Download The Greatest Battles in History: The Battle of Waterloo AudioBook Free
"Trust me, little or nothing except a challenge lost can be half so melancholy as a challenge gained." - Duke of Wellington, at Waterloo It is later in the evening of 18th June, 1815. The picture is a training inn on the highway between Charleroi and Brussels in what is now Belgium. For 100 back yards either side of the street men are strewn, inactive or dying. They are Napoleon's top notch Imperial Guard, three battalions which had retreated into the inn by the end of the challenge. With the rest of the Armee du Nord streaming past him, Napoleon got taken personal order. Yet before long even these grizzled veterans got became a member of the rout. Now he too has remaining the field, fated to mind for Paris, captivity, exile and an early on death. Night has fallen on one of the continent's most cataclysmic battles. At the inn, the two exhausted but victorious allied commanders meet for the first time that day. Their close co-operation has made certain the final defeat of Napoleonic France and will end 23 years of almost continuous warfare across the continent. Correctly, the inn is called "La Belle Alliance". Waterloo is the most well-known challenge in modern background if not absolutely all of background, and appropriately so. Gathering an military of 100,000 men, Napoleon marched into what is now Belgium, intent on generating his force between your advancing British military under the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian makes under Marshal Blucher. It was the type of daring strategy that only Napoleon could pull off, as he had at places like Jena and Austerlitz. At Waterloo, however, it would end disastrously, as Napoleon's armies were unable to dislodge Wellington and struggling to keep carefully the Prussians from linking up with the English. The challenge would end with the French fighting nearly 60% casualties, the end of Napoleon's reign, and the restructuring of the European map. Simply put, another 200 years of European background can be tracked back to the consequence of the challenge that day in 1815.
