outnumbered in artillery and cavalry regiments 1 ) for long enough so that the
Prussians could arrive and ensure victory was inevitable (please do forgive me
for my Whiggishness). Wellington could at the very best have won a pyrrhic
victory had he not had the delayed support of the Prussians. This is supported by
the Duke of Wellington’s own personal report of proceedings to the Prime
Minister where he acknowledges that the battle was won so decisively due to the
“cordial and timely assistance…[he]…received from [the Prussians]”. This is
because the sheer number of men lost would have been astronomically greater
with the addition of Marshal Grouchy’s 30,000 troops to the battle which had
successfully been tied down by Prussian Lieutenant General von Thielmann
following the previous Prussian defeat at Ligny the day before. In fact, even with belated Prussian support, British losses were devastating 2 .
However, one also must recognise the multinational composition of the British
Army at Waterloo when considering which player should be given most credit
for victory. Just forty-nine per cent of
Wellington’s troops were from the British
Army of which 8 battalions were from the
King’s German Legion, infantry largely
recruited from the German State of Hanover.
Other Hanoverian troops accounted for a
sizeable twenty-one per cent of the infantry
with Dutch, Belgian, Brunswick, and Nassau
troops accounting for the rest. Overall, the
majority of Wellington’s Anglo-Allied army
spoke languages other than English,
Duke of Wellington
1 Napoleon had 90 more pieces of ordnance and roughly 2,350 more cavalrymen. 2 Of the 53,800 men Wellington had available at the start of the battle, over 15,000 ended up as casualties.
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