3,000 get ready to re-enact the famous Waterloo battle
By Jasper Gerard, LDT June 14, 2010
The British can't find the Duke of Wellington. The French are in disarray as they have too many Napoleons. Marshal Ney is secretly a librarian while a British commander spends much of his time dressed as a pirate. As for the Prussians, bets are already being taken whether Field Marshal Gebhard von Blucher is going to be late again.
Load your muskets for the biggest re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo, to be fought in Belgium next weekend at the foot of the giant mound built on the battlefield that commemorates one of the most decisive clashes in European history.
But if the original battle was won on the playing fields of Eton (Wellington went to Eton and sent his sons there), this summer's re-enactment near the town of Waterloo might owe more to the comedy studios of Ealing. The 3,000 "combatants" invading Belgium less resemble Wellington's terrifying troops than a theatrical troupe. Indeed, one of the "commanders" of British forces can more typically be found dressing up for children at Alton Towers. "Wellington" is proving tricky to cast as none of the candidates own a horse - something of a job requirement - prompting frantic calls to the local pony club. Oh, and in a development that speaks volumes for French strategic planning, one year a re-enactment was attempted 11 "Napoleons" turned up.
This time, the armies will fire only blanks (smoking and highly convincing) and the first aid tents will be well manned for warriors suffering a spot of dehydration. Visitors will be able to stroll around recreations of the Allied and French camps with soldiers taking shooting practice, eating and generally being shouted at. Children will be put to work in a cadet force to keep the camp fires burning. "Napoleon(s)" will even be seen dictating letters and scoffing. Spectators can wander through the army camps, watch from the mound or from the slightly incongruous grandstand.
It might seem a mystery why anyone would wish to refight a battle across fields that were as bloodied as they were muddied. As a Captain Kincaid recalled at the time: "I had never thought there would be a battle where everyone was killed. This seemed to be it."
Which was in stark contrast to the confident prediction of Napoleon, the self-styled emperor whose wars had so scarred Europe; over his petit dejeuner on silver service he predicted that defeating the British would be "nothing more than eating breakfast".
In the event, all sides found the casualties on Sunday, June 18 1815 harder to stomach. The count for dead and wounded fell just shy of 50,000. With carnage all around, Wellington and Lord Uxbridge observed how the latter's leg had just been blown off: "By God, Sir. I've lost my leg." "By God, Sir. So you have."
This was a battle so brutal that von Blucher declared: "Raise high the black flags, my children. No prisoners. No pity. I will shoot any man I see with pity in him." Just as Flanders has never shaken off the memory of a later exercise in systemised slaughter, so these lowland fields still seem flattened by the weight of their dead.
Rather than treating the battle as a game, would it not be better remembered as the day Europe was finally rid of Napoleon, ushering in one of the most peaceful and prosperous centuries in history? And, from a British point of view, the day a small European island became the world's undisputed power. Who would want to witness the actualite of soldiers moaning their last at the mercy of rats and robbers?
Quite a few, it would seem, and they enjoy every minute of it. On Friday large groups will be deployed from the principal combatants of Britain, France, Germany and Holland, as well as from Russia, Ukraine, Austria, Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Luxembourg, even Malta. Some are coming from as far as Australia, New Zealand and America.
Meanwhile the grandstands will be packed. Belgium, never the world's hottest tourist destination, is preparing for one of its largest invasions since the last European army on its travels decided to pop in.
: That's insane!
