Commemorating the 200 th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo: 18 th
June, 1815.
Tom Gardner
“What pen can describe the scene? Horses’ hooves sinking in men’s breasts, breaking bones
and pressing out their bowels. Riders’ swords streaming in blood, waving over their heads and
descending in deadly vengeance…It was a scene of vehement destruction, yells and shrieks,
wounds and death; and the bodies of the dead served as pillows for the dying”.
The words of Sergeant Anton of the 42 nd describing the charge of the Scots Greys .
The famous charge of the Scots Greys heavy cavalry in one of the first stages of the battle which broke the backs of the first advancing French columns but were almost obliterated by a counter-charge from enemy French lancers.
In a sodden, water-logged valley, pretty and yet unremarkable in almost every
respect, a battle was fought the significance of which has resonated across Europe to this very day. Waterloo. The slaughter wrought on 18 th June 1815 was brutal.
Over 55,000 men had died or been wounded in an area of land just over 3 miles
squared and the sheer concentration of the carnage is one of the features that make
Waterloo such a remarkably bloody battle.
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