Napoleon Battle At Waterlon Essay

When Napoleon retained control of the French army in 1815 he did something out of the norm for him. During all his campaigns he used conscription to fill his ranks but when he came back from his exile he used only veterans who were extremely experienced and had an unquestionable loyalty to him. This resulted in having a smaller amount of men then the combined allied forces. At Waterloo he had a total of 73,000 men broken down as 48,000 infantry, 14,000 cavalry, and around 7,000 artillery men who manned close to 250 guns. The problem Napoleon faced with this new army were his officer staff was not experienced with working with other parts of the army. This meant they were not able to coordinate or support each other as well. The allied forced on the other hand were not made up of veterans and before the Prussian’s joined battle at

This move was for the ground to harden up from the previous night’s rain. This move while smart in the reason was a move that ultimately lost Napoleon the battle. It gave the Prussians enough time to make it to the battlefield later in the day and still give them time to save the British who were on the verge of defeat. The battle started on the right flank at Hougoumont. Napoleon’s plan was to attack this flank and to draw Wellington’s reserves into the flank so he could then break through the center with his artillery which would roll up the British and cut them off from the Prussians returning to help them. The problem with this is that the French were repelled from Hougoumont several times throughout the day. This part of the battlefield was a huge failure on the French side which ended up having the opposite effect on what they wanted. Instead of drawing the British reserves in they had to throw their own reserves into the