"Thou first and last of fields,
King-making victory!"
BYRON.
The Battle Of Waterloo - part1
The Battle Of Waterloo - part2
The Battle Of Waterloo - part3
In his book, ‘The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World’, in 1851 (from where fifteen of the War and Battle on this web
site have been adapted), E.S. Creasy describes how England has now been blessed with thirty-six years of peace, since Waterloo. At no other
period of her history can a similarly long cessation from a state of warfare be found.
It is true that our troops have had battles to fight during this interval for the protection and extension of our Indian possessions and our
colonies, but these have been with distant and unimportant enemies, compared with the battle of Waterloo.
The danger has never been
brought near our own shores, and no matter of vital importance to our empire has ever been at stake. We have not had hostilities with either
France, America, or Russia; and when not at war with any of our peers, we feel ourselves to be substantially at peace. There has, indeed,
throughout this long period, been no great war, like those with which the previous history of modern Europe abounds.
There have been formidable collisions between particular states, and there have been still more
formidable collisions between the armed champions of the conflicting principles of absolutism and democracy; but there has been no general war,
like those of the French Revolution, like the American, or the Seven Years War, or like the war of the Spanish Succession. It would be far too
much to augur from this that no similar wars will again convulse the world; but the value of the period of peace which Europe has gained is
incalculable, even if we look on it as only a long truce, and expect again to see the nations of the earth recur to what some philosophers have
termed man's natural state of warfare.
No equal number of years can be found during which science, commerce, and civilization have advanced so
rapidly and so extensively as has been the case since 1815. When we trace their progress, especially in this country, it is impossible not to
feel that their wondrous development has been mainly due to the land having been at peace. Their good effects cannot be obliterated even if a
series of wars were to recommence.
When we reflect on this, and contrast these thirty-six years with the period that preceded them—a
period of violence, of tumult, of unrestingly destructive energy—a period throughout which the wealth of nations was scattered like sand, and the
blood of nations lavished like water, it is impossible not to look with deep interest on the final crisis of that dark and dreadful epoch—the
crisis out of which our own happier cycle of years has been evolved.
The great battle of Waterloo, which ended the twenty-three years' war of the first French Revolution,
and which quelled the man whose genius and ambition had so long disturbed and desolated the world, deserves to be regarded by us not only with
peculiar pride as one of our greatest national victories, but with peculiar gratitude for the repose which the battle of Waterloo secured for us
and for the greater part of the human race.
One good test for determining the importance of Waterloo is to ascertain what was felt by wise and
prudent statesmen before that battle respecting the return of Napoleon from Elba to the imperial throne of France, and the probable effects of
his success. For this purpose, I will quote the words, not of any of our vehement anti-Gallican politicians
of the school of Pitt, but of a leader of our Liberal party, of a man whose reputation as a jurist, a historian, and a far-sighted and candid
statesman was, and is, deservedly high, not only in this country, but throughout Europe. Sir James Mackintosh said of the return from
Elba.
