In Waterloo as it really happened, Steven Den Beste explains why the standard the-Brits-won-the-battle account of Waterloo isn’t quite right:
And what is most remarkable about Waterloo is that for the last 150 years the standard account of the battle was wrong. It was a fabrication. In its essence, it was historical fiction.Few battles in history have inspired more books than Waterloo, and virtually all of them repeated the same basic fable. Historians writing those books relied on earlier books, whose authors in turn used even earlier books.
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It turned out that a book written in the early 1840′s by Captain William Siborne became the definitive history of the campaign. All later accounts were directly or indirectly based on his.Siborne was not a very successful man in life. He was deeply in debt. He had tried to create a massive diorama of the battlefield which would have included some 70,000 figures, for instance, and had engaged in other similar projects.
To keep these projects going, he had borrowed money from many wealthy Brits who had participated in the actual battle. As his financial situation deteriorated, he wrote his history of the battle, and he presented the events of the battle so as best to flatter his benefactors.
Some details:
In the standard story, the Anglo-Dutch force held its position through most of the day, in face of every assault the French could throw against them. Prussian forces appeared in the distance, and a Prussian corps, and then eventually two of them, engaged the French right flank. They were fought off and the flank was held by the French Young Guard, with help from the Middle Guard. With a third Prussian corps finally entering the battle, Napoleon gambled desperately and sent the Old Guard against the British. The Grognards marched resolutely, confidently, and came up the British position. But British units in front of them did not waver. In the end, it was the Old Guard which routed, for the first time ever. And as word spread, the entire rest of the French army broke and ran, in one of the largest routs in military history.
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Siborne didn’t think we needed to know that the Prussian I Corps broke the French line. That was easily the most astounding thing Hamilton-Williams discovered from primary sources that Siborne had omitted.The Old Guard didn’t rout because they saw resolute English in front of them. They routed because they were within minutes of having Prussian cavalry behind them. Steinmetz’s 1st Brigade had opened a massive breach in the French position, and Prussian troops pushed through it and began to fan out to both sides, to roll up the French line.