How Did Napoleon Lose the Battle of Waterloo?
The defeat that sent Napoleon into exile
In the thousands of years old history of human warfare, few battles are as well known as Waterloo, the bloody carnage that finally ended Napoleon Bonaparte's career.
As we all know, the French Emperor lost at Waterloo and was sent into exile shortly afterward. However, as Napoleon’s enemy at the day, the Duke of Wellington, put it, Waterloo was a damned close-run thing.
So close run, in fact, that countless historians have since written about the Waterloo Campaign and the battle itself, trying to understand why were the French defeated on June 18, 1815, or how Napoleon could have emerged victorious.
To understand why the battle occurred, we must look back in time.
Napoleon’s fall and return
After his disastrous Russian campaign, where he lost between 2/3 to 3/4 of his army, a new Coalition was formed against Napoleon in 1813. Made up of Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia, Sweden, Spain, and some smaller German states who switched sides midway through the conflict, the allies fought and defeated the French in 1813–14, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in the spring of 1814.
The Emperor was exiled to the island of Elba, and his former enemies allowed him to become…
