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‘No Troops but the British’: British National Identity and the
Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
BA/BBus (Accy) (QUT), BA Honours (UQ)
A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at
The University of Queensland in 2015
School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
Abstract
In the ‘long eighteenth-century’ British national identity was superimposed over pre-existing
identities in Britain in order to bring together the somewhat disparate, often warring, states.
This identity centred on war with France; the French were conceptualised as the ‘other’,
being seen by the British as both different and inferior. For many historians this identity, built
in reaction and opposition to France, dissipated following the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo
in 1815, as Britain gradually introduced changes that allowed broader sections of the
population to engage in the political process. A new militaristic identity did not reappear in
Britain until the 1850s, following the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. This identity did
not fixate on France, but rather saw all foreign nations as different and, consequently,
inferior. An additional change was the increasing public interest in the army and war, more
generally. War became viewed as a ‘pleasurable endeavour’ in which Britons had an innate
skill and the army became seen as representative of that fact, rather than an outlet to dispose
of undesirable elements of the population, as it had been in the past. British identity became
increasingly militaristic in the lead up to the First World War. However, these two identities
have been seen as separate phenomena, rather than the later identity being a progression of
the earlier construct.
This thesis argues that this militaristic nineteenth-century identity was simply an evolution of
that which was superimposed a century earlier. A key component, linking the two constructs,
was the memoirs of the soldiers of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, particularly those
that served in the Waterloo campaign. Even as the wars were underway, former soldiers were
releasing their memoirs to a receptive public, thanks to expanding literacy, and this only
escalated after the final victory at Waterloo. In the 1820s, several memoirs were published
that achieved an unprecedented level of resonance with the public as they successfully
presented their wartime experiences as ‘an exciting adventure’ and ‘showed’ that British
soldiers faced the horrors of war with a ‘cheerful stoicism’. These works helped to establish
the memoir as an accepted literary genre in Britain.
The public’s enthusiasm for heroic episodes of war allowed the veterans to influence the
public memory of the campaign. The soldiers’ own experiences led an overwhelming
majority to conclude that they had more in common with their French enemy than their
various allies, whether they were civilian or soldier. With respect to Waterloo, this meant that
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they erroneously portrayed the battle as a British victory, won in spite of the insipid
performance of the allied combatants. These allied combatants made up of Germans from the
states of Hanover, Brunswick, Nassau and Prussia, along with troops of the Netherlands,
which at the time included modern-day Belgium, with a few notable exceptions, provided
little in the way of defeating the enemy.
Despite the exceeding popularity of memoirs, demonstrating a continuing public interest in
war, their impact on the views of the British public regarding foreigners was, initially, fairly
limited. It was only with the advent of secondary literature, and the passing of the generation
that had direct memories of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, around the middle of the
century, that the British public began to embrace this memory. As British identity became
increasingly militaristic and nationalistic, new secondary histories continued to remove the
allied contingents from the battle, to the point where Waterloo became the final FrancoBritish conflict, affirming British supremacy. But whereas in the past British supremacy had
been measured against France, in the nineteenth-century, the rest of Europe was included in
this assessment, not just the French. The British viewed themselves as both different from the
continent and, consequently, superior. The few attempts to redress this perception within the
Waterloo narrative were vigorously rebuked by military historians in the period.
The memoirs of the military veterans alone did not achieve the objective of reshaping British
national identity in the nineteenth-century. But they provide an important example of the
manner in which British national identity was influenced by war and the military in the
nineteenth-century. They provide a prominent example of the continuing interest of the
British public in war, even after the long wars with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France.
Furthermore, they provide the context for the changing view of the ‘other’ from France, as it
had been in the eighteenth-century, to all foreigners as it became in the nineteenth-century.
Finally, they help to explain why in much of the English-speaking world the battle of
Waterloo is viewed as a British victory, rather than an allied one.
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Declaration by author
This thesis is composed of my original work, and contains no material previously published
or written by another person except where due reference has been made in the text. I have
clearly stated the contribution by others to jointly-authored works that I have included in my
thesis.
I have clearly stated the contribution of others to my thesis as a whole, including statistical
assistance, survey design, data analysis, significant technical procedures, professional
editorial advice, and any other original research work used or reported in my thesis. The
content of my thesis is the result of work I have carried out since the commencement of my
research higher degree candidature and does not include a substantial part of work that has
been submitted to qualify for the award of any other degree or diploma in any university or
other tertiary institution. I have clearly stated which parts of my thesis, if any, have been
submitted to qualify for another award.
I acknowledge that an electronic copy of my thesis must be lodged with the University
Library and, subject to the policy and procedures of The University of Queensland, the thesis
be made available for research and study in accordance with the Copyright Act 1968 unless a
period of embargo has been approved by the Dean of the Graduate School.
I acknowledge that copyright of all material contained in my thesis resides with the copyright
holder(s) of that material. Where appropriate I have obtained copyright permission from the
copyright holder to reproduce material in this thesis.
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Publications during candidature
Conference Proceedings
‘Flight of the Panic-Stricken’: British historians and the Dutch-Belgian troops at Waterloo,
In: Marcus K. Harmes, Henderson, Lindsay, Barbara Harmes and Amy Antonio eds., The
British World: Religion, Memory, Society, Culture, proceedings of conference at the
University of Southern Queensland, July 2012.
Conference Abstracts
‘Flight of the Panic-Stricken’: British historians and the Dutch-Belgian troops at Waterloo,
British World: Religion, Memory, Society, Culture, conference at the University of Southern
Queensland
War, the military and British national identity, Mobilities and Mobilisations in History,
conference at the University of Wollongong, July 2013
The role of Faith, the Waterloo Conflict and the Foreign Other, Empire, Faith and Conflict,
conference at the University of Notre Dame, October 2013
Victorian Britain and the Prussians at Waterloo, Conflict in History, conference at the
University of Queensland, July 2014
Publications included in this thesis
No publications included
Contributions by others to the thesis
My Principal and Associate Supervisors, Assoc. Prof. Andrew Bonnell and Dr Geoff Ginn
respectively, were of invaluable assistance in the conception, planning and revision of this
work.
Statement of parts of the thesis submitted to qualify for the award of
another degree
None
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Acknowledgements
Firstly, I would like to thank the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the
University of Queensland for their financial support during my thesis. The grants from the
school allowed me to attend numerous conferences. This not only provided me with the
opportunity to present my findings, but allowed my exposure to ideas I was yet to consider.
Thanks must also be given to the helpful staff at the UQ’s Social Science and Humanities
Library, as well as the administrative staff of the School of HAPI, particularly Judy King,
who helped organise the administrative arrangements for conferences and my periods of
absence.
I am also deeply grateful to the assistance of my two supervisors Andrew Bonnell and Geoff
Ginn. Andrew in particular provided endless support, whether it was checking countless
drafts, recommending texts, lending me books from his extensive collection, or simply
offering his own personal wisdom. There is no doubt that without his involvement this thesis
would not exist. Geoff’s contribution, while less in depth, provided the necessary perspective
that ensured the thesis did not lose focus. I would also like to thank my friends Anthony
Cooper, Renee O’Ryan and Lucas Clarke; all who offered to read final drafts and offer their
opinions. Anthony was also helpful with respect to the narrative on the battle of Waterloo. I
must also acknowledge my fellow researchers, Romain Fathi and Samuel Finch, who both
read abstracts, paragraphs or chapters in order to help in my process. Romain, in addition,
helped correct any mistakes with my French translations.
Finally, the moral support of many is required to complete a task of this nature. I simply will
not be able to acknowledge them all but thanks must be given to my friends Steffan van Lint,
Philip Trudinger and Francis O’Ryan, all who offered me extra work where possible, or
simply their own personal wisdom, despite their differing opinions. To my other friends, and
this endeavour really taught me how fortunate I am in that respect, thanks for providing the
necessary distraction from what I was doing. Lastly, my family, particularly my parents and
siblings, must be recognised for their support throughout this long process. Whether they had
misgivings or not, they knew how important this task was to me and as a result maintained
their support, in whatever form that required. Without them, this thesis would not exist.
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Keywords
waterloo, siborne, history, war, identity, national, britain, militaristic, memoir,
Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classifications (ANZSRC)
210305 British History, 50%
220209 History of Ideas, 30%
210307 European History (excl. British, Classical Greek and Roman), 20%
Fields of Research (FoR) Classification
2103 Historical Studies, 70%
2202 History and Philosophy of Specific, 30%
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Maps
ix
List of Commonly Used Abbreviations and Terms
x
Introduction
1
Chapter 1
Waterloo Revisited
17
Chapter 2
War, the Military and British National Identity
39
Chapter 3 –
‘They did not lose a man’: The soldiers’ memory of Waterloo
50
Chapter 4 –
‘Not a truly British scene’: The public memory of Waterloo
69
Conclusion
90
Bibliography
94
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List of Maps
Map 1 – The map of the various cantonments at the outset of the campaign
17
Map 2 – The map of the initial deployments at the twin battles of Ligny
and Quatre Bras
20
Map 3 – The map of the initial deployments of the Anglo-Allied and French
armies at the beginning of the battle of Waterloo and the French
and Prussian armies when they began their engagement during the
battle
27
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List of Commonly Used Abbreviations and Terms
Anglo-Allied Army – Commanded by the Duke of Wellington, the army consisted of 93,000
men. The army was made up of British, Hanoverian, Nassau, Brunswick, Dutch and Belgian
troops as well as formations from the King’s German Legion.
British Army – The British army consisted of units from all the nations of the Isles, as well
Hanoverian units and the King’s German Legion that formed a large part of Wellington’s
army. Unless otherwise stated, they are referred to as British units.
Brunswick Contingent – A German contingent of Wellington’s army recruited by the Duke
of Brunswick, and referred to as Brunswickers.
Column – An infantry formation used to move large groups of men across the battlefield in
the shortest space of time
French Army – Consisting of 124,000 men and known as l’armée du nord, it was
commanded by Napoleon.
K.G.L. – King’s German Legion which formed part of the British army
Line – An infantry formation designed to bring as many muskets to bear as possible and
prevent unnecessary casualties from artillery
Nassau Contingent – Essentially a brigade of Germans, though separate from the one in the
Netherlands service that formed a part of Wellington’s army. Nassauers are referred to as
such, irrespective of whether they served in this contingent, or the Netherlands army.
Netherlands Army – Often referred to as the Dutch-Belgians in English literature, at the
time the two countries were combined as the United Netherlands. The army was made up of
troops from modern day Netherlands and Belgium, as well as a brigade from Nassau and
formed a significant part of the Anglo-Allied army. During most of the campaign the Nassau
brigade fought separately, and is usually referred to as Nassauers. The Dutch and Belgian
troops are referred to interchangeably as either the Netherlanders or Dutch-Belgians.
Prussian Army – Consisting of 116,000 men, it was under the command of Marshal
Blücher.
Siborne Letters – The letters received by William Siborne in order to construct his Waterloo
Model and which he would later use to compile his history of the campaign.
Skirmish Line – Soldiers sent ahead of their infantry units to disrupt the enemy formations,
often by shooting officers on horseback, or to counter an enemy skirmish line.
Square – A defensive infantry formation designed to protect against cavalry assaults
The Times – The Times newspaper, the largest newspaper in nineteenth-century Britain.
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Introduction
The importance of inter-state warfare and the Napoleonic Wars in the development of British
national identity has been emphasised by writers since the appearance of Linda Colley’s
Britons.1 For Colley, recurring warfare with France between 1688 and 1815 enabled the
French to fill the role of the hostile ‘other’ in Britain. With British national identity wellestablished by Queen Victoria’s ascension, nineteenth-century Britons are seen as defenders
of domestic liberty and international peace, at least until 1890 when militarism spread across
Britain and Europe. This view has been challenged by Michael Paris’ Warrior Nation which
contends that by the 1850s war had become an acceptable and even pleasurable endeavour in
British culture.2 But interest in war and the military, contrary to most assumptions, never
really ceased following the victory at Waterloo. It was sustained, in large part, by the
countless veterans’ memoirs being published. These memoirs played a significant role in
establishing that France should no longer be the only nation viewed as the external ‘other’,
directing a greater level of animosity towards Britain’s former allies. This was particularly
the case for the Waterloo campaign, the most important event in British military history until
1914. Soldiers’ prejudices were eventually embraced in the historiography of the conflict,
resulting in Waterloo shifting from an inclusive allied victory to a British victory. Most
examinations of British historiography, such as Richard Evans Cosmopolitan Islanders, have
downplayed or ignored military history, leading to a distorted representation of nineteenthcentury British national identity. This thesis intends on addressing the role of military history
on British national identity with a particular focus on the Waterloo campaign.3
Great Britain came into being with the Treaty of Union in 1707, uniting Scotland with
England and Wales. This established a new state that not only needed to form a new national
1
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, 3rd ed., New Haven, 2009. Colley’s work, first
published in 1992, explores the origins of British national identity in contrast to the varying identities that had
previously held sway in Britain before the Union Treaty in 1707. Much credence is given to the role that interstate warfare, particularly the wars against France, had on the establishment of this identity and its influence on
masculinity in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain.
2
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000.
Contrary to most works which argue that nineteenth-century Britain was a peace-loving, commercial nation, this
work argues that a ‘pleasure culture of war’ has existed in Britain since the 1850s, following the outbreak of the
Crimean War. This affinity for war has remained a component of British culture right up to the present-day.
3
Richard Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders: British Historians and the European Continent, Cambridge, 2009.
Evans’ book analyses the influence that British and American historians have had on the study of continental
Europe in contrast to the historical fraternity of continental Europe who rarely explore the history of nations
other than their own.
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identity but assert it over the pre-existing national and regional identities. Linda Colley’s
Britons argued that Protestantism and war with Catholic France were critical components in
shaping British national identity over the course of the eighteenth and early nineteenthcenturies. Protestantism became a uniting factor that differentiated Britain from Catholic
France, encouraging Britons to view themselves as a chosen people destined to overcome
their greatest enemy. This conceptualisation was superimposed over other identities in Britain
and was endorsed and strengthened by the repeated military successes against France during
‘the long eighteenth-century’. Even the defeat by the American colonies helped strengthen
this conviction with the rationale being that Britain had grown arrogant trying to impose itself
against its religious brethren. Repeated conflict with France also helped improve the public
image of the British Army, particularly the perception of senior commanders. Men such as
James Wolfe, who was killed commanding the capture of Quebec City in 1759, became
venerated in Britain.
The conflict with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France would cause some alteration of these
perceptions as France no longer projected itself as a Catholic power. The protracted conflict
with a less overtly Catholic enemy, coupled with the earlier failure in the American
Revolution weakened the influence of Protestantism in Britain. But successes for the army in
both the Iberian Peninsula and Belgium occasioned a general improvement in its relationship
with the public. Like Admiral Horatio Nelson, army commanders such as John Moore and
Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, became national heroes. Furthermore the ‘Great
War’, as it was then known, placed an unprecedented demand on the population, creating
circumstances highly favourable to the development of a national consciousness.4 This
national consciousness encouraged the population to push for greater civic recognition after
1815. While initial efforts proved unsuccessful, due to effective government counter-actions,
later efforts witnessed the successful introduction of Catholic Emancipation, Political Reform
and the abolition of slavery in Britain, without Revolution, in a four year period. For Colley,
a British national identity was well-established by Queen Victoria’s ascension in 1837.
While Colley’s work was ground-breaking it was certainly not unique in exploring the
development of Britain during this period and offering a synthesis. For many historians the
critical event was the passing of the Reform Act in 1832. E. P Thompson’s The Making of the
4
Prior to the First World War, which until the Second World War was known as the Great War, the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had been known in Britain as the ‘Great War’.
2
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English Working Class is one of the seminal works that explores the development of class in
Britain in this formative period between 1780 and 1832.5 For Thompson this period marked
the foundation and development of a clear, distinct, politically conscious working-class
identity amongst the mass of the English population, the so-called “free-born Englishman”.
This is in contrast to Jonathan Clark whose more conservative analysis extends to the
Restoration in England in 1660.6 Clark felt that there was a gradual erosion of the social,
religious and political hegemony that existed in England leading to reform in 1832 rather than
the more dramatic shift argued by Thompson. Harold Perkin was less polarised with his
narrative of this period, though he continued beyond the Reform Act to 1880.7 For these
works, the key developments were social, religious and political.
While this period of British history had been explored prior to Colley’s work, there was not a
great deal of interest in nationalism or war. Nationalism, as Hobsbawm argued in his seminal
work, was a phenomenon that started appearing around 1780 and, for the most part, this was
accepted.8 Gerald Newman argued that nationalism had earlier origins than 1780 in England,
suggesting that it could be traced back to around 1740, in large part for the English people to
establish a separate identity from the French.9 Meanwhile, John Brewer was one of the few to
explore the relationship of the English state with war. Brewer noted that between the
Revolution of 1688 and the American victory in 1783, England was heavily engaged in war;
progressively demanding more of the nation’s manpower and material resources.10
The situation was strikingly similar for works on Britain in the nineteenth-century. A more
circumspect analysis then Colley had been previously released by Keith Robbins, who noted
integration between England, Scotland and Wales, while also acknowledging continuing
diversity.11 His focus was on the social, economic and political processes often linked to
industrialisation and urbanisation that tend towards cultural homogenization. Religion and
military conflict are largely ignored. Robbins noted that Britishness is perhaps best measured
at a more formal level, defending the Colley perspective that it was superimposed but arguing
that it was not uniform or embraced as strongly on a personal level. There is a general
5
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, 1968.
J. C. D. Clark, English Society 1660-1832, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 2000.
7
Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society, 1780-1880, London, 1969.
8
E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: program, myth, reality, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1992.
9
Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History 1740-1830, London, 1987.
10
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783, New York, 1989.
11
Keith Robbins, Nineteenth-Century Britain: Integration and Diversity, Oxford, 1988.
6
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acceptance that a British national identity only began to form in the period following 1780 as
a result of political developments that eventually led to the passing of the Reform Act in
1832.
The Colley thesis forced a re-evaluation of Britain and nationalism and while it was wellaccepted in some quarters, others were critical. These criticisms, as cited by Chris Williams,
focus on the elevation of identities and groups that endorse the thesis and dismissal or
reduction of others that do not.12 The conceptualisation of a homogenous Protestant identity
in Britain has often drawn criticism, with many observing that the work understated the level
of domestic religious tensions within Protestant groups. A series of essays entitled
Protestantism and National Identity showed that there were many facets of Protestantism in
Britain which Colley had understated.13 Protestantism, rather than being a uniting force,
could easily be used, and sometimes acted as a dividing force. Some, like Colin Kidd, argue
that a sense of North Britishness actually developed around Anglicism rather than British
nationhood.14 He believes that ‘North Britons themselves did much to inhibit the
development of a comprehensive vision of British nationhood that drew on the history of both
Scots and English’.15 Nonetheless, these critics did not completely dismiss the entire premise
of the Colley thesis but merely identified perceived flaws or components that required further
analysis. As Claydon and McBride point out, ‘it would be as distorting simply to abandon the
simple model of protestantism and nationality as it would have been to leave it
unchallenged’.16
Debate around the influence of Protestantism in Britain obviously brought with it questions
around the role of anti-Catholicism and France as a Catholic ‘other’. Robin Eagles has been
quite critical of the depiction of Francophobia in eighteenth-century Britain, arguing that this
12
Chris Williams, “British Identities”, in Chris Williams, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain,
Malden, 2004, p.539.
13
Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, eds., Protestantism and National Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650c.1850, Cambridge, 1998. Another work which looked at the issue of the British Union and the challenge of
accommodating a variety of identities was Laurence Brockliss and David Eastwood, eds., A Union of multiple
identities: The British Isles, c. 1750-c. 1850, Manchester, 1997. This collection of essays, though exploring the
entire century, focuses on the period between the battle of Waterloo and the Crimean War, arguing that it was in
this period that the fundamental characteristics of the British Union evolved.
14
Colin Kidd, “North Britishness and the Nature of Eighteenth-Century British Patriotisms”, The Historical
Journal 39, 1996.
15
Kidd, “North Britishness”, p.364.
16
Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, “The trials of the chosen peoples: recent interpretations of protestantism and
national identity in Britain and Ireland”, in Tony Claydon and Ian McBride, eds., Protestantism and National
Identity: Britain and Ireland, c.1650-c.1850, Cambridge, 1998, p.26.
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phenomenon has been overstated, particularly regarding the elites.17 Eagles has made little
headway with this argument as it was mainly the elites who were the Francophiles. A more
contentious issue has been the lack of engagement with Ireland. While technically only a part
of Britain from 1801 and predominantly Catholic, Ireland still constituted a significant factor
in opposition to British national identity. Furthermore the political changes in 1801 did not
lead to a massive embrace of British identity by the Catholic Irish. This is also an area of
concern for the Scottish Highlands with their predominantly Catholic population. The
isolation of the Catholic population is a necessary component of projecting the ‘other’, in the
form of Catholic France, as the enemy of Britain as well as validating the role of
Protestantism in fashioning national identity.
The exclusion of Catholic Britons has led to concerns that Colley has inadvertently elevated
Britishness to the exclusion of other identities because she mistook wartime British rhetoric
for strong examples of identity. This argument is put forth by J. E. Cookson’s The British
Armed Nation.18 Cookson focuses on topics that he feels were either ignored or
underexplored including the Scottish and Irish dimensions and their military contributions,
the role of what he calls national defence patriotism and its contribution to national loyalty
and the strategic, military and political limitations of the state and society during the wars.19
Moreover Cookson believes that Colley has conflated loyalism and ‘national defence
patriotism’ during the conflict with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Finally, Cookson
rejects Colley’s argument that the development of a more inclusive identity following this
conflict was a key component of the political turmoil of the period between the battle of
Waterloo and the ascendancy of Queen Victoria by stating that ‘few, if any, satisfactory
connections have been made between Britain’s war experience and subsequent events and
development’ such as Catholic Emancipation and Political Reform.20
17
Robin Eagles, Francophilia in English Society, 1748-1815, Basingstoke, 2000. While Eagles’ work raises
some interesting points, it ultimately struggles because it fails to extend the Francophilia beyond British elites
who represented only a small section of the population.
18
J. E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1793-1815, London, 1997. This work explores the ‘war and
society’ history of Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period.
19
Another work that explores the enlistment of Irishmen into the army and the non-Irish militia in that country
is Catriona Kennedy, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Military and Civilian Experience
in Britain and Ireland, London, 2013. This work explored the way in which the soldiers, and to a lesser extent
civilians, contemporaneously depicted the 1793-1815 conflict and the different narratives that developed,
reflecting the multitude of experiences service personnel encountered. This work in many respects shows the
complexities of Britishness in this period.
20
J. E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, p.252.
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Despite these criticisms, Colley’s work remains a standard reference for any work exploring
British national identity in the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. This is evident by the
wealth of works that have utilised her as a foundation. This thesis intends on doing the same
by exploring the battle of Waterloo and its influence on British national identity in the
nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries.
The battle of Waterloo was the climatic point in the short 1815 campaign which marked the
end of the Napoleonic era in Europe. The French army under Napoleon was comprehensively
defeated by the effective combination of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher and a
conglomerate army of British, King’s German Legion, Hanoverian, Brunswicker, Nassauer,
Belgian and Netherlander units under the Duke of Wellington. The initial belief for many of
combatants on the morning following the battle was that it marked the costly opening
exchanges in a long campaign. Despite early foreboding, it quickly became apparent that the
long wars that had plagued a generation were finally over. In Britain, the fascination with the
battle reached a level that had not been achieved by the earlier successful campaigns in the
Iberian Peninsula or Egypt. All who served at Waterloo, including the rank and file, received
a medal for their service and the Duke of Wellington left the army to pursue what turned out
to be a rather contentious political career. Embitterment from veterans of other campaigns,
many who saw far more combat than most at Waterloo, eventually led to a General Service
Medal being introduced for all participants who served from 1793-1814, with clasps to
signify battles.21 Nonetheless Waterloo would remain the pre-eminent reference point for
public remembrance of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
A significant amount of research has been conducted into the various ways in which
Waterloo was remembered in nineteenth-century Britain. Some like Stuart Semmel have
focused on British tourism and collecting in the initial post-Waterloo period and how these
artefacts and the battlefield contributed to the public’s ability to connect to the conflict.22
Others, like Philip Shaw and J.R Watson, explore the Romantic literature that developed both
21
Kevin Pryor, The Mobilization of Memory: The Battle of Waterloo in German and British Memory, 18151915, PhD dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2010, p28.
22
Stuart Semmel, “Reading the Tangible Past; British Tourism, Collecting, and Memory After Waterloo,’
Representations 69, 2000. Other works that have looked at military iconography and cultural patriotism more
broadly in this period include J. W. M. Hichberger, Images of the Army: The Military in British Art, 1815-1914,
Manchester, 1988 and Holger Hoock, The King’s Artists: The Royal Academy of Arts and the Politics of British
Culture 1760-1840, Oxford, 2004.
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during the wars and in the period after their successful conclusion.23 Elisa Milkes has
demonstrated the impact economic structures had on channelling ‘people’s memories of the
past’ in the post-Waterloo period.24
More recently Kevin Pryor has argued that the memory of Waterloo in Britain developed in
three overlapping stages.25 The first period from 1815 to the 1850s cemented a popular
narrative in the public consciousness that depicted Wellington as the paternalistic saviour.
This for contemporary Britons was validated by their global hegemony. From the 1850s to
the 1870s this memory was destabilised by Britain’s declining global pre-eminence.
Consequently efforts were made to recast the myth as a more universal conflict, rather than
one against France, to suit a changing world. Pryor concludes that these arguments paid
dividends in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods as the middle-class culture embraced
the chivalry and militaristic nationalism of earlier conceptions of Waterloo. While less antiFrench then previous representations, it had become more hero-worshipping and militantly
British.26 Alan Forrest has also put forth many of the arguments maintained by Pryor in in his
work Great Battles: Waterloo.27 His work argues that it was only Britain that saw Waterloo
as part of the national story and an event worth commemorating, their allies being less
engaged in the process of memorialising Waterloo.
The problem for both Pryor and Forrest is their failure to look at the evolution of the military
history of the battle in the nineteenth-century. A focus on public memorialisation has led to
an ignorance or dismissal of the serious disputes that developed in the mid-nineteenth-century
between the allied states over their contribution to the campaign’s success. Milkes, Pryor and
Forrest all acknowledge that the Prussians disputed British claims and that there were
problems with the British depiction. Problematically, these works focus on the supposed feud
23
Philip Shaw, Waterloo and the Romantic Imagination, Basingstoke, 2002; J. R. Watson, Romanticism and
War: A Study of British Romantic Period Writers and the Napoleonic Wars, Basingstoke, 2003.
24
Elisa Milkes, A Battle’s Legacy: Waterloo in Nineteenth-Century Britain, PhD dissertation, Yale University,
2003, p.iii. Milkes concludes that the commemoration of Waterloo was sustained by a shifting balance between
the state and civil society. Contrary to prevailing opinion, the British state’s influence in this period, while
unobtrusive, was remarkably extensive.
25
Pryor, The Mobilization of Memory. Pryor contrasts British memory with that of Germany, where memory of
the conflict was superseded by the Battle of Leipzig. Leipzig was a more effective reference point for German
identity because it was seen as the final act in removing Napoleonic hegemony in Germany, although there were
issues with the different roles that various German states played in the battle, such as the Saxons, who fought
with Napoleon.
26
Pryor, The Mobilization of Memory, p.18.
27
Alan Forrest, Great Battles: Waterloo, Oxford, 2015. Forrest’s work looks at how Waterloo was remembered
in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands in the nineteenth-century.
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Kyle van Beurden
between Wellington and William Siborne, as depicted in Peter Hofschröer’s rather
troublesome work Wellington’s Smallest Victory.28 William Siborne released an enormous,
and highly detailed, model of the battle of Waterloo in 1838. Six years later he released a
two-volume history of the campaign. While the model showed a significant Prussian
contribution, this was later removed from both the model and the history. Peter Hofschröer
believes that the Duke of Wellington orchestrated a conspiracy against Siborne to prevent the
British public from discovering the significant Prussian contribution to victory in 1815. This
is in spite of the wealth of contradictory evidence to the claims of a conspiracy that will be
presented in chapters three and four of this work. Furthermore, this has led to an ignorance,
or dismissal in the case of Hofschröer, of the hostile reaction against Siborne’s work in both
the Netherlands and Belgium, which had nothing to do with Wellington.29
Not only are their problems with Hofschröer’s analysis, but he presumes the post-1815
British public had embraced a national memory of the campaign that excluded non-British
contributions. This has been readily accepted by these listed works and is fundamentally
flawed. Overwhelming evidence, discussed in chapter three, illustrates that while most
Britons in this period embraced the memory of Waterloo as an inspiring national display of
arms, this was not at the expense of the allied armies. This attitude would only shift following
the publication of Siborne’s work.
Siborne, though providing the necessary context for the shift in the public view of Waterloo,
does not deserve full responsibility for its development. In many respects, he was reacting to
a section of the community with a vested interest, namely veteran officers of Waterloo. To
construct his work Siborne contacted hundreds of these men, predominantly from the British
army, creating the so-called Siborne Letters. To this he added letters from some of the
German officers in Wellington’s army, as well as engaging in correspondence with the
Prussians. While attempts at engaging the French were rebuffed, Netherlander and Belgian
officers, other than the Prince of Orange, were not contacted. While a number of British
officers were generous in their praise to the allied troops the vast majority were highly
28
Peter Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker and the Secret of Waterloo,
London, 2005.
29
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.110. Hofschröer briefly mentions this ‘acrimonious affair’ in his
book. He provided more detail on this debate in an internet article. Numerous publications were written in both
the Netherlands and Belgium refuting the claims of cowardice Siborne directed at their respective troops. Peter
Hofschröer, Waterloo’s Controversial Historian, 2007. Accessed from
http://www.richardgilbert.ca/achart/public_html/wellington/siborne.htm.
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critical. Criticism in the letters usually depicted foreign cowardice, incompetence or
negligible impact on proceedings and helped to endorse many of the claims in veterans’
memoirs published before Siborne’s work. While Siborne’s original display of the model in
1838 challenged some of these claims, by the time he wrote his history six years later he
largely endorsed the prejudice of these troops.
From this point in time British writing on Waterloo became increasingly nationalistic to the
point that Waterloo became, at least in the English-speaking world, a battle in which Britain
proved its martial supremacy over its old enemy. Even when William Siborne’s son
published some of the letters in 1891 he was selective with the one’s he chose. Denigration of
the non-British formations would only begin to be revised in 1993, when David HamiltonWilliams released Waterloo: The Great Battle Reappraised.30 This work challenged many
accepted ‘truths’ of Waterloo, but as a revisionist work it also attracted its fair share of
criticism. However, others were keen to add their own contributions to the history of
Waterloo. Hamilton-Williams was followed by Peter Hofschröer, whose two-volume work
1815: The Waterloo Campaign, probably still stands as the definitive work on the German
contribution.31 While criticised for its unfair assaults on Wellington and its overly aggressive
defence of the Prussians, Hofschröer makes a robust and highly engaging case for the
Germans (Prussians, Hanoverians, Brunswickers and Nassauers) to be viewed as the victors
at Waterloo. As he observes, overall 75% of the Allied troops during the campaign were
German, with a little over 10% being British.
These new works initiated a period of growing interest in Waterloo that had been absent since
the commencement of the First World War. While a few works had been written in that time,
most were written by non-academic historians, who simply restated the thesis that had been
dominant prior to 1914, although the Prussians received some rehabilitation in light of the
reduction in Anglo-German hostility following the Second World War. Of the new works that
did appear, some like Brendan Simms tried to be provocative. 32 Others narrowed their focus
30
David Hamilton-Williams, Waterloo New Perspectives: The Great Battle Reappraised, New York, 1994.
Peter Hofschröer, 1815: The Waterloo Campaign – Wellington, His German Allies and the Battles of Ligny
and Quatre Bras, London, 1998; Peter Hofschröer, 1815: The Waterloo Campaign - The German Victory,
London, 2004.
32
Brendan Simms, The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men who Decided the Battle of Waterloo, London, 2014
argued that the King’s German Legion troops that held La Haye Sainte for much of the afternoon effectively
won the battle for the Allies. Though it did provide some interesting information on these men and the
importance of the position, the premise was not strongly argued, and was not convincing.
31
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to particular formations, there being a particular interest in the much-maligned Dutch-Belgian
contingent.33 Andrew Field was more intrigued by the French source material, especially that
written by those other than Napoleon and his marshals that had often served to accentuate
British prowess.34
While some were conducting their own analyses, others simply decided to publish previously
unused primary sources, including translated material. John Franklin released translated
material from the Netherlands and Hanoverian contingent.35 Meanwhile Gareth Glover
progressively released a wealth of previously ignored material, beginning with the Siborne
Letters not published by William Siborne’s son in 1891. This included correspondence with
German veterans.36 This was followed by six volumes of The Waterloo Archive which
contained a mass of letters, documents, after battle reports and various other important and
largely unknown documents.37 While four volumes were from British sources, two were
made up of material from the often neglected German troops in Wellington’s army.
Unfortunately Glover’s narrative of the campaign, envisioned as a dispelling of long held
33
André Dellevoet, The Dutch-Belgian Cavalry at Waterloo, The Hague, 2008 focused solely on the
Netherlands cavalry. As of September 2015, three of the four volumes of Erwin Muilwijk’s work on the
Netherlands Mobile Army of 1815 have been released. Erwin Muilwijk, 1815: From Mobilisation to war,
Bleiswijk, 2012; Erwin Muilwijk, Quatre Bras: Perponcher’s Gamble, Bleiswijk, 2013; Erwin Muilwijk,
Standing Firm at Waterloo, Bleiswijk, 2014. The fourth volume is currently intended to be released in 2016.
This collection addresses the role of the Netherlands Army in the 1815 campaign from Napoleon’s escape from
Elba to the allied occupation of France. Martin Mittelacher, “The Nassauers at Hougoumont”, Journal of the
Society for Army Historical Research 18, 2003 looks at the role of the Nassauers, who formed part of the
Netherlands army, and fought with the British and Hanoverians at Hougoumont.
34
Andrew W. Field, Prelude to Waterloo Quatre Bras: The French Perspective, Barnsley, 2014; Andrew W.
Field, Waterloo: The French Perspective, Barnsley, 2012. Andrew Field’s two works both provide a good
investigation and analysis of accounts other than Napoleon and his marshals. His work also makes it clear that
there is a sharp delineation between the British and French source material when describing events of the battle,
a discrepancy that does not exist on the same scale between the other allied sources and the French.
35
John Franklin, ed., Waterloo: Netherlands Correspondence: Vol. 1, Ulverston, 2010; John Franklin, ed.,
Waterloo: Hanoverian Correspondence: Vol. 1, Ulverston, 2010. These works provide a number of welltranslated battle reports and letters from veterans of the campaign from both national contingents.
36
Gareth Glover, ed., Letters from the Battle of Waterloo: Unpublished Correspondence by Allied Officers from
the Siborne Papers, London, 2004. This publication included the correspondence between Siborne and
Wellington’s affiliates regarding their issues with the Waterloo Model. This was followed by the
correspondence of a number of veterans who served during the Peninsular War and Waterloo campaign.
37
Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. 1, Barnsley, 2010; Gareth Glover, ed., The
Waterloo Archive: German Sources Vol. 2, Translated from German by Martin Mittelacher, Barnsley, 2010;
Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. 3, Barnsley, 2012; Gareth Glover, ed., The
Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. 4, Barnsley, 2012; Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: German
Sources Vol. 5, Translated from German by Martin Mittelacher, Barnsley, 2013; Gareth Glover, ed., The
Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. 6, Barnsley, 2014. These six volumes provide a wealth of primary
source material that has, for the most part, remained hidden to most historians of the campaign. The German
volumes in particular provide material from the non-Prussian German contingents, a seriously neglected
viewpoint of the campaign.
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myths, lacked adequate source material from French, Dutch-Belgian, and Prussian sources to
make any serious contribution.38
Despite this wave of new material that challenged the standard Waterloo narrative, it was still
very common to see the British military epic in print. This included works by academic
historians. Andrew Roberts’ Waterloo: June 18, 1815, The Battle for Modern Europe,39
depicted the battle as a not only a duel between the two generals and their armies, but as a
representation of the differences and animosity between the two nations. Roberts does make
the pertinent point that ‘just as it is an absurd question to ask whether Wellington could have
won Waterloo without Blücher – because he never would have fought the battle – so it is
equally pointless to consider a battle fought without the Dutch and Belgian contingents.’40
However, his work does little to show this and he even makes the bizarre claim that the
Netherlands troops were not, among other reasons, ‘racially’ invested in the fight.41
Jeremy Black’s The Battle of Waterloo: A New History argued that allied success depended
less on Wellington’s military genius than his being a product of the system around him.42 The
premise of the argument relies on a dismissal of the allied contingents, who are once again
treated as inexperienced and largely insignificant. The reality was that many non-British
commanders were highly experienced after long service in the Napoleonic system. More
recently, Gregory Fremont-Barnes in response to the many works on other national
contingents, decided to review the role of the British troops.43 Disappointingly, FremontBarnes chose the title British Army’s Day of Destiny and it would be fair to say that he did
little to repudiate the national epic popularised in the late nineteenth-century. This primarily
stemmed from a failure to adequately utilise non-British source material to provide a more
objective analysis.
Despite more than twenty years of revisionism, the publication of works that perpetuate the
nationalist narrative in British campaign histories demonstrates its continuing influence. But
38
Gareth Glover, Waterloo: Myth and Reality, Barnsley, 2014.
The book was released in paperback in 2006 with a new title; Andrew Roberts, Waterloo: Napoleon’s Last
Gamble, London, 2006. In many respects this work was a continuation of his previous work Andrew Roberts,
Napoleon & Wellington, London, 2002.
40
Roberts, Waterloo, p.104.
41
Roberts, Waterloo, p.66.
42
Jeremy Black, The Battle of Waterloo: A New History, London, 2010.
43
Gregory Fremont-Barnes, Waterloo 1815: The British Army’s Day of Destiny, Stroud, 2014.
39
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even a rudimentary review of the contemporary newspapers following the victory in 1815
illustrate that there was almost no animosity to sharing the victory with their allies. At this
time Waterloo was an Allied victory in which the British had performed exceedingly well.
However, by 1900, in a revisionist article about the Netherlands contingent, Sir Herbert
Maxwell made the point that ‘nine Englishmen out of ten think of Waterloo as a purely
British victory, in which the army of the King of Prussia figures, if it figures at all, as a
merely subsidiary fact, and consider the whole campaign as a triumph of British strategy and
valour, wherein the Netherlander contingent in Wellington’s army acted a negligible and
even an injurious part.’44 Maxwell’s attempt to revise the narrative was met with open
contempt by the premier military historian of the age, Sir Charles Oman, illustrating how
entrenched the history had become.
The development of a nationalist Waterloo narrative in Britain contradicts the generally
prevailing view that war had a limited impact on British national identity in the nineteenthcentury. Many of the works that employ the Colley thesis as grounding for their analysis of
nineteenth-century Britain tend to draw away from war, focusing instead on political, social
and economic developments.45 Colley, for the most part, seems to agree with this sentiment
as her work when reviewing developments after Waterloo focuses on the political turmoil in
Britain relating to Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Act and Slavery Act. It is not
surprising given that the Crimean War with Russia was the only conflict Britain engaged in
with a European power until 1914. Colonial wars did continue unabated during much of this
period but much of this has been seen as a reflection of imperialism rather than inter-state
war. For the majority of historians of nineteenth-century Britain, war is distant, affecting only
44
Herbert Maxwell, “Our Allies at Waterloo”, The Nineteenth Century and after: a monthly review 48, 1900,
pp.407-408.
45
David Powell, Nationhood and Identity: The British State since 1800, London, 2002 does provide some
comment on the relationship between British identity and war in the nineteenth-century but is more interested in
the institutional and political evolution of the ‘British state’ and how British nationhood and identity interacted
with already existing identities and the consequences of the rise of the British Empire and the Industrial
Revolution; W. D. Rubinstein, Britain’s Century: A Political and Social History, 1815-1905, London, 1998, as
the title suggests, is interested in providing a political and social history on the period in question, in an attempt
to explain British pre-eminence, although, it is perhaps ironic that the front cover is an illustration of Sir David
Wilkie’s ‘Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch’; Eric J. Evans, The Forging of the Modern State:
Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870, 3rd ed., Harlow, 2001, suggested that rather than the dynamic of war, it was
the broad investment in the British Industrial Revolution that made it too important for nineteenth-century
Britain to recede into the political arrangement that existed prior to the Treaty of Union, p.452; Richard Price,
British Society, 1680-1880, Cambridge, 1999, is more focused on the domestic developments, particularly
Reform and Industrialisation, to explore British development, going as far back as the late seventeenth-century;
Steve Attridge, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture: Civil and Military Worlds,
Basingstoke, 2003.
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a small segment of the population. A militaristic culture only begins to emerge in the 1890s,
as Britain became increasingly threatened from German imperial and military expansion.
Some explanation for this view is provided by Richard Evans in Cosmopolitan Islanders,
when he argues that the French Revolution and the ‘long series of wars with France, and at
times, much of the rest of the continent’ helped forge a ‘specifically British national
consciousness and identity’.46 In Britain, Europe became a definable ‘other’,47 encouraging
‘British historians to investigate its past as if they were investigating the past of some strange
and remote foreign land’.48 Evans accepts the role of war in shaping a British national
identity but regards nineteenth-century attitudes toward Europe as being shaped by curiosity
and objectivity, not animosity. He also notes that in the second-half of the nineteenth-century
the British historical fraternity began to adopt the ideas of professional history as they were
established by the Germans.49
It is reasonable to say, as Evans does, that nineteenth-century British historians maintained a
strong interest in the French Revolution, at least until 1870 when interested shifted eastwards
following the formation of Germany. But like their European counterparts the most wellknown national historians ‘whether opposing empires or legitimating existing or aspiring
nation states … were busy providing historical master narratives’.50 Evans acknowledges that
much of the British historiography of the French Revolution acted to strengthen the British
nationalist conviction of being a protector of liberty, the so-called Whig Interpretation of
History as it was later coined by Herbert Butterfield.51 The writing of history, as Berger
points out, was not simply an academic activity, it was a public project, and in the nineteenthcentury national histories were most effective at fulfilling this function.52 While national
46
Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders, p.64.
Evans’ works does tend to assume that there was a strong delineation between Britain and Europe, at least in
the eyes of Britons, after the Napoleonic Wars. Other works that have explored this relationship include Keith
Robbins, Britain and Europe 1789-2005, London, 2005, which shows the difficulties of deciding whether
Britain’s identity is as a part of Europe or separate from Europe. The work of Jeremy Black, Convergence or
Divergence?: Britain and the Continent, London, 1994 is a more broad analysis covering Britain from the
Romans to the present. It is generally inconclusive though Black does argue that Britain should maintain
separate identities.
48
Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders, p.64.
49
Evans, Cosmopolitan Islanders, p.91.
50
Stefan Berger, “Writing the Past in the Present: An Anglo-Saxon Perspective”, Diogenes 58, 2011, p.6.
51
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, London, 1931.
52
Stefan Berger, “Representations of the Past”, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe
12, 2004, p80.
47
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history for some countries was about validating their right to exist, for Britain it was about
justifying why they were and deserved to remain pre-eminent.
War and military history operated in this fashion too and the history of conflict often serviced
this most effectively in an era shaped by nationalism. Military history offered the opportunity
for Britain to justify its claims to pre-eminence in the period. But it also allowed Britain to
establish difference between itself and the other nations of Europe. British troops would often
be lauded while the allied troops who fought with them were often ridiculed or ignored in
these works. This helped to establish the rest of Europe, not just France as the ‘other’, and
consequently inferior. In actual fact, the French were often depicted more generously than
any of Britain’s allies. Evans has overlooked the role of military history, partly because in
Britain at least, this history was not written by academics. But this history was influential in
Britain because it was being published for and read by the general public on a greater scale
than many academic histories.
While it has remained an underexplored topic, since the Colley thesis was published a
number of works have come forward exploring the relationship of nineteenth-century Britain
with war. Graham Dawson released a psychoanalytical and historical analysis of the creation
and development of the military adventure in Britain and its associations with masculinity.53
This, in his estimation, can be traced as far back to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. Dawson also
coined the phrase ‘pleasure culture of war’ to describe the commercialisation of war in
British society that he marks as beginning in the 1890s. Building on this work and the phrase
‘pleasure culture of war’, Michael Paris has shown, rather than developing in the 1890s, and
shaping Britain in the lead up to the First World War, the idea of war being an enjoyable or
pleasurable national endeavour developed in Britain during the Crimean War.54 He further
concludes that this national interest still exists even today. However, Paris also acknowledges
that this positive relationship with war can be seen even earlier. Even as Britain dealt with
war-weariness and the massive gains from the wars after 1815, it was still busy expanding its
empire.55 A mass public interest, and even fascination, with war would only grow as warweariness began to wane during the 1830s.
53
Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, London,
1994.
54
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000.
55
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.20.
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One aspect of this burgeoning public interest in war that has been underexplored is the
military memoir. This new literary genre became exceedingly popular after the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic wars. Countless memoirs were published, even as the war was going on, and
that continued in the post-Waterloo period. These memoirists benefitted both from the
expanding literacy of the working-class population, with two-thirds being literate by 1830,
and a continuance of a strong public interest in the recent wars.56 Neil Ramsey has shown that
by 1823 the memoir was a viable literary genre in Britain.57 His research further demonstrates
that the memoirs that enjoyed the most success in Britain were not those caught up in the
melancholy of combat but those that revelled in it. War for a British soldier was to be
endured with a ‘cheerful stoicism’ with most Britons believed to have an innate ability at its
execution. The most popular works of the period enjoyed such success that multiple editions
were published to satiate the demands of the British reading public.
This was a significant development because for the first time following a war, the British
public memory was being shaped by the men who had actually served. Most historians have
tended to ignore this aspect of the memoirs instead utilising them to contribute to military
histories when appropriate. One that explored this topic is Gavin Daly’s The British Soldier
in the Peninsular War which conducted a comprehensive analysis of the letters, diaries and
memoirs of the officers and men who served in the Peninsula.58 One observation he made
was the soldiers’ propensity to find more in common with their French enemy than their
allied counterparts. While British civilians saw the French as the enemy or the ‘other’ this
was not the case for servicemen. Many actually found their allies more contemptible, and saw
more in common with the French.59 First-hand British accounts from the Waterloo campaign
illustrate that despite operating with a new set of allies, and a new civilian population, the
attitudes of the majority of servicemen were unchanged. The popularity of these memoirs
allowed them to influence public memory of the war and provide a viable context for the
population to view other nations as militarily and culturally inferior to themselves. The early
nineteenth-century view of the French as the ‘other’ evolved over the course of the century as
56
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.49.
Neil Ramsey, The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780-1835, Aldershot, 2011.
58
Gavin Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War: Encounters with Spain and Portugal, 1808-1814,
Basingstoke, 2013.
59
Laurence Montroussier-Favre, “Remembering the Other: The Peninsular War in the Autobiographical
Accounts of British and French Soldiers”, in Alan Forrest, Étienne François and Karen Hagemann, eds., War
Memories: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture, Basingstoke, 2013
conducted a smaller analysis comparing French and British soldiers. His conclusions on the British were
consistent with Daly and he found that French attitudes were remarkably similar to the British troops.
57
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Kyle van Beurden
Britons were increasingly exposed to the view that not only France, but any foreign nation
was the ‘other’ and consequently inferior to Britain.
This thesis will show how British national identity became increasingly nationalistic
throughout the nineteenth-century by building on the work of Linda Colley and the memory
of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The first chapter will establish the context of the
thesis by providing a narrative of the Waterloo campaign using available source material
more objectively. The second chapter will explore the impact of Waterloo and the
Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars more broadly on the British political and societal
developments of the post-1815 era and the shaping of national identity in the early
nineteenth-century. The third chapter will show how these changes to national identity
actually affected the developing public memory of the Waterloo campaign. The public’s
interest in veterans’ memoirs exposed them to a prejudice towards their nation’s former allies
that superseded the anti-French hysteria that gripped the nation during the wars. The final
chapter will show how war increasingly became seen as a pleasurable endeavour in Britain in
the second half of the nineteenth-century, as war correspondents depicted British conflicts as
heroic, necessary and entertaining. The exposure to these attitudes allowed the public to fully
embrace the nationalisation of the history of Waterloo as it was represented in the secondary
literature. These depictions were vindicated by veterans’ memoirs and sustained by the
increasing application of ‘scientific’ constructs in history. By 1914, while war with Germany
was being enthusiastically received by many Britons, the history of the Waterloo campaign
had truly become a British heroic epic.
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Chapter 1 – Waterloo Revisited
This chapter, using relevant primary and secondary literature, is intended to document the
extent of the allied and British participation in the Waterloo campaign, providing the
necessary context for the rest of the thesis.
1
The French invasion
The Waterloo campaign began in earnest at approximately 3:00am on June 15, 1815 as the
French vanguard crossed the Sambre River and engaged the Prussian outposts at Thuin. As
per their orders in case of a full-scale invasion, the Prussians slowly withdrew, aiming to
delay the French to provide time for the Allied armies to assemble.2 Prussian I Corps
commander General Zieten sent a letter to his commander Marshal Blücher sometime before
5:00am, informing him of the developing situation. The closest Anglo-Allied troops to this
1
The dispositions of the three armies on the night of June 14-15, 1815. Archibald Frank Becke, 1911
Encyclopaedia Britannica 28, Cambridge, 1911, p.372. Accessed
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/EB1911-28-0327-aWaterloo_Campaign%2C_Map_I.jpg (June 17, 2015).
2
The Allied force was spread out across modern day Belgium, as Napoleon’s point of invasion was not known.
This was also necessary because no town in Belgium had the resources to sustain the whole Allied army.
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Kyle van Beurden
engagement, commanded by Prince William of Orange, were made aware of this combat at
around 8am. However, as current information was little more than rumour, and border clashes
had become quite common, full-scale assembly seemed premature. However the Prince of
Orange’s command post remained on alert. Upon the Prince’s arrival in Brussels at 3pm he
informed the Duke of these rumours, but no new orders were deemed necessary.
The French continued to push back the Prussians holding Thuin and Lobbes on the border
and moved on Charleroi. However the tenacity of the Prussian defence surprised the French
and whilst superior numbers forced withdrawals, the French planned schedule for operations
was being pushed further and further back. This was not helped by poor French staff work.3
Between 8 and 9am General Zieten compiled two letters, the first for Blücher, the second for
Wellington, informing them of the situation.4 The French, after taking Charleroi, split their
forces in two. Marshal Ney, commanding the smaller left wing of about 48,000 men, was
ordered to the crossroads at Les Quatre Bras, whilst Napoleon commanding the right wing
and reserve, consisting of around 80,000 men, headed to Fleurus and Ligny. Marshal Ney
was ordered to prevent the Anglo-Allied army from joining with the Prussians, while
Napoleon intended to bring the Prussians to battle and destroy them.
The Prussians were quick to respond to the situation with Blücher’s chief-of-staff General
von Gneisenau actually ordering the concentration of their forces the previous evening,
fearing imminent conflict. Zieten was ordered to ‘observe every movement of the enemy so
3
Napoleon’s Chief-of-Staff for the campaign, Marshal Soult, had never performed this role, having seen many
battlefield commands, perhaps most famously against Wellington in the Peninsula. Napoleon’s first choice, and
long-time Chief-of-Staff, Marshal Berthier, had died two weeks before the commencement of the campaign in
suspicious circumstances.
4
This letter has caused heated debate among historians due to the ambiguity of the language of another letter the
Duke sent to the duc de Feltre. Wellington stated in French ‘I have received nothing of Charleroi since 9am this
morning’. After the campaign Zieten would twice claim, in 1819 and again in 1839 that he had sent a letter to
Wellington at 5am, but his own letters from the time prove that he did not send a letter until close to 9am.
Additionally, parts of the letter to the Duke include events that had not occurred at 5am. Even the German
historian in the early twentieth century, Julius Pflugk-Harttung, who examined all the evidence, concluded that
the letter could not have been received by Wellington at 9am. Given the fact that the period in which PflugkHarttung wrote marked the height of Anglo-German animosity, his conclusions are hard to dispute. Nearly all
modern historians accept this interpretation, however Hofschröer, being somewhat selective with the evidence,
has argued that Wellington has been duplicitous to defend his own record. The key articles for this debate are
Peter Hofschröer, “Did the Duke of Wellington Deceive his Prussian Allies in the Campaign of 1815”, War in
History, 5, 1998; John Hussey, “At What Time on 15 June 1815 Did Wellington Really Learn of Napoleon’s
Attack on the Prussians?”, War in History 6, 1999; Peter Hofschröer, “Reply to John Hussey: At What Time on
15 June 1815 Did Wellington Really Learn of Napoleon’s Attack on the Prussians?”, War in History, 6, 1999;
John Hussey, “Towards a Better Chronology for the Waterloo Campaign”, War in History, 7, 2000; Gregory W.
Pedlow, “Back to the Sources: General Zieten’s Message to the Duke of Wellington on 15 June 1815”,
firstempire.net http://www.firstempire.net/samples/sample82.pdf
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as to recognise the direction and strength of his columns’.5 By 11am, Blücher had decided to
concentrate his army at Sombreffe, requesting that Zieten not fall back any further than
Fleurus, near Ligny,6 dispatching a letter at 1pm to Wellington informing him of their
situation.7 Despite their activity, II and III Prussian Corps were delayed in assembling, only
getting to what would become the Ligny battlefield at 10am and midday on the sixteenth,
although well in time for the battle. However, IV Corps under General Bülow would never
arrive, a result of both Gneisenau failing to convey the urgency of the situation and Bülow
being, according to historian Peter Hofschröer ‘deliberately awkward and obtuse’.8 In spite of
these setbacks, at Ligny, Napoleon’s 63,000 men would be outnumbered by nearly 84,000
Prussians.
Incoming reports greatly concerned Netherlands commanders and full assembly for their
troops near the border was initiated by the Prince’s chief-of-staff General ConstantRebecque. Troops from the Netherlands 2nd Division first engaged the French at 3pm,
eventually being pushed back to their brigade at Les Quatre Bras around 8pm. They stopped
the French cavalry at that point, and French requests to Marshal Ney for infantry support
were denied. The Netherlands divisional commander, General Perponcher, was informed at
9pm that this brigade was ‘too weak to hold out here for long’.9 Perponcher ordered this unit
to defend the position resolutely and ‘only withdraw if attacked by very superior forces’,
while he prepared to move additional troops there early the next morning.10 However when
Wellington became aware of the situation, only around 6pm upon receiving the 9am letter
from General Zieten, he ordered their withdrawal to Nivelles. Fearing this withdrawal would
allow the French to take Quatre Bras unmolested and threaten the Prussians, Perponcher, with
5
Peter Hofschröer, 1815: The Waterloo Campaign – Wellington, His German Allies and the Battles of Ligny
and Quatre Bras, London, 1998, p.188.
6
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.188.
7
Andrew Uffindell, The Eagle’s Last Triumph: Napoleon’s Victory at Ligny, June 1815, London, 2006, p.52.
8
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.220. Bülow, seemingly, was affronted by the situation of
being ordered around by a subordinate, and a non-Prussian, and acted as if the situation was not serious.
Therefore his force was not in a position to support the Prussian troops at Ligny.
9
Prince Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar in Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: German Sources Vol. II,
Translated from German by Martin Mittelacher, Barnsley, 2010, p.148. This was due in part to the French
formation opposite, but also his limited ammunition, due to the different calibres of muskets that some of his
units carried.
10
Pieter van Zuijlen van Nyevelt and Prince Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar in John Franklin, ed., Waterloo:
Netherlands Correspondence, Ulverston: 1815 Limited, 2010, pp.43, 77.
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the tacit agreement of Constant-Rebecque, decided to ignore this order, holding on to Les
Quatre Bras and reinforcing it the next morning with the other brigade from his division.11
12
The Battle of Quatre Bras
Throughout the morning of the sixteenth troops across Belgium began either to march or
prepare for battle. However, aside from some minor skirmishing between both forces, little
action was seen until 2pm, when Marshal Ney launched nearly 15,000 infantry and cavalry
11
Wellington hated his orders being contradicted, particularly if he was proven right. Nonetheless the decision
was both correct and of critical importance, a fact acknowledged after the campaign by Lt-General Gneisenau,
the Prussian army’s Chief-of-Staff. He wrote to his king informing him that if Perponcher ‘had of obeyed the
Duke of Wellington’s order, if he had marched on Nivelles and had not resisted so well, then Marshal Ney,
having arrived at Quatre Bras, could have turned right and fallen on the rear of the army fighting at Ligny (the
Prussian army on June 16), thus totally destroying it.’ For this action the Prussian king awarded Perponcher, a
Netherlands diplomat in the Prussian court both before and after the campaign, the Grand Cordon of the Order
of the Red Eagle; Andrew Uffindell, The Eagle’s Last Triumph, p.59.
12
The dispositions of the armies at the commencement of the battle of Ligny and Quatre Bras. The Netherlands
units holding Les Quatre Bras would be reinforced by hastily arriving units as the battle progressed. Archibald
Frank Becke, 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica 28, Cambridge, 1911, p.376. Accessed
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/EB1911-28-0376-aWaterloo_Campaign%2C_Map_II.jpg (June 17, 2015).
20
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and 34 guns against 8,000 Netherlands infantry and 16 guns under the Prince of Orange.13
Ney also ordered to his position the division of Jerome Bonaparte, the largest in the French
army, less than an hour away. However, while initially giving up ground on their left, the
Netherlands troops dug in around the Gemioncourt farmhouse in the centre and the French
tirailleurs sent forward failed to dislodge these troops, while cavalry assaults were seen off
with heavy French casualties.14 By 3pm the line had remained essentially where it had been
thirty minutes earlier, however with many young French, Dutch and Belgian troops now
casualties. However, the situation was exceedingly desperate for the allies as the French
severely outnumbered them.
This point marked the arrival of both the Duke of Wellington and a brigade of Netherlands
light cavalry. Needing to buy time for the cavalry to deploy, the Netherlands infantry were
ordered to advance. However, while initially successful in pushing the French back, they
were overwhelmed by superior numbers and in the resulting confusion attacked and routed by
French cavalry.15 In the space of five minutes more than 200 men became casualties and the
centre almost collapsed. At this stage Jerome Bonaparte’s troops arrived and began attacking
the, mainly, Nassauers in the Bossu Forest on the allied right, pushing them back through the
woods.16 This freed up French troops to attack the crumbling centre. However, the allies were
also reinforced by the division of General Picton.17 Needing to release the pressure on the
infantry and provide Picton time to deploy, a Dutch cavalry regiment was ordered forward to
delay the French. This was not executed well and they were routed by French cavalry,
devastating the supporting artillery and remaining infantry.18 Only the Netherlands troops
held in reserve and some Scottish troops held the crossroads. In desperation, the remaining
regiment of Netherlands cavalry, a Belgian unit, was ordered forward. The commander
skilfully ordered his units forward. At this point a prolonged cavalry swordfight developed
between the two sides as each vied for supremacy.19 Eventually the Netherlands cavalry
13
Andrew W. Field, Prelude to Waterloo Quatre Bras: The French Perspective, Barnsley, 2014, pp.96-97.
Erwin Muilwijk, Quatre Bras: Perponcher’s Gamble, Bleiswijk, 2013, pp.76-79.
15
Some of these men would end up prisoners and escape later during the battle, while others would escape to
other allied units.
16
Field, Quatre Bras, p.111.
17
Field, Quatre Bras, p.118.
18
André Dellevoet, The Dutch-Belgian Cavalry at Waterloo, The Hague, 2008, p.109.
19
Dellevoet, The Dutch-Belgian Cavalry, pp.116-118. As irony would have it, many of these cavalrymen
hacking one another had been comrades a year earlier under Napoleon and many Frenchmen implored their
former comrades to return to the tricolour. These requests were ignored.
14
21
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withdrew, but not before the allies had been able to reinforce their position at the
crossroads.20
The casualties sustained by all three arms of the Netherlands army in the opening hours of the
battle had been substantial, but their performance had provided the necessary time for Picton
to deploy his men. The majority of Picton’s men were deployed to the under-defended
eastern (left) side of the Allied line and while the troops in the centre had been battered the
position held. Picton’s experienced units began to assault the French right flank and while
they could not recapture Piraumont, they held on to Thyle, proving a thorn in the French
side.21 Picton’s men were followed, at around 4pm, by the Brunswickers, with the troops,
mostly, sent to reinforce their allies struggling in and around the Bossu Forest.22 The French
launched a new assault, but Picton’s men charged into their flank. Their success forced the
French cavalry to divert units to support their infantry but British officers, in particular, paid
a high price for this success.23 Meanwhile the Brunswickers strengthened the allied defence
and pushed the French in the forest back, temporarily removing this threat to the crossroads.24
By 4:30pm, despite a significant section of the Netherlands force being hors du combat the
Allies had finally stabilised the front, although Gemioncourt was still in French hands.
The situation did not seem bleak for Marshal Ney because d’Erlon’s French Corps was
expected to arrive around 5pm. In anticipation, he ordered an aggressive assault by his
remaining infantry and pushed the Allies back, retaking more of the Bossu wood. However,
unbeknownst to Ney, at 4pm d’Erlon received an order from Napoleon to come to Ligny to
deliver the coup de grace upon the Prussians.25 By the time Ney learnt of this, the troops had
been heading to Ligny for more than an hour. Enraged, Ney ordered his immediate return but
by then d’Erlon was too far from Quatre Bras to affect the battle. Ney’s men were on their
own. Meanwhile, another British division arrived, and began to make their presence felt as
20
These withdrawing cavalrymen would be shot at by the British troops who had recently arrived, due to the
similarity of their uniform to the French. Friendly fire would be a continuing problem for both sides, but
particularly Wellington’s multi-uniformed army, throughout the battles.
21
Mike Robinson, The Battle of Quatre Bras, Stroud, 2010, pp.214-218, 241-242, 251.
22
August von Herzberg in Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: German Sources Vol. V, Translated from
German by Martin Mittelacher, Barnsley, 2013, p.149.
23
One unit had their square entered by cavalry; however their composure resulted in the horsemen being
captured inside the square and killed. Robinson, Quatre Bras p.251-252, 262-265.
24
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.294.
25
Field, Quatre Bras, p.149.
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Wellington now had numerical superiority. Some were sent to assist Picton, but most
reinforced the troops in the Bossu Forest and the centre.26
In desperation, Ney used his only fresh division, the cavalry of Kellerman, to assault the
Allies, while an infantry division launched a supporting assault. Despite the apparent futility
of this charge, the cavalry actually succeeded in overwhelming a British battalion, taking
their colours.27 In addition, during this time the Duke of Brunswick was killed. However, the
French attacks on other British regiments failed and the cavalry could not hold the ground
they had taken. By 6:45pm the Allied centre was saved. With the arrival of the British Guards
around this time, and shortly after Kruse’s Nassauers, Wellington went on the offensive.
British units took Gemioncourt, the Brunswickers took Piraumont and the wood was
completely taken by a mixture of units. Estimates for casualties usually consist of
approximately 4,000 Frenchmen and 4,800 Anglo-Allied soldiers.28 At 9pm, with light fading
and the battle dying down, the Allies held the field but Ney had prevented their joining the
Prussians at Ligny.
The Battle of Ligny
At about 2:30pm, approximately fifteen kilometres away from Les Quatre Bras, the combat
between the French and Prussians began as the French advanced against St Amand, the
western point of the Prussian position. The Prussians had selected the villages, from west to
east as their main defensive positions because, as Peter Hofschröer observes, ‘young,
inexperienced, but enthusiastic Prussian militiamen were more suited to street fighting where
the better training of the French would be of less advantage.’29 As the French advanced they
eventually came across Prussians holding St Amand and the hamlet of St Amand La Haye.
The battle was quite furious, caused by both sides deploying their artillery, and while in the
first half hour the French took St Amand with small loss, the battle bogged down into a
26
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.299.
The Prince of Orange has been heavily blamed for the loss of the King’s Colour, including by General Colin
Halkett, as he ordered the unit from square into column. However a Captain Pigot, who served in the regiment,
suggested in a letter to Siborne that it was a Major Lindsey who made the wrong decision, something he
regretted for the rest of his life, when he ordered the side of the square facing the cavalry to turn around, while
midway through changing formation, and fire rather than run and close the square. However, in reality, the
topography, the tall crops, the desperate situation and a bit of bad luck were probably the main causes for this
disaster. Lt-General Halkett and Captain Pigot in H. T. Siborne, ed., The Waterloo Letters: Accounts of the
Battle by British Officers for its Foremost Historian, Driffield, 2009 (orig. 1891), pp.314, 327.
28
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, pp.303-304.
29
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.253.
27
23
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stalemate as they pushed on to the hamlet. However the French, despite tenacious Prussian
rebuffs, with better use of their reserves, were finally able to take the position around 4pm.30
As a result of this, Blücher ordered more units into the slaughter. Reinforced, the Prussians
again removed the French from the hamlet and most of St Amand, but could not take the
farmhouse. They were forced to withdraw when French cavalry were sent in to assist their
beleaguered comrades. French reinforcements restored the situation and by 5pm the French
held St Amand and the hamlet.31 Meanwhile at Ligny, the French assault began at 3pm.
Initially, the French fared poorly, being driven from the position. Altering their tactics, they
were able to slowly grind their way through. The French capture of St Amand at 5pm allowed
for more artillery support to move forward and the French managed to capture most of Ligny,
with the exception of the chateau and a section held by a Prussian regiment.32 During this
time, further east, Tongrinne had remained relatively quiet, with small skirmishes being the
order of the day. This all benefitted Napoleon who wanted only to contain the Prussians there
so he could focus his attention on the western part of the battlefield.
Following on from these successes, at around 5pm the Emperor reinforced his offensive to
the west with a Young Guard Division and cavalry to help maintain contact with Ney’s wing.
However the Prussians used this time to launch an assault on both St Amand and Ligny. The
ferocity of the assault can be gauged from a Prussian participant who later wrote ‘pardon was
neither asked nor given’.33 Their assault once again proved successful, and they took most of
Ligny, along with St Amand and St Amand La Haye. However, in their euphoria, the
Prussians advanced too far at both locations, being subjected to fire from French artillery at
St Amand and infantry hiding in the tall crops at Ligny. The Prussian success was short-lived.
By 6pm the French had once again retaken St Amand, St Amand La Haye and most of Ligny.
Napoleon had planned at this point to throw in the reserve and the Imperial Guard to deliver
the coup de grace. However, a large force appeared in Napoleon’s rear. Not knowing its
identity, the Emperor delayed his plans for nearly an hour in order to work out to whom this
force belonged.34 The Prussians used this apparent pause to launch a new assault on both
30
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, pp.264-271
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, pp.271-274.
32
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, pp.306-309.
33
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.311.
34
Uffindell, Eagle’s Last Triumph, pp.103, 108.
31
24
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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positions, desperately seeking to arrest French gains. By this stage the battle had devolved
into a grinding attritional contest. However, the better husbanding of resources and higher
quality troops was allowing Napoleon to overcome his numerical inferiority.35 The Prussian
assaults, though successful in retaking St Amand and parts of Ligny, were draining their
available resources. Meanwhile at Tongrinne, events finally started to heat up as the
Prussians attacked the French positions. Fighting here also became attritional, as Tongrinne
and Boignée changed hands several times.36
It was not until 7pm that this force in the French rear was discovered to be that of d’Erlon,
which had appeared further south than expected. However, this freed up the French for one
final push. While most of Napoleon’s reserves had been engaged, he still maintained the
Imperial Guard, which he decided to send towards Ligny. While the Prussians had proven
harder to dislodge from St Amand, they had nearly lost Ligny by around 8:30pm. Napoleon
diverted troops from St Amand to Ligny which induced Blücher to send more troops to St
Amand to remove the French there entirely, playing into Napoleon’s hands. With light
fading, the Imperial Guard delivered the coup de grace decimating the Prussians at Ligny and
threatening to encircle the Prussians fighting around St Amand.37 Blücher personally led
cavalry charges, trying to provide time for the spent Prussian units to withdraw. He was
wounded when his horse was shot.
Unfortunately for the French, d’Erlon’s Corps, despite being near the battlefield, had received
an order from Ney to return to Les Quatre Bras. Despite the impossibility of returning before
nightfall, d’Erlon split his force up, sending parts in both directions. Still those that did arrive
at Ligny did not get involved, strangely failing to seek orders from the Emperor.38 Without
additional troops the French could not destroy the Prussians. Nonetheless, Prussian casualties
were high and an additional 8,000 deserted via Liege further east.39 Despite the setback, the
majority of the troops managed to reach Tilly, as per Gneisenau’s orders, who took charge in
the absence of Blücher. Many men continued onto Wavre. Meanwhile Blücher was rescued
35
This aggressive tactical approach of Blücher was also causing problems. However as Robert Citino points out
in his work The German Way of War, Prussian operational doctrine dictated a highly aggressive approach to
warfare. This was further necessitated by the fact that many of Blücher’s troops were inexperienced and fighting
in complex formations which would have benefitted the seasoned French more than his own troops. Robert
Citino, The German Way of War: From the Thirty Years War to the Third Reich, Lawrence, 2005.
36
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.318.
37
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, pp.319-321.
38
Field, Quatre Bras, pp.156-157.
39
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.327.
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and eventually met up with Gneisenau just beyond Tilly. Including the 8,000 deserters, the
Prussians sustained around 20,000 casualties. The French lost more than 10,000 men.40 The
French commanded the field but in their exhaustion did not vigorously pursue the defeated
Prussians. Ultimately Napoleon had defeated the Prussians but had failed to annihilate them
as an effective fighting force.
The Retreat to Wavre and Mont St. Jean
The engagements on the seventeenth were relatively low key, in comparison to the two days
either side, but they had critical strategic consequences. The Prussians continued their retreat
to Wavre, while Wellington, upon being made aware of the Prussian defeat and subsequent
withdrawal, decided to withdraw to Mont St Jean. This would prevent his being outflanked
by the French. Lord Uxbridge, successfully, though according to one subordinate somewhat
rashly, provided cover for this manoeuvre.41 In this he was greatly assisted by the torrential
downpour which hindered the French pursuit. But the French were also noticeably lethargic.42
Not until 11am did Napoleon dispatch Marshal Grouchy, with around 33,000 men, to pursue
the Prussians. The remainder of his force at Ligny was diverted to Quatre Bras to support
Ney. Napoleon anticipated that it would take several days for the Prussians to fully recover
and ordered Grouchy to destroy them or at least prevent their union with Wellington. But
Grouchy had trouble locating them, in part because the 8,000 deserters were heading in the
opposite direction.43 French difficulties allowed the Prussians to reorder themselves and when
the Duke of Wellington asked for one Prussian Corps as reinforcement to stand against
Napoleon, Blücher promised him his entire army.
40
Hofschröer, Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras, p.348; Uffindell, Eagle’s Last Triumph, p.204.
While there are problems with Tomkinson’s memoirs, probably not helped by the fact that they were edited
by someone else in the late nineteenth-century, his account of the events of the covering of the Anglo-Allied
withdrawal by the British cavalry on the seventeenth of June is one of the best. William Tomkinson, With
Wellington’s Light Cavalry: The Experiences of an Officer of the 16 th Light Dragoons in the Peninsular and
Waterloo Campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars, Driffield, 2006 (orig. 1894), pp.284-288.
42
This is well explored by Field, Quatre Bras, ch.17.
43
Andrew W. Field, Waterloo: The French Perspective, Barnsley, 2012, pp.30-31.
41
26
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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44
The Battle of Waterloo
On the morning of the eighteenth, troops continued to move into position for what would
become one of the most famous battles in history. Wellington deployed the majority of his
troops behind the Mont St Jean ridge with skirmishers placed on the forward ridge. He also
deployed formations into the three farmhouses, Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte and Papelotte,
in front of his position. These positions, particularly Hougoumont on the Duke’s right and La
Haye Sainte in his centre would be critical bulwarks against the French assault. On the ridge,
Wellington deployed a larger percentage of his force to his right, with a strong centre and
comparatively weak left wing, expecting Prussian reinforcement on this side. Overall,
Wellington had approximately 67,000 troops and 157 cannon, with a further 17,000 deployed
at Halle who would have no bearing on the battle.45
44
The dispositions of Wellington and Napoleon’s armies as the battle of Waterloo commenced around 11:30am.
The map also shows the path of the Prussians to the battlefield and the position of their initial engagement with
the French, which occurred around 4:30pm. Archibald Frank Becke, 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica 28,
Cambridge, 1911, p.380. Accessed https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/EB1911-28-0380-aWaterloo_Campaign%2C_Map_III.jpg (June 17, 2015).
45
This deployment at Halle has created debate ever since.
27
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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Opposite Wellington, Napoleon’s troops were slowly coming into position. Napoleon’s
troops were more evenly spread to respond to the developing situation. Many of his units had
also suffered relatively light casualties on the sixteenth, if any at all. Overall he had 73,000
troops and 246 cannon arrayed against Wellington. However, the troops were still making
their way up to the front well into the morning and while the Emperor had wanted to
commence operations at 9am the French troops were simply not in position.46 The Guard
would still be arriving as the French assault began. Based on the available evidence Napoleon
was little concerned at this point as he was not expecting any Prussian involvement in the
battle.
Wellington’s decision to resist Napoleon on the ridge, rested on the promised support of Field
Marshal Blücher. Blücher directed three of his four Corps on to Mont St Jean, including the
still uncommitted Corps of General Bülow. While the march began at daybreak the rain had
added to their difficulties by eroding much of the poor quality roads between Wavre and
Mont St Jean. Wellington expected Blücher to start arriving by 9am, and even, allowing for
delays, by 11am, but these impediments would add several hours to the march. The
remaining Corps was left at Wavre to protect the Prussians from Grouchy’s detachment. This
would not be easy given that the French force was nearly twice that of the Prussians.47
The battle of Waterloo began with the French assault on Hougoumont at around 11:30am
according to most accounts. These French soldiers engaged Hanoverians and Nassauers in the
wood, using superior number to slowly push them back. After about an hour the German
units were forced to retreat to the Chateau. French attempts to assault the garden were less
successful as they were shot down by troops behind the wall. Some Frenchmen, it is claimed
by Allied sources, breached the southern gate, but were forced back by the Nassauers.48
Meanwhile, British units reinforced the remaining Hanoverians, driving the disordered
French out of the orchard and setting up a defensive line on its edge. The reinforced French
attacked to the west of the farmhouse and slowly drove back the British troops. The British
46
Peter Hofschröer, 1815: The Waterloo Campaign - The German Victory, London, 2004, p.70.
Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran, Gregory W. Pedlow, eds., On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington and the
Campaign of 1815, clausewitz.com, 2010, p.154.
48
The specific details are only recorded by one Nassau sergeant but his report is supported by at least one
British veteran. Sergeant Buchsieb in Glover, ed., Waterloo Archive: Vol. V, p.115; Thomas Wedgwood in
Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. I, Barnsley, 2010, p.147. Gareth Glover,
Waterloo: Myth and Reality, Barnsley, 2014, p.121.
47
28
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retreated to the open northern gate, which had been left as such to receive supplies from the
ridge. However, the French were too close and they managed to breach a small gap in the
closed door, before the crossbeam could be put in place. Between thirty and forty men
breached the gate. Lt Colonel Macdonnell, commanding the garrison, showed great
composure and ran forward with a small group of officers and soldiers to seal the door before
more Frenchmen could get in. Once secured the isolated Frenchmen who had breached the
door were killed.
While the battle within Hougoumont continued, Napoleon made his second move. At around
1:30pm 62 French guns were arrayed between their infantry formations and began firing on
the Allied line.49 While a standard Napoleonic tactic, with the skirmishers forward of the
ridge too dispersed to hit, the French were forced to fire upon the unseen troops on the
reverse side of the ridge.50 While some allied soldiers were killed, the order to lie down
resulted in the vast majority of cannon flying harmlessly over their heads. The muddy terrain
further reduced the cannon’s explosive capacity. After a thirty minute bombardment, the still
uncommitted d’Erlon Corps was ordered to advance. Consisting of four divisions and around
18,000 men, the troops marched forward, taking up most of the space between La Haye
Sainte and Papelotte. Cavalry provided protection on their flanks. The two divisions on the
wing had to detach units to deal with the farmhouses but the middle divisions pushed forward
like a human battering ram. This was unpleasant work for the French soldiers, as they were
forced to march under Allied artillery fire in mud that slowed their advance.
As the French closed in on the ridge, their artillery was forced to stop firing allowing the
Allies to fire artillery unmolested into the French mass. But the Allied left wing had the
fewest artillery units and they could not inflict enough damage. British Riflemen on the
forward slope were forced to withdraw and the garrison in La Haye Sainte was under extreme
pressure. Attempts were made to reinforce the farmhouse but they were caught by French
cavalry.51 The main French assault faced a brigade of Netherlands troops who after a
49
Many historians claim that this barrage was made up of 80 guns in a continuous battery, but this seems to
reflect a historical construct after the battle. No contemporary eye-witness evidence supports this supposition.
Glover, Myth and Reality, p.125.
50
This tactic had been brilliantly employed by Wellington since the early part of the Peninsular War.
51
Brendan Simms, The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men who Decided the Battle of Waterloo, London, 2014,
pp.29-32.
29
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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numerically uneven firefight were forced to withdraw behind the British units to regroup.52
The British units moved forward. Those under Kempt on the right were able to stop the
French advance, though the French remained in position, as both sides reorganised their
formations. To the left, where Pack commanded, the French were more successful and British
units were forced to withdraw.53 General Picton was also killed at this time. Little stood in the
way of these Frenchmen and with another division in support to their right, the allied line was
close to collapse.
The line held because Lord Uxbridge was operating in this sector of the field with the British
heavy cavalry and saw the developing situation. He ordered the heavy cavalry forward to
engage the French hoping to catch them before they could form a defensive square. This was
made a little easier by the French not advancing in their usual column formation. The French
altered the shape of the column so that more men were in the front line, allowing it to bring
more muskets to bear against the British infantry who were operating in a line formation.
However, this did mean the French would find it more difficult to quickly change into square,
if the Allied cavalry attacked. Given that British cavalry attacks had not been a major factor
in the Peninsula this potential problem had, seemingly, been disregarded.54 The British
cavalry made their way up the slope at a trot, as a faster speed would have drained the horses
and endangered the Allied infantry. The lie of the land made it difficult for the French to see
them so that by the time their presence had been discerned little could be done. French
infantry, unsure of how to respond in their unusual formation, were easy prey and the
cavalrymen hacked at them with little mercy. As the cavalry came over the ridge they
accelerated and rode into the three most forward columns causing significant casualties.55
52
The high casualties of this Dutch-Belgian brigade have often been attributed to the story that they were left on
the forward part of the ridge and consequently sustained heavy casualties from artillery. Some of the Siborne
Letters attest to this and it was picked up by Siborne. It has since been dismissed by most historians as the battle
report of the chief-of-staff of the Netherlands division clarifies that they were ordered back before the artillery
barrage commenced. These casualties, for the most part, were sustained in the firefight against d’Erlon’s Corps.
Pieter van Zuijlen van Nyevelt in Franklin, Netherlands Correspondence, pp.53, 55; Erwin Muilwijk, Standing
Firm at Waterloo, Bleiswijk, 2014, pp.135-136.
53
S. Monick, ed., The Iberian and Waterloo Campaigns: The Letters of Lt James Hope (92 nd (Highland)
Regiment) 1811-1815, Heathfield, 2000 (orig. 1819), p.253-254; Field, Waterloo, pp.106-107.
54
Aiming to mitigate the advantage of the British line, which throughout the Peninsular War had always been
able to defeat the French columns with superior firepower, the French had increased their frontage. However,
while it did enable more muskets to be fired at the allied infantry, it did inhibit the French from changing
formations if they were assaulted by cavalry. As the British cavalry had always been rather small in the
Peninsular War, and particularly deficient in heavy cavalry, the French had not anticipated this being a problem.
Field, Waterloo, pp.244-249.
55
Gregory Fremont-Barnes, Waterloo 1815: The British Army’s Day of Destiny, Stroud, 2014, ch.7; Field,
Waterloo, pp.110, 248.
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The British cavalry drove the French columns back, capturing two Eagles in the process.
They were supported down the slope by the British and Netherlander infantry, both of which
had reformed after the French assault. Somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 prisoners were
added to those killed. The pressure on La Haye Sainte was relieved, at least temporarily, and
more troops were sent to defend the farmhouse, though without additional ammunition.56
While a great success had been achieved the British cavalry could not be stopped and they
charged at the French artillery further down the ridge.
The attack on the French artillery brought great confusion and many French artillerymen
were either killed or abandoned the field. But during the British charge, many commanders
were either killed or, like Lord Uxbridge, lost control of their units. Bugle calls to retire were
ignored and the British horsemen were exposed to a French cavalry counter-attack ordered by
Napoleon. The British horses were now fatigued and the French showed as little mercy to
them as they had shown to their infantry.57 The casualty list would have been higher but for
British and Dutch-Belgian light cavalry who came to their aid, drawing the French cavalry
away and forming up to cover their retreat. This action contravened Wellington’s standing
order but saved many who had not advanced too far.58 Some of the surviving British heavy
cavalry, along with some of the Netherlands infantry, escorted the prisoners to Brussels.59
Meanwhile Lobau’s VI Corps was sent forward by Napoleon to protect d’Erlon’s survivors,
allowing them to reform. While hostilities did not cease on this wing, there was a discernible
lull, allowing both sides to regroup.
The engagement at Hougoumont failed to dissipate at this time, as the Allies were forced to
place more troops into the farmhouse to hold it. Meanwhile, the French eventually deployed
an entire Corps to take the farmhouse. With all their infantry committed, except the Imperial
Guard in reserve, the French deployed approximately 4,500 cavalrymen against the Allied
position. The allied infantry were forced into a chequerboard of squares and for the better part
of three hours the French horsemen charged up the hill, attacked the squares, withdrew back
56
Georg Baring in Franklin, Hanoverian Correspondence, p.71.
Field, Waterloo, pp.113-115.
58
Dellevoet, The Dutch-Belgian Cavalry, pp.141-148.
59
The Netherlands brigade has often been accused of having abandoned the field en masse. While a few soldiers
probably did abandon their post, a problem for all the armies involved in the battle, some of the infantry were
ordered to escort the French prisoners to Brussels, explaining why there was a sizeable force there after the
battle. The surviving Netherlanders not ordered to do so were engaged in the fighting for the rest of the battle.
Muilwijk, Standing Firm, pp.144-145.
57
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down and repeated the process. Meanwhile, when the French cavalry had retreated out of
harm’s way, their artillery bombardment recommenced, which was more destructive on the
allied infantry as they were forced to remain in square. Fortunately for the allies, the mud, the
slope and the narrow defile for the cavalry between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte
affected their cohesion. With further disorder created by the infantry squares, the allied
cavalry, with the Dutch-Belgian heavy cavalry in the vanguard, launched numerous
successful counterattacks against the French.60 However, the French simply responded by
deploying more horsemen up the ridge. With this increase, the French cavalry now dwarfed
their allied counterpart. Some units were still ordered forward but they were often summarily
beaten back by the wave of Frenchmen. The Cumberland Hussars, a Hanoverian cavalry unit,
actually abandoned the field en masse, though they were the only allied unit to do so.61
Wellington’s infantry were forced to weather the assault. A number of allied squares were
said to have lost their cohesion and withdrawn, though they must have always returned to
their positon because the French did not break an Allied square.62 The mixture of British and
German units that made up the allied centre was hit particularly hard. Wellington was forced
to order allied units from other parts of the battlefield to his centre. While initially inducing
fear, the cavalry’s inability to break the squares saw the infantry prefer the cavalry charges as
a temporary relief from the horrendous artillery bombardment.
The French pressure also increased on La Haye Sainte and Hougoumont. Both positions had
received much needed reinforcements from the ridge but only Hougoumont had received
extra ammunition thanks to the actions of a brave private of the wagon train.63 From around
3pm French troops assaulted La Haye Sainte for the better part of two hours. But without the
distraction of a French infantry advance against the main allied line, the Germans inside
could focus their attention on this threat and forced the French to withdraw. Concurrently at
Hougoumont, a French advance was stopped in its tracks by an Allied bombardment on the
ridge. The French changed their tactics and began bombarding Hougoumont, with the roofs
of the great barn and chateau catching fire. Many wounded who had been placed in the barn
were burned alive in the inferno, despite their comrades’ best efforts. However, the position
60
Dellevoet, The Dutch Belgian Cavalry, pp.148-159. The Netherlands heavy cavalry commander was
acknowledged by name in Wellington’s Waterloo Despatch; Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of,
Wellington’s Dispatches Vol. XII France, 1813-1815, London, 1837-39, p.484.
61
Hofschröer, The German Victory, p.111.
62
Two sources who mention this are Constant-Rebecque in Franklin, Netherlands Correspondence, p.19 and
Cavalie Mercer, Journal of the Waterloo Campaign, Cambridge, 1995 (orig. 1870), p.170.
63
Horace Seymour in Siborne, Waterloo Letters, p.30.
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was not abandoned, and when the French breached the west door, the Nassauers fought the
enemy fiercely and with the strong support of the British Guardsmen, overwhelmed their
enemy with only a few French escaping back through the gate.64
The situation deteriorated for the French at around 4:30pm following the arrival of the
Prussians on their right flank. The Prussians had endured a tumultuous time trying to reach
the battlefield. The muddied path had retarded their advance, and they had also been forced to
march through Wavre to avoid Grouchy’s advanced cavalry. In addition a fire broke out in
Wavre delaying some of the formations.65 The Prussians were led by the Bülow’s untested
Corps, with another in support, while the remainder headed towards Wellington on the ridge.
The French did not openly respond to this threat and the Prussians were able to cross the
boggy Lasne valley unhindered by the French, with the first brigade arriving at the Paris
wood at around 4pm. They were joined by another brigade at 4:30pm. The French had still
done nothing to stop their advance but Blücher had grown so worried about Wellington’s
situation that, over Bülow’s protests, he ordered an immediate attack on the French near
Plancenoit, in order to relieve the pressure.66 The small Lobau Corps, already near the village,
deployed into action. However, with the arrival of the rest of this Prussian Corps, the
Prussians had a 3:1 advantage in manpower. The French could not hold out indefinitely.
Napoleon decided to take men from his reserve and ordered the 4,500 men of the Young
Guard forward to Plancenoit to support his units there. The Emperor was well aware that if
the village was lost so was the battle.
The French cavalry attacks finally came to an end at around 6pm. Hougoumont continued to
hold but became less relevant as the French shifted their focus to La Haye Sainte. Napoleon
finally recognised that capturing La Haye Sainte was critical to breaking the Allied line.67
Fresh troops under Marshal Ney were deployed and despite the garrison’s tenacious defence,
without ammunition, they could not hold out. The allies sent out relief units but they were
overrun by supporting French cavalry. Following its loss another unit was sent forward to
retake the farmhouse but it too was overrun by cavalry.68 The French took the farmhouse
which allowed their artillery to be moved forward. The allies on the ridge endured a ferocious
64
Moritz Büsgen in Glover, Waterloo Archive: Vol. II, p.158.
Hofschröer, The German Victory, pp.54-55.
66
Hofschröer, The German Victory, p.98.
67
Kershaw, 24 Hours, p.216.
68
Simms, The Longest Afternoon, pp.55-57.
65
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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barrage and sustained heavy casualties. Marshal Ney called for more men to take advantage
of this success but none were forthcoming as the Prussians had nearly captured Plancenoit.
Despite the presence of the Young Guard, the Prussians were slowly moving through
Plancenoit, taking the village in heavy street fighting. Prussian reinforcements also started to
appear. Some reinforced those at Plancenoit and, after some confusion, the others moved
towards Wellington on the Mont St Jean ridge. The Prussian arrival on the ridge allowed
British cavalry units on the allied left to be dispatched to the crumbling centre.69 Even
without these units, the Prussians were still making progress at Plancenoit. Napoleon, despite
the pleas of Marshal Ney for reinforcements to exploit La Haye Sainte’s capture, ordered two
and a half battalions of the Old Guard to recapture Plancenoit. Though only consisting of
1,500 men, they were veterans and successfully bayonet-charged the village. The Prussians
were forced back and, with their success helping to reinvigorate the Young Guard, they
retook Plancenoit.70 Napoleon had stabilised his right wing.
While the French had stabilised their right wing, it was obvious that the Prussian superiority
in numbers meant they could not be held off indefinitely. Unfortunately for Napoleon,
Grouchy and his 33,000 men had been locked in a battle with the Prussians at Wavre since
4pm which had seen neither side gain any real tactical advantage.71 Though the Emperor was
not aware of this at the time, the successful Prussian deployment of so many troops must
have convinced him that Grouchy would not be intervening in the day’s proceedings.
Recognising that the Prussian superiority in numbers meant that he could not hold on to
Plancenoit without more troops, Napoleon convinced himself that if he could destroy
Wellington’s troops, he could divert his forces from the ridgeline to deal with the Prussians.
While hindsight would point to a number of problems with this assessment, rather than
retreat, Napoleon chose to deploy the majority of his reserve, the remaining Guard units,
against the Duke.
The final assault of the Imperial Guard was launched at around 7:30pm with the remaining
French units fighting around Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte providing additional support.72
69
Hofschröer, The German Victory, p.125. Although the Nassauers holding Papelotte were exposed to ‘friendly
fire’ from their allies, the Prussian support ensured that the French assault on this part of the battlefield failed.
70
Field, Waterloo, pp.179, 271.
71
Hofschröer, The German Victory, pp.158-165.
72
Muilwijk, Standing Firm, pp.187-188.
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The Imperial Guard advanced with their artillery which began to pour heavy fire into the
Allied line. Most of the allied artillery had used up its ammunition and the Guard sustained
minimal casualties. Seeing this, the Netherlands General Chassé ordered his artillery forward
to the ridge, though only one of his two batteries did so.73 Two battalions of the French
Grenadiers reached the centre of the ridge and attacked the British brigade of Colin Halkett,
the Brunswickers, the Nassauers and some Hanoverian units.74 The artillery forced the
Hanoverian units to retreat, and they were followed by the Brunswickers.75 The British
brigade was also forced back in the confusion76 and the Prince of Orange was wounded
leading the Nassauers in a counter-charge that failed once he had been knocked out of
action.77 However the counter-charge provided the British and Brunswickers time to regroup
and the Netherlands artillery began firing from close range at the Guards. A Netherlands
brigade of the division of Chassé also reached the front at this time and, after a brief firefight
with one of the Guards battalions, was ordered to bayonet-charge the Guard.78 The other
Guard battalion, seeing the mass of Netherlanders rushing towards their comrades, with the
Brunswickers following this movement, withdrew back down the ridge.79
73
David Chasse and Carl van Delen in John Franklin, Netherlands Correspondence, pp.119, 125.
This force is acknowledged by Macready, though he is confused about the details, presumably because, by the
time he wrote of it, his memory has been influenced by the numerous works that he admits he read on the battle.
Edward Macready, “On a part of Captain Siborne’s History of the Waterloo Campaign: By an officer of the
Fifth British Brigade”, The United Service Magazine 47, 1845, p.398.
75
Kielmansegge in Glover, Waterloo Archive: Vol. II, p.97.
76
‘At this instant we found ourselves commingled with the 33 rd and 69th Regiments; all order was lost, and the
column (now a mere mob,) passed the hedge at an accelerated pace’. Macready, “On a part of Captain Siborne’s
History”, pp.400-401; ‘The French infantry, that were now advancing, were so overwhelming in numbers, that
we were forced to retire’. Thomas Morris, Recollections of Military Service, in 1813, 1814, & 1815, through
Germany, Holland, and France; Including Some Details of the Battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo, London,
1845, p.225; Field, Waterloo, p.197.
77
Kruse was much upset by this, speculating that if both Nassau regiments had been united rather than one
operating under Netherlands’ command, it would have won itself ‘immortal glory’ by defeating the Imperial
Guard. August von Kruse in Glover, Waterloo Archive: Vol. V, p.137.
78
David Chasse, Carl van Delen and Hendrik Detmers in Franklin, Netherlands Correspondence, pp119, 125,
135. The conduct of both the infantry and the artillery was acknowledged by Lord Hill, the commander of the
Allied 2nd Corps in his report to Wellington. Arthur Wellesley, 2nd Duke of Wellington, ed., Supplementary
Despatches, Correspondence and Memoranda of Field Marshal Arthur, Duke of Wellington, K. G., Vol. X
Waterloo, the Campaign in France and the capitulation of Paris by a military convention, with the Allied British
and Prussian armies, 1815, London, 1863, p.544. Accessed
http://archive.org/stream/supplementaryde15wellgoog#page/n554/mode/2up. Erwin Muilwijk has, more
recently, suggested that the Netherlands brigade did not engage the Imperial Guard but rather a brigade of
French I Corps, and that the Halkett brigade defeated the French. Muilwijk, Standing Firm at Waterloo, pp.199200. However this is not consistent with the Allied evidence, or the evidence of most of the French participants.
Field, Waterloo, pp.198-199, 273.
79
August von Herzberg in Glover, Waterloo Archive: Vol. V, p.160. British ensign Edward Macready was
seemingly not in a position to see this, stating thirty years later, ‘I never could account for their (the French)
flight, nor did I ever hear an admissible reason assigned for it’. Macready, “On a part of Captain Siborne’s
History”, p.396.
74
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The Grenadiers were followed by the Chasseurs of the Guard who attacked to the left of the
Grenadiers, closer to Hougoumont. The Chasseurs ran into Maitland’s British Guards who
had sustained relatively light casualties throughout the day. These British Guardsmen had
been ordered to lie down during the French advance, reducing the impact of the French Guard
artillery that accompanied the infantry, and deceiving the French as to the size of their force.
Upon the French reaching them, they were ordered to stand and delivered devastating volleys
into the two battalions of the 3rd Chasseurs, forcing them to withdraw.80 They also received
support from the Netherlands artillery.
Maitland’s men followed the French forward, but they were hit by the French 4th Chasseurs
who came up in support of their retreating compatriots, along with formations of the French
Corps fighting around Hougoumont. Maitland’s men were forced back by this fresh advance
and the unit lost cohesion, retreating up the hill. Colonel John Colborne, commanding the
British 52nd Foot, a large and more experienced regiment than most under Wellington’s
command, audaciously wheeled to the left flank of the advancing French, a move supported
by the other units in the brigade by its commander Major General Adam. Below the ridgeline,
the 52nd marched rapidly across the ground and approaching the French columns fired several
musket volleys. Despite initial attempts to return fire, the French could not stand and the
units, including the famed Guard, withdrew.
With the floor of the shallow valley removed of French troops and the Netherlands troops
having forced the French to abandon La Haye Sainte, Wellington, sensing the moment,
ordered the entire Allied line to advance. The British light cavalry, with the relatively fresh
brigades of Vanderleur and Vivian forming the vanguard, led the charge and these units
decimated the French troops trying to hold formation.81 Meanwhile, the Prussians were
pushing the French out of Plancenoit and the French line collapsed under the unrelenting
pressure. Some of the Imperial Guard units were able to maintain formation and the British
cavalry paid for their over-exuberance against these units with heavy losses. But these men
could not stop the rout that was unfolding around them and the French retreated in disorder.82
As the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blücher met with their respective troops at La Belle
80
Peregrine Maitland and John Byng in Gareth Glover, The Waterloo Archive: British Sources Vol. IV,
Barnsley, 2012, pp.132, 143. The regiment were renamed the Grenadiers as it was erroneously believed that
they defeated this Guard unit, rather than the Chasseurs.
81
John Vandeleur and Hussey Vivian in Waterloo Letters, pp.108, 157, 161
82
Field, Waterloo, pp.208-212
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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Alliance, the Prussian troops who were less tired, despite their heavy exertions just getting to
the battlefield, took full responsibility for the pursuit of the French. Gneisenau ordered that
the pursuing units beat the charge, creating further chaos for the fleeing French.83 Overall,
throughout the day, 15,000 troops under Wellington became casualties along with 7,000
Prussians. Meanwhile anywhere between 25,000 and 40,000 Frenchmen were killed, captured
or wounded over the course of the eighteenth of June.84
The 19th of June and beyond
Grouchy would not become aware of the disaster until around midday on the nineteenth. The
Prussians had launched an assault, anticipating his withdrawal, and they were very nearly
overwhelmed. Despite this, any success for Grouchy by this stage was inconsequential and he
was forced to retreat, with Blücher detaching troops from one of his Corps to head them off.85
While he had been rather lacklustre during much of the campaign, Grouchy executed a skilful
withdrawal, escaping the Prussians’ grasp. Napoleon had hoped that these troops could
reinforce him, but this was impossible given the Emperor could not adequately reassemble
his army and he fled to Paris to deal with the ensuing political intrigues. On June 22 after
returning to Paris and realising that France would no longer support him, he abdicated in
favour of his son. Naturally, his then four year-old son did not succeed him. While he
contemplated attempting an escape to the United States, he realised the Royal Navy had made
this impossible and he demanded asylum from the HMS Bellerophon. He was eventually
exiled to St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, where he would remain until his death in 1821.
As this was going on the Allies commenced their invasion of France with the Prussians, their
leader enthusiastic to reach Paris first, in the vanguard. While both Wellington and Blücher
invested sieges, the Prussians did most of the fighting and consequently sustained the
majority of the casualties during this stage of the campaign. Their casualty list was higher
than necessary, however, due to the Prussian attitude that France was an enemy country, and
therefore open to licentious behaviour. Conversely, Wellington imposed strict rules on
looting by his troops and their progress was markedly less costly. The Prussians also suffered
83
Hofschröer, The German Victory, pp.151-152.
William Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, 1815, 4th ed., London, 1904. Siborne’s tables are usually called
upon even today for providing the number of Allied casualties. The French casualties are much harder to gauge
because the records were not well kept in light of the disintegration of the army and its rapid retreat back
through France. In addition, many men, like the 8,000 Prussians after Ligny, deserted, returning to their homes.
Consequently, the French numbers will probably always remain a best estimate.
85
Hofschröer, The German Victory, pp.168-172.
84
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casualties outside Paris. Overall though, the casualty list was much lower than the first four
days of the campaign, leading many to assume that the invasion of Paris was more a
procession than a march. On July 7 the allies occupied Paris, with the British on the north
bank and the Prussians on the south. Müffling, Blücher’s liaison officer to the British during
the campaign, was appointed Governor of the city. Aside from a few investments of fortress
towns, the Waterloo campaign was over. For Britain, and the rest of Europe, two decades of
war were over. But as the next chapter will show the consequences of these wars, and this
particular campaign, would be felt for many years to come.
38
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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Chapter 2 – War, the Military and British National
Identity
Linda Colley suggests that a proud military history and culture, centred on the recurring
warfare with France in the ‘long eighteenth-century, were focal points of a well-established
British national identity by the Victorian era.1 However early nineteenth-century Britons were
not imbued with fervent nationalism. Rather, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were
patriotic2 conflicts that, even as they took place, ‘reinforced the conservative social
structure’.3 Ultimately though, this ‘reinforced conservatism’ proved deceptive and
temporary. To meet the unprecedented demands of mobilisation the British government
encouraged a deep-seated hatred of France, which benefitted from a century of recurring
conflict. Conflict with a common enemy helped to unify a broad cross-section of the Isles,
establishing a more British national identity. This unity, along with wartime demands, created
the necessary conditions for political change. After the victory at Waterloo, Colley focused
on the political changes in Britain, regarding these developments as the final component in
establishing a British national identity. For most historians, the role of war in national identity
in this period is separated from the militarism that gripped Britain in the 1890s. While
Michael Paris has argued that this militaristic identity developed earlier, he still views them
as separate phenomena, a reflection of post-1815 war-weariness.4 But war continued to
influence identity in Britain after Waterloo through the publication of the numerous and
popular memoirs from veterans of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. This chapter will
show how the wars that ended in 1815 helped to develop a more inclusive British national
identity, providing the necessary context for political and societal change.
The outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, had initiated an almost unbroken
twenty-two year period of ever-expanding war between the two nations.5 France had been at
1
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, 3rd ed., New Haven, 2009.
The term patriotic is being applied in its modern sense, i.e. devotion or loyalty to their own nation. However,
in the eighteenth and early nineteenth-centuries the term patriot represented an individual diametrically opposed
to the modern sense of ‘my country, right or wrong’. The French Revolution ‘thought of patriots as those who
showed the love of their country by wishing to renew it by reform or revolution’. E. J. Hobsbawm, Nations and
Nationalism since 1780: program, myth, reality, 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1992, p.87.
3
Tom Nairn, The Break-up of Britain, London, 1977, p.272.
4
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000.
5
The Peace of Amiens lasted one year, ending in May 1803, but most commentators see it as nothing more than
a pause with both sides intending to renew hostilities in more favourable conditions.
2
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
war with other nations in Europe since 1792 and, buoyed by the doctrine of the Revolution,
had been able to conscript enormous numbers of highly motivated citizen-soldiers, to engage
and subdue the other European powers. These men found this motivation in that the new
doctrine allowed for them to have a voice, theoretically at least, in the political direction of
their nation. Invigorated by these ideas and aggrieved by the invasions of the old European
monarchies, Frenchmen fought tenaciously to spread the benefits of the Revolution to the rest
of the continent.6 The growth of these conflicts demanded a far greater involvement of the
British population than in any previous war. Rapid growth in personnel was not a new
phenomenon in the British military, all eighteenth-century wars were marked by the initial
period of expansion, as peacetime Britain did not maintain large armies like continental
Europe. Additionally, eighteenth-century warfare had seen a marked increase in the
consumption of both money and men to the point that during the American Revolutionary
War the British armed forces had peaked at over 190,000 men.7 However, the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic Wars marked a profound and rapid escalation. By 1812, 140,000 men served
in the navy alone, while a quarter of a million men were in the army by 1814. This already
enormous force was augmented, as early as 1804, by the presence of half a million men either
in the militia or volunteer units for home defence.8
This unprecedented mobilisation of the British population had posed numerous problems for
the Government. Manpower, particularly in wartime, had always been a problem for Britain
throughout the eighteenth-century, due to the atrocious conditions for the rank and file. As a
result, the “dregs” of British society volunteered or were more often impressed into military
service, in order to meet demands. This force would be routinely augmented by the hiring of
large numbers of German mercenaries.9 The demands of the Revolutionary wars only
exacerbated this problem. At its peak, one in five males was a member of a branch of the
armed services. Consequently, it was simply not realistic to rely on prisoners or impoverished
men to fill the ranks, rather men from all parts of society were needed to serve, if not in the
regular army than at least in the militia or army reserve to repulse a French invasion.10 The
6
Charles John Fedorak, “L’impact de la Révolution française et de Napoléon sur l’armée britannique et la
Grande-Bretagne en tant que nation armée”, Annales historiques de la Révolution française 342, 2005, pp.197198.
7
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783, New York, 1989, p.30.
During the American Revolutionary War an additional 32,000 Germans fought for the British against the
colonists, p.41.
8
Colley, Britons, p.293.
9
Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870, Leicester, 1982, p.42.
10
Fedorak, “L’impact de la Révolution française”, pp.199-202.
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
population disparity between Britain and France at this time only made the situation worse.
The British government felt compelled to issue what they termed a Defence of the Realm Act
in April 1798, in order to better ascertain the number of able-bodied men in each parish and
the details of what service, if any, they were willing to do.11 Men who were not persuaded or
pressed into service were forced to pay substantially larger amounts to the government in the
form of the newly created income tax, to pay for the war effort.
This caused major consternation amongst the British aristocracy, who greatly feared the
threat posed by the arming, training and onerous taxation of such a large section of the
impoverished and disenfranchised. The Naval Mutinies of 1797, though they were peacefully
resolved, and the sailors had confirmed they would return to duty if the French invaded, were
an indication of the legitimate fear the government had in addressing the French threat. The
navy was the major impediment to a French invasion of Britain, and there was no guarantee
that future mutineers would be so loyal in a crisis. This has not been accepted by all
historians. David Powell, for instance, argues that the battle for control of the British state
‘was a one-sided affair. In the 1790s the political advantages were all with the ruling
authorities who were in a powerfully entrenched position, bolstered by strong popular
loyalism and a heightened British patriotism’.12 While this might have seemed clearer in
hindsight, it was not obvious to contemporaries. The government proved extremely reluctant
to institute reforms which would strengthen both nationalist and patriotic ideals. This is
particularly pertinent because of the success instituting nationalist reforms had had on the
capacity of France to wage war. Linda Colley infers that, in relation to the British
government having a nationalist agenda, ‘what is striking is not how much it (the British
Government) attempted, but how much it left deliberately undone’.13 This fear was not
unique to Britain. Governments across Europe were often equally reluctant to carry these
changes out given the disastrous impact it had on the French crown and aristocracy. They
instead focused on “patriotic incitement”. As Cookson argues, ‘rulers and ruling groups soon
appreciated the wisdom of presenting wars as struggles in which the whole society had a
stake and quickly developed the skills of patriotic incitement’.14 But even in this endeavour
11
Colley, Britons, p.295.
David Powell, Nationhood and Identity: The British State since 1800, London, 2002, p.22.
13
Linda Colley, “Whose Nation? Class and National Consciousness in Britain 1750-1830”, Past and Present
113, 1986, p.105.
14
J. E. Cookson, “British Society and the French Wars, 1793-1815”, Australian Journal of Politics and History
31, 1985, p.192.
12
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
Britain lagged behind the rest of Europe, with the government depending upon a century of
animosity towards France generated by recurring warfare.
While the British Government refrained from implementing a nationalist agenda, the wars
against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France marked a rise in the public’s estimation of the
army, allowing it to play a major role in propagating British national identity. Prior to these
wars, Britons had been vehemently opposed to large domestic armies and viewed the
ordinary soldier with something akin to contempt. While nearly a century of external war
after the Union of 1707, particularly with France, had been significant in fashioning a British
identity, there had been minimal positive impact on the public’s view of the army, excepting
towards the aristocratic officer corps.15 With the ranks filled with the poorest of the lowest
socio-economic class, Britons remained unsupportive of large domestic armies. The rise in
public appreciation for the army resulted from the fear of a French invasion, which triggered
soaring army enlistments in 1797, 1801 and in 1803-1805 when a large French army
threatened to invade England.16 While the navy overcame the threats of invasion with
Nelson’s victories at the Nile, Copenhagen and Trafalgar, it was the army’s long campaign in
the Peninsula, and it’s much shorter one in Belgium and France, that finally removed any
future threat. These successes, orchestrated by the army, with the navy playing a reduced role
after Trafalgar, and the growing enlistment of men outside of the traditional “dregs” of
society, helped to refashion the army in the public’s mind. Meanwhile, the expansion of the
British army and the need for manpower greatly contributed to the breakdown of some
cultural and identity barriers in Britain leading to a more homogenous British national
identity. In particular, there was a marked increase in the enlistment of British Catholics,
reflecting the relaxation of prohibitions against their arming under the Relief Act of 1793.17
This contributed to the Scottish, Irish and Welsh in the army being ‘over-represented relative
to their total number in the British population’.18 This developing British identity, founded in
the crucible of war, expanded by the unprecedented scale of the conflict, and coupled with
15
Colley, Britons, p.295.
Fedorak, “L’impact de la Révolution française”, p.199.
17
J. E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1793-1815, London, 1997, p.153. The government had increasingly
been making changes since the Catholic Relief Act of 1778 in order to recognise and consolidate Catholic
loyalty following the American War of Independence. This aggrieved many Irish Protestants who felt that
London was dealing with the Irish Catholics in a manner that suited their own interests irrespective of the
impact on Irish Protestants, pp.153-154.
18
Fedorak, “L’impact de la Révolution française”, p.203. Original in French: ‘sur-représentés par rapport à leur
nombre dans l’ensemble de la population britannique’.
16
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the exposure to the new ideology of the Revolution, would have a profound impact on
domestic discourse in the nineteenth-century.
Public interest in Britain in the wars, and the battle of Waterloo in particular, exacerbated by
the finality of its victory and the extended peace, remained quite strong throughout the
period. However, wartime heroics were increasingly overshadowed as more pressing
domestic issues gained public attention. For the British Government in the post-Waterloo
period, the key foci were on lowering taxation, demobilisation and repaying debt. However,
the economic contraction that followed the end of the conflict, due to a rapid drop in
government consumption, was only exacerbated by the demobilisation of more than 300,000
military personnel.19 These economic woes, coupled with the wartime demands on the
population both in men and money, saw concerns of citizenship, mostly ignored prior to
1789, become a central issue. As Colley states, ‘having been compelled to draw on the armed
service and income of unprecedented numbers of its population so as to defeat France, the
men who governed Great Britain found themselves under increasing pressure after the peace
to change the political system so that all men of property, and all working men, were given
access to the vote’.20
In 1819, agitation for greater enfranchisement reached crisis point, forcing government
action. However, rather than institute reform, the government crushed the demonstration, of
50,000 to 60,000, at St Peter’s Field in Manchester, leaving fifteen dead, including Waterloo
veteran John Lees, and hundreds more wounded.21 This incident later called the Peterloo
Massacre, in reference to its contrast with Waterloo, marked the introduction of the Six Acts,
restricting meetings and publications.22 While this put a dampener on demonstrations, it did
not quell the public unrest. Economic woes, coupled with unprecedented wartime demands
on the population, encouraged many, particularly in the unrepresented and increasingly
wealthy middle class, to push for enfranchisement.
Political reform would return to the public consciousness in Britain in the 1820s as the nation
found itself in the midst of domestic political upheaval. In 1823, the Catholic Association was
19
For a thorough analysis of the demobilisation and economic policies of the British Government after the
Napoleonic Wars, see N. Gash “After Waterloo: British Society and the Legacy of the Napoleonic Wars”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 28, 1978.
20
Colley, Britons, p.329.
21
Joyce Marlow, The Peterloo Massacre, London, 1971, p.13.
22
Ian Martin, The Rise of Democracy in Britain, 1830-1918, London, 2001, p.9.
43
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founded in Ireland by Daniel O’Connell to campaign for full Catholic Emancipation across
Great Britain. O’Connell successfully achieved the mass support of the Irish Catholic
population, without presenting the government with unreasonable demands, mitigating claims
that the Association was overly threatening.23 Additionally, by achieving mass support, it was
made prohibitive for the British government to destroy them with military force as they had
successfully and quite brutally done at St. Peter’s Field in 1819.
The passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 reflected a major break with eighteenthcentury conceptualisations of Britain. The unprecedented demands of the Revolutionary and
Napoleonic wars had made it untenable to ignore the potential contributions of Britain’s
Catholic subjects. Eighteenth-century warfare against Catholic France had come to
increasingly define Protestant Britain, which had developed around the animosity that had
previously existed between Britain and Catholic Spain. War with Revolutionary and then
Napoleonic France destabilised this, driven by the atheism of the Republic. Following on so
soon from the war with Protestant America, Britons were forced to reassess their position on
the Catholic issue. These wars demonstrated not only the loyalty of British Catholics but also
the need for these troops. Ireland and the Scottish Highlands were predominantly Catholic
and had been major recruitment sources for the British army.24 While many enlisted from
necessity and a lack of alternatives rather than a deep sense of loyalty to Britain, particularly
so the Irish, it was a major shift from previous conflicts where many had joined foreign
armies to fight Britain.25
This and other demonstrations of loyalty by Catholic minorities in Britain, along with a
political desire to be more accommodating to Ireland to strengthen the Union, illustrated that
anti-Catholicism no longer defined Britain as it had in the eighteenth-century. Added to this
was the comprehensiveness of the victory in 1815. France, whether Catholic or not, was not
23
Powell, Nationhood and Identity, p.29.
Jane Silloway Smith, English Catholics and the Forging of the British Nation 1778-1829, PhD dissertation,
Northwestern University, 2009. This dissertation explores the role that English Catholics, along with their coreligionists in the rest of Britain, played in the formation of the British nation which led to Catholic
Emancipation in 1829. Interestingly, the militia would not accept Catholics (or Quakers) and if they were drawn
in the militia ballot they were forced to pay a fine which would effectively finance the purchase of a substitute.
Roger Knight, Britain Against Napoleon: The Organization of Victory 1793-1815, London, 2013, p.261.
25
25,000 Irish enlisted in the forces of King Louis XIV during the Nine Years War; Charles Spencer, Blenheim:
Battle for Europe, London, 2005, p.238. Meanwhile the Stuart invasion of 1745 was greatly assisted by the
military contribution of Scottish Highlanders who supported the Catholic sovereign; Frank McLynn, 1759: The
Year Britain Became Master of the World, London, 2008. Conversely, 159,000 Irishmen were integrated into
English regiments voluntarily between 1793 and 1815; Peter Karsten, “Irish Soldiers in the British Army, 17921922: Suborned or Subordinate”, Journal of Social History 17, 1983, p.36.
24
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the threat it had been in 1793 and no Catholic nation had risen in its place. Internationally,
Britain also cooperated with Catholic Austria and Orthodox Russia, as well as Protestant
Prussia, in supporting the post-1815 order in Europe, even if the British Foreign Secretary
Lord Castlereagh was sensibly sceptical of the Tsar’s rhetoric of a “Holy Alliance”.
Naturally, Protestantism was not simply dismissed from the psyche of the British public,
many continued to think in terms of Protestant supremacy, particularly regarding the issue of
British monarchs marrying Catholics.26 However, the passing of Emancipation, legally at
least, made minimal distinction between the rights of Catholic and Protestant Britons and was
a major break from previous conceptualisations.
The passing of Catholic Emancipation in 1829 provided an effective template for the budding
parliamentary reform movement. As The Times, an ardent reform advocate, stated, quite
presciently in 1830, ‘the defeat or triumph of the cause may turn upon the national unanimity
and energy’.27 The reform movement would need to achieve the support of a broad crosssection of the population, without appearing overly threatening to government authority. The
section of British society that harboured realistic ambitions of enfranchisement were the
middle-class, however as E. P. Thompson rightly pointed out, they needed the mass support
of the working-class to effectively present their case.28 Many middle-class reform leaders, not
enthralled with the much larger expansion of the franchise or even universal manhood
suffrage espoused by some working-class reformers, proved adept at cloaking the reforms in
terms of a nationalist crusade to restore freedom and liberty to Britain. While uniting the
middle and working-class disenfranchised, leaders of the movement were also faced with
bringing together people from the different parts of Britain in order to present reform as a
pan-British cause.
Despite the public displays for reform being driven by local communities, the symbolism
employed demonstrated the pan-British conceptualisation of the appeal. At a reform
procession in Edinburgh, a placard bearing Nelson’s order at Trafalgar, ‘England expects that
every man will do his duty!’ was found interspersed with symbols of Scotland and Britain.29
There was a strong call in Scotland for all Britons to have access to the benefits of English
26
Catholics could still not become part of the royal family, a rule that was only changed in 2013.
‘Scotland begins already to make herself heard on behalf of Parliamentary reform.’ The Times, Dec. 1, 1830.
TD
28
Thompson, The English Working Class, pp.889-890.
29
Colley, Britons, p.346.
27
45
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liberty in order to address the appalling corruption in their electoral structure.30 Meanwhile,
Thomas Attwood’s Political Union in Birmingham refused to celebrate the passing of Reform
in England and Wales until the Scottish equivalent had been passed.31 This was supported by
some leading London journals with The Morning Chronicle recommending ‘that all public
demonstrations of joy for the success of Reform should be postponed until the Scotch and
Irish bills receive the Royal Assent’.32
While the article acknowledged that most could not deny themselves the joy of their labours,
it demonstrates the increasing sense of unity in Britain in this period. These were hardly
isolated incidents as reformers used all manner of symbolism from across Britain to argue
their case. Anti-Reformers did attempt to gain mass public support in the contemporary press
but their efforts proved futile as the public largely viewed them as a seditious anti-British
group working against the will of the people.33 The 1832 Reform Act proved less successful
than many envisioned, though most advocates failed to realise this at the time.34 This resulted
from pragmatic anti-Reformers, who recognised its inevitability, working to implement
reform while minimising the ‘damage’.35 However, despite the fact that universal suffrage
would not come until 1918 and 1928 for some women, it showed that a united British
population could affect domestic political change.36
The success of Reform depended principally on the collaboration of so broad a cross-section
of the population and the growing sense of Britishness that helped to engender a sense of
30
Gordon Pentland, “Scotland and the Creation of a National Reform Movement, 1830-1832”, The Historical
Journal 48, 2005, p.1001. The Reform Act saw the enfranchised population in Scotland rise from 5,000 to
65,000.
31
Colley, Britons, p.346.
32
‘Scotland’, The Morning Chronicle, June 12, 1832. BLN
33
This futility is perhaps best encapsulated by a response in The Times, to an article from anti-Reform periodical
the Quarterly Review, in which they retitled the Review’s article ‘Manifesto of the Oligarch Faction against the
British Crown, Constitution, and People, preparatory to the 1 st of March’. ‘The Indifferent success which, in
some important particulars, has attended Lord ALTHORP’S recent scheme of taxation’, The Times, Feb. 23,
1831. TD
34
As Eric J. Evans points out, the changes of 1832 ‘amazed radicals outside Parliament’ to the point that only
one nationally prominent figure opposed it, recognising that it would not, as many of his compatriots believed,
‘inevitably be followed by further concessions from which working men would more obviously benefit’. Eric J.
Evans, The Forging of the Modern State: Early Industrial Britain, 1783-1870, 3rd ed., Harlow, 2001, p.263.
35
Richard Price, British Society, 1680-1880, Cambridge, 1999, pp.264-269.
36
Two further reform bills would be passed in the nineteenth-century, in 1867 and again in 1884, however,
Britain would not establish universal suffrage until 1918, with women between 21 and 30 only receiving the
vote in 1928. It has often been suggested in the past that the Third Reform Act of 1884, resulted in, for all
intents and purposes, universal manhood suffrage. However, as Blewett observed, even by 1911, ‘some 40% of
all adult males were not on the electoral register’. Given that women at this time were not allowed to vote,
approximately 70% of Britons could not vote prior to the changes of 1918. Neal Blewett, ‘The Franchise in the
United Kingdom 1885-1918’, Past and Present 32, 1965, p.27.
46
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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unity across the Kingdom. This sense of unity was developed around the successful template
provided by Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association in Ireland. However, the capacity
for unity reflected changes precipitated by the demands of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
wars, which had aided in breaking down barriers that had previously seemed impossible to
broach. J. E. Cookson has correctly observed that ‘statesmen and politicians never articulated
the connection between national defence and reform’, but he has seemingly missed the
point.37 The population did not precipitate change because of their individual service or
contributions to the war, but because there existed a sufficient amount of unity within the
population to challenge the government en masse. Military service and other forms of
contribution merely provided validation to themselves to challenge the pre-existing status
quo. While previous identities remained, the wars allowed for a British national identity to be
firmly established, providing the population with a sense of unity. Coupled with an
unparalleled sense of entitlement, the population felt they were in a position to demand the
political changes that occurred between 1829 and 1832.
In spite of Linda Colley’s arguments many historians have denied or downplayed the
relationship of war to a specifically British national consciousness and identity. One key
component of the contrary argument is the time-lapse between the wars with France and
Emancipation and Reform. Cookson strongly advocates this position.38 Many historians have
perceived the process of developing a national identity in Britain being dependent on the
entitlement of all to ‘English liberties’. This concept is often traced back to the Glorious
Revolution of 1688, an event which is seen to have guaranteed British independence and
liberties.39 This became an integral part of what Herbert Butterfield would critique as The
Whig Interpretation of History; a construct in which Britons saw their nation as the
unparalleled protector of liberties that were denied to other European nations via autocratic
rule.40 Few present-day historians would accept many of the arguments put forward by the
Whig Interpretation. Nonetheless, the concept of liberty, and the Reform Act of 1832, often
coupled with the Industrial Revolution and the social changes it brought, are seen as the
means by which to interpret British national identity in the nineteenth-century.41
37
Cookson, The British Armed Nation, p.252.
Cookson, The British Armed Nation,
39
E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working-Class, p.85.
40
Herbert Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation of History, London, 1931.
41
Some of the works that do this are mentioned in the Introduction Chapter at footnote 45.
38
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This conceptualisation has led many historians to portray ‘nineteenth-century Britons as an
essentially peace-loving, commercially-minded people who shunned warlike activity and had
little interest in or respect for the army’.42 Even Colley has, somewhat tacitly, contributed to
this idea by focusing on the political developments in Britain after 1815. Although
conceptualisations of British liberty suited nineteenth-century British politicians, the fact that
70% of the population were disenfranchised until 1918 makes it difficult to reconcile their
claims of Britain being defined as such as nothing much more than rhetoric.43 Challenges to
the political structure by the disenfranchised were an expression of changing identity in
Britain, but the conceptualisations of liberty that come with this discourse only formed a part,
and an overstated one at that, of this evolving identity.
The role of war has often been downplayed in nineteenth-century identity because following
the victory at Waterloo and the occupation of France there was a dissipation of public fervour
for war. This reflected war-weariness from a conflict that had spanned two decades.44 But as
time progressed, and a new generation was born and the memories of the older ones faded,
the nation increasingly projected a more bellicose attitude internationally. Furthermore, from
1830, British supremacy had a rival in the form of France, following a more peaceful
Revolution there, and the collapse of the United Netherlands into Belgium and the
Netherlands. This rebalancing of power allowed France to once again pose a threat to
Britain’s colonial pre-eminence. In addition to the threat of France was a Russian state that
increasingly attempted to impose itself on its various neighbours, endeavouring to expand its
global power.45 While much has been made of the militarism of the 1890s that would lead to
huge public support and mass enlistment in the initial phase of the First World War, it did not
appear out of a vacuum. As Michael Paris reasons, ‘certainly it was during the 1890s that
militarism became most evident, but throughout the century the essentially aggressive nature
of the British was reflected as a powerful theme within popular culture, a culture which
legitimized war, romanticized battle and portrayed the warrior as the masculine ideal’.46
42
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.13.
Neal Blewett, “The Franchise in the United Kingdom”, p.27.
44
This period of war-weariness would be repeated again in Britain following the much shorter but far more
costly First World War, as evidenced in the work by Paul Fussell. Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern
Memory, New York, 2000.
45
John R. Davis, “Britain and the European Balance of Power”, in Chris Williams, ed., A Companion to
Nineteenth-Century Britain, Malden, 2004, p.38.
46
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.13.
43
48
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These are important developments for British national identity but no work has analysed the
role of war in the period between 1815 and 1850. Paris does establish tenuous links,
acknowledging that even in the period of increased war-weariness between 1815 and 1830
the country was engaged in colonial expansion. This was despite struggling to cope with its
huge gains during the wars with France.47 He also provides evidence of growing appreciation
in Britain of war and the army from 1830 to the Crimean War.48 This is the point in which the
‘pleasure culture of war’, a phrase first coined by Graham Dawson, comes into being in
Britain according to Paris, a topic that will be explored in more depth in chapter four.49 But
previous works have tended to ignore or downplay the role of veterans of the Revolutionary
and Napoleonic wars in this development. The number of memoirs published in the postWaterloo period, and even before the wars ended, was extraordinary, providing strong
evidence of the public’s continuing interest in war in this period. Veterans, even more than
the population, established a sense of Britishness at the expense of outsiders, but as the next
chapter will illustrate, the ‘other’ was not the French, but rather the soldiers and indigenous
populations who served as their allies throughout the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
47
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.20.
Paris, Warrior Nation, pp.27-30.
49
Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, London,
1994, p.233. Dawson argues for the ‘pleasure culture of war’ as a much later phenomenon in the militaristic
period of the 1890s and beyond, rather than Paris who feels its origins go back to the 1850s.
48
49
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Chapter 3 – ‘They did not lose a man’
A general euphoria towards all allied participants swept across Britain following the victory
over Napoleon at Waterloo. The nation was swept up in the jubilation of a second, far more
decisive victory against Napoleon, in which Britain could claim a key role. The campaign’s
success and the growing literacy in both serving army personnel and the British population
more broadly, enabled veterans of the conflict to publish memoirs of their service to a
receptive public. However, most works, many of which focused on the Peninsular War, were
‘constructed as travelogues’ documenting ‘personal responses to the scenery and local
customs’.1 Impersonal narratives failed to attract mass readership despite widespread interest
in the topic. This changed with the publication of the memoirs of Moyle Sherer in 1823 and
George Gleig in 1825. By individualising the conflict, they both projected war as ‘an exciting
adventure’ and became exceedingly popular in post-Waterloo Britain. Their style was later
adopted in John Kincaid’s memoirs, the first Waterloo veteran to project substantial pride in
his ‘professional identity and military achievements’.2 This chapter will illustrate that despite
the success of these new literary constructs, British veterans were more preoccupied with
their army’s depiction as a fighting force, in contrast to the French and even more so their
allies. This developed into a serious issue for William Siborne, who, in his efforts to construct
a model of the battle, was forced to resolve disputes between British veterans and non-British
sources. The repercussions of this historiographical conflict would, in time, have a profound
influence on the developing public memory of the campaign in Britain.
The arrival of the Waterloo Despatch into London on June 22, 1815, and the publication of
the allied victory in the next morning’s newspapers produced a groundswell of appreciation
1
Neil Ramsey, The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780-1835, Aldershot, 2011, p.38. Ramsey
explores the commercial success of the British soldiers’ memoirs and autobiographies and their influence on the
methodology of war writing and role in shifting the relationship between the soldier and the nation during the
Romantic Period. Other works that explore memories of British Peninsular veterans include Gavin Daly, The
British Soldier in the Peninsular War: Encounters with Spain and Portugal, 1808-1814, Basingstoke, 2013,
who, through the writings of British soldiers during the Peninsular War, analyses how their experiences helped
shape their own identity in response to the vast cultural differences they encountered. Ironically, while most
works were constructed as travelogues, this issue has often been ignored by historians. Eleanor Morecroft, ‘For
the British soldier is keenly sensitive to honour’: Military History, Heroism and British Identities in the Works
of William Napier’, PhD dissertation, University of Queensland, 2011, looks at the writings of William Napier,
whose six-volume history of the Peninsular War became definitive in its field until the early twentieth-century.
Napier’s work is particularly significant for its application of the theme of national identity and his creation of
an image of Britishness that was necessarily masculine and military but still applicable to the nation as a whole.
2
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.165.
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for the servicemen of the various nations of the allied forces. One of the first articles
regarding the battle in The Times declared, that when the Prussian Corps arrived at the
battlefield ‘their presence was most highly serviceable’.3 That same newspaper had already
stated on June 21, 1815, that at the battle of Quatre Bras ‘the sons of Britain did their duty.
The troops of Nassau, the Dutch, and Belgians, all behaved with distinguished bravery; and
our gallant Highlanders, who are ever foremost in danger, suffered greatly. The Brunswickers
did honour to their country’.4 On June 29, The Times even published the official report of the
Prussian operations during the four days by General Gneisenau.5
Appreciation was not confined simply to the newspapers. Lord Castlereagh, the Foreign
Secretary, said in the House of Lords, ‘the confederated soldiers who had fought under the
duke of Wellington, the subjects of the king of the Netherlands, the Hanoverians, and the
duke of Brunswick’s corps, were entitled to the Thanks of that House, as well as our own
countrymen; and the Prussian army had the same claims on our gratitude’.6 As the scale of
the success became known, following Napoleon’s abdication and the quick and relatively
easy invasion of France and occupation of Paris, Britons began to realise that this probably
signified the end to two decades of war. The accompanying enthusiasm resulted in the
newspapers publishing letters received by friends and family from men in the battle, with the
amazing survival story of Colonel Ponsonby being published more than two years later.7 In
an effort to convey their appreciation, the British public established a fund to provide for the
families of deceased soldiers of all allied nationalities, while the government provided
3
‘London, Friday, June 23, 1815’, The Times, June 23, 1815. TD
‘Private Correspondence’, The Times, June 21, 1815. TD (italics in original)
5
‘Official Report of the Operations of the Prussian Army of the Lower Rhine’, The Times, June 29, 1815. TD;
This report is very interesting because it states that the ‘moment’ that ‘decided the defeat of the enemy’ was the
arrival of General Zieten’s corps on the enemy’s right flank, from where they charged instantly. However, as
Foster points out, the British public were too euphoric to notice the discrepancy with Wellington’s depiction. R.
E. Foster, Wellington and Waterloo: The Duke, The Battle and Posterity, Stroud, 2014, p.80.
6
This motion was read in the House of Commons seeking endorsement from that house. Lord Castlereagh,
“Thanks to the Duke of Wellington, Prince Blucher, and the Allied Armies”, House of Commons Debate,
Volume 31, 23/06/1815, p.986.
7
‘Battle of Waterloo – Letter from a Private Soldier of the 42d Regiment to his Father in this City’ and ‘Copy of
a Letter from an Officer of Rank, in the late General Ponsonby’s brigade of Cavalry to his Father residing in
Scotland’, Caledonian Mercury, July 3, 1815. BLN. These two letters were written by two unknown veterans,
one an officer, the other a member of the rank and file, providing a snapshot of the fighting these men faced.
‘The Hon. Colonel Ponsonby [Extract from Mudford’s Historical Account of the Battle of Waterloo]’, The
Times, Aug. 13, 1817. TD. This letter told the lucky survival story of Colonel Ponsonby who was injured in the
heavy cavalry charge in the early afternoon and remained on the battlefield, wounded, over the course of the
battle, eventually being retrieved the next morning by some British soldiers. This article was republished ten
days later in The Lancaster Gazette, ‘The Hon. Colonel Ponsonby’ The Lancaster Gazette and General
Advertiser, for Lancashire, Westmoreland, &c., Aug. 23, 1817. BLN. The fact that this letter was published in
1817, more than two years after the battle, strongly conveys the continuing public interest in the Waterloo
campaign.
4
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Kyle van Beurden
payments to all Allied troops on a pyramid scale based on rank.8 The generosity of the British
people even elicited a response from King Frederick William of Prussia to the Chairman of
the Waterloo Committee, thanking them for their generosity.9 Meanwhile British soldiers
received a Waterloo medal for service in the campaign, which no doubt aggrieved veterans of
the much longer campaigns in the Iberian Peninsula or the War of 1812 with the United
States.10 Interest in the battle, enhanced by the finality of its victory and the extended peace,
remained strong even as the political rights of the population became a central issue in
Britain.
While the notion of veterans compiling and publishing memoirs was not unprecedented prior
to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the scale of works released during and after the
wars most certainly was. There were a number of factors that resulted in an increase of these
memoirs, the most obvious being the exceptional number of men who served overseas.
However, while a disproportionate percentage of memoirs still came from senior officers,
there was a marked growth in works from both subalterns and members of the rank and file.
This reflected both the increasingly divergent backgrounds of the rank and file, as they no
longer simply constituted the poorest and least educated of the working-class, and also the
growth in literacy amongst that part of the population. By 1830 two-thirds of the British
working-class were literate.11 Consequently, these memoirs, as well as those from officers,
benefitted from the potential of a much larger reading market. One anonymous work by a
soldier in the 71st regiment, known only as Thomas, was claimed by its publisher to have sold
more than 3,000 copies.12 The claim is impossible to validate and probably overstated, but the
few reviews on it from the period do show that it attracted some acclaim. One review
commented on its ‘success’ and noted the interest it ‘must excite’, while another observed
‘the ready spirit of imitation it must inspire’.13
8
There were numerous articles in the various newspapers of the period asking for funds for the widows and
orphans resulting from the war. According to the article ‘Waterloo Subscription’, Jackson’s Oxford Journal,
June 22, 1816, BLN, all funds for the allied armies had been dispatched to the respective allied governments.
Meanwhile every soldier was awarded a payment by the British Government; André Dellevoet, The DutchBelgian Cavalry at Waterloo, The Hague, 2008, p.208.
9
‘King of Prussia – Waterloo Subscription’, The Morning Chronicle, Oct. 3, 1816. BLN
10
This was later rectified by a general medal for any person who had served between 1793 and 1814. Kevin
Pryor, The Mobilization of Memory: The Battle of Waterloo in German and British Memory, 1815-1915, PhD
dissertation, Southern Illinois University, 2010, p28.
11
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000,
p.49.
12
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, pp.39, 43, 109. Anon, Journal of a Soldier of the Seventy-First, or Glasgow
Regiment, Highland Light Infantry, from 1806 to 1815, 2nd ed., London, 1819.
13
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.111.
52
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
However, many of these memoirs were written in the old style of ‘travelogues’, with their
authors seemingly more interested in describing their experiences with foreign cultures. For
the men who discussed their combat experiences there was a clear focus on the melancholy
and horror of their wartime experiences, particularly the deaths of friends. There was little
mention of individual involvement. Thomas was no exception, presenting himself as a small
part of a larger whole, cataloguing events that he experienced as part of a collective, and
presenting himself as almost anti-military. Other veterans’ memoirs, like James Hope, were
even ready to describe events that were detrimental to the military image of British soldiers.14
Commentators, such as John Lockhart, who in 1819 had described Thomas’ work
approvingly, by the mid-1820s, were referring to most memoirs as dull and unpatriotic.15
While there was a propensity to publish memoirs in this period, their adherence to the
‘travelogue’, a feature of their eighteenth-century equivalent, coupled with an overwhelming
sense of moroseness about their experiences, prevented their achieving a powerful resonance
with the British public.
The style in which memoirs were presented progressively changed with the 1823 publication
of Moyle Sherer’s Recollections of the Peninsula16 and, even more so, with the 1825 release
of George Gleig’s The Subaltern.17 Both former junior officers, they discuss events in the
Peninsula, with Gleig’s also covering his service in America in the War of 1812. Sherer
proved adept at relating scenes of war in familiar, picturesque terms, allowing ‘ordinary
British readers to more easily imagine and associate themselves with the experience of being
a soldier on campaign’.18 Gleig extends this reconciliation between gentleman traveller and
soldier, by ‘introducing the taste and feelings of the ‘man of peace’ into his professional
14
A lieutenant in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, who anonymously published the letters he wrote to his
grandmother in 1819, Hope, in his letters, highlighted the retreat of two British battalions upon the ‘approach of
the enemy’, following a ‘sharp conflict’ between ‘hostile columns’ at the battle of Waterloo. Monick, S., ed.,
The Iberian and Waterloo Campaigns: The Letters of Lt James Hope (92 nd (Highland) Regiment) 1811-1815,
Heathfield, 2000 (orig. 1819), p.253. While this is a measure of his integrity, it did serve to the honour of his
regiment, which evidence would indicate was either forced to retreat or saved from the ‘ignominy’ by the charge
of the British Heavy Cavalry, a situation he neglected to mention. The letters were originally published
anonymously under the title ‘Letters from Portugal, Spain and France, during the memorable campaigns of
1811, 1812, 1813; and from Belgium and France in the year 1815 by a British Officer’. Gareth Glover, ed.,
Letters from the Battle of Waterloo: Unpublished Correspondence by Allied Officers from the Siborne Papers,
London, 2004, p.290.
15
Ramsey, pp.111-112.
16
Moyle Sherer, Recollections of the Peninsula, 4th ed., London, 1825.
17
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.137; G. R. Gleig, The Subaltern, 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1828.
18
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.144.
53
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
views of war’.19 In essence, Gleig writes from both perspectives. The success of these works
reflected their authors’ deliberate attempt to construct a personal narrative telling readers of
their experiences as soldiers in war. But this was not to condemn war, but in a sense to glorify
it. As Ramsey articulates both ‘asked their readers to share their military enthusiasm’.20
While neither was devoid of the melancholic horror of war, particularly when discussing the
deaths of friends, there was a discernible distancing of their writing from war’s horrors.
The successful integration of military memoirs and literary Romanticism by Sherer and Gleig
meant that, by the time John Kincaid published his own several years later, memoirs had
become an accepted and even popular genre in Britain.21 A veteran of the 95th Rifles in the
Peninsular and Waterloo campaigns, the popularity of Kincaid stemmed from his ability to
inject a powerful sense of ‘cheerful stoicism’ into his work, with his experiences being
presented as a military adventure. Kincaid, unlike Gleig and Sherer, focuses on his personal
experiences of military combat, while maintaining the military enthusiasm that popularised
their works. Revelling in his regimental identity and his individual role as a combatant,
Kincaid projects himself as a ‘soldier hero’. Kincaid was careful to present himself as
someone to be admired and held in esteem, as someone that ordinary Britons should aspire to
emulate. War and its privations are seen as a natural state and one in which his comrades took
great pride.22 Tales of melancholy and suffering, particularly respecting lost friends, are more
noticeably absent than even in Sherer and Gleig.23
The unprecedented nature of Kincaid’s work enabled his memoirs to achieve greater
popularity than both of these previous works. With the removal of the horrors of war and his
tendency to revel in combat, Kincaid successfully engaged with the public enthusiasm for
war. In an eleven page review in The Monthly Review his work is placed in their library ‘by
the side of the “Subaltern,” and not far from Napier’.24 Another extended review in The
Monthly Magazine described the memoirs as ‘one of the most attractive, eccentric and
animated volumes that has been produced by the British campaigns’.25 There was a particular
19
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.153.
Ramsey, The Military Memoir.
21
John Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands, from 1809 to
1815, London, 2011 (orig. 1830).
22
Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, pp. (187-188 of Random Shots)
23
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, pp.165-166.
24
Anonymous, "Book review", The Monthly review 13, 1830, p.544.
25
Anonymous, “The Captain of Rifles”, Monthly Magazine 9, 1830, p.447.
20
54
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
commentary on the humour in his work, given the subject matter, with The Monthly
Magazine writing that ‘he takes the world’s roughness with the gayest nonchalance’.26
Noting that the one fault with the book, according to reviewers, was that it was too short,
Kincaid released a second memoir with more stories from his service in 1835. This was
followed by the publication of a second edition of his original memoirs in 1838. This
popularity ensured that Kincaid’s recollection would help influence the public memory of the
battle of Waterloo.
The growing popularity of memoirs from this period requires a reflection on the
historiographical problems that accompany this source material. While the memoir is an
important primary source, it is the memories of the writer rendered as a literary account, a
‘notoriously unreliable and highly selective faculty’.27 As a consequence they are not viewed
with the same validity as some other forms of primary source material, such as battlefield
reports, letters or even diaries. Furthermore, the dramatic expansion of the memoir as a
literary source coincided with the development of the novel in Europe. While the ‘memoir
presents itself … as a nonfictional record or re-presentation of actual humans’ experiences’
the exploitation of novelistic techniques does lead to a blurring of that distinction.28 The
influence of this can be seen in these memoirs by Sherer, Gleig and even more so Kincaid.
The construction of the ‘soldier hero’ depends on the literary flair of the author and the
removal of the horror and moroseness that accompanies the death of friends and ghastly
sights in war. That it took time to develop is hardly unique. Paul Fussell’s analysis of the
writings of British veterans from the First World War illustrates that the process of turning
memoirs from something immediate to something more ‘literary’ can take up to a decade or
more.29 As the lack of success of earlier works proves this was an important consideration for
potential memoirists. In addition to this, memoirs often include authors’ propensities to
justify mistakes or errors, often by blaming them on others, usually someone or a group they
dislike, or simply highlighting the key facets of their careers that reflect well on them.30
The attitudes of British veterans to the people and the customs of the nations in which they
served also influenced the manner in which they wrote their memoirs. Gavin Daly noted that
26
Anonymous, “The Captain of Rifles’, p.438.
G. Thomas Couser, Memoir: An Introduction, New York, 2011, p.19.
28
Couser, Memoir, p.15.
29
Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory, New York, 2000.
30
John Barnes, “Books and Journals”, In Anthony Seldon, ed., Contemporary History: Practice and Method,
Oxford, 1988, p.37.
27
55
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
‘general histories of the war … have given little consideration to British soldiers’ experiences
outside a strictly military context’, a hardly surprising observation given that most works
written as ‘travelogues’ disappeared into obscurity during the nineteenth-century.31 This is
even more the case with Waterloo, due to the comparative shortness of the campaign, and the
near obsession with its military aspects or memorialisation. The influence of these prejudices
is important given that the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars marked a substantial rise in
nationalist fervour in many parts of Europe. In Britain, popular Francophobia ‘reached an
unsurpassed intensity on several occasions of threatened invasion, most notably in 180305’.32 However, as Daly observes with British soldiers, ‘what is startling is how similarly
soldiers of the British army reacted to Spain and Portugal as a cultural ‘Other’ – as a counterimage to themselves. … British soldiers were united in their shared sense of cultural
superiority over the local peoples, and in much of what they found as repulsive, alienating,
confronting, attractive, exotic and romantic. In creating a sense of Iberian Otherness, they
helped to define themselves.’33 In the context of the campaign of 1815, tensions were
exacerbated by the fact that many of Wellington’s non-British troops, who were veterans, had
made their careers in the service of the Grande Armée.34 The fact that many had gained this
experience in Spain, fighting against the British, only added fears of disloyalty to the little
faith British servicemen had in their ‘new’ allies’ military competency.
These early literary memoirists, like Kincaid, were not fixated on labelling foreigners as
cowards. This feature developed as a by-product of desiring to project themselves and, by
association, the British troops more favourably. Kincaid wanted to project himself and his
comrades as the ‘beau-ideal’ of the soldier, proficient, professional, experienced in the
hazards and rigours of campaign and battle, but he also wanted to portray them as successful,
if possible, against the odds.35 When recalling the battle of Waterloo he stated ‘I was told, it
was very ridiculous at that moment (between 2-3pm) to see the number of vacant spots that
were left nearly along the whole of the line, where a great part of the dark dressed foreign
31
Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War, p.4.
J. E. Cookson, The British Armed Nation, 1793-1815, London, 1997, p.210.
33
Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War, pp.14-15. This conclusion is further supported in Laurence
Montroussier-Favre, “Remembering the Other: The Peninsular War in the Autobiographical Accounts of British
and French Soldiers”, in Alan Forrest, Étienne François and Karen Hagemann, eds., War Memories: The
Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in Modern European Culture, Basingstoke, 2013, p.71. It is also found in
Catriona Kennedy, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars: Military and Civilian Experience in
Britain and Ireland, London, 2013, pp.96-111.
34
More than half the Netherlands senior officers and nearly all of the junior officers and NCOs who had served
on campaign before Waterloo were veterans of the Grande Armée. The same held true for Nassauer veterans.
35
Ramsey, The Military Memoir, p.181.
32
56
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
corps had stood, intermixed with the British when the action began’.36 The depiction of
absent foreigners accentuates both the quality of his performance and the importance of both
himself and his compatriots to overall victory. He extends this with his final summary,
‘This was the last, the greatest, and the most uncomfortable heap of glory that I
ever had a hand in; and may the deuce take me if I think that everybody waited
there to see the end of it, otherwise it never could have been so troublesome to
those who did. We were, take us all in all, a very bad army. Our foreign auxiliaries,
who constituted more than half our numerical strength, with some exceptions,
were little better than a raw militia—a body without a soul or like an inflated
pillow’.37
There is an obvious condemnation of non-British troops but it serves the larger purpose of
explaining why the battle was so difficult to win while still projecting British pre-eminence.
The allied troops under Wellington were not the only formations criticised by Kincaid. While
the Prussians were not accused of abandoning their post, they were said to have arrived too
late to have any impact on the battle. Kincaid states,
‘it is certain that the promised aid (Blücher’s promise to Wellington) did not
come in time to take any share whatever in the battle. It is equally certain that
the enemy had, long before, been beaten into a mass of ruin, in condition for
nothing but running and wanting but an apology to do it; and I will therefore
ever maintain, that Lord Wellington’s last advance would have made it the
same victory had a Prussian never been seen there’.38
While Kincaid acknowledges that it will ‘ever be a matter of dispute what the result of the
day would have been without the arrival of the Prussians’, the forcefulness of this statement
shows that, respecting his view, there was no ambiguity.39 However, while these descriptions
are direct, they are not the driving force behind the work. They are few and far between,
36
Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p.190. This comment is discussed in David Howarth, A Near Run
Thing: The Day of Waterloo, London, 1968, p.113, in which Howarth points out that Kincaid is exaggerating to
make the foreigners sound worse and conversely the British more heroic. Howarth, in his popular military
history, however, agrees with the sentiment, stating that a foreign brigade (Bijlandt’s) had already run
(something which Kincaid never mentions) while the other foreign units had been depleted by men assisting
wounded comrades to the rear, among other methods to avoid the dangers at the front. Howarth at no stage
mentions the fact that this was a common action by British troops as well. The reality is that many men from all
the Allied armies, as well as the French, attempted to inconspicuously remove themselves from the greatest
danger in order to avoid death. However, there was no discernible difference between the number of British and
non-British units carrying this out.
37
Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p.193.
38
Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p.194.
39
Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, p.194.
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
rather than being repeated continuously, and they are used to endorse claims of both
Kincaid’s and the British army’s prowess. It almost seems that Kincaid assumed that the
readers were aware that this was the case and it did not need to be defended.40 However, the
reviews would indicate that the public did not seriously engage with the portrayal of
foreigners. There was greater interest in the humour of his stories with reviews often quoting
excerpts with a comedic undertone, confirming the notion of ‘cheerful stoicism’.41 As a
reviewer for his later work Random Shots from a Rifleman noted, ‘we know not that we ever
met an author who can more easily fabricate an amusing and instructive volume out of
slender materials’.42 Foreigners, for the most part, were only included when they appeared in
an anecdote, usually at their expense.
This seemingly caused concern for some veterans and memoirs that were released after
Kincaid started to address the question of the incompetence of the foreign contingents more
directly. In 1834, Major Henry Ross-Lewin, a veteran of the 32nd Regiment, released his own
memoirs. Being one of only two British officers court-martialled for cowardice after
Waterloo, for which he was later exonerated, he had a unique perspective on what he was like
to be accused by others with no evidence.43 But while he failed to discuss this experience in
his memoirs, he proved comfortable making unfounded allegations against the non-British
troops. The accusation of cowardice against ‘les Braves Belges’ (the Dutch-Belgians) as they
are ironically referred to, is attributed to ‘a want of heartiness in the cause’, while the foreign
cavalry were said to be ‘breaking and galloping off in all directions’.44 Ross-Lewin describes
events he could not have witnessed such as the Nassauers having been ‘quickly dislodged’ at
Hougoumont, while the British Guards were ‘more stubborn’. Meanwhile the Prussians, after
40
An example of this appears when a reviewer notes that one can ‘observe how frequently, by their wild
bravery, they (the Rifles) turn the scale, or secure the possession, of victory’. Anonymous, "Book review", The
Monthly review 13, 1830, p.544.
41
Anonymous, "Book review"; Anonymous, “The Captain of Rifles”; James Silk Buckingham, ed., “Adventures
in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands, from 1809 to 1815”, The Athenaeum 123,
1830; William Jerdan, ed., “Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France and the Netherlands, from
1809 to 1815”, The Literary Gazette 687, 1830; William Jerdan, William, ed., “Adventures in the Rifle Brigade,
in the Peninsula, France and the Netherlands, from 1809 to 1815”, The Literary Gazette 688, 1830.
42
Anonymous, “Random Shots from a Rifleman”, The Monthly Review 3, 1835, p.14.
43
Tim Clayton, Waterloo: Four Days That Changed Europe's Destiny, London, 2014, p.380.
44
Harry Ross Lewin, With the “Thirty-Second” in the Peninsular and Other Campaigns: The Experiences of a
British Infantry Officer throughout the Napoleonic Wars, Driffield, 2010, (orig. 1834), pp.186-187, 198. The
idiom ‘les Braves Belges’ seems to be attributable to James Hope, who released a memoir, adapted from his
letters in 1833. However, while he uses the phrase ironically, to disparage these men, he still notes their initial
strong efforts, as well as the retreat of two British battalions. James Hope in Gareth Glover, Letters from the
Battle of Waterloo: Unpublished Correspondence by Allied Officers from the Siborne Papers, London, 2004,
pp.283-284.
58
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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the failure of their initial assault on Plancenoit, did not re-engage the French until after the
Imperial Guard had been defeated. In contrast, his divisional comrades resisted the French
with the ‘utmost intrepidity’.45
Ross-Lewin goes a step further than Kincaid by providing an assessment of all the major
nations that fought during the wars whether he saw them in action or not. Stereotypes help fill
in the gaps. Respecting the national contingents at Waterloo, the Prussians are described as
‘mere machines’, a result of ‘rigid discipline and a too frequent use of the cane’. This claim
did have validity in the pre-1806 Prussian army but had been well outdated by 1815. It was
also hypocritical given British officers’ propensity in this period to use the lash to keep the
rank and file in line, a practice the Duke of Wellington strongly endorsed, and one ‘not
absolutely abolished (except of course in military prisons) until 1881’.46 As for Wellington’s
army, the Dutch troops are ‘heavy, stupid, and slow at manoeuvring’ while the Belgians’
‘celerity’ of movement ‘is more frequently observable on their retreat than in advance’.47 The
German soldiers in Wellington’s army, with the exception of the highly regarded King’s
German Legion, are completely forgotten. In all these aspects, Ross-Lewin has actively
displayed the disquiet that he and many of his compatriots felt towards their foreign allies.
The more dramatic development in Ross-Lewin’s work is the measurement of the British
troops against their French counterparts. This analysis advises that British troops ‘with equal
numbers, either cavalry or infantry will beat any soldiers in the world in an open country’,
their cavalry were ‘superior in prowess’ though with an ‘ill-restrained impetuosity’ and their
heavy infantry were the ‘best’ in Europe, ‘whether in the field of battle or in the breach’.48
However, the light troops,49 despite the efforts of the King’s German Legion, ‘never attained
to such a degree of perfection as might have been expected’ though they still ‘generally beat
the French’.50 The Franco-British comparative characterisations are not all one way. The
French soldiers are recognised for possessing greater intelligence, a testament to the greater
45
Ross-Lewin, With the “Thirty-Second”, pp.187-187, 190-192.
Geoffrey Best, War and Society in Revolutionary Europe, 1770-1870, Leicester, 1982, p.235. During the
entirety of the Napoleonic Wars the lash was not employed by the French army or the King’s German Legion.
Robert Kershaw, 24 Hours at Waterloo: 18 June 1815, London, 2014, p.98.
47
Ross-Lewin, With the “Thirty-Second”, pp.213, 215.
48
Ross-Lewin, With the “Thirty-Second”, pp.206, 208.
49
Light troops often operated as skirmishers in front of the line to combat enemy skirmishers performing the
same operation and to harass enemy columns. It was pioneered by the French Revolutionary army, and reflected
the growing commitment the rank and file had to the cause and the consequential trust officers had towards their
men as well as the greater individual initiative of soldiers in this period.
50
Ross-Lewin, With the “Thirty-Second”, pp.208-209.
46
59
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
recognition granted to individual merit in the French army. However, Ross-Lewin is quick to
point out the British soldier had a ‘still more valuable quality’, the courage to ‘stubbornly’
adhere to a position without an officer’s exhortation, unlike the French who often required
‘artificial’ stimuli. This idea of ‘stubbornness’ bears similarities to the ‘cheerful stoicism’ of
Kincaid, with the idea being that a true British soldier holds on to his position come what
may, an ability he should take pride in. Seemingly it did not occur to Ross-Lewin that during
much of the Peninsular War, and at both Quatre Bras and Waterloo, French soldiers were
forced to advance under heavy artillery fire, at an unseen enemy, due to their deployment
behind a reverse slope. Characterising the French had hardly been a focus of Kincaid, but for
Ross-Lewin it was an opportunity to define British military supremacy against not only the
French but, given their success in this period, all the nations of Europe. Acknowledging the
French army adds to the prestige of those who defeated them.
Despite the engaging analysis, Ross-Lewin did not achieve the public interest that Kincaid
had before him. One veteran who was able to provide a more direct analysis of the nonBritish units while still attracting public interest, was the unknown officer of General Sir
Thomas Picton’s Fifth Division, who published a short memoir in the United Service Journal
in 1835. The work proved exceedingly popular and would be republished by the Journal in
1841. This officer wanted to send a clear message about his own unit and the foreign
contingents. The anonymous veteran presents the great pride he felt in his divisional
comrades, saying the ‘Fifth Division … stood its ground manfully’ some even likening it to
the ‘defence of Thermopylae by the Spartans against the Persians’.51 Critical anecdotes were
also offered such as the ‘braves Belges’ often being found ‘making their way to the rear as
fast as they could’.52 However, the primary targets of quite a vitriolic tirade were the
Prussians. In the mind of the author they were simply ‘held at bay by the French right’.
However while operating in France he learnt ‘for the first time, that the Prussians had given
us material assistance in the battle’. While willing to accept that Blücher and his men had
kept their word in trying to reach the battlefield and they were therefore entitled ‘to his
Grace’s53 best thanks’, he was appalled by their belief that they should ‘share in the laurels of
the day at our expense’.54 He even theorised that ‘they did not lose a man’ as they had not, to
51
Anon, Operations of the Fifth or Picton’s Division in the Campaign of Waterloo, Seven Oaks, 2011 (orig.
1835), p.10.
52
Anon, Operations of the Fifth, p.9.
53
A common contemporary term for the Duke of Wellington.
54
Anon, Operations of the Fifth, p.55. Italics in the original.
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
his knowledge, published a list of killed and wounded.55 In fact, Prussian casualties at
Waterloo were estimated at 7,000, with over 1,000 killed in action.56
The prejudices demonstrated in these memoirs were not isolated. In 1838, William Siborne,
an army officer and gifted topographer, released to the public his ‘most perfect model’ of the
Waterloo battlefield. This model, which began life in 1829, represented the designated
‘crisis’ of the battle, at approximately 6:30pm, following the French capture of La Haye
Sainte farmhouse, prior to the advance of the Imperial Guard. After being commissioned by
the government to construct the model, Siborne spent eight months reconnoitring the
battlefield and dispatched a series of letters to hundreds of surviving officers and the military
staffs from all participating nations, except those from the Netherlands or Belgium.
These ‘Siborne Letters’, as they are more commonly referred too, are the most extensive
collection of British primary source material from the campaign, and they confirm the
prejudice already shown. Some observations made by veterans included that of the Marquis
of Anglesey, then Lord Uxbridge, and second-in-command at Waterloo, who described the
‘impossibility of making’ a Dutch heavy cavalry brigade charge and being ‘excessively
dissatisfied’ with their commander.57 A major in the light dragoons speaks of a DutchBelgian unit ‘firing their muskets in the air, meaning to move off in the confusion’.58 Another
speaks of the inability to ‘get the damned Belgians to advance’ while Lt-General Sir William
Gomm speaks flippantly of the dispersal of the ‘Brunswick and Belgic cavalry’ at Quatre
Bras.59
Letters were not universally derisory. One British lieutenant spoke of the Brunswick cavalry
behaving with ‘great intrepidity’ while their infantry were ‘fiercely engaged’ and two cavalry
officers mentioned being in the rear of ‘Belgian infantry’, well into the afternoon.60 This was
long after this unit was supposed to have abandoned the field according to a number of
55
Anon, Operations of the Fifth, p.60.
A significant number of the wounded would have died in the ensuing days but went unrecorded.
57
Henry Paget, Marquis of Anglesey in H. T. Siborne, ed., The Waterloo Letters: Accounts of the Battle by
British Officers for its Foremost Historian, Driffield, 2009 (orig. 1891), pp.22-23. Despite this claim, the unit
commander, Major-General Trip van Zoudtlandt, was individually commended for his performance by
Wellington in both his Waterloo Despatch and his report to the King of the Netherlands. See note 250.
58
W. Tomkinson in Siborne, The Waterloo Letters, p.119. This refers to the division under Chasse’s command.
59
Henry Murray and Sir William Gomm in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, pp.111, 35.
60
Frederick Hope Pattinson in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.221.
56
61
British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
Kyle van Beurden
veterans.61 However, positive statements to this effect were exceedingly rare. The DutchBelgian units particularly suffered at the hands of these recollections. This problem was
further exacerbated by Siborne’s failure to contact their veterans, a decision he rather
unconvincingly tried to explain by saying he had already received sufficient material from
British and German officers.62 Meanwhile Wellington’s German units, except for the King’s
German Legion, were either being rallied by a British commander or more often were simply
ignored. The letters that Siborne received overwhelmingly confirm that most British veterans
felt that they, and only they, had been responsible for the victory at Waterloo.
The Prussians presented an altogether different problem. Memoirists such as Kincaid, RossLewin and the anonymous veteran were highly critical of the Prussians but opinions in the
few ‘Siborne Letters’ that discuss them were mixed. A lieutenant-colonel in the infantry did
state that the Prussians were ‘still far to the left’ during the final assault, though he later
contradicted himself by saying that their artillery shot was flying over their heads. 63 Another
veteran stated that after the initial Prussian assault, which the French ‘quickly repulsed’, ‘that
corps of Prussians made no further progress, or any effort that I saw, during the remainder of
the battle’.64 Conversely, a Captain Powell wrote that ‘between five and six the Emperor was
so much pressed by the Prussian advance on his right that he determined to make a last grand
effort’.65 The confusion, undoubtedly, reflected the fact that most of the British troops did not
fight with the Prussians and, for the most part, could not see what they were doing.
These limitations did not impede Major-General Sir Hussey Vivian, a commander of a
cavalry brigade at Waterloo, championing the contribution of the Prussians. He wrote to
Siborne that ‘in truth I care not what others may say, we were greatly indebted to the
Prussians, and it was their coming on the right and rear of Napoleon that gave us the victory
of Waterloo. We might have held our ground but we never could have advanced but for the
Prussian movement’.66 Vivian’s comment ‘I care not what others may say’ shows that he was
well aware that his robust defence of the Prussians was at variance with many of his fellow
61
Philip Dorville and Henry Duperier in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, pp.57, 121.
Peter Hofschröer also suggested that the collapse of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1830 probably
convinced Siborne that contacting the warring nations was a waste of time. Peter Hofschröer, Wellington’s
Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker and the Secret of Waterloo, London, 2005, pp.119-120.
63
G. Gawler in Siborne, The Waterloo Letters, p.288.
64
Robert Gardiner in Siborne, The Waterloo Letters, p.199.
65
H. W. Powell in Siborne, The Waterloo Letters, p.248.
66
Sir Hussey Vivian in Siborne, The Waterloo Letters, pp.148-163.
62
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veterans, but this did not change his opinion. The Prussians also provided Siborne with
substantial evidence and this, along with the endorsement of Vivian, convinced him that the
Prussians had made an important, if not critical, contribution to the victory. While unforeseen
at the time, this would quickly develop into one of the more serious problems Siborne would
encounter in his vast endeavour.
Problems with the model began shortly after Siborne returned from his eight month survey of
the battlefield. The newly elected Whig government were averse to financing a venture to
glorify their political enemy, the former Tory Prime Minister Wellington, and cancelled the
project. Furthermore, they requested that Siborne repay the funds he had already received
unless he was prepared to complete the model at his own expense.67 Determined to complete
the project he carried on and by the time it was completed his construction costs alone
amounted to £3,000. A substantial sum at that time, in order to finance the model he
requested subscriptions from officers and took out a loan of £1,500.68 Additionally, despite
being out of Parliament, the Duke of Wellington was kept well informed of Siborne’s
progress by his associates. As the project developed, Siborne received letters from
Wellington’s associates who doubted his capacity to construct a model accurately depicting
the scene he intended. They believed only the opening of hostilities could be accurately
represented. While historiographic concerns with twenty-year-old memories were noted as an
issue, another letter argued that a multitude of accounts would not only produce ‘a mass of
contradictory information’69 but ‘weaken the high authority of the Duke’s despatch’.70
This concern, in their minds, came to fruition with the layout of the Prussian troops on the
model and the intended ‘share the Prussians actually had in deciding the battle’ came to be
known.71 These concerns encouraged the Duke, through an intermediary, to request Siborne
visit him in London. Perhaps unwisely, the request was denied. Siborne simply sent a letter
confirming his intended dispositions of the Prussians. In a letter from March 1837, Lord
Fitzroy Somerset, himself a Waterloo veteran, wrote to Siborne, ‘I still think that the position
67
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.91; William Siborne in Glover, Letters from the Battle of
Waterloo, p.338. For a listing of the correspondence between Siborne and numerous others regarding the model
see pp.320-345. This correspondence confirms the supposition that Wellington’s associates were not in
agreement with the positioning of some of the Prussian troops on the model.
68
William Siborne in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.338; Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest
Victory, pp.92-93, 95, 153, 168-169.
69
Lord Fitzroy Somerset in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.327.
70
James Willoughby Gordon in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.327.
71
F. H. Lindsay in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.332.
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you have given to the Prussian troops is not the correct one as regards the moment you wish
to represent, and those who see the work will deduce from it that the result of the battle was
not so much owing to British valour and the great generalship of the chief of the English
Army, as to the flank movement of the Prussians’.72 It is clear that the Duke was trying to
exert some pressure to depict the battle in a manner acceptable to his memory and reputation.
Wellington’s relationship to the model has become exceedingly complex since the
publication of Peter Hofschröer’s Wellington’s Smallest Victory. Substantial anecdotal
evidence is available showing that as time after the battle passed Wellington became
increasingly convinced that the British army and he individually had won the battle. Within a
month of the battle the Duke stated in a private comment, ‘he owed the victory entirely to the
admirable conduct of old Spanish infantry’.73 By contrast the new English regiments, while
behaving ‘tolerably well’, often got ‘unsteady and alarmed’, requiring ‘great exertion’ to keep
together while the foreign contingents would ‘probably have left the field altogether if they
had not had the infantry to rally under’. Furthermore, he deigned to acknowledge that only
after the defeat and disorderly retreat of the French Imperial Guard did he observe the fire of
Bülow’s advancing columns, allowing him to order the general advance.74 He later claimed
successes at which he was not present and even said to one friend that ‘Blücher’s main
achievement had been to avoid Grouchy and arrive at Waterloo in order that the Prussians
may profit by their victory’.
However, it must be noted that these claims were made in private and were not published
until after the Duke’s death in 1852. These later publications also included an explanation for
his grievance at Siborne’s failure ‘in producing an accurate, and even intelligible,
representation of the Battle of Waterloo … by having listened to every hero of his own
tale’.75 The main problem for the Duke was that the positioning of the Prussians contradicted
his memory. The Duke actually believed that no one could recollect Waterloo as well as he.
Therefore the Waterloo Despatch, in his opinion, should have formed the cornerstone of any
work on the battle. It was the obvious reluctance by many to follow this direction that
72
Lord Fitzroy Somerset in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, pp.334-335.
Meaning the regiments which had served under him in Spain.
74
Foster, Wellington and Waterloo, p.91.
75
Alice Byng, ed., Personal Reminiscences of the Duke of Wellington by Francis, the First Earl of Ellesmere,
London, 1903, pp.204-205.
73
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encouraged the Duke to almost plead in an anonymous memorandum ‘surely the details of
the battle might have been left in the original official reports’.76
Wellington’s personal desire to have the campaign presented as a victory solely owing to
‘British valour’ and his ‘great generalship’ conflicted, as Siborne rightly pointed out, with
both his public statements and original official reports. The Duke’s 1815 despatch was clear
on the need to ‘attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely
assistance I received from them (the Prussians). The operation of General Bülow … was a
most decisive one … if I had not found myself in a situation to make the attack which
produced the final result, it would have forced the enemy to retire’.77 The Waterloo Despatch
also paid regard to several non-British officers under the Duke’s command ‘who operated
much to the Duke’s satisfaction’, including General Kruse of the Nassau regiment, General
Trip commanding the Netherlands heavy cavalry and General Vanhope who commanded a
brigade of Netherlands infantry.78 General Vanhope did not exist but the duke indicated in his
later report to the King of the Netherlands that he meant General d’Aubrêmé, although he
actually meant Colonel Detmers.79 The Times would also report on the annual Waterloo
Banquets, in which Wellington recognised foreign contingents, particularly when a veteran or
dignitary of that nation was present.80 This position was reaffirmed in the 1842
memorandum, though with no more detail. Siborne cited this as justification for the
maintenance of his position on the Prussians. The anecdotes do illustrate that the Duke did
not actually believe what he wrote but it was the public front he had established. With respect
76
Carl von Clausewitz, On Waterloo: Clausewitz, Wellington, and the Campaign of 1815, Translated and edited
by Christopher Bassford, Daniel Moran and Gregory W. Pedlow, Clausewitz.com, 2010, p.234. This
memorandum he was written for a friend in 1842, in response to the posthumously published work on the
campaign by Carl von Clausewitz. It was the Duke’s only detailed public comment on the battle aside from the
Waterloo Despatch. The Memorandum by Wellington on Waterloo is recorded from pp.219-235, while a highly
engaging and balanced analysis by Gregory Pedlow on the Memorandum and Wellington’s view of the battle
and von Clausewitz is recorded from pp.257-287.
77
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, Wellington’s Dispatches Vol. XII France, 1813-1815, London, 183739, p484.
78
Wellington, Wellington’s Dispatches, p.484.
79
Duke of Wellington in Gareth Glover, ed., The Waterloo Archive: German Sources Vol. 5, Translated from
German by Martin Mittelacher, Barnsley, 2013, p.5. No Vanhope commanded at Waterloo and many, including
Siborne, have dismissed it as a result. However in his report to the King of the Netherlands, a less frequently
cited document than the Waterloo Despatch, the Duke indicated that the officer who operated much to his
satisfaction was ‘General d’Aubrêmé who commanded an infantry brigade of the 3 rd Division’. In actuality he
meant Colonel Detmers, who commanded the brigade of that division that charged the Grenadiers of the French
Imperial Guard at the climax of the battle. D’Aubrêmé’s men were operating in reserve.
80
For example in 1851, the Duke acknowledged both the Netherlands and the Hanoverian army as a
representative of both those forces was present at the Banquet, an acknowledgement reported in The Times the
next morning. ‘The Waterloo Banquet’ The Times, June 19, 1851. TD
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to the Prussians, it would be the same one that Siborne would present when he released the
model in 1838.
Ultimately for Siborne, the model would not be a financial success but, contrary to his fears,
this failure had little to do with his representation of the Prussians. The bigger problem for
the model was the level of detail, as it pushed costs up dramatically. On display at Egyptian
Hall in London from October 1838 until the end of 1839, 100,000 visitors paid to see the
work. At an entry price of one shilling, the overall gross profit equated to approximately
£5,000. While a substantial sum at the time, once accounting for the £4,200 in costs to his
exhibition manager for transport and display, he was left with only £800 in profit. This meant
that he could not cover the £1,500 loan or reimburse the model’s subscribers.81 Undoubtedly,
he was cheated by the exhibition manager, but the £5,000 gross profit was still far less than
he had expected, and much less than others had made with less sophisticated pieces, such as
the Waterloo panorama, which made its creator £10,000 in profit.82
Siborne had not foreseen that that the complexity of the model dissuaded public enthusiasm
for the project. James Hope, a former Waterloo veteran, in a letter to Siborne in 1840, pointed
out that ‘nine out of every ten take leave of the model, without having added anything to their
previous store of information respecting the memorable event’.83 This claim was endorsed by
contemporary reviews with only The Times reviewer in 1838 correctly ascertaining the
moment of the battle being presented. This was only successfully deduced after reading the
accompanying guide.84 The Morning Post inaccurately wrote that the scene being represented
was during the middle of the attack of the Imperial Guard against Wellington’s army. This
occurred around thirty minutes later.85 While some might claim that these discrepancies
reveal that the public saw what they wanted to in order to better project the superiority of
British arms the reviews do not support this conclusion. Firstly The Times review, which did
ascertain the correct scene, wrote of the ‘powerful diversion’ effected by the Prussians.86
They also acknowledge the Prussians had, at the point of time depicted on the model,
engaged eight battalions of the Young Guard and three of the Old Guard, reducing the Guard
81
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, pp.168-169.
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, pp.92-94.
83
James Hope in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.286.
84
‘Plan of the Battle of Waterloo’, The Times, Oct. 5, 1838. TD
85
‘Model of the Battle of Waterloo’, The Morning Post, Oct. 5, 1838. BLN
86
‘Plan of the Battle of Waterloo’, The Times, Oct. 5, 1838. TD
82
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units still available for Napoleon to deploy against Wellington.87 Secondly, the only review
that was critical of the placement of the Prussians was The United Service Magazine, a
military journal, which wrote that the Prussians ‘are generally considered to bear too
prominent a share in the battle.’88 But there were no accusations of deliberate deception and
none of the other reviews listed this as an area of conjecture. The public were convinced of
the quality of the British performance irrespective of the importance of the Prussians to final
victory. But, for the most part, they had no clear idea of what scene the model was actually
depicting.
Siborne simply did not see it that way, and what he lacked in good business sense he made up
for with a tireless work ethic. With the debt still hanging over his head he decided to
construct a new model, make changes to his old one and complete a comprehensive history of
the campaign. But Siborne was convinced that the Prussian issue must be addressed. The
comments from Wellington’s associates were endorsed in the same letter by James Hope,
who also articulated that while, ‘failure to this extent I really did not anticipate’, he did feel
that model projected the battle as ‘not truly a British scene’. Hope reasoned, ‘had there been
fewer of Father Blücher’s children in the distance, the model would undoubtedly had more
(the look of a) British victory’.89 But Siborne did not seem to realise that all these critics were
servicemen, not the general public. Convinced that the display of the Prussians was the major
impediment to success, the downplaying of their role became a key area of change with his
new Waterloo projects.
As Neil Ramsey has shown, memoirs such as Kincaid, with his ‘cheerful stoicism’, captured
the public imagination and assisted this genre gaining popularity and acceptance in Britain in
the post-Waterloo period. However, this has overshadowed the significance of their content.
As modern scholarship has rigorously argued, ‘‘identity’ is not fixed or singular, but rather,
contingent, relational and contextual’, and for the British soldier of this period, their context
was very different from that of the British civilian at home.90 This raises an issue with
Colley’s premise. While the war with France was important to British identity, for the British
serviceman at Waterloo, particularly if he was a veteran of the Peninsular War, troops
operating in alliance with him were more often viewed in negative terms than their French
87
‘Plan of the Battle of Waterloo’, The Times, Oct. 5, 1838. TD
United Service Magazine, 1839, p.203.
89
James Hope in Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.286.
90
Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War, p.14
88
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adversaries.91 This view was not only endorsed in the memoirs, both popular and unpopular
with the public, but was consistent with the hundreds of ‘Siborne Letters’. Siborne was not
completely convinced by these veterans’ depictions, but when he constructed a work at
variance with their memory he drew some sharp criticism. Many historians have concluded
that this reflected a public memory that, by the commencement of the Victorian Period,
regarded Waterloo as a British victory. The evidence shown would indicate that only veterans
and military personnel, including the Duke of Wellington, actually had problems with the
model’s depiction of the Prussians. But as the next chapter will demonstrate, Siborne could
not see this and concluded that the Prussians were impeding his desire for fame and fortune.
His conclusion was to reduce their presence and construct a suitably British Waterloo
narrative.
91
Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War, p.15.
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Chapter 4 – ‘Not a truly British scene’
In the latter half of the nineteenth-century, the prejudice in veterans’ memoirs was effectively
utilised to endorse the more militaristic national identity that developed in Britain. Almost a
generation after the battle, the release of William Siborne’s history in 1844 saw secondary
literature became the most prevalent form of Waterloo historiography. Intended for the
aristocracy and educated middle class, there was both a discernible grandiloquence with
respect to British heroism, and a depreciation of the contribution of the allied contingents,
particularly the Prussians and Dutch-Belgians. While veterans’ were critical when they felt
their unit was not appropriately recognised, the denunciation of the foreign contingents was
readily integrated into the narrative. Though popular, by the time Siborne printed a massmarketable version, other writers, exploiting underdeveloped copyright laws, published their
own more engaging interpretations of his thesis. Exceedingly popular, the works exposed to a
mass audience Siborne’s questionable interpretation of events. Despite this, an intensification
of nationalist hyperbole only developed later with the advent of war correspondents during
the Crimean War. This new medium was eagerly engaged with by the public and they were
increasingly deployed to report on colonial conflicts. War correspondents proved adept at
projecting Britain’s wars as heroic, necessary and entertaining, and the public affection for
the military and war intensified. This marked the British public’s comprehensive embrasure
of the ‘pleasure culture of war’.1 This was complemented by the introduction into historical
writing of ‘scientific’ constructs. Designed to improve the overall quality and accuracy of
historical literature, they failed because, as Stefan Berger states, for historians the ‘desire to
be ‘truthful’ … did not protect them from maintaining a wide array of historical myths, many
of which became important in national collective memory’.2 New Waterloo histories from the
mid-nineteenth-century utilised this concept, often in name only, to attribute victory to the
British army even more vociferously than Siborne. The militaristic national identity that led
to such enthusiasm and mass enlistment in Britain at the commencement of the First World
War developed around these precepts over the latter half of the century.
The financial failure of the Waterloo Model and the correspondence he had received from
veterans encouraged William Siborne to reduce the prominence of the Prussians from a
1
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000.
Stefan Berger, “On the Role of Myths and History in the Construction of National Identity in Modern Europe”,
European History Quarterly 39, 2009, p.492.
2
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number of new and old Waterloo-inspired endeavours. Firstly, he released a new model in
1844, this time portraying events leading up to the charge of the British heavy cavalry against
the massive French infantry assault in the early afternoon. Disregarding Dutch-Belgian and
German involvement, it was a classic British scene of success against a superior French force.
James Hope had already observed that this would have been a better choice for the original
model as the latter did not represent ‘a truly British scene’.3 Concurrently, Siborne rereleased the original model, but only after he had removed the equivalent of 40,000 Prussian
troops. Suddenly 48,000 Prussians became 8,000.4 This significant change was explained in a
large footnote in his new two-volume history, reflecting the discovery of ‘new evidence’.
Siborne concluded that Prussian witnesses had inadvertently erred, due to their inability to
see all the actions of Wellington’s troops, concluding that their final assault on the village of
Plancenoit coincided with Wellington’s defeat of the Imperial Guard. Siborne explains ‘in
reality, there was an interval of at least twelve minutes between these two incidents’;5 by the
time Plancenoit was permanently captured Wellington’s men were already advancing.6
Siborne does not actually deny the Prussians impact on the battle. He acknowledges ‘that the
powerful diversion effected by the Prussians diminished the strength of those French Lines
by the Corps of LOBAU … by twelve Battalions of the Imperial Guard … and, finally, by
eighteen Squadrons of Cavalry’.7 However Siborne concludes that the Prussian army, by
‘operating a powerful diversion’, made Wellington’s advance ‘still more decisive, rendering
the victory complete by a harassing and vigorous pursuit’.8 The use of ‘still more decisive’
indicates that Siborne believes the Duke would have been successful, if not as conclusively,
without the Prussians. This is a surprising conclusion given that the Duke personally
described the battle as ‘the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life’. Presumably, the
diversion of 16,000 of the 73,000 French troops from Wellington’s line must have been
decisive. The reasons for Siborne’s changes are made clearer, by Peter Hofschröer, Siborne’s
most avid defender, who acknowledges that there is no evidence to suggest that between
3
James Hope in Gareth Glover, ed., Letters from the Battle of Waterloo: Unpublished Correspondence by Allied
Officers from the Siborne Papers, London, 2004, p.286.
4
Peter Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory: The Duke, the Model Maker and the Secret of Waterloo,
London, 2005, p.196.
5
William Siborne, History of the War in France and Belgium in 1815: Containing Minute Details of the Battles
of Quatre-Bras, Ligny, Wavre and Waterloo Vol. II, 2nd ed., London, 1844, p.271. This extensive note,
explaining the difference between the record of events in the book and their original presentation on the model,
was removed by editors from the fourth edition published in 1894.
6
Siborne, History of the War Vol. II, 2nd ed., pp.270-271.
7
William Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, 1815, 4th ed., London, 1904, p.597.
8
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, pp.597-598.
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1838 and 1844, ‘a most careful and diligent investigation of the whole question of the
Prussian co-operation’ was ever conducted.9 Siborne, it must be concluded, made alterations
to his work not because of evidence, but due to financial expediency.
While the Prussian role was the most important issue, Siborne did not ignore Wellington’s
allied contingents. The K.G.L were seen as equals, if not in some ways superior to British
troops, but the other German troops, the Brunswickers, Nassauers, Hanoverians, while not in
that league, deserved ‘the strongest commendation’.10 This was not so for the Netherlands
troops. Some of the Dutch-Belgian infantry were accused of making a hurried retreat ‘not
partially and promiscuously, but collectively and simultaneously’,11 while other units had to
be blocked by British cavalry to stay in place.12 Additionally, the heavy cavalry at one point
‘retired in such haste and disorder’ that they disturbed two squadrons of K.G.L. Hussars.13
These largely inaccurate claims were not simply manufactured but were a recurring theme in
the Siborne Letters. As Siborne surmised, ‘the fact of such supineness is too well attested to
admit of any doubt respecting the value to be attached to their co-operation in the great
struggle so courageously and resolutely sustained by the Anglo-Allied Army’.14 However,
Siborne cannot abscond from some responsibility. As Gareth Glover points out, ‘his failure to
procure any substantial information from the Dutch-Belgian contingent … led directly to the
negation of any achievements of the Dutch/Belgian troops in the battle by virtually all British
histories’.15 The Prince of Orange, divisional generals such as Perponcher and Chassé, and
many lower-ranked officers were still alive at the time but the only source he obtained were
the Prince of Orange’s papers, which, to him, were always superseded as a source by a
British eye-witness.16 It is a curious deviation for a man who went to the trouble of contacting
the Prussians and even the French that has never been satisfactorily answered.17
The downplaying and denigration of the Allied contingents was an important component in
presenting the campaign as a British military historical epic. The majority of those concerned
9
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.196.
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.594.
11
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.395.
12
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, pp.526-527.
13
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.463.
14
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.591.
15
Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, pp.19-20.
16
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.151. Keeping in mind in this era, the sources of noncommissioned officers and the rank-and-file were not eagerly sought by historians and writers.
17
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.120.
10
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with ‘sharing’ the victory were alarmed with the impact it might have on the Britishness of
the victory. The manner in which Siborne presented the British in his work demonstrates his
awareness of this issue. Techniques he employed included rhetorically questioning the reader,
‘what then might not be achieved by such innate valour—by such consummate discipline?’18
On other occasions he would instruct the reader ‘what exulting pride and heartfelt gratitude
must not the British nation reflect on the heroic valour displayed by her sons’.19 Siborne even
proved adept at redressing negative episodes. While initially successful, the British heavy
cavalry charge quickly turned into disaster due to the formation’s ill-discipline and inept
command. In the Netherlands it was later included in training manuals as an example of what
not to do.20 However Siborne instructed, ‘Britons! Before other scenes are disclosed to your
view, take one retrospective glance at this glorious, this instructive, spectacle’.21 In a rather
obvious manner, Siborne is trying to encourage British readers to see themselves, both
individually and collectively, represented in the exploits of their national army.
The Britishness of the victory was, perhaps surprisingly to some, accentuated by Siborne’s
exceedingly generous portrayal of the military ability of the French army. The French are
assessed as being ‘unquestionably the finest Army which even NAPOLEON had ever
collected together, formed exclusively of one nation—of that nation whose legions had at
once subjugated nearly the whole of Europe—imbued with inveterate hatred against its foes,
cherishing the most enthusiastic devotion to its Chief, and filled with the ardent desire of
restoring the fallen glory of the Empire’.22 This appraisal of the Armée du Nord is simply not
true. Most military historians would agree that this army was formidable and man-to-man
superior to the allies. This is evidenced by their successes during the campaign, despite being
heavily outnumbered by the combined allied forces. But Napoleon’s armies in the 1805-1807
campaigns at Ulm, Austerlitz, Jena and Auerstadt were of higher quality. The French rankand-file also feared the loyalty of many senior commanders who had changed sides twice in
the space of twelve months. The esprit de corps was further weakened by a number changing
sides during the campaign. However, Siborne is not concerned with the validity of this case.
His objective is to convince the reader it was so, because if the reader accepts this point, then
the British army that defeated it must be superior. This kind of analysis was consistent with
18
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.398.
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.194.
20
André Dellevoet, The Dutch-Belgian Cavalry at Waterloo, The Hague, 2008, p.141.
21
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.427.
22
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, p.592.
19
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the memoirs of Henry Ross-Lewin. Final victory offered irrefutable evidence of British
martial supremacy. Both appreciated that a positive characterisation of the French was critical
because no victory is complete without it being won over a powerful and dangerous foe.
Siborne’s decision to downplay the Prussians, denigrate the Dutch and Belgian troops and
promote the French did not adversely impact his success, though whether it actually helped is
debatable at best. Criticisms of his history still came from veterans and military sources,
though the Prussians hardly featured.23 Some like Major Edward Macready, who served as an
ensign at Waterloo, were driven by personal and regimental loyalty. Macready published a
letter to Siborne in the United Service Magazine in 1845 hoping to address ‘errors’ he felt had
denuded his regimental comrades of their rightful honours.24 However the overall public
response, judging by contemporary reviews, was exceedingly positive. The Dublin University
Magazine called it a ‘military classic’ and ‘a work which should at once and for ever settle
the disputed questions of the campaigns’.25 Meanwhile the United Service Gazette had
already described it as ‘likely to be as enduring as it is credible to his talents as a writer’, and
The Times in 1845 referred to it as ‘a work so faithful and excellent’.26
However, many reviews did note that Siborne ‘proves’ the success of the Duke was not
owing to the ‘assistance of the Prussians’ but rather that ‘ultimate defeat of the enemy, fell
exclusively upon the Anglo-allied army (minus the Dutch-Belgians)’.27 Some sources, who
had previously accepted that the Prussian contribution had been significant, now believed that
claims defending the original viewpoint stemmed from a ‘lack of knowledge, or from
national vanity’.28 Others were not totally convinced of this argument. They felt that Siborne
had gone too far and noted the Duke’s acknowledgement of the Prussian co-operation in
23
Most were inconsequential, like those that would claim Wellington could see the battle of Ligny from Quatre
Bras. Simple topography made this impossible, but later writers would continue to make this claim.
24
Edward Macready, “On a part of Captain Siborne’s History of the Waterloo Campaign: By an officer of the
Fifth British Brigade”, The United Service Magazine 47, 1845. Macready’s letter even elicited a reply from
Siborne to which Macready replied in turn discussing their differences of opinion. William Siborne, “The
Waterloo Campaign: Captain Siborne in Reply to Major Macready” The United Service Magazine, 47, 1845;
Edward Macready, “The Waterloo Campaign: Major Macready in Reply to Captain Siborne”, The United
Service Magazine 47, 1845.
25
Anonymous, “The Campaign of 1815”, The Dublin University Magazine 23, 1844, p.126; Hofschröer,
Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.202.
26
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, pp.202-203. ‘History of the Waterloo Campaign’, The Times, Jan.
27, 1845. TD
27
‘History of the Waterloo Campaign’, Hampshire Advertiser & Salisbury Guardian, Feb. 1, 1845. BLN;
‘History of the Waterloo Campaign’, The Times, Jan. 27, 1845. TD
28
Anonymous, “The Battle of Waterloo”, Fraser’s Magazine 30, 1844.
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every particular had been ‘unvaried and uncompromising’.29 An observant American
reviewer recognised that Siborne was denouncing the foreign contingents in order to magnify
the exertions of Britain’s ‘fire-eating heroes’, but while astute, his observations were
published in an American journal and read by few Britons.30 Siborne had validated the
argument proffered by veterans that the Prussian involvement, at best, only exacerbated the
disaster for the French, while the Dutch-Belgians were only injurious to the Allied cause.
Though it would be difficult to determinate what impact, if any, these alterations had on
Siborne’s success, his works did prove popular. The first edition, consisting of 1,000 copies,
sold out prior to release, along with another 1,000 released as a second edition in the same
year. An additional 1,500 copies were released with success in the United States.31
Nonetheless, while enjoying this success, even in the Victorian period, 3,500 sales across
Britain and the United States was hardly awe-inspiring. The main problem was that at over
800 pages in two-volumes and priced at £2, 2s ($3.25 in the US), it was both written and
priced for the aristocracy and wealthy middle-class.32 According to Siborne, he had intended
to convert his text into a single-edition version at a reduced price for the mass market.
Unbeknownst to him, he had a competitor for the mainstream history of Waterloo. George
Gleig, the author of The Subaltern, had been a confidant of the Duke since the late 1820s and
was aware of Wellington’s dissatisfaction with Siborne’s Waterloo Model.33 How much of
the Duke’s disquiet encouraged Gleig is open to never-ending debate, but given the success
of Siborne’s work, the conditions were certainly present for a successful mass-marketable
history. Problematically for Gleig, he did not have access to Siborne’s source material,
leaving him with little alternative but to exploit underdeveloped copyright laws to construct
his narrative.
29
Francis Egerton, Earl of Ellesmere, “Marmont, Siborne, and Alison”, Quarterly Review 76, 1845, pp.224-225.
Ellesmere was accused of being part of a conspiracy against Siborne by Hofschröer. However, Hofschröer only
cites a small reference to support his claim, which only works because he ignores the part where Ellesmere
compliments the Prussians, in no less avowed terms than Siborne. Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory,
pp.204-205.
30
Anonymous, “Siborne’s Waterloo Campaign”, Southern literary messenger; devoted to every department of
literature and the fine arts 13, 1847, pp.548, 557.
31
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.190.
32
£2, 2s was equivalent to 2 guineas or 42 shillings.
33
R. E. Foster, Wellington and Waterloo: The Duke, The Battle and Posterity, Stroud, 2014, pp.143-147.
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Released in 1847, Gleig’s 300 page Story of the Battle of Waterloo proved extremely popular
with the British public.34 Priced at 6s, its popularity prevented Siborne from achieving much
success with his own mass-marketable publication. Gleig’s association with the Duke of
Wellington encouraged Peter Hofschröer to argue that Gleig stole Siborne’s work and altered
it to glorify Wellington. This development met both the Duke’s demands for greater personal
recognition and disestablished a significant Prussian contribution.35 Hofschröer’s attacks are
misguided. As evidenced, Siborne had already significantly reduced the role of the Prussians.
Additionally, Gleig made minimal changes to that particular discussion in his history. While
Gleig has certainly had differences of opinion over technical issues, and his work is much
shorter, his presentation is very consistent with Siborne.36 Much has been made of Gleig’s
recurring eulogies to the Duke, but Siborne spent a whole page in his second chapter regaling
how the Duke was ‘resolute, yet cool, cautious and calculating in his proceedings; possessing
a natural courage unshaken even under the most appalling dangers and difficulties’.37
Claims of marginalisation of the Prussians by Hofschröer are also difficult to substantiate
when Gleig describes the Prussians as a ‘gallant people’ whose ‘courage that day was only to
be equalled by their patience’.38 Statements such as ‘the Prussians forced their way’, ‘Blücher
was true to his word’ and ‘Prussian regiments showed themselves at this critical juncture’
only act to further vindicate this supposition.39 Any reduction of the Prussian role reflected
changes made by Siborne, not Gleig. The Prussians, along with Wellington’s German troops,
are well regarded by Gleig.40 The British troops are also lauded with as much fervour as they
were by Siborne, if a bit more subtly.41 Gleig even states that when the Dutch troops served
alone, they were ‘as staunch and brave as they have uniformly proved themselves to be, both
as the allies and the enemies of the British army’.42 Their efficiency, he theorises, was marred
34
G. R. Gleig, Story of the Battle of Waterloo, London, 1847.
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.227.
36
For example, Gleig was one who pushed the idea that Wellington could see the battlefield of Ligny, whilst
commanding at Les Quatre Bras, and knew the Prussians had been defeated. Though bizarre, it was an
inconsequential difference between the two works.
37
Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, pp.63, 66-67.
38
Gleig, Story of the Battle, p.225.
39
Gleig, Story of the Battle, pp.227, 229, 230.
40
Some examples of Gleig’s compliments to German soldiers include, Kruse’s Nassauers ‘exhibited much
gallantry’; Du Plat’s Brunswickers, ‘stood, after a little wavering, immoveable’; ‘Brave resistance’ from
Hanoverians and Nassau riflemen; Gleig, Story of the Battle, pp.231, 218, 171.
41
Some examples of this glorification of the British troops include ‘still the strength of the British infantry were
unbroken; and the cavalry, though much crippled, exhibited no symptoms of uneasiness’; the untiring energy of
the British soldier’; “both infantry and cavalry sustained it with a patience which only British troops can, under
like circumstances display’; Gleig, Story of the Battle, pp.224, 56, 206.
42
Gleig, Story of the Battle, p.235.
35
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by their ‘intermixture with Belgians’.43 The only substantial difference between Siborne and
Gleig was this lone compliment to the Dutch troops, with their ‘lacklustre’ performance being
attributed to the Belgians. Marginalisation of the Belgians was hardly a new concept. The
notion that ‘Gleig saw to it that the masses read Wellington’s questionable version of the
campaign’,44 put forward by Hofschröer, depends upon Siborne’s work being discernibly
different. The only discernible difference is the length of the respective works.
A closer analysis reveals that Siborne’s biggest problem was that he could not reconcile his
ambitions with a small-scale project. Even when he published a mass-marketable version of
his work in 1848, it was over 600 pages long and cost 20s. This is more than three times the
price of Gleig’s work.45 A future commentator quite fairly described the work as ‘tedious’.46
Gleig would have at least seven editions published in Britain and the United States by 1862.
Siborne was not as favourably received. An inability to simplify his work had created issues
with his model but Siborne failed to recognise the signs. In his desire to become the preeminent scholar on the battle he overestimated public interest in the minutiae of the
campaign. Conversely, denigrating foreign contingents seemed to have had little, if any,
impact on his success or failure. There is simply insufficient evidence to suggest that the
public were seriously concerned with that aspect of the campaign.
The establishment of the similarity of the two works illustrates the influence Siborne’s work
had on the Waterloo narrative in this period. Many veterans had shown a desire to distance
the non-British contingents from any significant role in the success against the French, but
Siborne’s work was the first secondary history that seriously engaged with this issue. The
main challenge to the British narrative in Britain at this time came from the Prussians.
Prussian military historians and their General Staff showed a willingness to challenge the
British record of the campaign. Siborne’s original model, which displayed so many Prussians,
was a result of the material they had provided him.47 And even as he was downplaying their
role he still accepted any new material they provided, an action that has probably helped
protect him from a more critical analysis of his depiction of the Prussians. The Prussians were
not the only ones to challenge the record but works from the Netherlands and Belgium were
43
Gleig, Story of the Battle, p.236.
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.227.
45
‘BOARD, &c., Boulogne-sur-Mer.-A French’, The Times, Aug 28, 1848. TD
46
‘A Good English Account of the Campaign of 1815’, The Times, Feb. 10, 1863. TD. Advertisements in 1858
and 1859 show the single-volume version was being sold at 12s. This was of course initiated after his death.
47
Hofschröer, Wellington’s Smallest Victory, p.131.
44
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often ignored as they were not written in English. French claims were also quickly dismissed
because they were the defeated party, a reality that many of their defenders struggled to
accept.
There is a discernible element of frustration amongst British veterans with the desire of
foreign contingents to defend their role in the campaign. This encouraged some veterans to
counter-argue the Prussians. Edward Cotton, a British cavalry sergeant at Waterloo,
published a succinct narrative in 1849 that proved to be exceedingly popular with the public.
Five editions were published by 1862. At around 150 pages Cotton was able to coordinate
narrative and memoir in a more concise manner than either Siborne or Gleig. The work also
had an afterword, consisting of his personal opinions on the battle, validated by his reputation
as a Waterloo veteran. Naturally the Prussians featured heavily. Cotton took particular
exception to the Prussians ‘taking the lion’s share in this glorious victory’, regarding it as ‘a
peculiar bad grace’.48 While acknowledging the Prussian loss during their ‘short’ engagement
‘proves the value of that cooperation’ and that their diversion ‘diminished the French force
against us’,49 Cotton believes that ‘it is doubtful whether Napoleon could have driven the
British from the ground, even if the Prussians had not arrived’.50 Cotton shows an
unwillingness to acknowledge the importance of the fact that the Prussians had significantly
reduced the French force against the ‘English troops’. He also ignores that British troops
constituted only a third of Wellington’s army. For Cotton the ‘English troops had maintained
their position for eight hours against the most experienced army and the ablest General ever
France sent into the field’.51 This is both something he believed and felt the public needed to
know.
Despite the success of a number of these works, a shift in public attitudes to the role of war
and national identity only becomes fully evident in the second half of the nineteenth-century
as Britain responded to international developments. One of the most significant events was
the outbreak of the Crimean War. While growing reconciliation between the army and the
public could trace its origins in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the small colonial
48
Edward Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo: The Personal Experiences of a British Cavalryman who became a
Battlefield Guide and Authority on the Campaign of 1815, London, 2007 (orig. 1849), p.225.
49
Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo, p.219.
50
Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo, p.224.
51
Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo, p.224.
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wars that characterised the post-1815 period failed to resonate as strongly with the public.52
In contrast, the Crimean conflict was a reaction to mutual suspicion that had developed in the
1840s between Britain and Russia and garnered much press and public attention. In 1853,
when Turkey declared war on Russia in order to prevent further Russian territorial gains at
their expense, the British public endorsed the Turkish decision.53 While driven more by
strategic considerations than public opinion, the decision to dispatch a Franco-British force to
the Crimea in 1854 met with limited public condemnation.54
The public reaction to the conflict was complex but one critical development was that the
public awareness of the army markedly increased. This reflected the unprecedented manner
in which reporting on the campaign was performed. The war saw a number of ingenuities, not
least of which were the advent of war correspondents. William Howard Russell, operating for
The Times, would make a name for himself in this capacity, taking advantage of fast
steamships and a lack of censorship to expose the public to a national conflict, unparalleled
both before and since.55 During the first year of the war several battles had seen heavy
casualties, while the poor performance of medical, supply and transport arrangements saw
this number needlessly escalate as cholera and other diseases afflicted the troops in the winter
during the siege of Sevastopol.56 Russell and his fellow correspondents were highly critical of
the organisational and strategic failures of the military. The power and reach of The Times
ensured that this was read by hundreds of thousands of Britons. The government and military
were aggrieved by Russell’s forthright observations but his words effected change. The
establishment of The Times’ Fund ensured that essential services reached the army.57 The
public were mortified by letters coming from Russell endorsing the same complaints that
were being made by troops in letters home. Along with donations to the fund, many members
of the public wrote letters to the editor offering their own expertise on all kinds of military
matters.58
52
Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities, London,
1994, p.81.
53
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.32.
54
Ute Frevert, “War”, in Stefan Berger, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789-1914, Malden,
2006, pp.420-421.
55
Stefanie Markovits, ‘Rushing into Print: “Participatory Journalism” during the Crimean War’, Victorian
Studies 50, 2008, pp.563-564. Despite the distance to the Crimea being more than twice that of the Peninsula,
technological improvements ensured that information reached Britain quicker than during that conflict.
56
Edward M. Spiers, “The Armed Forces”, in Chris Williams, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain,
Malden, 2004, p.85.
57
Alan Hankinson, Man of Wars: William Howard Russell of The Times, London, 1982, pp.98-101.
58
Markovits, “Rushing into Print”, pp.572-573.
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While senior commanders and the government were being reproached for command
ineptitude, admiration for ordinary soldiers was unprecedented. Russell’s reports did show
the trauma of the soldiers’ experience but were far more sanguine, and less critical, about
their performance in battle. Russell was descriptive and emotive, and while happy to criticise
senior commanders, lauded the British troops.59 The British servicemen helped themselves
with their own letters, many of which their families published in the newspapers of the
period. Their positive depictions were further assisted by the advent of battlefield
photographers. This was the first major British war to incorporate photography. While
pioneering, the technical constraints of the time meant that photographs could not capture the
horrors of combat. This led to the war’s imagery helping to reinforce the existing correlation
between heroism and war. Another new development that accentuated this idea was the
awarding of medals for bravery for both officers and enlisted men, including the new and
highly coveted Victoria Cross.60 Overall, tales of suffering as a result of government
mismanagement drew, as Paris articulates, ‘a sympathetic humanitarian response from the
public, while the guts-and-glory reports had an immediacy and excitement which powerfully
reinforced ideas about the heroic nature of the rank and file’.61
Ultimately the campaign ended in success in 1856, but the subsequent year witnessed the
revolt of several sepoy regiments in India, which even led to their capture of Delhi. The
Indian Mutiny, as it became known, was an almost guaranteed British victory from the outset,
given both British technological superiority and the continuing loyalty of many Indian
regiments. Despite this, the British press projected the conflict as a heroic struggle of an
outnumbered force, and reported horrific atrocities perpetrated by the mutineers. Most were
either fabricated or at least exaggerated but the public could not know this and it galvanised
support.62
The technological capabilities of the period enabled foreign wars to be increasingly
accessible to the public, while still being sufficiently distant to detach the public from the
realities of modern conflict. This enabled war to serve as a form of entertainment, and as
Paris quite rightly argues, the ‘pleasure culture of war’ came into being in Britain at around
59
Hankinson, Man of Wars, pp.68-77.
Paris, Warrior Nation, pp.34-36.
61
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.33.
62
Dawson, Soldier Heroes, pp.87-94.
60
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this point in time. Periodicals and newspapers were increasingly interested in the army and
the motivation of the troops to serve.63 Representations of war to the public encouraged
Britons to see themselves as either responsible for civilising the ‘other’ as they did in India,
or stopping tyranny, which they did in the Crimea. The fact that the French did much of the
fighting in the Crimea, or that the Indian Mutiny resulted from poor British treatment of the
population, was largely ignored.64 The army’s senior command, consisting of the aristocracy
and an expression of the class-based nature of British society, received sustained criticism
from the public. Consequently, between 1868 and 1871 the Cardwell Reforms were
introduced, which included removing the purchasing of commissions. Additionally, a cadre
of reserves were created to improve the available quality and quantity of manpower.65
Conditions for the ordinary soldier steadily improved, increasing the pool of men in Britain
willing to join the army. Soldiers would continue to be kept at arm’s length by the public, but
intriguingly the soldier began to epitomise masculinity in a manner that would have been
impossible during the Napoleonic Wars. Even more than the burgeoning nationalist literature,
these conflicts enabled Britons to view war as a pleasurable endeavour in which they as a
nation were pre-eminent, and their wars as acceptable either in stopping tyranny or necessary
to civilise the ‘other’.
The acceptance of and appeal of war to the British public, and the essence of British martial
supremacy, gained an additional dimension with the increasing application of ‘scientific’
constructs on military history. This application was part of a process that could be traced back
to the eighteenth-century when the concept first gained support, resulting in the
‘institutionalisation and professionalization of history as an academic subject’.66 With respect
to Waterloo, this became a real focus following the 1862 publication of George Hooper’s
Waterloo: The Downfall of the First Napoleon.67 While the 1850s saw several new editions
of Gleig and Cotton’s work being published, as well as Kincaid and Siborne’s works being
sold, there was a decline after 1862. Hooper’s work was similar in style to Gleig and Cotton,
63
Some examples include; ‘The Russian Soldier, the French Soldier, and the British Soldier’, The Observer,
Oct. 23, 1854. BLN; Anonymous, “British Army Reform”, Bentley’s miscellany 40, 1856; Anonymous, “The
British and Indian Armies, and the Purchase of Commissions”, Saturday review of politics, literature, science
and art 5, 1858.
64
Orlando Figes, Crimea: The Last Crusade, London, 2010, p.402.
65
Edward M. Spiers, The Late Victorian Army: 1868-1902, Manchester, 1992; Best, War and Society, p.236.
66
Stefan Berger, “The Power of National Pasts: Writing National History in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century
Europe”, in Stefan Berger, ed., Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective, Basingstoke, 2007, p.32.
67
George Hooper, Waterloo: The Downfall of the First Napoleon: A History of the Campaign of 1815, London,
1862.
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though he seemingly does not rate their works, as he intended his history to present a quality
single volume without ‘all the minute details’ and military ‘character’ of Siborne’s work,
something they had already seemingly done.68
Hooper was followed in 1865 by a posthumous publication of a short analysis of the
campaign from Waterloo veteran James Shaw Kennedy.69 While neither were professional
historians operating within an institution, both were conscious of the increasing acceptance of
this method, or at least creating the impression of its application. Hooper, in his work,
outlines his ‘recourse to the best authorities in English, French, German and Dutch’, with
which he ‘endeavoured to produce a complete and accurate work’.70 Meanwhile Shaw
Kennedy highlighted not only his military record, as ‘circumstances of the action brought me
into personal contact, during its progress’, with a number of Allied senior commanders, but
that he had consulted all ‘published accounts’ then available, ‘deriving from them such views
and facts as seem legitimate’.71 While, in theory, the application of a scientific methodology
to history should have improved the quality of the history being produced, many historians,
particularly Stefan Berger, have noted that it often acted to strengthen myths that had been
crucial ‘in formulating ideas about national character’ prior to the emergence of ‘scientific
history’.72
Despite the strong intimation that they were constructing a ‘scientific’ history, both Hooper
and Shaw Kennedy were more concerned with attributing victory to the British army. While
preceding works had regularly lauded the British and K.G.L. troops, Hooper and Shaw
Kennedy went further. Both eliminated any discernible contribution from other contingents,
not just the Dutch-Belgians. Although sometimes simply inaccurate, Hooper often just
downplays or ignores any involvement of the non-British troops. The higher percentage of
casualties for the British and K.G.L. troops is regularly employed as justification. This
interpretation ignores many alternative reasons for disparate casualty counts.73 Similarly,
68
Hooper, Waterloo, p.vi.
James Shaw Kennedy, Notes on the Battle of Waterloo, London, 2010 (orig. 1865). This short analysis had
been written two years earlier and was published following his death.
70
Hooper, Waterloo, p.vi.
71
Shaw Kennedy, Notes on the Battle of Waterloo, p.11.
72
Stefan Berger, “Representations of the Past”, Debatte: Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe
12, 2004, p78.
73
One reason why a unit may have a high casualty list is that they were poorly commanded. The best example
of this is the British Heavy Cavalry who sustained unnecessary casualties as a result of the commanders losing
control of the charge in the early afternoon. Additionally, national contingents can be underrepresented because
69
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though in a more direct manner, Shaw Kennedy denounces the allied troops. At the
commencement of his work he discerns that the non-British or K.G.L troops of Wellington’s
army, nearly 40,000 troops, possessed the same martial qualities as that of 11,000 British
troops. Consequently, Shaw Kennedy reduces Wellington’s army to that of approximately
41,000 British-equivalent troops. He provides no evidence for this beyond his reputation as a
Waterloo veteran. Seemingly these troops are so incompetent that four of them were worth
only one British soldier. The French commitment to deal with the Prussians is also reduced to
enlarge the reciprocal force facing the British position. By his estimation, 61,000 French
troops faced 41,000 British equivalent troops from 11:30am to 6pm.74 He also establishes at
the outset of his work that he will focus specifically on Waterloo, thereby neatly avoiding the
Prussian detachment that successfully prevented the 33,000 French under Grouchy from
reinforcing Napoleon. Shaw Kennedy has quite effectively created parameters that prejudice
the view he intends to present and utilised the word ‘science’ to justify his position.
‘Scientific’ constructs were not exploited by all contemporary writers and historians of
military history to present their own nation as militarily pre-eminent. Charles Chesney, a
colonel and official military historian, aptly observed in his Waterloo Lectures,
‘succeeding authors think they are doing their country service by shutting their
eyes to the truth, and following blindly the narratives of their own party, thus
accepting for history a purely onesided version of events. By and by the
stereotyped statement is treated as fact, its accuracy hotly defended, records
diligently searched in as far as they are likely to confirm it. This process,
continued on either side, multiplies contradiction, until essayists moralise over
the falsity of history, forgetful that in all disputes truth can only be sifted out by
comparing evidence, and that it is the special duty of the judge to correct that
partiality of witnesses which obscures but does not change the nature of the facts.’75
This is an astute observation and Chesney constructs, arguably, the most objective history of
Waterloo to come out of Britain in the nineteenth-century.
their units operated in reserve for much of the day. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the Netherlands
casualties, with one division acting in reserve for much of the day, and then only one of its brigades coming into
action late in the day. As a result, this formation sustained relatively light casualties. The removal of these
troops from the list increases the percentage of Netherlands casualties significantly.
74
Shaw Kennedy, Notes on the Battle of Waterloo, pp.13-14.
75
Charles C. Chesney, Waterloo Lectures: A Study of the Campaign of 1815, 2006 (orig. 1868), pp.2-3.
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Chesney’s Waterloo Lectures proves more adept at integrating source material from all the
national contingents. However, he does still tend to favour British sources. This reflects both
his acquisition of more British sources and that, except for a couple of Prussian memoirs, his
primary source material all came from British veterans. As a result, he accepts claims from
these sources because, as he often argues, there is more material supporting them. It is not
clear whether he realised that much of the non-British secondary sources he uses were
constructed from the memories or battle reports from participants. Either way, it must be
remembered that it was far more difficult to obtain large amounts of material in the
nineteenth-century. Ultimately, his biggest mistake appears in the introduction when he
undermines his objective to not accept ‘a purely onesided version of events’. In it he declares
Hooper’s work as ‘one of the best single volumes on this campaign existing in any
language’,76 and Shaw Kennedy as being in possession of ‘the faculty of judicial criticism,
which makes history valuable’.77 As already evidenced this is not the case and by saying
otherwise, Chesney has endorsed works that project national aggrandisement and use
‘science’ to justify their claims, something he is opposed too.
By the start of the 1870s the ‘pleasure culture of war’ had become well-established in Britain
as had the nationalistic memory of Waterloo. This period also marked a fundamental shift in
European power politics, as the disparate German states finally formed a complete German
state with Prussia as the main power. The formation followed the end of the highly
successful, though costly, campaign against the French which saw the removal of Napoleon
III.78 The Austrians were left out of the new German state, but Central Europe enjoyed an
unprecedented position of power. Initially, this did not concern the British because the new
German state could offset Russian ambitions, as France has previously done.79 This would
quickly change as German ambitions desired international expansion, which led to them
increasingly impinging upon British colonial interests.
The Anglo-German relationship deteriorated over the last part of the nineteenth and early
twentieth-centuries as Britain tried to maintain global pre-eminence from the rising power of
Germany. The competition for colonies intensified as both competed for islands in the Pacific
76
Chesney, Waterloo Lectures, p.24.
Chesney, Waterloo Lectures, p.22.
78
There are comparatively few works in English on the Franco-Prussian conflict. One of the best is Geoffrey
Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871, Cambridge, 2003.
79
William Mulligan, “Britain, the ‘German Revolution’, and the fall of France, 1870/1”, Historical Research
84, 2011, pp.312, 325-326.
77
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British National Identity and the Battle for Waterloo
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and became involved with the rest of Europe in the ‘Scramble for Africa’. This dynamic was
more complicated than a simple decline in relations that eventually led to war. Both nations
feared the implications of an alliance between France and Russia, leaving many conservatives
in the 1890s to regard Germany as a ‘natural ally’.80 In this period France and Russia were as
equally likely as Germany to appear as the national antagonist in the fictional military
literature that was being popularly written and read in Britain.81 But both nations’ desire for
pre-eminence ensured that this potential partnership would never develop.
From a military standpoint, a major area of contention centred over Germany’s naval
expansion. This problem escalated following the ascension of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Germany
maintained a large conscript army, like the other Continental European powers, and this force
continued to grow as France and Russia became friendlier, which, in a dangerous and obvious
circle, was precipitated by rising German power. But the expansion of the navy was seen as
both a direct challenge and a threat to Britain, as well as unnecessary, due to their already
powerful army.82 This triggered a naval arms race between the two countries, leading to the
development and production of dreadnoughts and even aircraft carriers. Furthermore, Britain
was left humiliated by the difficulty it had in overwhelming the Boers in the turn of the
century conflict in South Africa. This European enemy, fighting with revolutionary
‘kommando’ tactics, forced Britain to deploy half a million men (including colonial and
mercenary formations) to deal with an enemy force that never exceeded 30,000 men.83
Humiliation was further exacerbated by concern over the substantial number of British
volunteers who failed to pass the then primitive medical requirements. This threatened the
capacity of the nation to deal with any future, more direct, threat, whether it came from
France, Russia or the growing power of Germany.84
British governments recognised the need to improve the living standards of the working class
to create a powerful enough force to stop its potential future opponents, though it would take
time for this to come into effect. The government also decided that it needed to become
80
Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism 1860-1914, London, 1982, p.211.
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.97
82
One work that explores the relationship between these countries and their navies, as well as the growing
competition of the two include Jan Rüger, The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire,
Cambridge, 2007; This competition is also a component of Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German
Antagonism.
83
Steve Attridge, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture: Civil and Military Worlds,
Basingstoke, 2003, p.45.
84
Paris, Warrior Nation, p.85.
81
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Kyle van Beurden
involved in the alliance system that characterised international relations in Europe at this
time. In the late nineteenth-century Britain had persevered with their policy of ‘splendid
isolation’, but the new century, the continuing rise of Germany and the problems encountered
in South Africa had encouraged a change in policy.85 The first alliance was actually signed
with Japan in 1902 and in 1904 a non-binding agreement, or Entente, was signed with France.
In 1907, this was expanded to include Russia, leading to the creation of the Triple Entente.
The Entente was non-binding and did not precipitate British involvement in 1914, their
reasoning and motivation being far more complex, but its signing showed a shift in Britain’s
view on international relations.
The other major development, which was not government-orchestrated, was the increase in
fictional literature depicting heroic British victories in future conflicts. Steve Attridge argues
that this was driven by the desire to escape from the realities of the situation, specifically the
military crisis in the first year of the Boer War.86 But the reasoning for this development is
more complicated because it occurred over such an extended period. As I. F. Clarke notes,
the first real example of this new genre was George Tomkyns Chesney’s 1871 work The
Battle of Dorking. In this fictional futuristic work, the new state of Germany was the enemy,
and the British were actually defeated. Chesney was motivated by the desire to institute
reform for the British army, but fictional military literature, of a more optimistic nature,
developed as a result.87 In its wake an entire industry centred on war developed, one that
particularly targeted the male youth of the country, an obvious choice given that they would
be the potential future recruits.88 The glorification of British arms and heroic national war in
fictional literature was also carried over into actual history, a common theme in Europe. As
Hobsbawm argues, the invention of traditions occurred with a ‘particular assiduity in the
85
This development is the focus of John Charmley, Splendid Isolation? Britain and the Balance of Power 18741914, London, 1999 although Charmley is highly critical of British diplomacy and the Foreign Office, arguing
that they shifted away from standard British policy of not getting involved in European conflict without the
need to do so.
86
Attridge, Nationalism, Imperialism and Identity in Late Victorian Culture, p.45. This poor performance was
not lost on Britain’s potential enemies. French fictional literature appeared that depicted the British army as
militarily incompetent, based on their performance in the Boer War. I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War 17631984, London, 1966, p.126.
87
Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, pp.30-33. Paris, Warrior Nation, pp.86-87.
88
Literature was not the only means by which British boys were inculcated prior to the creation of clubs like
Scouts. The industry around toy soldiers had grown significantly in Britain since the mid-nineteenth century.
Kenneth D. Brown, “Modelling for War? Toy Soldiers in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, Journal of
Social History 24, 1990.
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thirty or forty years before the first world war’.89 But in relation to Waterloo, it went beyond
simply writing false history.
In 1891, Herbert Siborne, the son of William, published approximately half of the letters his
father had received from veterans of the Waterloo campaign.90 Despite his father receiving
numerous letters from officers of the German states none were included in the release. This
created an even more prejudicial view of the campaign. Glover quite rightly notes at ‘the time
in which he was publishing, Victorian Britain demanded to read of a British victory and
nothing else’.91 But the implications are more significant. The British public was not just
reading of a victory, writers and historians were actually disclosing or hiding evidence to
support a nationalist interpretation. Scientific history was being used to strengthen a myth
crucial to ideas about national character.
The Waterloo myth was also vigorously defended when it was challenged, irrespective of
whether that challenge was launched domestically or abroad. In May 1900, Briton Demetrius
Boulger published an article, The Belgians at Waterloo, in the British periodical The
Contemporary Review.92 For this article, Boulger was granted access to numerous after-battle
reports from the high-ranking officers of the Netherlands army of 1815, allowing him to
challenge the by now well-accepted British narrative. The reasoning for constructing a new
history was not purely driven by a desire for revisionism. Boulger was actually in the employ
of King Leopold II of Belgium, who was attempting to reverse the negative press he was
receiving in Britain for his brutal regime in the Congo.93 Despite questionable motives, his
work had merit, precipitating a conversation on the British memory of the conflict. Boulger
was followed by countryman Sir Herbert Maxwell, whose work provided further vindication
of the performance of the Dutch-Belgian troops. Maxwell also made the pertinent point,
quoted in the introduction, regarding the fact that the vast majority of the British population
saw Waterloo as a ‘triumph of British strategy and valour’ and the foreign contingents, if
89
Eric Hobsbawm, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914”, in Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger,
eds., The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge, 2012, p.263.
90
There were omissions of parts of the letters from the British veterans, but no material was removed on the
grounds that it was at variance with the original Siborne’s history, as has been claimed. Glover, Letters from the
Battle of Waterloo, p.20.
91
Glover, Letters from the Battle of Waterloo, p.20. Glover also points out that it is possible that Herbert
Siborne did not read German adequately.
92
Demetrius C. Boulger, “The Belgians at Waterloo”, The Contemporary review, 1866-1900 77, 1900.
93
Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, London,
2012, p.239.
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mentioned, were either ‘merely subsidiary’ or played ‘an injurious part’.94 While both men
disagreed with one another over minor points, both were willing to challenge a consolidated
historical judgement about the performance of one of Britain’s allies.
These articles did not go unnoticed and earned a stinging rebuke from one of the premier
military historians of the period, Sir Charles Oman. Oman, who would later compile a multivolume history of the Peninsular War, was mystified at the claims that both Boulger, and
even more so, Maxwell, were suddenly making. Oman, citing as he says, the ‘best eyewitnesses of 1815, and of the official statistics vouchsafed by the Dutch-Belgian
Government’, rejected all Maxwell’s conclusions.95 Oman interpreted, or some might say
exploited, the Dutch-Belgian sources which differentiated between casualties and missing,
concluding that the high figures that some Netherlander units had in missing men resulted
from cowards abandoning the battlefield.96 Boulger published an expanded thesis of his
article in response to Oman, including translations of after-battle reports from various
Netherlander officers. His work highlighted the variety of other reasons that would result in
men being declared missing from units such as prisoners and cavalrymen who had had their
horse shot from under them. He further noted the statistics of various British formations who
highly distinguished themselves at the battle. The 2nd Life Guards, an English Regiment,
recorded 17 dead, 41 wounded and 97 missing.97 However, in light of the times and the
strength of the narrative in British collective memory, little impact was made by these
revisionist works.
While the Dutch and Belgian case was being argued by Britons and neither nation threatened
Britain militarily, the Kaiser offended many when speaking of Waterloo in 1903. At a
celebration in Hanover marking the 100th anniversary of the formation of the King’s German
Legion, the Kaiser remarked ‘the Germans had rescued the British army from destruction at
Waterloo’.98 As has been seen throughout the last two chapters, this was a contentious issue
94
Herbert Maxwell, “Our Allies at Waterloo”, The Nineteenth Century and after: a monthly review 48, 1900,
pp.407-408.
95
Charles Oman, “The Dutch-Belgians at Waterloo”, The Nineteenth Century and after: a monthly review 48,
1900, p.629.
96
Oman, “The Dutch-Belgians at Waterloo”, p.632.
97
Demetrius C. Boulger, The Belgians at Waterloo: (With Translations of the Reports the Dutch and Belgian
Commanders), Uckfield, 2005 (orig. 1900), p.28.
98
Rowland Blennerhassett, “The Germans at Waterloo and Anglo-German Relations”, The Nineteenth Century
and after: a monthly review 55, 1904. Both this article and one released a month later J. Holland Rose, “The
87
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between the two nations, and little had changed. The comment earned the ire of the British
public and press and a number of articles were published in periodicals debating the veracity
of the comment. Naturally, they were contemptuous of the Kaiser’s comment with one
British writer even offering a counterview theorising that while ‘it is untrue to say the
Prussians saved the English army from destruction, it is nothing but the most sober truth to
affirm that the steadfastness of the British infantry in resisting the attacks of Napoleon saved
the Prussian army from annihilation’.99 This is the problem with the entire premise of
according responsibility for victory to one ally over another, one can only mitigate risk in war
not remove it. During the 1815 campaign both allied armies were forced to take chances and
risk their own destruction to destroy Napoleon. However for both nations, rational
observations were superseded by the needs of national aggrandisement.
The advent of war correspondents during the Crimean War in the middle of the nineteenthcentury was a critical component in the development of a ‘pleasure culture of war’ in Britain.
The manner in which they projected the campaign, and those that followed, allowed Britons
to view their conflicts as both entertaining, as well as necessary either to stop tyranny or
spread the benefits of ‘civilisation’. This ‘pleasure culture’ was not a sudden shift but built on
the strong foundation of interest in war that could be traced back to the eighteenth-century. It
was at this time that the memory of Waterloo, as it was constructed by the veterans of the
campaign, achieved greater public acceptance. While writers such as Siborne and Gleig had
proven comfortable with exalting the British army, they were generally reluctant to denigrate
the non-British contingents, with the exception of Siborne’s assaults on the Dutch-Belgians.
But attitudes hardened and the works that were released after the Crimean War and Indian
Mutiny embraced the argument put forward thirty years earlier. These works further utilised
‘scientific’ history, in contrast to its intended assertions, to strengthen pro-British sentiments.
Their broad reach and successes had more significant consequences in that they extended the
‘other’ from France, in which eighteenth-century Britons saw themselves in opposition too
and superior than, to including anything that was not British. As militarism gripped Europe at
the end of the nineteenth-century, in the lead-up to the First World War, these histories were
used to validate ideas about national character and any challenge against them was vigorously
defended. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Waterloo had become a classic British military
Prussian Co-Operation at Waterloo”, The Monthly Review 14, 1904 attest to the latent anger in Britain over the
claims to laurels for a battle that had taken place nearly ninety years earlier.
99
Blennerhassett, “The Germans at Waterloo”, p.191.
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Kyle van Beurden
epic in the public memory and Britain saw itself as both different and superior to its European
rivals.
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Conclusion
The militarism of British national identity that existed in the latter half of the nineteenthcentury has been seen by historians as a separate phenomenon to that which was formed in
the crucible of war in the ‘long-eighteenth-century’. This earlier national identity, as
described by Colley, was an artificial construct that was moulded around recurrent war with
an easily discernible ‘other’ in the form of France.1 This is in contrast to the robust militarism
of the late nineteenth-century, which saw Britain establish an identity in opposition to
anything foreign. Michael Paris’ Warrior Nation has shown that this militaristic national
identity has an earlier history, tracing this influence back to the mid-nineteenth-century, when
a ‘pleasure culture of war’ was fashioned in Britain.2 But these constructs are still seen as
detached from one another, with the post-Waterloo period up to the mid-century Crimean
War being seen as a period marked by war-weariness and a lack of enthusiasm for conflict.
Rather, this period is viewed as a time of domestic upheaval in which Britons, buoyed by
wartime demands in the conflict against Napoleon, pushed for changes to the political system
to allow greater access to the vote.
The publication of Neil Ramsey’s work on military memoirs assists, somewhat inadvertently,
in linking the national identity of the two periods.3 His thesis shows that by 1823, only eight
years after Waterloo, the military memoir established itself as a successful literary genre in
Britain. Furthermore, they show that the public, rather than embracing the melancholy of the
majority of veterans’ memoirs, proved far more receptive to those that, in essence, glorified
their wartime experiences. John Kincaid achieved even more success with his projection of a
‘cheerful stoicism’ that saw him discuss his experiences in an almost light-heartened manner,
even if they were exceedingly graphic.4 The success of these works demonstrates that for a
war-weary population, the public had a continuing interest in war, and more specifically its
glorification, a theme that would be consistent with views later in the century. There was
certainly an element of war-weariness among the population, particularly those that endured
hardships such as the many veterans who wrote melancholic memoirs. But for the majority of
1
Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, 3rd ed., New Haven, 2009.
Michael Paris, Warrior Nation: Images of War in British Popular Culture, 1850-2000, Trowbridge, 2000.
3
Neil Ramsey, The Military Memoir and Romantic Literary Culture, 1780-1835, Aldershot, 2011.
4
John Kincaid, Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands, from 1809 to
1815, London, 2011 (orig. 1830).
2
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the population, no doubt reflecting the fact that they, as a nation, had been victorious, war
held a grandiose romantic appeal that would only expand over the course of the nineteenthcentury.
Gavin Daly’s work on British soldiers in the Peninsula adds further to this argument because
it illustrates that British soldiers’ identity was markedly different from the population on the
home front.5 France remained the most obvious enemy for the public at home, as they were
the nation that threatened invasion. But identity develops from experience and British troops
in the Peninsula experienced the war from a very different perspective than their civilian
counterparts. While a healthy respect developed between British and French soldiers, this did
not transfer over to the Portuguese and Spanish soldiers, or their civilian populations. The
Spanish and Portuguese were seen as the ‘other’, they were vastly different, far more
different than the French, and that, consequently, made them inferior.
While more Britons served in the Peninsula, and wrote about their experiences, Waterloo
resonated more with the public, as the campaign marked the end of the wars and also saw the
British army involved in the defeat of Napoleon and his removal from power. The prejudice
felt by British soldiers in the Peninsula carried on through to the Waterloo campaign, where
the situation was made worse by the fact that many of their allies had previously served under
Napoleon in the Peninsula against the British. Questions of loyalty were added to perceptions
of inferiority. The memoirs clearly show that many veterans were aggrieved at the allied
contingents for their perceived immaterial contributions, along with their claiming of credit
for the success of the campaign. Earlier memoirs proved comfortable simply relating
episodes of the campaign with casual denigration of the non-British formations, as if it was
well accepted by the public. But the level of vitriol escalated as time progressed and veterans
took greater care to justify their animosity. This bellicose attitude was strongly endorsed by
the Siborne Letters, the letters procured by William Siborne in order to create his model,
which provide overwhelming evidence that these opinions were not isolated but rampant
amongst the British servicemen in that campaign.
Nonetheless, there was not an immediate transference of this animosity from the veterans to
the general public. There is a general perception amongst Waterloo historians and writers that
5
Gavin Daly, The British Soldier in the Peninsular War: Encounters with Spain and Portugal, 1808-1814,
Basingstoke, 2013, pp.14-15
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the British public, by the late 1830s, had embraced the nationalistic history of Waterloo, but
this conclusion seems to be based on perception rather than evidence. While the public
enjoyed the memoirs and engaged with the concept of ‘cheerful stoicism’, available evidence
suggests that for most Britons there was a willingness to acknowledge the non-British
contingents, particularly the Prussians. Undoubtedly some of this misplaced perception
comes from the financial failure of William Siborne. His model made insufficient profit to
repay his outlays and he became convinced this was a result of his model being insufficiently
British, due to its acknowledgement of the Prussians. As a result, Siborne scaled down the
significance of the Prussians to accentuate the British.6 Despite his efforts, he was still no
more financially successful, while his competitors enjoyed great success.
The great divide between the public’s reception towards Siborne and his literary competitors,
particularly George Gleig, has led most to assume Siborne’s lack of appeal stemmed from his
more balanced portrait of events.7 But an objective analysis of Siborne and Gleig shows that
Siborne is more preoccupied with themes of Britishness than Gleig. Siborne’s glorification of
British arms is more evocative and less subtle than Gleig, and Siborne was responsible for the
downgrading of the Prussian contribution and the dismissal of the Dutch-Belgians. Gleig has
taken on board these points but has not argued them as vociferously as Siborne. Gleig was
also not the only one who enjoyed success in this period with his history of the campaign.
Waterloo veteran Edward Cotton was also immensely popular, and his work was more
aggressive with themes of Britishness than either work.8 Ultimately, it was the exceedingly
complexity and depth of Siborne’s work, rather than the level of Britishness, that inhibited his
success. Even when he released a mass-marketable work, it was 600 pages long and cost 20s,
making it uncompetitive with other works at the time.
By the middle of the century Waterloo was a popular reference point for British national
identity, demonstrating that war continued to be a popular theme in its development after
1815. However, the success or failure of a number of works had shown that ‘foreigner
bashing’ was not a prerequisite for success. Certainly the veterans of Waterloo, along with
their brethren in the Peninsula, had conceptualised their allies as the ‘other’ and,
consequently, inferior, but this had not been overwhelming embraced by the population. The
6
William Siborne, The Waterloo Campaign, 1815, 4th ed., London, 1904.
G. R. Gleig, Story of the Battle of Waterloo, London, 1847.
8
Edward Cotton, A Voice from Waterloo: The Personal Experiences of a British Cavalryman who became a
Battlefield Guide and Authority on the Campaign of 1815, London, 2007 (orig. 1849).
7
92
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catalyst for a shift in the population identifying themselves in opposition to all, not just the
French, can be seen with the outbreak of the Crimean War. This conflict, followed so soon
after by the Indian Mutiny, and being the first British conflict reported by war
correspondents, helped to solidify the positive relationship that had developed between the
public and the army, dating back to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. While
correspondents were prompt in criticising the army’s organisational and command structure,
they were also swift in prodigiously recognising the qualities and performance of the ordinary
fighting soldier. The Indian Mutiny added the additional element of civilising the ‘other’ and
from that point on British conflicts were almost uniformly portrayed either as attempting to
stop tyranny and oppression, or civilise the less developed for their own benefit.
The prejudice evident in the memoirs was not the reason that the ‘other’ in Britain shifted
from the French to essentially anything foreign. But once this viewpoint began to develop in
the country the memoirs were used to re-present the Waterloo narrative. These changing
attitudes of the British public coincided with the development of ‘scientific’ constructs for the
study of history in Germany. Theoretically designed to improve the overall quality and
accuracy of the discipline, the methods were readily adopted internationally. But in the era of
nationalism, writers and historians, as Stefan Berger has shown, utilised them to argue their
own nation’s cause, whatever that might be.9 For Britons in this period, there was a desire to
project martial pre-eminence and one of the most effective ways to do this was to reference
the success of past conflicts. This was made easier in new Waterloo histories because it
simply meant recycling the case put forward in memoirs and William Siborne’s history.
Historiographical problems with these works were poorly understood by contemporaries,
allowing veterans’ prejudices to influence public memory. The manner in which the nonBritish contingents were portrayed was increasingly dismissive and denigrating, and the
memory of Waterloo shifted from an allied victory to that of a British victory over an old
enemy. Animosities leading up to the First World War only accentuated this development.
Attempts to redress the narrative were vigorously challenged by historians at the time until
the nationalistic narrative became established fact in the minds of both the British public and
the British historians of Waterloo.
9
Stefan Berger, “Writing the Past in the Present: An Anglo-Saxon Perspective”, Diogenes 58, 2011.
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