Waterloo in popular culture

Because of its pivotal role in European and world history the Battle of Waterloo has a prominent place in military history and is frequently mentioned in popular culture.

Commemorative memorials and places

For a comprehensive list of places named Waterloo see Waterloo (disambiguation).

There are many memorials and places named after the battle, perhaps the most famous is Waterloo station in London. In the 1990s, after Waterloo station was chosen as the British terminus for the Eurostar train service, Florent Longuepée, a municipal councillor in Paris, wrote to the British Prime Minister requesting that the station be renamed, because he said it was upsetting for the French to be reminded of Napoleon's defeat when they arrived in London by Eurostar.

Books

Fiction

• Clarke, Susanna: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a fantasy novel in which the battle of Waterloo is described from the point of view of a magician who aids the Duke of Wellington. For example, it is thanks to the magician's weather control that heavy rain falls before the battle, aiding the Coalition forces.
• Cornwell, Bernard. Sharpe's Waterloo or Waterloo: Sharpe's Final Adventure Campaign is a novel which sets Cornwell's fictional hero Richard Sharpe at the battle on the staff of the non-fictional Prince of Orange. The book was later adapted for television by the ITV and starred Sean Bean as Sharpe.
• Doyle, Arthur Conan The Adventures of Gerard (1903): This novel contains a chapter "How the Brigadier Bore Himself at Waterloo", about his fictional hero Brigadier Etienne Gerard. The chapter consists of two short stories which were originally published separately. Project Gutenberg:The Adventures of Gerard (Audio Book)
• Goscinny, René (stories) and Uderzo, Albert (illustrations), Asterix in Belgium: The entire battle between Julius Caesar and the Belgians in Asterix in Belgium is a parody of the battle of Waterloo. The arrival of Caesar and his troops resembles a similar painting depicting Napoleon and his army. In the French version, the text which accompanies the battle on paper is a parody of Victor Hugo's poem about the Battle of Waterloo. Asterix, Obelix and Vitalstatistix lead a surprise attack on Caesar's troops just when the Romans seem to win the battle. This is of course, exactly what happened to Napoleon in Waterloo.
• The Battle of Waterloo is covered in some detail from the viewpoint of the fictional Morland family in The Campaigners, Volume 14 of The Morland Dynasty, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.
• Heyer, Georgette. An Infamous Army. This novel details the battle (and the days leading up to it) as seen through the eyes of a fictional officer. Heyer consulted both primary and secondary sources,and produced a work of such insight and accuracy it has been used in military history lectures at Sandhurst.
• Hugo, Victor Les Misérables (Gutenberg: Les Miserables: Text,HTML) As a sort of interlude in his Les Misérables, after the death of Fantine in Montreuil-sur-mer but before Jean Valjean arrives in Paris, Victor Hugo recounts his visit to the battlefield in 1861 and recites his version of the battle.
• Mallinson, Allan: The first of his Matthew Hervey novels, A Close Run Thing (1999) culminates with Hervey's experience in the Battle of Waterloo.
• In Terry Pratchett's novel, Nation, Daphne compares Mau's deceptive strategy against First Mate Cox to the Battle of Waterloo.
• Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), The Charterhouse of Parma
• Thackeray, William Makepeace, Vanity Fair (1848): this novel contains several chapters revolving around the events at Waterloo.
• Willis, Connie, To Say Nothing of the Dog: the Battle of Waterloo is used as a reference point to model how reality is believed to adjust to neutralize the effects of a temporal paradox. There are so many critical turning points in the battle, it's explained, that a time traveler would have many opportunities to affect the outcome. Oddly - whether by accident or design - Willis consistently refers to the battle as taking place on 18 June 1814, precisely one year earlier than it did.

Non Fiction

• Creasy, Edward Shepherd. The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World. The Battle of Waterloo is the final battle listed.

Films and television

• A 1913 film of The Battle of Waterloo made by British and Colonial Films and directed by Charles Weston has been described as "the first British epic film".

• Waterloo was a 1970 Italian-Russian film, directed by Sergei Bondarchuk. It was the story of the preliminary events and the battle, and is remembered for its lavish battle scenes.

• The book Sharpe's Waterloo (#Books see above) was adapted for television by the ITV and starred Sean Bean as Sharpe.

• Waterloops is a fictitious water park visited by Napoleon in the film Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

• The Battle of Waterloo is referenced during an episode of The O.C. in "The Safe Harbor".

• In Blackadder: Back & Forth, Lord Blackadder travels back in time and accidentally kills Wellington before the battle of Waterloo; when he returns to the future England is full of French culture, so he time-travels once again to ensure that the Duke lives.

• In the movie Jaws, Captain Quint, while recounting his experience as a seaman aboard the USS Indianapolis, likens the sailors' grouped formations to avoid sharks as "something you would see in a calendar, like the Battle of Waterloo."

• The battle is mentioned in the 2004 film The Alamo, where it is compared to the Battle of San Jacinto, the final battle of the Texas Revolution.

• The 2005 Discovery Channel series Battleground: The Art of War featured one episode on the Battle of Waterloo.

• In the James Bond film The Living Daylights, Bond (played by Timothy Dalton) kills the villain Brad Whitaker with an explosive that knocks a bust of the Duke of Wellington onto him. Bond then says of Whitaker, "He met his Waterloo".

• There is a TV show shown on BBC1 called Waterloo Road

• In an episode of Dad's Army entitled "A Soldier's Farewell", Captain Mainwaring (Arthur Lowe) dreams that he is Napoleon during and after the Battle of Waterloo.

• During the Denver Broncos' loss to the Kansas City Chiefs in 2008 at Arrowhead Stadium, where Denver's coach Mike Shanahan is 3-11, Dan Dierdorf made the comment, "If Mike Shanahan was Napoleon, then this [Arrowhead] is his Waterloo."

• In Swedish television series Bert from 1994, the episode "Det viktiga är inte att kämpa väl utan att vinna" features Torleif's little sister wrongly referring to the battle as "Waterloo var ju 1812, Gud vad dum du är Torleif!" ("Waterloo was 1812, Oh My God how stupid you are, Torleif!") when their family plays a quiz.

Interactive media

Battle of Waterloo simulators

There are two simulators on the internet, one at PBS.org, and one at the BBC online

Games

• In the computer game Empire Earth, the Battle of Waterloo is the last mission of the English campaign.
• The 2010 PC Game Napoleon: Total War features the Battle of Waterloo as a "historical battle".
• The NTW 3 mod for Napoleon Total War goes more in depth with a reworked map and actual order of battle.* In the video game Psychonauts, Fred Bonaparte, an insane asylum employee turned inmate and descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, loses his sanity after continuously losing a game of "Waterloo" with a patient and develops a split personality between himself and his forefather.

Music

• The band ABBA made a song titled "Waterloo" that won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1974.
• "The Battle of Waterloo" is a traditional tune for great Highland bagpipe.
• "Waterloo" is a song by American metal band Iced Earth, that is about the battle at Waterloo. It appears on the album The Glorious Burden, but is not available on the regular American release.
• "Waterloo" is a song by British pop band Suede, and appeared on their top 5 single "Electricity".
• "The Battle of Waterloo" is a song by the German metal band Running Wild on their album Death or Glory.
• "Waterloo" was a 1959 country song recorded by Stonewall Jackson. The chorus is:

Waterloo, Waterloo

Where will you meet your Waterloo?

Every puppy has its day

Everybody has to pay

Everybody has to meet his Waterloo.

And the last verse ends:

And that's how Tom Dooley met his Waterloo.

• The Battle of Waterloo is mentioned in the song, Lydia the Tattooed Lady:

Oh Lydia The Queen of Tattoo.

On her back is The Battle of Waterloo.

Beside it The Wreck of the Hesperus too.

And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue.

You can learn a lot from Lydia!

• "You're My Waterloo" is an unreleased song by The Libertines.
• Waterloo to Anywhere is the debut album by Dirty Pretty Things, though this is more likely a reference to the London railway station.
• La Belle Alliance is an alternative electronic band from Cork, Ireland named after the Inn which served as Napoleon's headquarters during the battle of Waterloo.
• The Irish singer-songwriter Percy French's song "Slattery's Mounted Fut" opens with a satirical comparison between Waterloo and an Irish rebel group:

You've heard of Julius Caesar and the great Napoleon too,

And how the Cork Militia beat the Turks at Waterloo;

But there's a page of glory that, as yet, remains uncut,

And that's the warlike story of the Slattery Mounted Fut.

• "Waterloo Sunset" by British rock band The Kinks, arguably amongst the most famous songs referencing Waterloo, is actually an ode to London's Waterloo railway terminus.

Other

• The phrase "to meet one's Waterloo" (or similar) has entered the English language as a word signifying a great test with a final and decisive outcome - generally one resulting in failure and proving vincibility, in recognition of Napoleon's defeat.
• The Waterloo Medal was issued to all ranks of the British Army who participated, including supposedly a baby born on the field to one unit's auxiliary woman aide. It was one of the first general medals issued. One can be seen with Wellington's uniform in the basement at Apsley House.
• When French President Jacques Chirac visited the UK to celebrate the centennial of the Entente Cordiale, the Waterloo Room in Windsor Castle was renamed the Music Room, and then renamed the Waterloo Room following Chirac's departure.
• The famous quote attributed to Wellington "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" was probably apocryphal. Unlike his older brother, Wellington was not an academic success at Eton; on one of his rare visits back there, the only athletic activities he could remember were skipping across a brook, and fisticuffs with a fellow student. See also Wikiquote.
• Jim DeMint, a Republican United States Senator of South Carolina, made a well-publicized comment during a conference call with conservative activists on July 17, 2009 in which he encouraged conservatives to go after President Barack Obama's Health Care Reform efforts, saying "[i]f we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." In response, DeMint's Facebook fan page was spammed with hundreds of postings of the link to the youtube video of Abba's Waterloo. After the passage of the health care reform bill, conservative pundit David Frum criticized the opposition strategy exemplified by DeMint's comment, saying, "it’s Waterloo all right: ours." Some liberal commentators claimed that it was his Waterloo, as DeMint predicted, but that Obama played the role of Wellington rather than Napoleon.

External links

Reenactment societies

• 1st Battalion, 95th (Rifle) Regiment of Foot (1/95) - 95th Rifles Living History Society An affiliate of the Napoleonic Association, UK
• King's German Legion - King's German Legion Living History Society (in German) an affiliate of the Napoleonic Association, Germany
• 15th Kings Light Dragoons (Hussars) Re-enactment Regiment