Category: Battle of Waterloo

Waterloo Skeleton Found

As the 200th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo approaches, a stunning discovery was made near the site of the Lion’s Mound – the intact skeleton of a British soldier. Crews were working on constructing a parking lot when a piece of equipment uncovered the remains, unfortunately destroying the skull in the process. However, other artifacts were uncovered along with the bones: a spoon, coins and the musket ball believed to have caused his death still between his ribs. Historians believe he is from one of the Duke of Wellington’s British regiments, and described the discovery of the skeleton as one of the best ever war finds.

Yves Van Der Cruysen, director of the Battle of Waterloo Association, said: ‘This is a major discovery. “It is the first time for over a hundred years that a complete corpse of a combatant from the time has been discovered in such a good state.”

“He could have been buried by a comrade or simply missed when the bodies were gathered up after the battle for burial. We hope to find evidence of his regiment from the spoon and the leather epaulets that were found with the corpse. And we know the names of the combatants thanks to military records of the time. When the soldier’s regiment can be determined we should be able to find his identity.”

Thanks to our loyal reader June Sproat for the heads up on this story!

Lady Butler, Battle Painter – A Surprise Discovery

Victoria here, working on a talk on our trip to Belgium last year (for the 195th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo) on a very rainy weekend, June 18-20, 2010.  Thousands of reenactors complete with regalia, horses, tents and camp followers were on display for thousands of tourists and observers, just like Kristine and her daughter Brooke, my husband Ed and me. We were all shivering as we tramped around the muddy fields, much like those soldiers would have done 195 years ago.
Turner, Waterloo, Tate Britain
I am presenting a talk on Waterloo: The Battle and the 195th Anniversary at a meeting of The Beau Monde chapter of the Romance Writers of America in New York City on June 28, 2011.  In the process of putting together my power point presentation, I came across many paintings of the events leading up to, during and following the battle.  A few of them might have been done, as was Turner’s, within days or weeks.  But most of the paintings were done later in the 19th century, feeding a British taste for celebrating the great moments of the Empire’s development.

The Roll Call, purchased by Queen Victoria, The Royal Collection (portrayuing scene in the Crimean War)

Elizabeth Thompson, later Lady Butler (1846-1933), was born in Switzerland to English parents.  She showed early talent for drawing and painting. She was able to study in Italy, and in 1866, entered the Female School of Art in Kensington, London. Eventually in 1873, one of her paintings was exhibited at the Royal Academy, the epitome of achievement for British painters.  She went on to further success.

In 1877, she married General Sir William Butler, of Tipperary, and moved with him to many foreign posts having six children along the way. Upon his retirement, they moved to his estate in Ireland.  He was an Irish patriot, which did not endear him to the London establishment. Some of his disapproval might have affected Lady Butler, though she continued to paint all her life.

One of her most famous paintings, “Scotland Forever!” shows the Union Brigade, the Inniskillen Scots Greys, at the Battle of Waterloo.  It is widely reproduced and beloved of many.
The 28th Regiment at the Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815, is in Melbourne, Australia, at the National Gallery of Victoria. It was painted in 1875, and drawn from the accounts of Captain William Siborne.  It shows  the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiment of Foot, on June 16, 1815, a battle leading up to Waterloo.

The Defense of Rorke’s Drift as commissioned by Queen Victoria and hangs in the Royal Collection.
It portrays a battle during the Zulu War in 1879.

Lady Butler was unusual among the painters of war scenes, most of whom were working long after the battles were over from written accounts. Obviously, she was a woman and most of the others were men.  Some observers also point out that she seemed to have more sympathy with the plight of the individual participants in the battles.  I do not have a broad enough knowledge of her work to endorse this view, but it seems to ring true.
Butler herself, in her autobiography, wrote: “I never painted for the glory of war, but to portray its pathos and heroism.”



The Story Behind True Soldier Gentlemen by the Author, Guest Blogger Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy

Writing historical novels is a long cherished dream. I love history, and if the Romans have always had a special place in my heart, I find plenty of other periods almost as fascinating. For all that widespread interest, the Napoleonic and Regency has long been a particular obsession.

It probably began as a boy, watching the film Waterloo on television, and then when Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle – the first of the series – was released. I devoured this and all its successors, along with C.S. Forester and his many imitators, as well as Patrick O’Brian who gave such a unique take on the genre. The fiction quickly led me to the real history of those times, and especially the wealth of letters and memoirs left by the men and women of those years of Regency in England and Revolution and Empire in France. So many of the real events and characters were stranger and more dramatic than anything a novelist would dare to invent, and there is so much human detail of everyday life during peacetime and on campaign. It was such a remarkable age, gaudy and inspiring, filled with larger the life characters and epic moments.

There is a lot of naval fiction out there, and new series seem to begin almost every year. Oddly, in spite – or perhaps because of – the success of Sharpe in books and on TV, there are very few adventure stories about Wellington’s men. Allan Mallinson’s series about the Light Dragoon Matthew Hervey begins in 1814, and apart from a few flashbacks, deals mainly with the world after Waterloo. Cornwell has on the whole moved on to other periods.



Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy

 I wanted to go back to the world of the redcoats, and True Soldier Gentlemen is the result. The big events and the major figures are all real. My main characters are invented, but I wanted them to act and speak in ways in keeping with the period, so that they could have existed. For most people, Regency England is inseparably linked with Austen’s novels and their frequent dramatisation on the large and small screens. The aim was to capture something of their feel. (Reading them at school had anyway always made me wonder what her various military and naval characters got up to as the war with France raged off-stage. Austen can seem desperately slow-paced to a boy, and I did not really take a delight in her work until I returned to the books as an adult).

Army officers were in many ways the male counterparts of Austen’s heroines. The majority of army officers were not rich or well connected, and their claim to genteel status resting on precarious grounds. Few could afford to purchase promotion, and they had little control over postings. A man’s career might stagnate in Britain, or be ended abruptly by disease if the battalion was sent to the West Indies, which consumed units at quite staggering rates. War service brought more opportunities for advancement at the risk of death and dreadful injury – and indeed increased chance of succumbing to disease. All the time a man’s conduct was regulated by strict rules. No gentleman could strike another, unless in a formal duel. (Richard Sharpe is a wonderful creation, but no one could have got away with behaving like that. Knowing that has never made me take any less delight in the stories, and I wish I could write half as well as Cornwell).

Like wider Regency Society, most army officers drank heavily and many gambled freely. There were plenty of opportunities to disgrace themselves and be forced to resign. There were also constant frustrations as better connected or wealthier men advanced their careers far faster than was possible for most. Officers who chose to marry, or who had to assist their parents and siblings struggled even harder to cope, but many somehow managed to do this.

I could not resist including Wickham in the story. At the end of Pride and Prejudice Austen has Darcy buy him a commission in the regular army and help his future career, and this gave me the opportunity. Using the excuse that she is vague about the date, I decided to accept the view that ‘the Peace’ she mentions was the short-lived Peace of Amiens. Wickham is not really interesting enough to be the centre of the stories in the style of George MacDonald Fraser’s marvellous Flashman novels. Instead he is there, charming and untrustworthy, doing his best to seduce pretty women and avoid paying his debts, while other characters do most of the work. Yet his connection to Darcy will allow him to rise, as long as his misbehaviour does not become too blatant. He also helps to add to the humour of the story. Over-serious adventure stories tend to be tiresome. Apart from that, all the soldiers I have known or read about always laugh a lot, and the aim was to capture something of that spirit.

The real heroes of the stories will be a group of young men without influence. One of them, Williams, serves in my fictional 106th Regiment as a Gentleman Volunteer. This was a peculiar status, where a man lived with the officers, but served in the ranks, wearing the uniform and doing the duty of an ordinary soldier. They hoped to be commissioned when disease or battle created vacancies. At the height of the Peninsula War, about one in twenty of Wellington’s officers were commissioned in this way. This is the sort of strange status that is fun to explore, and not really that well known about these days.

True Soldier Gentlemen has always been intended as the start of a series, and I hope readers will have patience with a book that takes a while to introduce a large cast of characters. The idea is to take them through the years up to Waterloo. Although I have plenty of ideas, and a fair notion of where they will go, I am not yet sure what will happen to them all. I have also tried to give something of the sedate feel of Austen’s world, so that the peace and formality of England contrasts all the more with the extreme savagery of the Peninsula War.

It is an adventure, hopefully an enjoyable yarn, and has no pretensions whatsoever to being literature. Ultimately, it is the sort of novel I enjoy reading.

Today is the official release date for True Soldier Gentlemen in the UK and at present there no US edition planned. You can order
here through Amazon UK.  The sequel, Beat the Drums Slowly, is due out in August of this year.
You can visit the author’s website here.

The Battle of Waterloo: The Video – Part Three

At the end of the Battle, Michael, a fellow tour mate, helped me down off the Mound and we proceeded to the pub mentioned earlier for a well earned coffee and fortifying brandy. On our way there, we were fortunate enough to get up close to the battlefield and witness some dashing derring-do by men on horseback, which I’ve edited in to the video below.  What the woman beside me was cackling about, I’ve no idea. Anyway, this is what I saw:

The Battle of Waterloo: The Video – Part Two

Though the rain continued to pour down and a Frenchman on a loudspeaker insisted on narrating the entire bloody Battle (and although people persisted in standing up in front of me and blocking the view), I remained in position on the confounded Mound and stayed to finish filming the action. Actually, it was at about this point that my daughter left me to the elements and hightailed it down to the nearby pub. However, in my guise as your intrepid reporter, I manned my post, aimed my camera . . . and this is what I saw: