Meeting Waterloo -- and loving it

Town was a nightmare for Napoleon, but it's fascinating for today's visitor

Author: By Bud Collins

Date: SUNDAY, September 27, 1998

Page: M14

Section: Travel

But the former emperor, Monsieur Bonaparte, who schlepped here with 125,000 comrades in arms, slept not at all during his final nightmare of about nine hours. Napoleonic dreams of reestablishing his and France's domination of Europe came crashing down around his muddy boots, detonating in tune with British artillery. On June 18, 1815, this Belgian village became the all-time symbol and buzzword for a disastrous fall by the mighty.

Waterloo.

That one word has said it all for ambition and its demolition over the last 183 years. There are still Frenchmen like my Parisian pal, Dominique Borde, who wince if you utter it in their presence. Dom happens to understand Boston baseball, and if you want to talk Waterloo, he will threaten to bring up Bucky Dent. Some wounds don't heal.

But Waterloo? How long has it been in my consciousness -- or anybody else's? -- even before understanding what or where? As a boy I often heard of somebody meeting his/her/their Waterloo, considerably before being aware of Napoleon and the battle that was his, well, undeniable Waterloo. Fourth-grade history as taught by Miss Leo Long brought me up to date.

And my Belgian friend, Franz Verstockt, has brought me -- under protest -- to the dateline, the place: this verdant, lumpy farmland where Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington (a.k.a. the Iron Duke, and likely thought of as the lucky Limey by contemptuous Napoleon), made his victorious stand.

Under kindly protest, I should say, because Franz, residing a few miles away, feels (probably correctly) that his small country offers a large assortment of architectural and artistic treasures more deserving of the browser's time and attention than a few green acres 12 miles from Brussels. He had never considered it worth inspecting himself.

But it's easy enough to find, outside the small town for which the battle was named, and where today, along with the aged stone inn that headquartered Wellington, you may partake of the cuisine of a McDonald's, as well as Vietnamese and Mexican restaurants.

Napoleon, of course, said that an army travels on its stomach, but Franz does not feel it advisable that his platoon of three should beef up its journey here -- apprehensive perhaps of a digestive Waterloo this far from his good wife's table. Still, realizing my determination to meet The Waterloo, satisfying curiosity about a plot that can't be forgot, he was pleased to act as chauffeur.

For such a mammoth, historically resounding result, the scene is almost a miniature: a battlefield not much more than a mile-and-a-half square. But what took place there -- the carnage in so brief a time, the intimate clash of 140,000 men, the ruin of one of them, the feared and famous man who had pushed Europe around for years -- is hard to grasp as you peer from an earthen height (since raised as a lookout) across land yet farmed. This perch, 227 steps up, called Lion Hill, is topped by a huge bronze British lion.

Fields in geometric patterns liebefore you in a shallow, uneven valley, splashed by copses and hedges amid the agricultural spreads, and decorated by the stone and tile buildings of the Hougoumont and La Haie Sainte farms, focal points of the fighting. Sheep graze placidly where men slashed wildly, ferociously at one another like cornered wolves and lions.

Though pastoral now, the site -- well-preserved as it was -- degenerated on that distant day into a gruesome muddle in the rye, a murderous, deafening mess that has been excellently bottled in three audio-visual productions at the visitors' center. A diorama depicting the movements of cavalry, infantry, and artillery surrounds you -- a smorgasbord of gunsmoke, cannon and rifle fire, clanging sabers, urgent bugles, whinnies, shouts of combatants, cries of wounded and dying. Red-headed Marshal Ney leads a French cavalry charge. Wellington supervises as best he can on horseback. Napoleon in the rear, amid weeping willows, wonders what the hell's going on. Soon enough he will weep himself in retreat, his comeback from Elba scrambled, permanent exile looming.

Everyone else wondered, too. This is clear in the jumble of morning-afternoon-evening chaos available in a slide show. Also a movie of the reenactment by uniformed amateur actors, an annual event such as occurs at Lexington and Concord. It was mostly desperate and lethal blind-man's buff on dipping, unfamiliar terrain, up-close and impersonal hand-to-hand slaughter of more than 40,000 men and 10,000 horses.

Whether there were any Private Ryans among Wellington's Brits is not revealed, but Waterloo's longest day was bloodier, if not as explosive, than that of the Normandy invaders 129 years later.

``Everything was a complete heap of confusion,'' summed up British Captain G.A. Barlow in a letter to his father after the battle.

Historian David Howarth writes:

``To make sense of formal maneuvers they used, one always has to remember that none of their weapons could be accurately aimed . . . musket shot needed more luck than skill. Because the weapons were so inaccurate, infantry officers, mounted and conspicuously dressed, could lead their men to within a few yards of the enemy. And Wellington himself could ride along the skyline all day in full view of the French, always in danger from masses of aimless shot flying everywhere but not in special danger from being deliberately shot at. Attacking infantry held their fire until the last 50 paces from the enemy. After firing [the one shot before having to reload -- two shots a minute was considered rapid-fire] they charged with bayonets.''

Napoleon, the favorite, outnumbered the allies (British, Dutch, Belgians, Prussians) with superior troops, but his hectic game plan wasn't good enough to bust through Wellington and Prussian counterpart, Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, and swarm Brussels.

Howarth says, ``The French command was fooled by the gentle folds in the ground that Wellington chose to defend . . . they believed, before each of their attacks, that Wellington's line had broken and fled; and each time they only discovered it had not when they were already in musket and grapeshot range and it was too late to change their formations.''

As any shoemaker will tell you, the memories of Wellington and Blucher are also kept alive by boots named for these guys who kicked Napoleon out of Waterloo -- and business.