The Battle of Waterloo (Hanoverian Monument) - Waterloo, Belgium
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ToRo61
N 50° 40.768 E 004° 24.756
31U E 599800 N 5615132
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815.
Waymark Code: WMP6VM
Location: Brussels, Belgium
Date Posted: 07/11/2015
Views: 7
A French army under the command of Napoleon was defeated by the armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, combined with a Prussian army under the command of Prince Blücher. Two large forces under Wellington and Blücher assembled close to the north-eastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the coalition. Waterloo was the decisive engagement of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. The defeat at Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French, and marked the end of his Hundred Days return from exile.
Waterloo cost Wellington around 15,000 dead or wounded and Blücher some 7,000 (810 of which were suffered by just one unit: the 18th Regiment, which served in Bülow's 15th Brigade, had fought at both Frichermont and Plancenoit, and won 33 Iron Crosses). Napoleon's losses were 24,000 to 26,000 killed or wounded and included 6,000 to 7,000 captured with an additional 15,000 deserting subsequent to the battle and over the following days.
In 1820, the Netherlands' King William I ordered the construction of a monument. The Lion Mound (
visit link) , a giant mound, was constructed here using 300,000 cubic metres. Apart from the Lion Mound, there are several other monuments throughout the battlefield.
About Hanoverian Monument also King's German Legion (KGL)
Even if they were "Germans", the members of the KGL surely belonged to the British Army, that's why we have included this monument here. It is located just opposite Gordon's monument, where there was probably the sandpit so heroically defended by the 95th Rifles. This monument in the shape of a truncated pyramid and surrounded by an iron fence was erected in 1818 by former KGL officers to the memory of colonel Christian baron von Ompteda, commanding the 5th Line Battalion, Colonel Karl du Plat, commanding the 4th Line Battalion and the 36 other officers of the King's German Legion killed of fatally wounded on the 18th June 1815.
Many sources give this place as the sandpit where so many corpses were buried (some say 4.000). Since this monument was erected in 1818, these corpses were probably not dug up by the companies -among these a Bavarian one- who "visited" most Napoleonic battlefield to dig up the bones of the victims of these battles and crush the to sell them in Great-Britain as fertiliser for the agriculture. This disgusting practice emptied a great deal of the common graves of the battlefields of the period.