Waterloo

Waterloo reconstructs the four-day campaign of June 1815 that ended Napoleon’s return to power. Tim Clayton follows the French advance into Belgium, the battles and manoeuvres involving the armies of Napoleon, Wellington and Blücher, and the confusion that culminated at Waterloo on 18 June. Newly available first-person accounts from soldiers of several armies allow him to reassess episodes that older histories often described primarily through later British testimony.

The book presents the campaign as a sequence of uncertain decisions, accidents, delays and acts of endurance rather than an inevitable Allied victory. Clayton gives substantial attention to the experiences of ordinary soldiers while still examining command choices and battlefield movement. Waterloo therefore becomes both a military reconstruction and a study of how later national and regimental traditions shaped the memory of Napoleon’s final defeat.