Bicentennial of Battle of Waterloo (June 18, 1815)

choi

The battle of Waterloo  | A Near-Run Thing; Appallingly bloody, yet decisive, the battle of Waterloo in June 1815 deserves the attention it is getting 200 years later. Economist, May 23, 2015
www.economist.com/news/books-and ... -june-1815-deserves
(book review of 3 Books on Battle of Waterloo)

Quote:

"Nearly all his [Duke of Wellington's] staff had been killed or wounded. Around 200,000 men had fought each other, compressed into an area of five square miles (13 square kilometres).  When darkness finally fell, up to 50,000 men were lying dead or seriously wounded—it is impossible to say how many exactly, because the French losses were only estimates—and 10,000 horses were dead or dying.

Historians "are helped by the massive archive of letters and diaries written by the men who were there. It was an age in which literacy was not just the preserve of the officer class. There was also a competitive newspaper industry

Note:
(a) “Through its dogged resistance to France’s hegemonic ambitions in the preceding 20 years, Britain helped create the conditions for the security system known as the Concert of Europe, established in 1815. The peace dividend Britain enjoyed for the next 40 years allowed it to emerge as the dominant global power of the 19th century.”
(i) Concert of Europe
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concert_of_Europe
(ii) concert (n; Italian noun masculine concerto concert, ultimately from Latin verb concerto  I fight or contend (I as the subject)):
"agreement in design or plan :  union formed by mutual communication of opinion and views"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concert

choi

(b) “the story of the [Waterloo] battle, or rather three battles--the engagement between Wellington’s Anglo-Dutch forces and the French at Quatre Bras on June 16th, the much bigger battle of Ligny on the same day, which saw the defeat of Prussia’s army, and finally Waterloo itself on the 18th”
(i) Quatre Bras
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatre_Bras
(“French for crossroads; literally ‘four arms’ ")
(ii) French English dictionary
* quatre (numeral; from Latin quattuor): "four"en.wiktionary.org/wiki/quatre
* bras (noun masculine; from Classical Latin bracchium; plural: bras): "arm"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bras

(Compare English noun brassiere (n; from Old French braciere arm protector, from bras arm)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brassiere
)
(iii) For the relative positions of Quatre Bras, Ligny and Waterloo, view the first map in
Barry C Jacobsen, The Hundred Days Comes to a Bloody End, as Napoleon Is Defeated at Waterloo. The Deadliest Blogger: Military History Page, July 31, 2013.
deadliestblogpage.wordpress.com/2013/07/31/the-hundred-days-comes-to-a-bloody-end-as-napoleon-is-defeated-at-waterloo/

choi

(c) first book’s author: “Bernard Cornwell, who is better known as the author of the fictional Sharpe novels set during the Peninsular War”

Bernard Cornwell
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Cornwell
(best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe [a fictional British military man])
(d) “In all probability, Napoleon could not ultimately have won the war, because of the size and determination of the forces ranged against him across Europe. But what gives the story is enduring power is the fact that the outcome of the [Waterloo] battle was far from certain.”

range
(vt): "1a :  to set in a row or in the proper order
b :  to place among others in a position or situation"
(vi): "3a :  to correspond in direction or line : ALIGN"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/range

(e) “The third [error, out of four--on the part of French] was the aimless wandering in the pouring rain of the Compte d’Erlon and his 20,000 troops between the battle at Quatre Bras against the Anglo-Dutch and the battle at Ligny that the Prussians were losing. Had he intervened in either, the impact could have been decisive.”
(i) The “compte” (French noun for the action “count” or “counting”--from Latin noun computus computation) is a misnomer (ie, misspelled).  

It should be “comte” (French noun for the nobility title “count”--from Latin noun masculine & feminine comes companion, servant, (medieval) a count, an earl).
(ii) Jean-Baptiste Drouet, Comte d'Erlon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Drouet,_Comte_d'Erlon

(f) the aftermath (the night when the Battle of Waterloo ended): “Amid the cries of dying men and horses, the clinking of hammer against chisel beside the burial pits could be heard—the sound of teeth being removed from dead men by entrepreneurial camp followers intending to supply denture-makers in London.”

Julia Armfield, Smiling with Dead Men’s Teeth. British Library, July 30, 203 (blog).
britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/untoldlives/2013/07/smiling-with-dead-mens-teeth.html
(g) “Mr O’Keefe paints a vivid picture of a France that had grown weary of Napoleon and, with the exception of a few old loyalists and anti-monarchists, was quite happy to consign Mr O’Keefe paints a vivid picture of a France that had grown weary of Napoleon and, with the exception of a few old loyalists and anti-monarchists, was quite happy to consign la gloire to the past. to the past.”

gloire (noun feminine; Latin [noun feminine] glōria glory): "glory"
en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gloire