MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · June 18 · 1815

ON THIS DAY · 18 JUNE 1815

Waterloo. Napoleon’s last army breaks against Wellington’s ridge and…

Waterloo. Napoleon’s last army breaks against Wellington’s ridge and Blücher’s evening arrival.

THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT

Now the coalition that never cohered finally does — and look at what the map shows arriving at Leipzig in October 1813: Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden converging with half a million men on Napoleon’s 200,000, in the “Battle of the Nations,” the largest engagement in European history before the World Wars. The allies have adopted every French invention — mass conscription, corps systems, even a rule (the Trachenberg Plan) to refuse battle wherever the Emperor commands in person and attack his marshals everywhere else. Three days break the Grand Empire: the Rhine Confederation defects mid-battle, 70,000+ men fall, and France is thrown back across the Rhine. In 1814 the allies do what was unthinkable for twenty years and march on Paris itself (the charcoal arrow); Napoleon, fighting his most brilliant campaign with teenaged conscripts, is finally dethroned by his own marshals’ refusal to continue. Exile to Elba; the Bourbons return in the baggage of the coalition; Europe exhales and sends its diplomats to Vienna to redraw the map — watch the hatching appear: restored monarchies, the age’s new color.

From Chapter 9 — The Fall of The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848 (JUN 1815).

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THE ATLAS THAT SHOWS IT

The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

12 CHAPTERS · AN INTERACTIVE SITUATION MAP