napoleon planned to attack them separately in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition.

Napoleon sent a third of his forces to pursue the Prussians


Upon learning that the Prussian army was able to support him, Wellington decided to offer battle near the village of Waterloo.

Here he withstood repeated attacks by the French throughout the afternoon of 18 June, aided by the progressively arriving Prussians who attacked the French flank and inflicted heavy casualties.

Waterloo was the decisive engagement of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. According to Wellington, the battle was "the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life".

Napoleon abdicated four days later, and coalition forces entered Paris on 7 July.

The defeat at Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days return from exile.

This ended the First French Empire and set a chronological milestone between serial European wars and decades of relative peace, often referred to as the Pax Britannica.

The site of the battlefield today is dominated by the monument of the Lion's Mound, a large artificial hill constructed from earth taken from the battlefield itself; the topography of the battlefield

Zugefügt zum Band der Zeit:

Datum: