The Historian 2015

deserves the bigger share of the pie at Waterloo. To summarise, the

Germanophiles declare that Marshal Blucher was the kingmaker and that

Wellington was the cannon fodder, while the Anglophiles proclaim that the

Prussians were late to the party and missed their slice of the cake. The

Francophiles then wade into the debate declaring, in a characteristically

conclusive fashion, that the battle was unfair or a conspiracy with some secret

agenda and that Napoleon was the true victor. If you haven’t noticed, I say this

all with slight ‘tongue-in-cheek’. Many sound historians and academics have

debated the topic using perfectly reasonable arguments and as much as I’d like it

to be, this article will not cover the age old question of who should claim the

credit in extensive detail.

A battalion of the King’s German Legion fighting to defend the farmhouse La Haye Saint from the French

Succinctly, I would put it this way: the British Army successfully held its own

against Napoleon’s forces (almost evenly matched in infantry but heavily

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