- Hofschröer, Peter. Wellington's Smallest
Victory. London: Faber and Faber,
2004. ISBN 0-571-21768-0.
- Wellington's victory over Napoléon
at Waterloo in 1815 not only inspired Beethoven's worst musical composition, but a
veritable industry of histories, exhibitions, and re-enactments
in Britain. The most spectacular of these was the model of the
battlefield which William Siborne, career officer and author of
two books on military surveying, was commissioned to build in 1830.
Siborne was an assiduous researcher; after surveying the battlefield
in person, he wrote to most of the surviving officers in the battle:
British, Prussian, and French, to determine the precise position of
their troops at the “crisis of the battle” he had chosen to depict:
19:00 on June 18th, 1815. The responses he received indicated that
Wellington's Waterloo Despatch, the after-action report
penned the day after the battle was, shall we say, at substantial
variance with the facts, particularly as regards the extent to which
Prussian troops contributed to the victory and the time at which
Wellington was notified of Napoléon's attack. Siborne stuck with the
facts, and his model, first exhibited in London in 1838, showed the
Prussian troops fully engaged with the French at the moment the tide
of battle turned. Wellington was not amused and, being not only a
national hero but former Prime Minister, was a poor choice as enemy.
For the rest of Siborne's life, Wellington waged a war of attrition
against Siborne's (accurate) version of the events at Waterloo, with
such success that most contemporary histories take Wellington's side,
even if it requires believing in spyglasses capable of seeing on the
other side of hills. But truth will out. Siborne's companion History of the Waterloo Campaign
remains in print 150 years after its publication, and his model of the
battlefield (albeit with 40,000 figures of Prussian soldiers removed)
may be seen at the National Army Museum in
London.
June 2004 