The weather of the Waterloo campaign 16 to 18 June 1815: did it change the course of history?

摘要

The Battle of Waterloo began at 1120 h (all times given are local) on 18 June 1815 when French artillery opened fire on the mixed British, German and Dutch forces of Wellington's army. At the close of the day, over 47000 soldiers had been killed or wounded, all within a horrifyingly small area of 6.5 km by 3.5 km (Fig. 1). Victory lay with Wellington and his Prussian ally, Field Marshal Gebhard von Blucher, and the outcome set the seal on European history for much of the nineteenth century. Yet Waterloo is not a battle in isolation, it was part of a three-day engagement that ebbed and flowed across the rolling countryside of southern Belgium.