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Not 1066 again! Should we ditch our obsession with dates?
From 1066 to 1918, our obsession with battles, elections and even voyages of discovery risks distorting a true understanding of the past
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. That, at least, is what the famous rhyme tells us. Memorising such dates is a common experience of being taught history – a cliché superbly lampooned by the witty 1930 book 1066 and All That. “History is not what you thought,” its preface suggested. “It is what you can remember.” Accordingly, as per its subtitle, it offered a “Memorable History of England, Comprising All the Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings and 2 Genuine Dates.” Conspicuously, though, “two out of the four dates originally included were eliminated at the last moment” because “they are not memorable.” Though evidently both humorists, the book’s authors – Punch writers WC Sellar and RJ Yeatman – were making a serious point. History has long been thought to be concerned with preserving the past. The 12th-century historian and Byzantine princess Anna Komnene observed how “time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things and drowns them in the depths of obscurity”. Her solution was the study of history, which “forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time”. This is a powerful idea – one that perhaps moved King Charles I, moments before his execution in January 1649, to utter a last single word to William Juxon, the former bishop of London, instructing him: “Remember.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1066-and-all-that-later-edition-CMYKWeb-Ready-dfb5326.jpg" width="2295" height="1530" alt="The cover of a book, with the title 1066 And All That across the top, and two men standing side by side in green and pink clothing" title="The 1930 book 1066 and All That wittily parodied the conventional approach to teaching history in schools at that time (Image by Amazon)" /> But do our efforts to remember really require us to do something so trivial as memorising dates? More radically, do the historical events these dates mark even matter? The Oxford English Dictionary leaves little room for doubt. Its definition of an event is “something that happens or takes place, especially something significant or noteworthy”. History is often taught as a succinct sequence of such occurrences – those accepted as important moments, neatly knitted together to explain the present. Indeed, for many historians, especially those preoccupied with political, constitutional or military matters, the practice of history itself involves assessing the importance of events by examining their causes, contexts and consequences, considering how they represent change or continuity over time. Yet almost no archaeologist would approach the past in such terms. Nor would many of today’s social, economic or cultural historians. In the 20th century, proponents of the Annales school, named for a scholarly journal, famously considered events relatively insignificant. French historian Fernand Braudel (1902–85) argued that events were simply “surface disturbances, crests of foam that the tides of history carry on their strong backs”. Has the importance given to events been overstated? Should we, therefore, put less emphasis on learning dates? Are there better ways of understanding history? The first issue to consider is just how ‘important’ dates are selected. If we are told that some day or year is more noteworthy than another, who decided this? It would be appealing to be able to say that the established chronology has been objectively selected by balanced, skilled historians, and arrived at through years of scrupulous scholarship and vigorous debate. Yet history is a human thing, written and argued over for all kinds of reasons. Even if such matters are really decided by historians – instead of, say, politicians or poets – we are all equally flawed, prone to error and liable to misinterpret the past through a panoply of biases, conscious or not. Moreover, humans are social animals and have consequently evolved to value convention, tradition and the received wisdom of our ancestors. Most of us simply accept the established chronology. Such a shared history can indeed function as a powerful bond cementing the otherwise disparate identities of social groups. To reinforce this sense of the collective, past incidents thought worthy of remembrance were once upon a time written in stone – literally. The Parian Marble, a fragment of a stele found on the island of Paros and now displayed in the ancient Greek section of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum, is inscribed with a neat chronology of events and their dates from 1582 BC to 299 BC in our terms. These include the fall of Troy, purportedly in 1209–1208 BC, and the rather more reliably dated battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The stele’s text, similar to the earlier ‘Sumerian King List’ housed in the nearby Mesopotamian gallery, fuses myth with history. Such objects represent early examples of a phenomenon that has become increasingly common in the past two centuries or so. With the rise of nation states, backstories have been created for their “imagined communities”, as Anglo-Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson famously dubbed nations in 1983. These stories typically rest on simple historical narratives, ideally sprinkled with a few inspirational national heroes and some key dates. In the UK, a chronology of past rulers plays a major role. Reigns became surrogates for eras, suffused with each ruler’s character. Looking back, for example, we see all those who were alive between 1837 and 1901 as ‘Victorians’. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-815264642cmykWeb-Ready-2ce7a55.jpg" width="3569" height="2379" alt="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" title="A 2017 re-enactment of the 1410 battle of Grunwald. Poles and Lithuanians see this victory over the German Teutonic Order as a turning point in their national stories (Image by Getty Images)" /> Battles are often key parts of national stories. Like Marathon for the ancient Greeks, the battles of Hastings in 1066 and Agincourt in 1415 are considered important to the English. For the British more generally, Trafalgar in 1805 and Waterloo in 1815 are significant. In Serbia, the notoriously bloody battle of Kosovo in 1389, in which forces led by Prince Lazar Hrebeljanović squared up to an invading Ottoman army under the command of Sultan Murad I, has been endlessly mythologised. Lithuanians and Poles still celebrate victory over the German Teutonic Order at the battle of Grunwald in 1410. But few dates and events are as significant as national narratives suggest, battles least of all. Why? Because battles, though certainly rare and dramatic moments, are seldom, if ever, decisive at ending wars so can’t be imbued with much causal importance. Even after Hastings, at which much of the English ruling class was killed, it took William the Conqueror many years to bring England truly under Norman rule, a period notorious for the so-called Harrying of the North (1069–70). Likewise, the greatly celebrated clash at Agincourt (1415), which owes much of its fame to William Shakespeare, saw the mass slaughter of French nobility – but it was not until 1420 that Henry V forced Charles VI to agree to recognise the Plantagenet claim to the French throne under the Treaty of Troyes. Read more | Do you know the correct date of Magna Carta? Here’s why you might be wrong Yet such totemic dates are repeatedly reinforced by that staple of public history and national myth-making: the commemoration of anniversaries. These appear to be good moments to reconsider the past and revive enthusiasm for historical enquiry, but there’s a built-in problem: at least outwardly, nobody involved questions the real significance of the events marked – that would defeat the exercise. It is understandable that, on occasion, people wish to memorialise the loss of their loved ones in wars or other disasters. In general, however, anniversaries reflect current concerns and as such are profoundly unhelpful when it comes to understanding what happened in the past. Admittedly, some moments appear to have been so overwhelmingly important that they demand our attention. For Europe, the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453 seems epochal. In China, the final defeat of the Song dynasty by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1279 has a similar significance. Yet these events represent the culmination of long and complex processes. Seen in this light, the events themselves were largely symbolic. Surely, you say, the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas in 1492 had massive historical consequences. Well, one can quibble over whether his first voyage itself achieved much – likewise his three further transatlantic expeditions in 1493–96, 1498–1500 and 1502–04, for that matter – despite being catastrophic for the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean. Columbus thought – and continued to think for the rest of his life – that he was exploring east Asia. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-599969077cmykWeb-Ready-7d51147.jpg" width="4272" height="2848" alt="A painting of a man dressed in a white shirt with a brown cloak, and a dark hat" title="This 1519 portrait reputedly depicts Christopher Columbus. Did his first transatlantic voyage in 1492 really have such world-changing consequences? (Image by Getty Images)" /> The world indeed changed thereafter as it gradually fused into what, in 1974, the American economic historian and sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein termed the “modern world-system”, but this was not an inevitable consequence of Columbus’s first voyage. After all, Europeans had been in the Americas before. The Norseman Leif Erikson is thought to have reached North America around AD 1000, and a Norse settlement excavated at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada seems to support this. So it is of far greater historical significance that pivotal processes occurred after 1492 – but not after 1000. This is a point made in Alfred W Crosby’s groundbreaking 1972 book The Columbian Exchange, a foundational text of environmental history that charted the seismic global effects of the intercontinental transfer of plants, animals, diseases and cultures. Such developments can be shown to be genuinely transformative to people’s lives, from the food they ate to the diseases that afflicted them. By contrast, traditional chronology often neglects the experiences of a broad spectrum of people. Not everyone was present at battles or on voyages of discovery. Indeed, most humans who have ever lived were peasants who wrested their subsistence from the soil. For these people, few experiences were shared beyond a restricted locality, especially in periods when speeds of travel were slow and communication limited. Nearly all people must have been ignorant of what we now assert, after the fact, were key events. Others would have been simply indifferent. According to the historian De Lamar Jennsen, the Spanish Armada – King Philip II of Spain’s unsuccessful project to invade England in summer 1588 – was the “worst kept secret in Europe”. Yet research suggests that, far from striving to achieve victory for their country in some epic national struggle, during the Armada many English sailors and merchants were more preoccupied with selling food and other supplies to the enemy than with fighting them. Perhaps the key problem is that narrative history gives us a false sense of order, in part by playing to our innate tendency to identify and interpret patterns. It suggests that big events necessarily have big consequences. This completely fails to account for the unpredictable nature of the world through which we move. Seemingly insignificant factors can and do have a disproportionate impact on history. As the proverb has it in James Baldwin’s version: “For want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe the horse was lost; for the want of a horse the battle was lost; for the failure of battle the kingdom was lost; and all for the want of a horseshoe nail.” Conversely, apparently important things can turn out to be irrelevant. To return to Columbus, how are we to frame the decision of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon to support him, having equivocated for years over whether to stump up the cash to fund his voyage west? Some cite the fall of Granada to Christian forces in January 1492 – marking the end of Islamic rule on the Iberian peninsula, which gave the co-ruler monarchs both confidence and the promise of more secure finances – as the key explanation for their change of heart. Assuming this were true, we could equally portray what happened as the result of the Arab Nasrid dynasty, which ruled the Emirate of Granada for more than 250 years, carelessly losing control of their territory. In the latter reading, Wallerstein’s modern world-system was in a sense created “for want of a nail”. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-128261385cmykWeb-Ready-6731e0e.jpg" width="3941" height="2628" alt="A photograph of a courtyard under tall, intricate archways with several columns throughout" title="The Court of the Lions in the Alhambra, Granada. That city’s fall in January 1492 arguably led to the European colonisation of the Americas. But it’s an episode that can be framed in different ways, argues Robert Blackmore (Image by Getty Images)" /> As should be becoming clear, questioning the assumptions that underpin so much conventional narrative history has serious implications. This forces you, for example, to recognise that the lowliest peasant may have been as significant as an emperor or king, and that their relative impact on history was not necessarily proportionate to their immediate influence. “The ruler’s power was rarely effective,” Danish historian Patricia Crone put it, “even within such sphere of competence as he did enjoy.” Braudel hauntingly evoked a “historian who takes a seat in Philip II’s chair and reads his papers” and is transported into “a world of strong passions” but one “unconscious of the deeper realities of history, of the running waters on which our frail barks are tossed like cockleshells”. Yet such is our wish to impose order on a complex world that we have frequently reached for elaborate explanations for erratic ‘nonlinear’ outcomes, among them the capricious will of deities, the movements of celestial bodies, even conspiracy theories. In truth, because our evidence of the past is so incomplete, we are unlikely ever to pinpoint true cause and effect. Despite this, we still tend to look for what Annales school historian Marc Bloch called “the idol of origins”. Countless books claim to trace the roots of anything from states and religions to sports. Even the aforesaid Parian Marble located the birth of agriculture to 1409–08 BC when the goddess Demeter supposedly invented grain crops. In practical terms, though, nothing has any origin in history. “For most historical realities,” Bloch wrote in the early 1940s, “the very notion of a starting point remains singularly elusive.” As we have shown, we cannot even be sure that the origin of the Columbian Exchange was Columbus himself. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster Indeed, trying to frame this story, we could be more radical and go back even before the time of Leif Erikson – perhaps all the way back to 14,800 years ago, when the Bering Strait Land Bridge was last rendered impassable and Asia was fully separated from the Americas. But where do you stop? Rather than there being actual origins, all things were and are constantly in the course of being made through a process of emergence. As Bloch argued, “A historical phenomenon can never be understood apart from its moment in time. This is true of every evolutionary stage, our own and all others.” So how, then, are we to approach history without straightforward narratives? There are any number of options. Some historians, such as those of the Annales school, have examined historical structures – social, political and economic – rather than events to explain change, frequently over the long term. This approach has often been fused with the so-called histoire des mentalités (history of attitudes), which endeavours to understand the perspectives of those in the past in their own terms. Meanwhile, some social and economic historians have used Marxist theory and framed conflict between social classes as explaining change. Others have put the emphasis on demography and land use. Today, in a time of climate change, many historians are interested in understanding past societies’ interactions with their environments. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-122317088cmykWeb-Ready-15b2d1a.jpg" width="3708" height="2472" alt="An image showing four people dressed in wool skins and carrying spears, walking across a large" title="An illustration depicts Asian hunters migrating across the Bering Strait Land Bridge. The strait becoming impassable some 15,000 years ago was a vital juncture in global history (Image by Getty Images)" /> Each new approach has inevitably attracted criticism for its own alleged oversimplification and misrepresentation of the past. British historians, in particular, were notoriously hostile to the Annales school. Geoffrey Elton of the University of Cambridge, for example, held to his focus on events, with disdain for nearly all scholarship outside the study of power politics. It is said that his colleague Maurice Cowling would privately exclaim: “Annales is balls!” Despite such intransigence, though, new ideas did spread. Going forward, future historians will doubtless find even more innovative forms of historical enquiry using formidable artificial intelligence-driven tools. Read more | Do you know all the major periods in British history? To be clear, though they make less of specific events, new approaches are not necessarily histories without dates. Peter Laslett, in his pioneering 1965 work of social history The World We Have Lost, even began with one: “In the year 1619 the bakers of London applied to the authorities for an increase in the price of bread.” Though Laslett pinpoints a moment that might seem banal when compared with a great battle, coronation or discovery, we should arguably accord such granular details equal attention for what they tell us of our ancestors’ priorities. Their world, like our own, was a practically infinite morass of events and dates whose relative importance and interrelationships were vastly more uncertain than we impulsively suppose. History is not, as one student in Alan Bennett’s 2004 play The History Boys put it, “just one f****** thing after another”. Rather, as the sixth-century historian and bishop Gregory of Tours began his Historia Francorum (History of the Franks), “A great many things keep happening.” Faced with this truth, should we not stop presenting history as neat, ordered and, as such, unrepresentative of how our forebears experienced it? Ultimately, we cannot preserve the past inside the present. Explorers such as Columbus and rulers such as Charles I or Philip II will eventually be forgotten, just as we will all one day be swept away by the stream of time. Trying to understand this process, not learning dates, is the true art of history. Kings and queens are not innately important; neither are great battles. All things are transient. As the 11–12th-century Persian poet and scientist Omar Khayyam put it, it is far better we “think, in this batter’d caravanserai [a refuge for travellers] whose doorways are alternate night and day; how sultan after sultan with his pomp, abode his hour or two, and went his way”. This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars
Jem Duducu, author of The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts, reveals seven things you might not have known about the 25 years (or so) of conflict...
What were the Napoleonic Wars? The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts that occurred from 1803 to 1815, fought between France under Napoleon and a series of coalitions of European powers. Though the Napoleonic Wars are often seen as a clash of European powers fighting for dominance over the European continent, in many ways they were also an example of a global conflict before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The Napoleonic Wars are usually numbered by the coalitions that were raised against Napoleonic France between 1803 and 1815: The War of the Third Coalition, 1805–06 The War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–07 The War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809 The War of the Sixth Coalition, 1813–14 The War of the Seventh Coalition, also known as the Hundred Days, 1815 What of the wars of the first and second coalitions? These precede the Napoleonic Wars, both being part of the French Revolutionary Wars of the 1790s. Read more | Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know Why did the Napoleonic Wars happen? There are many explanations, but you could consider the Napoleonic Wars to be a consequence of the French Revolutionary Wars, which concluded with the 1802 Peace of Amiens. These wars had left France in a commanding strategic position in Western Europe, “something that no other European power could tolerate, because it appeared to threaten their own strategic security”, says Michael Rapport, reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow, who spoke to us about the Napoleonic Wars on the HistoryExtra podcast. “Any peace – which occurred in 1802 through the Treaty of Amiens – was going to be really a truce.” That peace broke down in 1803. “The Peace of Amiens wasn't really honoured by either side,” he says. Neither side really trusted each other.” Who was Napoleon? The Napoleonic Wars are named after a single man – Napoleon Bonaparte. How did a young, inexperienced artillery officer from Corsica rise to such a position of military prominence, not to mention Emperor of France? It took Napoleon just six years from being a relative unknown in 1793 to taking personal rule of France through a coup d’etat in 1799, something Rapport believes that it is no small part thanks to the French Revolution itself. “What the revolution did was it unlocked careers in the army, in government and in law to talent, rather than to birth and status,” he says. “Even though he was noble and he was never barred from the officer corps, the chances of him maybe advancing really high up were probably slimmer than they would have been if it hadn't been for the French Revolution.” War itself provided opportunities. Staggering death rates among officers plus the loss of royalists created opportunities for advancement – if you were politically motivated that is (“Napoleon, initially at least – wore some Republican credentials fairly visibly,” notes Rapport.) Read more about the rise and fall of Napoleon How did the Napoleonic Wars end? In March 1814, the allied powers of the Sixth Coalition occupied Paris, prompting Napoleon’s abdication on 11 April. He was exiled to Elba, an island home to some 12,000 people just off Italy’s Tuscan coast, to live out his days as its sovereign. And that should have been the end of that. Napoleon was held in high esteem even after his abdication, and so when he and 700 of his followers escaped from Elba back to France, he quickly gained support. Among the most totemic was his former marshal turned royalist commander, Michel Ney. Sent to intercept Napoleon, Ney had promised to bring him back to Paris in an iron cage; instead he joined his army of 6,000 to Napoleon’s. So began the Hundred Days, Napoleon’s final roll of the dice. Realising that he could not sit still in Paris, lest the powers of Europe join and assault him en masse, he went on the offensive – culminating in the battle of Waterloo. Waterloo was Napoleon’s final defeat, at the hands of Britain and Prussia. He was forced to abdicate once more, and banished anew – this time he was exiled to St Helena, an East India Company possession deep in the Atlantic, where he remained until his death in 1821. How many people died during the Napoleonic Wars? Five million people died in the Napoleonic Wars between 1803 and 1815, notes Rapport. “It's an estimate, but it's the best estimate we have,” he says. “In terms of the size of the European population at the time, that is the same number, proportionately, as in the First World War.” Michael Rapport is reader in modern European history at the University of Glasgow and the author of The Napoleonic Wars: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2013). He was speaking to Jon Bauckham On the podcast | The Napoleonic Wars: Everything you wanted to know Seven facts about the Napoleonic Wars… The young Napoleon showed little promise The Bonapartes (Buonapartes in Italian) originated in Italy, but Napoleon was born into a branch of the family that moved to Corsica [an island in the Mediterranean Sea belonging to France]. His parents were both of minor Corsican nobility and had married young. The couple had had another son called Napoleon four years before the more famous one, but the child died in infancy. Growing up in Corsica, Napoleon’s first language was Italian, not French. However, as his family was well off (by Corsican standards), he and his brother Joseph were sent to military academies in France. Read more | What killed Napoleon Bonaparte? Napoleon did not fit in particularly well. While he did learn French, he spoke it with an accent that betrayed his roots, and he was teased for sounding like a peasant. Furthermore, the other boys came from well-connected and more affluent families, and while they were good at dancing, Napoleon’s skills lay in gardening. It was not a promising start for a boy who, at various times, dreamed of becoming an officer in the French navy or an artillery instructor in the Ottoman Empire. How different history would have been had he taken one of those routes. Aged 15, Napoleon was admitted to the elite École Militaire in Paris. This was a huge honour, which turned into a disaster when his father died of stomach cancer while Napoleon was in his first year. The young cadet was now expected to be the family’s chief source of income, while at the same time attending one of the most expensive schools in France. The situation forced him to complete the two-year course in just one, and while he came only 42nd in a class of 58, graduation meant he could become a commissioned officer just after his 16th birthday. By 1791, as war was about to break out across Europe, Napoleon, still a second lieutenant stationed in a sleepy garrison town, went on leave to see his family in Corsica. This was about as unexceptional a start to a military career as can be imagined. No one could have predicted that within 10 years Napoleon would be the most feared military commander in Europe, and later would become one of the greatest generals in history. Read more | Your guide to the Seven Years' War The royal navy attacked a city France was courting Denmark and Norway in 1801, and, if they could be persuaded to join the fight, it looked like Russia might also join them. The possibility that Denmark might attack the British mainland could not be contemplated – something had to be done. Step forward Admiral Parker, who was sent to carry out some very British gunboat diplomacy (ie turn up with some warships and force a settlement). It wasn’t necessarily meant to be a shooting war. When the royal navy arrived, the Danish fleet was moored against the gun batteries and naval defences of the city, so a frontal assault would have been impossible. However, Parker’s subordinate was Vice Admiral Nelson, who was just the right mix of brilliant, brave and mad. He attacked the weaker southern end of the Danish defences, which resulted in a brutal artillery duel between land and sea. Parker lacked Nelson’s grit and, on seeing the devastating effect of close-quarter cannon fire, signalled the retreat. Nelson replied with a signal that acknowledged the order, but did nothing. Instead, he lifted his telescope to his blind eye and said to his flag-captain, Thomas Foley: “You know, Foley, I only have one eye. I have the right to be blind sometimes.” Read more | 5 facts you (probably) didn’t know about Nelson’s navy With that, he continued to press his attack. In the heat of the battle, Nelson was seen to be carefully preparing a letter for the terms of Copenhagen’s surrender – amid the roar of cannons, the screams of men and the sound of splintering wood. This forced at least one of his officers to conclude that Nelson had lost his mind, but Nelson calmly explained that if he was seen to have the time and the conditions to prepare a decent letter, it would make the Danes think they weren’t causing as much damage as they were. It was remarkable logic, and an example of the ultimate cool head under fire. The ruse worked, and Copenhagen surrendered. Remarkably, no royal navy ships were sunk; however, around 1,000–1,200 British crew were either killed or wounded. The Danes suffered 50 per cent more casualties and lost three ships, including their flagship, the Dannebrog, when it exploded. After this short but bloody encounter, the two nations agreed an armistice. Following this, Parker sailed the fleet to Sweden in an attempt to persuade it to break away from the armed neutrality league that had been set up in the Baltic, but the Swedes declined his offer. As a result of Parker’s wavering at Copenhagen, followed by his rather lacklustre display in Sweden, he was relieved of duty, and Nelson was promoted to vice-admiral. All sides understood the ‘propaganda war’ The Napoleonic Wars were not the first to use the medium of print for propaganda purposes – The Times, for example, started in 1785 as The Daily Universal Register, was not above bias. But this particular era of conflict excelled at printing scurrilous opinions and defamatory cartoons. The leaders of the age knew the power of the press. As Napoleon once said: “Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” However, it wasn’t just opinion pieces that influenced; imagery was often more powerful and lingered longer. Napoleon understood this, and became known for self-aggrandisement. The famous painting of him crossing the Alps (painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805), for example, shows a strongly idealised view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps. Napoleon also made sure his coronation as emperor was immortalised in oil paintings, and both he and his wife, Josephine, commissioned regal portraits of themselves in their splendid imperial robes. While Napoleon didn’t plan his own tomb, it continued the themes of power and supremacy – this time with Napoleon as an Adonis; a god among men. Brilliant general he assuredly was, but physically Napoleon was a little on the pudgy side, and had a crooked nose. Napoleon had the twin advantages of being both a general and an absolute ruler; he was able to dictate and control the French press. Britain did not provide its monarchs and leaders with the same benefits; it had a freer press, and parliamentary democracy meant magazines could draw witheringly satirical cartoons of friend and foe alike. For example, Napoleon’s nickname, ‘Boney’, was a British invention designed to conjure antipathy. At the time, it was thought that having some meat on your bones was a good thing; therefore, horrible old ‘Boney’ was a wraith to be feared or mocked. ‘Boney’ stood in stark contrast to the famous John Bull cartoon popularised first by British print makers. Bull was the national personification of England; a plump, down-to-earth patriot and beer lover. Napoleon is often portrayed as compensating for his lack of stature with comically large hats and boots. But to set the record straight, Napoleon wasn’t short. This misunderstanding arose because French measurements were different to British ones, and we now know that Napoleon was a little taller than the average man of his time (although he would probably have looked diminutive standing next to someone like the Duke of Wellington). The idea that Napoleon was short still exists to this day, all thanks to British propaganda from 200 years ago. The best way to defeat Spain was to invade Argentina By 1806, Britain had been at war almost constantly for well over a decade. Its continental allies were continually being humbled by French armies, and Britain’s own contributions to the war thus far had been mainly naval victories. However, William Pitt and Sir Home Riggs Popham (the British royal naval commander) had been mulling over for a year or so ideas to weaken France’s main ally, Spain. Spain’s South American empire was largely undefended. Trying to resist a British invasion there would take Spanish troops away from the resources that Napoleon could use in Europe. So, in short, it was decided (by Popham, without authorisation) that the best way to win a war against France in Europe was to invade Argentina in South America. These operations were referred to as the British invasions of the Río de la Plata. Britain achieved early success when it captured Buenos Aires – one of the key cities in the area – and held it for more than a month. When the invaders were ejected, it wasn’t thanks to the arrival of Spanish troops, but an uprising of the local population. In 1807, the British responded by sending a larger invasion force – this time successfully storming Montevideo, where they stayed for a few months just to prove a point. Shortly afterwards, the British sent a third force back to Buenos Aires, but after heavy fighting with a combined force of Spanish soldiers standing side-by-side with the local militia, they were pushed back and suffered more than 50 per cent casualties. The British lost this campaign. It was an ambitious plan that had assumed resistance could only be achieved by Spanish regular troops. In fact, it was the bravery of the locals that saved Río de la Plata from becoming part of the British empire. The repercussions of this attempted invasion were unforeseen by everyone. The Spanish were, at first, overjoyed that their colonies had resisted so resolutely. However, those same colonies felt their actions had earned them the right to be considered the equal of their colonial masters in Spain. The Spanish were, at this time, also having serious trouble with a French invasion of their own country, so could do little. By 1810, the South American colonies felt confident enough to carry out their own revolution (the May Revolution), which removed the Spanish Viceroy and set up a local government for the first time. This led, in July 1816, to the declaration of independence for the United Provinces of South America, which later became known as Argentina. At the time, some of the ex-Spanish colonies were at war with each other but, overall, shrugging off the old colonial overlord was seen as beneficial. The irony then was that while Britain lost the campaign, it achieved its goals of weakening Spain and distracting Spanish priorities and forces. Another irony is that today in Argentina, Britain’s actions of 1806–7 are seen as the trigger for independence, and are widely considered to have been a good thing. Nobody expected the Spanish Inquisition to end The story of the Spanish Inquisition [a tribunal established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms] is a long and complex one. However, the first area to come under its scrutiny was in 12th-century France. The more notorious version of these religious enquiries into potential heretics or apostates started in Spain in the late 15th century, and never really went away until the 19th century. The French Revolution (which began in 1789) sparked real concerns in Spain. King Charles IV worried about how his people might regard the wealth and power not only of the monarchy, but also of the church. With this in mind, he took steps to clip the wings of the Spanish Inquisition. A number of the monolithic Catholic organisations were anathema to the enlightenment ideals of revolutionary France, and there were a number of times Napoleon (and others) dismantled century old ‘Holy Cows’ in the name of modernity. Read more | What triggered the French Revolution? When the French invaded Malta they had ended the Hospitallers; a religious organisation founded in the Middle Ages. Napoleon also abolished another ancient organisation, the Holy Roman Empire, the argument being that it too was a remnant of a theocratic past incompatible with a new Europe. So it should therefore come as little surprise that once the French invaded Spain, it was Joseph Bonaparte who tried to abolish the Spanish Inquisition once and for all. However, Bonaparte was king of Spain from 1808 to 1813, which wasn't long enough to overthrow all the old ways. Consequently, by 1814 the inquisition was back in business. The last person to be killed by the Spanish Inquisition was a teacher in 1826, for suggesting so-called heretical ideas. The inquisition was officially abolished in 1834. The showdown at Waterloo was delayed due to rain With the battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny fought on 16 June 1815, and all the main forces still in roughly the same area, it would have been safe to assume that the next clash would be on the 17th. However, there were surprises in store for everyone. First of all, Marshall Ney, Napoleon’s right-hand man returned to Quatre Bras to fight the second round of this encounter… except that when he got there, he found that Wellington had largely moved on. The challenge then was to find the allied positions and engage. However, while a brief skirmish did take place between the British and French on the 17th, it quickly faded as the heavens opened and torrential rain lashed all the armies for hours. A year earlier, Wellington had been in this very region, and had recognised that a ridge with a reverse slope would be the perfect defensive position for a battle, should one ever take place in the area. Now was the time, and he positioned his forces both along and behind the ridge, located near the small Belgian town of Waterloo. Read more | How the French won Waterloo (or think they did) Wellington spent the night at a Waterloo inn, impatiently waiting for communication from the Prussian leader Blücher. It finally came at around 2am. After that, Wellington was wide awake and spent the rest of the night consulting with his officers and sending out orders. Blücher’s message had been delayed while he argued with his subordinate, Gneisenau, about how their forces could effectively work with Wellington’s. Blücher knew that a concentration of troops was the best bet to beat Napoleon; however, Gneisenau distrusted the British. Meanwhile, Napoleon was unusually indecisive. Grouchy had not advanced as fast as he’d hoped, and in the middle of the night Napoleon was seen going for a walk. He sent ambiguous orders to Grouchy who, instead of coming to his aid, continued to advance towards Wavre. Napoleon bedded down in a farmhouse and, in the morning, had fine breakfast with his officers. When they expressed concerns about Wellington – the only major allied general Napoleon had yet to face on the battlefield – Napoleon admonished them by saying: “Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he's a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general; the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast.” On the morning of 18 June, Napoleon delayed the start of battle as he waited for the ground to harden after the downpour of the previous day. This, he believed, would make it easier to reposition his artillery, and would allow better conditions for cavalry movements. He gave Ney operational command and could be seen sitting in an armchair, miles from the front line. It seems that Napoleon had been, once again, struck down with illness, and his haemorrhoids made it impossible for him to remain in the saddle for the whole day. Waterloo was not the final battle against France Conflicts are messy. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that there is no neat ending to this period of warfare. Waterloo was undeniably the most pivotal battle of this campaign, and it shattered Napoleon’s authority – less than a week after the battle, Napoleon abdicated. But the fighting had been in Belgium, and the race was now on to get to the French capital to ensure an allied army was present to oversee the dismantling of Napoleonic power and the return of Louis XVIII. Read more | What is the significance of Waterloo? The French, however, didn’t see things in quite the same way. They had around 65,000 troops in the area [25,000 others had been killed or wounded at Waterloo, and 9,000 captured], and French General Vandamme led part of that army out to meet the approaching Prussians at a small town to the south of Paris. Wellington’s forces were also on their way, so quite what Vandamme was hoping to achieve is uncertain. He might not have been able to win in the long run, but in the short term he’d be damned if he’d allow Blücher to march to the capital without a fight. The allies had come in a southerly direction because Paris’s main defences had been constructed north of the Seine. The battle was a Prussian/French affair because Vandamme chose to attack Blücher, rather than Wellington. Battle commenced on 2 July 1815 around the town of Issy and the commanding heights of Meudon. That night a council in Paris discussed whether it was time to surrender; however, it was Davout, one of Napoleon’s most loyal and talented marshals, who dug in his heels and insisted that Vandamme should try to oust the Prussians from their position. The next day the French attacked the Prussians (who by now had barricaded themselves in) with artillery fire. Then the French infantry advanced. After fierce fighting, the French were driven back, only to regroup and try to break the Prussians once more. This attempt also failed, and for the rest of the day the French alternated between pounding the Prussians with cannon fire and then surging forwards with an infantry assault. But the French never threw everything they had into any assault. Vandamme, for reasons unknown, never fully committed to the battle, and because of this the Prussians were able to hold their positions (despite high casualties). Ultimately, the French were forced to retreat back to Paris. The Prussians pursued Vandamme’s retreating men, and some forward units even clashed with the French rear guard in the Parisian suburbs. This was quickly followed by a unilateral French ceasefire, and by now, Wellington had linked up with Blücher. Allied negotiators met French representatives at the Palace of St Cloud, chosen as a relatively neutral location. It was here that Paris formally surrendered in a hastily created document now rather formally known as ‘The Convention of St Cloud’. Ironically, the palace was destroyed by German troops the next time the Prussians attacked Paris, in 1870. In summary, the Napoleonic Wars are like most of history – a swirling mass of facts, with areas that simply don’t fit into an easy narrative. But they shaped the political and cultural landscapes from Egypt to Russia and from Argentina to Belgium. Today, their legacy reverberates throughout Europe and beyond. The above facts are abridged versions taken from Jem Duducu’s The Napoleonic Wars in 100 Facts (Amberley Publishing, 2015). Find out more, and you can also follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @JemDuducu This article was first published by HistoryExtra in June 2015
How the French won the battle of Waterloo (or think they did)
Two centuries after the battle of Waterloo, the French are still in denial, says writer Stephen Clarke. As soon as the cannons stopped firing in June 1815, French historians began rewriting history, diminishing the Anglo-Prussian victory and naming Napoleon the moral victor…
It can come as something of a shock to read Napoleon Bonaparte’s official account of Waterloo, written on 20 June 1815, two days after the battle. A key phrase reads: “After eight hours of firing and infantry and cavalry charges, the whole [French] army was able to look with satisfaction upon a battle won and the battlefield in our possession.” Given that the first cannon shots were fired at about 11am, this would mean that as night fell, Napoleon was victorious. And yet almost every historian since 1815 has stated unequivocally that the battle was won by the armies of the Duke of Wellington and his Prussian ally General Gebhard Blücher, and that France’s defeat at Waterloo effectively put an end to Napoleon’s reign as emperor. So how could he possibly “look with satisfaction upon a battle won”? 10 moments that decided the Waterloo campaign To find the answer, it is necessary to read a little further into the report, where Napoleon concedes that “at about 8:30pm” some French troops mistakenly thought that his invincible Old Guard were fleeing the battlefield, and panicked. He explains that “the confusion of the night made it impossible to rally the troops and show them that they were mistaken”. It sounds here less like a lost battle than an abandoned football match. And it wasn’t only the soon-to-be-deposed emperor of France who rewrote accepted historical fact about Waterloo. A French veteran of the battle, Captain Marie Jean Baptise Lemonnier-Delafosse, claimed in his memoirs: “It wasn’t Wellington who won; his defence was stubborn and admirably energetic, but he was pushed back and beaten.” Crucially, though, Captain Lemonnier-Delafosse goes on to add that Waterloo was an “extraordinary battle, the only one in which there were two losers: first the English, then the French”. So he admits defeat, albeit in a confusing way. What Lemonnier-Delafosse means is that Napoleon beat Wellington, and then lost to Blücher when the Prussians arrived on the battlefield after dark. This is a key argument, because it suggests that Napoleon emerged from 18 June with one victory and one defeat. We’re back to a football analogy: at Waterloo, Napoleon won a score draw. In other words, he wasn’t a total loser. And for Napoleon’s admirers, past and present, this has always been the essential point. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-511037309-08f8082.jpg" width="1000" height="650" alt="Napoleon Bonaparte tries to lead the final assault by his Imperial Guard at the battle of Waterloo. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="Napoleon Bonaparte tries to lead the final assault by his Imperial Guard at the battle of Waterloo. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Even today, there is a sub-species of historian (mostly French, unsurprisingly) dedicated to preserving this notion of ‘Napoleon Bonaparte, the winner’. They present him as a great general who may have suffered setbacks in Russia in 1812 (when he lost about half a million soldiers and was forced to abandon all his territorial gains) and Belgium in 1815 (though don’t forget Waterloo was a draw), but who, when all the battles are totted up, was a winner – France’s greatest-ever hero, who expanded the nation’s boundaries until French-dominated Europe stretched from Portugal to Poland, and from the Baltic to the southern tip of Italy. Almost the only piece missing from his empire-building puzzle was Britain. This is why Waterloo is so important, and why controversy is still raging about it (in French minds, at least) – it was fought against France’s ancient enemy, the English, with whom it had been at war practically non-stop since 1337. Britain was almost the only European country that Napoleon never managed to invade. It was already a black mark on his map of Europe before Waterloo, so British attempts to glorify it as a French defeat threaten to deliver the coup de grâce to Napoleon’s memory. Waterloo: what was the battle like for Wellington’s Redcoats? All of which explains the perversely twisted arguments that Bonapartist historians have given to diminish the Anglo-Prussian victory of June 1815, ever since Napoleon did so in his post-battle report. One of their classic arguments is that Wellington cheated. A year earlier, he had predicted that the open farmland south of Brussels might be the site of a standoff between British and French forces in the region, and had found the ridge where he would align his soldiers on 17 June 1815. Some might argue that reconnoitering for higher ground in a strategic location was intelligent military planning – to Bonapartists, though, it was cheating. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-3172483-a1520c6.jpg" width="1050" height="820" alt="The Duke of Wellington commanding his troops at the battle of Waterloo. Original artwork engraved by T Fielding after a drawing by R Westall. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="The Duke of Wellington commanding his troops at the battle of Waterloo. Original artwork engraved by T Fielding after a drawing by R Westall. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> Once the battlefield was chosen, many French historians argue that any hope of victory for Napoleon’s men was dashed by the incompetence of his generals. They cite a long list of mistakes made by Napoleon’s brother Jérôme, who lost 5,000 lives in a pointless attack when he had been ordered to create a simple diversion at the start of the battle; by Marshal Michel Ney, who led several ill-timed cavalry charges; and by Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy, who was sent to scout for Prussians and simply disappeared for the day, stopping at one point to enjoy some fresh strawberries. That fruity picnic has haunted his family name ever since. But the sad fact was that after more than a decade of continuous war, a critical number of Napoleon’s most gifted and most faithful generals were dead. In the early 19th century, generals led their troops from the front, and stayed almost permanently in the firing line. Napoleon’s most faithful men had fallen in battle. Others had betrayed him during the political upheavals in France in 1814, when Napoleon was deposed for the first time. Many French troops later complained in their memoirs that their officers didn’t believe in Napoleon’s cause. What is the significance of Waterloo? If uncommitted officers weren’t enough, Napoleon is also said to have been hampered by the weather. Rain poured out of the Belgian sky all night before the battle, forcing the French soldiers to sleep in puddles and preventing Napoleon from manoeuvring his cannons – his favourite weapon – into place. Of course the rain also fell on Wellington’s men, but that doesn’t matter in Bonapartist eyes. As the 19th-century French writer Victor Hugo put it: “If it hadn’t rained on the night of 17-18 June, the future of Europe would have been different. A few raindrops more or less felled Napoleon.” Hugo implies that this rain didn’t come by chance – God himself had decided that Napoleon was just too great: “The excessive importance of this man in world destiny was unbalancing things… Waterloo wasn’t a battle. It was a change in the direction of the universe.” It was therefore impossible for Napoleon to win at Waterloo, Hugo concludes: “Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No, because of God.” With enemies like that, no friends could help. Napoleon was also troubled by his health. According to various accounts he was suffering from piles, a urinary infection, a glandular condition and/or syphilis. One of Napoleon’s 20th-century French biographers, Max Gallo, describes what must be the worst case of hemorrhoids in literary history, with “thick, black blood, heavy and burning hot, flowing through [Napoleon’s] lower body, swelling the veins until they were fit to burst”. Riding a horse on the battlefield was bound to be agony. The implication of these health stories is of course that the great champion wasn’t entirely fit on the day he was forced to fight. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2018/01/GettyImages-507368547-e569898.jpg" width="800" height="1000" alt="A portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte on 1 June 1815 in Paris, France. An engraving by Samuel Freeman from a painting by Paul Delaroche. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" title="A portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte on 1 June 1815 in Paris, France. An engraving by Samuel Freeman from a painting by Paul Delaroche. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" /> It is because of all his sufferings that Napoleon’s supporters refuse to look upon him as the loser of Waterloo. On the contrary, these setbacks were the very reason that Victor Hugo and others claim that Napoleon’s men won the moral victory: outnumbered by two armies to one, led by second-string generals, frowned (and rained) upon by the creator of the universe, they still put up a glorious fight. The Bonapartists point to a crucial moment towards the end of the battle. As the French retreated, one group of 550 men did so without breaking ranks – this was a battalion of the Garde, led by General Pierre Cambronne. However, they were quickly surrounded by Wellington’s infantrymen, backed up with cannons, who called on the Frenchmen to surrender. Cambronne famously replied “merde!” (“shit”). Some say he added: “The Garde dies but never surrenders,” although he later denied this, explaining: “I’m not dead and I surrendered.” Were the pulverised bones of soldiers and horses who died at the battle of Waterloo sold as soil fertiliser? Hearing this insulting rebuff, the British artillery opened fire from point-blank range and wiped out almost all of the 550, who instantly became martyrs – and in some French eyes, victors. Victor Hugo went so far as to claim: “The man who won the battle of Waterloo was Cambronne. Unleashing deadly lightning with such a word counts as victory.” And a more modern Bonapartist, the former French prime minister Dominique de Villepin, went further, saying that this “merde” created “a new idea of Frenchness”, a defiant nation that believes in its own superiority despite any proof to the contrary. It is true that, even as early as the 1820s, impoverished France almost relished the fact that it was being left behind by the (British-led) industrial revolution, and began to concentrate on its traditional industries such as the production of unique regional cheeses and wines, the distillation of perfumes from its native plants and hand-made high-quality clothes. Villepin suggests that the global importance of these French industries today are victories that sprung directly from Waterloo. This is not to forget Napoleon’s personal victory. In July 1815, when he was briefly brought to England as a prisoner, a thousand boats filled Plymouth Sound harbour, with locals desperate to get a glimpse of the famous Frenchman, and, according to a British sailor, “blessing themselves that they had been so fortunate” if they succeeded. Until the order was given to exile Napoleon to Saint Helena, he seriously believed that he could retire as a celebrity in England. Despite his exile in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte’s fame has since spread throughout the world. His supporters point to the fact that his tomb in Paris is bigger, and more frequently visited by tourists, than that of any king of France. They rightly remind us that the legal system Napoleon founded, the Code Civil, is still used right across Europe. If further proof of Napoleon’s enduring fame is needed, one of his black hats sold at auction in 2015 for 1.8 million euros, to a Korean industrialist who planned to display it in the foyer of his head office to show that he too was a winner. What killed Napoleon Bonaparte? Indeed, while he was alive, Napoleon always dressed in his own unique style. On a recent visit to the new museum at Waterloo I counted the statuettes on sale in the souvenir shop, and the figurines of Napoleon in his trademark hat and greatcoat outnumbered Wellington and Blücher by at least five to one – clearly, the Bonaparte brand image lives on. In short, Napoleon might have lost on 18 June 1815 (and the debate about that continues in France), but it is hard to deny that his highly vocal admirers are right – he has won the battle of history. Stephen Clarke is the author of How the French Won Waterloo (Or Think They Did) (Century, 2015). This article was first published by History Extra in August 2016
Napoleon Bonaparte: facts about his life, death and career
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) is considered to be one of history's greatest military leaders. He rose to prominence during the French Revolution (1787–99) and served as emperor of France from 1804 to 1814, and again in 1815. Napoleon is remembered today for his role in the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), and his defeat at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. But how much do you know about him?
When was Napoleon born? 15 August 1769, in Corsica. When did Napoleon die? 5 May 1821, on the Atlantic island of St Helena | Read more about what killed Napoleon What is Napoleon remembered for? Many things, but in particular his roles, which included Emperor of the French, during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15), and his defeat at the battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Who were his family? Napoleon was the second of eight surviving children born to Carlo Maria Buonaparte (1746–85), a lawyer, and Letizia Ramolino Buonaparte (1750–1836). The Buonapartes were minor Corsican nobility. Napoleon was twice married: to Joséphine de Beauharnais, from 1796–1810, and Marie Louise, [later known as Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma], from 1810–1821. His second wife bore him a son, Napoleon II. Napoleon acknowledged one illegitimate son, Charles Léon (b 1806), but may have had further unacknowledged illegitimate offspring. Napoleon's height: how tall was the French emperor? If there's one thing Napoleon Bonaparte is known for, it's that he was short – and very unhappy about it. But how tall was he really? What was Napoleon's childhood like? Although Napoleon’s parents were members of minor Corsican nobility, the family was not affluent. Educated at French military academies, which he attended on scholarships, Napoleon was poor compared to his classmates, who came from wealthy, well-connected families. Having grown up in Corsica, Napoleon’s first language was Italian, not French, and he was teased for allegedly sounding like a peasant. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2015/06/Blurry-872a682.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="General Bonaparte at Arcole, 17 November 1796', (c1797). From the Musee National, Chateau de Versailles. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" title="General Bonaparte at Arcole, 17 November 1796', (c1797). From the Musee National, Chateau de Versailles. (Photo by Ann Ronan Pictures/Print Collector/Getty Images)" /> When did he begin his military career? Aged 15, Napoleon was admitted to the elite École Militaire in Paris, but was forced to complete the two-year course in just one after his father died of stomach cancer, leaving Napoleon as the family’s chief source of income. He became a commissioned officer just after his 16th birthday. As war was about to break out across Europe, Napoleon was still a second lieutenant stationed in a sleepy garrison town, and went on leave to see his family in Corsica. What were Napoleon’s early achievements? In July 1792 Napoleon was promoted to captain in the regular army, and in 1796, having helped to suppress a royalist insurrection against the revolutionary government in Paris, he was made commander of the French army in Italy. Napoleon’s national profile was bolstered dramatically by his numerous critical victories against the Austrians and his marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais, whose first husband, Alexandre de Beauharnais, was famously guillotined during the Reign of Terror, a period of violence following the onset of the French Revolution. In November 1799, Napoleon became first consul, and worked to establish a European empire under his military dictatorship. He centralised the government, reinstated Roman Catholicism as the state religion, instituted education reforms, and managed the creation of the Bank of France. When did Napoleon become emperor of France? Napoleon triumphed over the Austrians at Marengo in 1800, and then negotiated a general European peace (which established French power on the continent). In 1802 Napoleon proclaimed himself consul for life, and two years later he became emperor of France. How did Napoleon gain control over Europe? But the peace Napoleon had negotiated was short-lived – by 1803 Britain had resumed war with France, later joined by Russia and Austria. Britain’s naval victory at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 forced Napoleon to abandon his plans to invade England, and he turned his attention instead to Austro-Russian forces, which he defeated at the battle of Austerlitz later that year in what is considered to be one of his greatest victories. Napoleon gained much new territory in the years that followed, which seemingly gave him control of Europe. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, and Napoleon's relatives and loyalists were installed as leaders in Italy, Naples, Spain and Sweden, as well as Holland and Westphalia – territories newly created by Napoleon. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2015/06/Blurry2-8e84f61.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Joséphine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte (1763-1814) in 1801. Found in the collection of the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" title="Joséphine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoléon Bonaparte (1763-1814) in 1801. Found in the collection of the Musée national des châteaux de Malmaison et de Bois-Préau. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images)" /> How did Napoleon's first marriage end? In 1810 Napoleon arranged for the annulment of his childless marriage to Joséphine, and married Marie-Louise, the 18-year-old daughter of the emperor of Austria. She gave birth to a son, Napoleon II (aka the King of Rome) the following year. Why did Napoleon go into exile? From 1810, the tide began to turn against Napoleon: France suffered several military defeats that drained resources, and in 1812 Napoleon oversaw the catastrophic failed invasion of Russia. France was forced to retreat, and of the original 400,000 frontline troops, fewer than 40,000 returned. Paris fell in March 1814, and Napoleon went into exile on the island of Elba, over which he was given sovereignty. Meanwhile, his wife and son went to Austria. How did Napoleon return to power? But in February 1815, after less than a year in exile, Napoleon escaped from Elba and marched on the French capital, and victoriously returned to power. This prompted Britain, Prussia, Russia and Austria to declare war. His success was short-lived: he governed for a period now known as the Hundred Days – a brief second reign brought to an end by the battle of Waterloo in June 1815. When and where did Napoleon die? Following his humiliating defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821, aged 51, most likely from stomach cancer, though exactly 'what killed Napoleon' has long been a subject of speculation. Where is Napoleon buried? Napoleon was buried on the island and his remains were not returned to France until 1840. Napoleon’s remains are entombed in a crypt at Les Invalides in Paris, where other French military leaders are interred. This article was first published on HistoryExtra in June 2015
Battle of Waterloo quiz: how much do you know?
Test your knowledge about the 1815 Napoleonic battle…
It was the battle that brought to an end the Napoleonic Wars, and one of history’s most dramatic military encounters. Test your knowledge below View Riddle on the source website How did you do? Share your result on social media to see how your knowledge compares with other HistoryExtra readers! Want to improve your knowledge? Read more about the battle of Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars, including: How the French won the battle of Waterloo (or think they did) What is the significance of Waterloo? 10 moments that decided the Waterloo campaign Questions written by Mark Simner, author of An Illustrated Introduction To The Battle Of Waterloo (Amberley Publishing, 2015)
The battle of Waterloo: 10 key questions answered
It was one of the world's most famous and important battles, bringing to an end the Napoleonic Wars and leading to Napoleon Bonaparte's final abdication and decades of international peace in Europe. Historians and journalists Peter and Dan Snow tell the story of the battle of Waterloo – one of history’s most dramatic military encounters…
The battle of Waterloo is one of history’s most dramatic military encounters. Here, the authors answer 10 key questions about the clash that brought an end to the Napoleonic Wars… Why does Waterloo matter? A: Waterloo was the battle that finally and decisively ended the ambition of the French Emperor Napoleon to dominate Europe and shaped the continent during a hundred years of relative peace until 1914. It brought to an end a terrible war that had raged on and off for more than 20 years. France had decisively lost the struggle for global mastery, and a victorious Britain went on to build the largest empire the world has ever seen. 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars What caused the battle? A: In early 1815 Britain and her allies – Austria, Prussia and Russia – thought Napoleon was finished: he had been defeated and forced to abdicate a year earlier. But he bounced back from exile in February 1815 and astonished the allies by advancing fast toward Brussels, in Belgium. Who were the protagonists on either side? A: The overall commanders at Waterloo were two of the greatest generals of all time. Britain’s Duke of Wellington had never lost a battle in 12 years of war. Napoleon Bonaparte had in his time crushed every army in Europe except Britain’s. Was the duke’s army all British? A: Only a third of Wellington’s army was British. Most were from the German states with some units from the Netherlands. Who were the men and how were they treated? A: British soldiers got paid about £20 a year but only saw about half that. They were fed a pound of beef a day, and a pound-and-a-half of bread. They got a daily ration of a pint of wine or a third of a pint of gin or rum. The average age that we can calculate was around 27 – the youngest soldiers were 17; the oldest were 44. What sort of battle was it? A: The battle was one of the last great contests fought at close quarters. The main weapon in both armies was still the musket. It had an effective range of little more than 50 yards. What is the significance of Waterloo? How did Napoleon perform? A: Napoleon was a shadow of his former self at Waterloo. He was not in good health, and his leadership was poor. Was Napoleon short? A: No. He was in fact 170cm or 5'7", which was the average height for a male at the time. Should we regard Waterloo as a great British victory? A: Waterloo was not just a British victory. The Duke of Wellington would have been hard pressed to win without the timely assault of Marshal Blucher’s Prussians on Napoleon’s right flank. Besides, two thirds of his own army was made up of allies from the rest of Europe. How the French won the battle of Waterloo (or think they did) How many casualties were there? A: It was a bloody battle. A veteran eyewitness said he had never seen “carcasses so heaped upon each other”. Some units lost two thirds of their men. Overall, the British lost 17,000 who were reported killed, wounded or missing – around a quarter of the army. Napoleon may have lost as much as a third of his men. Peter and Dan Snow’s The Battle of Waterloo Experience (Andre Deutsch) is available now
Alternate history: what if... Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo?
Napoleon Bonaparte's final bid for power came to end with defeat at Waterloo in Belgium on 18 June 1815 at the hands of the Seventh Coalition – but what if he had won? Jonny Wilkes talks to Professor Alan Forrest about whether Napoleon's victory at Waterloo would have been enough to secure a remarkable return to power – or if it would only have delayed the inevitable
Each month BBC History Revealed asks a historical expert for their take on what might have happened if a key moment in the past had turned out differently. This time, Jonny Wilkes talks to Professor Alan Forrest about what might had happened had Napoleon Bonaparte emerged triumphant at the Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was over. A bloody battle. A dirty battle. A shifting battle, where both sides gained and lost momentum and the result could have gone either way. By the end of the day on 18 June 1815, thousands of men lay dead, and when the smoke cleared, it was Napoleon Bonaparte looking out across the battlefield as victor. His army had defeated the Duke of Wellington’s British-led forces on one side and Field Marshal von Blücher’s Prussians on the other, dealing the allies of the Seventh Coalition a severe blow... From his abdication and exile a year earlier, Napoleon’s return to power in France had a winning start. Yet the war was far from over and he would have to decide where to head next. “If Napoleon had got rid of the British and Prussian armies at Waterloo, he might have marched on to Brussels,” says Professor Alan Forrest, historian of revolutionary and Napoleonic France. “That was where the road was most obviously leading.” Had he returned to France to secure his domestic position and take a more defensive approach, Napoleon may have delayed the next battle. Decades of revolution, the Terror, and the rise and fall of his empire had left the country bitterly divided, though, and he could not rely on the citizenry for support, many of whom remained loyal to the republic or the monarchy. “In order to be a leader at all, Napoleon had to be a war leader.” says Forrest. “He was dependent on the army.” More alternate history What if... Alexander the Great hadn't died so young? What if... Boudica had defeated the Romans? What if... the Spanish Armada had landed in England? That left Napoleon with major shortcomings both before and after Waterloo. As emperor of France up until 1814, he had been able to draw on the resources of Europe to build and sustain his army. Since returning from exile on Elba, he only had France. While many soldiers remained fiercely loyal to him, not everyone rushed to rally to the returned emperor. Napoleon had limited resources and his army suffered, notably in the quality of its commanders. “Michel Ney, in particular, was a brave man, but headstrong and liable to fling his troops into action without due consideration,” says Forrest. Before Waterloo: what happened at the Duchess of Richmond's ball? The allied nations, meanwhile, were united against Napoleon. As he had launched a military campaign virtually right away, he only cemented beliefs among the likes of Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia that he posed a danger to the security and peace of Europe. There was no way they could tolerate his return. What’s more, the desire for revenge would have been strong – the other powers held Napoleon responsible for wars dragging on and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. Napoleon after Waterloo Even following a victory at Waterloo, Napoleon could not have been as offensive as he once had. “Whereas previously he had been an emperor, in 1815 he wasn’t,” says Forrest. “He was an outlaw, with no legal status and, from that position, he had plunged Europe back into war.” The overwhelmingly larger forces commanded by the allies and the diplomatic determination of their leaders not to let Napoleon establish power once more, meant they were not going to make concessions. “The war would go on until Napoleon was defeated,” says Forrest. The beaten Duke of Wellington probably would have played no further part in the ongoing fight against Napoleon. Instead of acting as a diplomatic representative of the allies – in Paris and at the Congress of Vienna – the mastermind of the Peninsular Campaign may have returned to Britain with his reputation tarnished. A promising political career that could have led all the way to him being prime minister would suffer without the upsurge of patriotic enthusiasm that followed a victory at Waterloo. 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars The prestige of Britain rested on the outcome of that battle, too. Defeat may have meant Britain was not taken as seriously as a military power on land in Europe – although, it would have remained the supreme naval power – and may have reduced its influence at future talks. “The four major allied powers had demobilised large parts of their army in 1814. Britain did this quite quickly,” says Forrest. “The country did not have a standing army in peacetime, was far more interested in the navy, and would have found it difficult to raise a large force again. Waterloo was Britain’s last fling.” Even with Britain’s role diminished, Napoleon would have had no possibility of long-term success. While two armies may have been defeated at Waterloo, 150,000 Austrians and a larger force of Russians were, as Forrest puts it, “waiting their turn”. Napoleon would have faced battle after battle, with the other powers of the Seventh Coalition keeping on coming and closing in until he eventually lost. The peace may have taken a different form if Waterloo had gone differently, but Napoleon was always going to be on the losing side. Napoleon Bonaparte: the rise and fall of a dictator Napoleon’s fate would have depended on who eventually captured him, and if in 1815 he chose to surrender to Britain, it would have been because he believed that he would receive more lenient treatment. He would have had no reason to think that Prussia, Russia or Austria – where his wife and son were living at the imperial court – would treat him benignly. The worst outcome, however, would have been to surrender to the French themselves. “The monarchists wanted Napoleon’s blood. He was a usurper, a traitor to his king – many called for the death penalty.” Instead of seeing out his days in exile on a remote island, Napoleon could have faced a firing squad. The real rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon Bonaparte rose from a soldier in revolutionary France to commander of campaigns in Italy and Egypt, seizing power in a coup in 1799 and becoming the country’s leader at the age of 30. In 1804, he declared himself emperor. A military mastermind, Napoleon seemed close to invincible on the battlefield until his disastrous Russian campaign in 1812, from which he never recovered. Forced to abdicate in 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba. In 1815, he staged a remarkable comeback, returning to France and taking power once more. A coalition of European powers – led by Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain – formed against him as he prepared to go on campaign. His brief second rule, The Hundred Days, ended with defeat at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. Napoleon was forced into exile again, this time on the remote Atlantic island of St Helena. Professor Alan Forrest is a historian of revolutionary and Napoleonic France, and author of Napoleon, Life, Legacy, and Image: A Biography. He was speaking to freelance writer Jonny Wilkes This article was first published in the September 2020 edition of History Revealed
Before Waterloo: what happened at the Duchess of Richmond's ball?
The Duchess of Richmond's soirée on 15 June 1815 might have been lost to time – had it not fallen just days before the climactic battle of Waterloo. Felicity Day explores that fateful night – featured in Julian Fellowes's drama Belgravia…
If it wasn’t for the chaos caused by an uninvited and most unwelcome guest, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball on 15 June 1815 would have been just another high society party in history. But since it was held in Brussels on the very day that Napoleon’s troops stormed into what is present-day Belgium, it became the stuff of legend, forever remembered as the glamorous prologue to the horrors of the battlefield at Waterloo. There’s no doubt that the highly romanticised fictional accounts of writers like Lord Byron and William Thackeray played their part in that. But just how much did they embellish the events of that fateful evening? Well for a start, the duchess – Charlotte Lennox – never intended her ball as a farewell for departing soldiers; it was just one of many parties and picnics entertaining genteel British expatriates and army officers alike that summer. Lady Conyngham had held a similar gathering the previous evening, and the Duke of Wellington had one planned for the 21st. It was by accident rather than design that the duchess’s party found its way into the history books. The story really begins more than a year earlier in March 1814, when Napoleon’s troops in Paris surrendered to Britain’s allies. The self-proclaimed emperor was forced to abdicate, and was swiftly exiled to Elba. With that, more than 20 years of recurrent war in Europe were over, and the long-awaited peace brought swathes of the British fashionable elite to the continent. Brussels was a particular tourist hotspot. It was partly because British regiments remained in the city. Families and friends of army officers came over to join them, jumping at the chance to holiday abroad again. But Brussels also owed its popularity to affordability. It was the perfect retreat for aristocrats feeling the pinch – not too far from home, cheaper than war-weary Britain and, being a garrison town, it had a lively social scene, with its own pleasure park, horse-racing, hunting and cricket. Like many of their friends, the Richmonds came over "on an Economical Plan". Warning tremors When Napoleon made his unexpected escape from Elba in February 1815, the shockwaves rippled through their merry community. Very quickly Brussels was at the centre of military operations again: by early April, the Duke of Wellington had arrived to take command of a combined Anglo-Dutch force, and joining him were ever-increasing numbers of officers and troops. Yet, surprisingly, few civilians chose to leave. One military wife commented (with just a touch of disapproval) that they seemed to consider the army’s arrival as the commencement of a series of entertainments. And certainly, as spring turned to summer, there seemed to be no immediate threat to their safety. Expectations were all for an Allied invasion of France, sometime towards the beginning of July. So by day, the assembled officers drilled and inspected the troops, keeping a close eye on Bonaparte’s movements. And by night, the social round continued – all with the encouragement of their leader. “Tho’ I have given some pretty good reasons for supposing that hostilities will soon commence, yet no one wd suppose it judging by the Duke of Wn,” wrote Spencer Madan, tutor to the Richmonds’ younger sons, on 13 June. “He ... gives a ball every week, attends every party and partakes of every amusement.” There was certainly a determination to Wellington’s nonchalance; it suited him to let Napoleon’s spies report that the Allies were relaxed about the battles to come. But as the city began to buzz with rumours that Napoleon’s forces were close to the border, the Duchess of Richmond grew uneasy about the ball she had planned. The Iron Duke reassured her unequivocally. “Duchess,” he said, “you may give your ball with the greatest safety without fear of interruption.” Privately, however, he had concerns. The call to battle was not as unexpected as the fictional accounts might have us believe – for either Wellington or his forces. By 5pm on the 15 June, some five hours before the Richmonds’ first guests arrived, the Duke knew that Napoleon had invaded. His troops were put on standby for a rapid move. His officers, however, were permitted to attend the ball. It was too late to stop it without causing widespread panic. Yet as they changed into their dress uniforms, the unmistakable sound of cannon fire could be heard in the distance; the officers knew an engagement was imminent. And as they went off to sip champagne and waltz with the ladies, more news was coming in. Their Prussian allies had been engaged in intense fighting with the French. In fact, the town of Charleroi, to the south of Brussels, had been in French hands since noon. Wellington ordered his troops to assemble, ready to march out in the early hours. He came to the ballroom sometime around midnight, not to socialise, but as a last act of reassurance for his civilian friends. The sight that greeted him was not quite as glamorous as paintings of the event suggest, with their gilded interiors and sea of scarlet uniforms. Being one of the last families to arrive in Brussels, the Richmonds had been forced to rent a house on the Rue de la Blanchisserie, an unfashionable street so-named because it was home to a laundry business. Built by a coachbuilder, their property came complete with two cavernous wings that had once served as showrooms for his various carriages. One of these, papered with a simple rose trellis pattern, was their makeshift ballroom – not the grand Hôtel de Ville, as Byron and other battlefield tourists were led to believe. Hidden truths Fewer than half of their guests were military men. The Duchess invited 238 people in all, but only 103 of them were uniformed officers. They were easily outnumbered by a combination of British, and Dutch aristocrats, diplomats and relations of the Richmonds. And a number of military invitees actually stayed away, either by choice – favouring preparation over partying – or because the rapidly developing operational situation detained them. Newlywed Colonel Sir William de Lancey was one. Wrenched from his honeymoon to act as Wellington’s deputy quartermaster-general, he was entirely occupied by logistical preparations that night. What’s no exaggeration, however, is the speed with which the party soon broke up. The arrival of a mud-splattered messenger, just as supper was ending, put an abrupt end to the drinking and dancing: he brought news that the French were advancing towards Brussels. A mass exodus of officers followed: in all conscience, they could delay joining their regiments no longer. “I became aware of a great preponderance of ladies in the room,” recalled Lady Jane Lennox, the Duchess’s daughter. “The gallant uniforms had sensibly diminished.” As the shocked civilians processed the news, the strains of the waltz gave way to the sounds of an army on the move: artillery wagons rolling, drums and bugles sounding, and cavalry horses clattering over the cobbles. Lady Jane’s dance partners went flying through the night on horseback. Some really would go dancing into battle, having had no time to change out of their finery. Belgravia: an invitation to the ball The most recent Waterloo-era programme to hit TV screens is ITV's six-part drama Belgravia. The brainchild of Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, the period drama – due to start in early Spring – is set amongst the upper echelons of 19th-century London society. The story begins on 15 June 1815, as British society – including the Trenchard family – attend the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of the battle of Quatre Bras, an event that presaged a dramatic chain of events... The Duchess of Richmond was apparently rendered hysterical – blocking the exit and pleading with her guests to “wait one little hour more”. But there are few reports of the kind of heartbreaking lovers’ partings the Victorians imagined; when another of the Duchess’s daughters, Lady Georgiana Lennox, bid farewell to her friend, the young Lord Hay, she was provoked by his obvious excitement. Probably the most sorrowful of all the goodbyes actually took place away from the ballroom. Colonel de Lancey and his new bride Magdalene watched the troops marching out of the city together as the Sun came up, before he charged her to retreat to Antwerp. Wellington slipped away from the ball without a farewell – though not before making a request of the Duke of Richmond. He wanted a map. It was while the two men pored over it together that Wellington is said to have confessed: “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God, he has gained 24 hours march on me.” Asked how he intended to react, Wellington replied that he had ordered the army to concentrate at Quatre Bras, a crossroads 25 miles outside Brussels. “We shall not stop him there, and, if so, I must fight him here” – pointing, as he spoke, to the village of Waterloo. And in that moment, the conversation of the two Dukes bridged the gulf between the brilliant ballroom of the past few hours and the bloody battlefield yet to come. What happened at the battle of Quatre Bras? The fighting at Quatre Bras the following day was intense but inconclusive. So close was the battlefield to Brussels that some officers rode back after the initial skirmish to eat and sleep. Covered in dirt, they had little good news for the anxious civilians, who were left unsure whether to make a hasty retreat. But 17 June did not bring a French attack as many feared. Pouring into the streets instead were the dead and injured Allied soldiers. After months of frivolous partying, Brussels’ British community was put to work tending the wounded as the city became an open-air hospital. As Wellington had predicted, Quatre Bras was the precursor to the fierce battle that followed at Waterloo on the 18th. Despite suffering 23,000 casualties (killed or wounded), the Allies emerged victorious. Napoleon abdicated again on the 22nd and was exiled once more, this time to St Helena. Within a matter of weeks, the Duchess’s ball began to be shrouded in myth. One correspondent described it as “a sort of farewell ball”, another lamented “all the young men who appeared there shot dead a few days after”. In fact, only 11 of the Duchess’s nearly 100 military guests died on the battlefield. The excitable Lord Hay was one of them. One more died later of his wounds, and another 35 were injured. Colonel de Lancey was also mortally wounded after being struck by a ricocheting cannon ball, his wife made a widow just three months after their marriage. LISTEN: Melvyn Bragg discusses Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington in an episode of In Our Time. Felicity Day is a freelance writer specialising in the history of the Georgian era. This article is taken from the March 2020 edition of History Revealed
How do big period dramas go about transporting audiences into a convincing historical world? Ahead of compelling new drama Belgravia, created by Downton Abbey writer Julian Fellowes and set in the 19th century, we sat down with executive producer Gareth Neame to find out how his team recreated the past…
It’s one of the most keenly anticipated new television dramas of the year. Based on Julian Fellowes’s own 2016 novel, Belgravia, named for the well-to-do area of London where so much of its action is set, tells a 19th-century story of class, money, aspiration and the invention of afternoon tea – and of how family secrets can surface long after those involved tried to bury the truth. Before Waterloo: what happened at the real Duchess of Richmond’s ball? Gareth Neame, managing director of production company Carnival Films, tells us how his team went about recreating the past, in part a case of getting telling details right in order to build trust with viewers, and why he so often looks for historical subjects as the basis for TV series… Jonathan Wright: How did the show initially come about? Gareth Neame: It was a very different approach to Downton Abbey where I had gone to Julian Fellowes and commissioned him, said, “This is the idea of the show and will you devise a group of characters?” Belgravia was very different because I was reacting to a completed novel. I knew he was writing it, but I waited until it was published and then I read the whole thing and said, “Yes, we should do this”. It’s not going to become a Downton with multiple seasons and lots of storylines. What it does have in common with Downton is that extraordinary social observation, the comedy of manners, that Fellowes writes – hierarchies, people’s views of themselves and of others, and where they sit in society, and people who are ambitious or want to fall in love or make something of their lives. It has all of those themes, but it doesn’t have that soapy, multiple-character, separate-storyline thing that Downton has. It works more in the style of a Victorian novel. JW: The story has a time-shift element, bringing to life two quite distinct periods, the Regency era and the early Victorian era of the 1840s. The 19th century covers a vast swathe of social development and changes. GN: Yes, it’s two very distinct periods. Downton Abbey started with an iconic event, which was the sinking of the Titanic. This one similarly starts with an iconic event, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball the night before the Waterloo campaign [held in Brussels and attended by the Duke of Wellington]. But we fairly quickly then jump into the Victorian period. I thought that would be very intriguing as drama. JW: It’s in part a story about class. There’s a bit more of a challenge to the society in the writing than in Downton. GN: I think that’s well put. Downton was elegiac, about the dying of the light, the end of the power and dominance of the aristocracy – they were running out of money, they now had to pay tax, they couldn’t afford the servants, they had to sell off land, the primacy of the British empire and the aristocracy were coming to an end. In 1840, it’s completely different. We’re at the beginnings of the industrial revolution and we’re seeing middle-class men like James Trenchard [played by Philip Glenister], because he’s a brilliant businessman, able to amass a fortune, establish a business. He can’t quite get into polite society on his own terms, because he’s a middle-class professional man, but by the next generation his son will become a gentleman. We can see that the industrial revolution allows this huge social mobility that probably wasn’t seen again until the 20th century. This is incredibly dynamic, optimistic in a lot of ways, – anything is possible – and that is the world in which these characters are all living. JW: The relationship between two women – Tamsin Greig as Anne Trenchard, wife of James, and Harriet Walker as aristocratic Lady Brockenhurst – is also central to the story. GN: They’re very different people but they’re united in one thing: they’re both women who have lost a child and the loss of that child informs every single aspect of the rest of their lives – as it does for any parent. I think that’s something that we can completely understand to this day. A mother’s love for a child is at the heart of Belgravia, and that is what they have in common. JW: The story picks two moments where classes can meet: the military during the Napoleonic War and the building of Belgravia, where you need the expertise of a man like Trenchard because you’re building a community from scratch. GN: Mostly, officers in the British Army [under Wellington] at that time would have been quite aristocratic I think and James Trenchard in the story is the supply man [to the British forces], a trading man. And then years later he’s completely changed the business he’s in. He’s had another brilliant idea, he gets into business with the Cubitt brothers, [real figures] great architects, builders who developed a lot of London at that time. Belgravia is a fascinating place because it was the first new area for rich people that had existed in London for hundreds of years. It wasn’t part of old London. That land to the west of Mayfair had been fields so it was an expansion of the city, specifically with this new architecture, which itself is an iconic architectural style [grand terraces of white stucco houses]. The neighbourhood itself has got an important presence in the whole show. It’s named after the neighbourhood, it’s what’s going on behind the doors of those houses. JW: For you as filmmakers, how much research goes into getting these periods right? One would always say this: first and foremost, it’s a drama, it’s a story. But Julian and I, quite independently of each other, are drawn towards historic subjects. I’m an amateur historian, I love historical stories. Julian writes with a lot of confidence about these different eras. The things he’s not intimately acquainted with, I’m sure he researches very clearly. Then, when we come to bring a project to the screen, our art department, our wardrobe department, all of these creative experts who work on these shows, work fastidiously to make sure that every detail is correct. We have historical protocol advisors, making sure that the actors know how to behave, that the tables are set properly, that people hold their knives and forks properly, that people stand up when somebody comes into the room, know how to doff their hats, get in and out of a carriage, all these sorts of things that are alien to us now. You want to get those details right. You want to get them right I think because it gives the audience confidence that they really are being transported into a historical world. I felt this very strongly – and this was before I knew Fellowes – but when I watched Gosford Park [Robert Altman’s 2001 country house ensemble drama, scripted by Fellowes] I was struck by specific historical details, which gave me confidence I was watching a film made by people who knew what they were talking about. I didn’t feel like they were wasting my time. I thought this is an accurate portrayal. This has been based on very detailed research and I think it helps audiences on their journey. You can become completely lost in this world because it’s been presented to you in a very believable and authentic way. It all starts with taking the facts seriously… JW: You need to be sure as an audience member that the filmmakers have forgotten more than you know. GN: Yes, there’s room for only a few bits of historical detail, but just by seeing those you think, “Who would have thought that the Duchess of Bedford [1783–1857] invented the institution of afternoon tea in the 1840s?” That’s why she’s there [in episode one of Belgravia]. The idea of saying, “Let’s have the first tea party, and where it came from, and how it was invented,” really captures my imagination. Very few things have always existed, they had to be created by somebody. We make The Last Kingdom for Netflix and what appealed to me about that was that these books were about the formation of England. I thought that’s very interesting and a good setting for a piece of drama: England before it became England, or England just on the political cusp of that event happening. I thought that was fascinating in the same way that going to what’s effectively the first ever tea party [is fascinating] – I think that’s a cheeky and rather delicious idea. Read more about the real history behind your favourite historical TV and film JW: How did you go about choosing locations? GN: We built a lot of sets. We also went to a lot of country houses and used those interiors as London townhouses – Basildon Park near Reading, Manderston House, which is on the Borders. But the real challenge was it’s quite impossible to shoot in Belgravia. It’s the heart of London, it’s filled with embassies; there’s no way you can shut down these parts of London and have horses and carriages going around for four days. It would never happen, so what we did was to go to the New Town of Edinburgh. We shot all of the exteriors for Eaton Square and Belgrave Square, we shot around there, and then in post-production we added all of the stucco and the porticos. JW: Is there anything you couldn’t do? GN: In the book, Julian writes about a meeting in a hotel in Trafalgar Square and he comments on the construction of Nelson’s Column. And it’s so good, and I said to Julian, “Put it in the script and we’ll see if we can do that”. We probably could have shown it, but it didn’t seem like a really important way of spending a lot of money. So what we did as a way of incorporating that is it’s in the title sequence [the column’s construction shown in illustrations]. It’s half-built. I’d love to have included that actually as a scene in the show. Belgravia, a six-part series, will begin on Sunday 15 March 2020 at 9pm on ITV, and will air weekly. Jonathan Wright writes the TV and radio previews for BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed.
Sam Willis describes the 1805 British naval victory and challenges misconceptions about the importance of the battle in the war against Napoleon
Historian Sam Willis describes the dramatic 1805 British victory against French and Spanish fleets, while challenging misconceptions about the role of Nelson and the importance of the battle in the war against Napoleon.