Tourists Meet Their Waterloo Historic Defeat Of Napoleon Re-Enacted On Belgium Fields

Napoleon lost - again. Only, this time, tens of thousands of tourists were watching.

The French Emperor’s army faced off against an alliance of British, Prussian and Dutch forces Sunday in a reenactment of the battle 180 years ago that changed history and gave Napoleon’s loss proverbial proportions.

When the clouds of gunpowder finally lifted on June 18, 1815, after a fierce, day-long battle, 12,000 soldiers were killed, some 40,000 were injured and 10,000 horses lay dead in the bloodied, soggy plains.

“It was absolute hell. Thousands of wounded remained stuck in the mud for days,” said historian Luc De Vos, author of a book on this celebrated battle.

The French troops shouted “Sauve-qui peut” (“Every man for himself”) when they fled the battlefield in panic.

France would never dominate Europe again.

Both sides were so ravaged that a victorious Duke of Wellington wrote, “Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.”

Sunday’s scenes were, however, less apocalyptic.

“Quite splendid,” said Timothy Pickles, playing the role of the Duke of Wellington. “At least nobody tried to change history.”

Napoleon was in a sorry mood Sunday.

After reviewing his troops, the actor playing the emperor felt sick and was unable to take part in the full reenactment.

Some 3,000 volunteers, representing the 150,000 soldiers who fought here, came from France, Britain, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, the Czech Republic and Belgium.

Dressed in period uniforms, they reenacted key scenes during the morning hours.

An exhausted Napoleon opened the attack in late morning, determined to have a good night’s sleep that night in Brussels, beyond allied lines. It was not to be.

On Sunday, some 60,000 tourists in grandstands saw how the French cavalry charges were blunted by the British infantry, with the staccato noise of muskets often overwhelmed by the booming blasts of cannon fire.

When Prussian reinforcements arrived to fight the French, Napoleon made a last, desperate ploy, sending out his trusted Imperial Guards to turn the tide.

They were mowed down in a hail of gunfire.

For almost two decades, Napoleon Bonaparte had set Europe afire with battles and conquests, creating a huge empire which started unraveling when he tried to challenge the Czar of Russia.

After a disastrous Russian campaign, he was sent into exile to the Italian island of Elba in 1814, only to return and make another attempt to restore his empire one year later.

He did not get beyond Waterloo.

“At stake was, no more and no less, who will control Europe,” said De Vos.

Napoleon was banished, to finish his life on St. Helena’s island off West Africa. The green fields of Waterloo, now synonymous with disastrous defeat, stand little changed.