"Waterloo Battlefield & Refight" Topic

I've just returned from a short trip to Belgium and the battlesite was a must.

link

Later we fought the wargame and the french even managed to win!

link

Great series of Photos. Not sure why I have not been back since early 2015, but this encourages me. The interior of the Waterloo church is rarely seen and I do not know of any images on line. It is WELL worth a visit. Never yet seen the museum on the filed itself and glad to see there is no photo here of the Hanoverian skeleton, which I assume still on display.

That disgusts me. Totally. Grossly inappropriate.

Great posting. I must go back to Brussels. Never did open your second link actually!

Thanks for this

The lion mound spoils the battlefield

I don't imagine the 'Mound' is moving anytime soon.

When I was a kid, there was a 'hussar' skeleton, with musket ball, at {EDIT} Le Caillou museum. Is that still there?

The view from atop the Lions Mound is unparalleled; it gives you the idea of how small LHS and Hougomont were in comparison to the rest of the field. 6mm stuff,really!
Wellington's famous ridge was excavated to build the mound, the original ridge was really quite steep. check out some contemporary plates or watercolours , esp of LHS – the road besde cuts through a hillock, which isnt there anymore.

Yes the Mound is good news and bad news. Shame it wrecked the original field but a great view of what's left!

Quite some schlep to the top though. Found it hard work 16 years ago, it would need a crack team of Sherpas to get me up it these days! :o)

I didn't get to the caillou but there's a skelleton in the museum. The mound is a hard climb

Let me again stress that what you see of Hougomont now is a fraction of the entire complex back in 1815. The building complex and walled garden are unchanged obviously, at least as far as footprint goes! The orchard though was the width of the walled garden again. It significantly narrowed the approach to the Western half of the Allied line. Even LHS was bigger then, but that was in a North South extension of the gardens/orchard etc.

Remnants of the sunken road did survive. Try standing at the Gordon Monument and deciding whether to get down to the main Brussels/Charleroi Road via the steps or the slope! The North bank of the Ohain road, west of the crossroads still has a bank that can be 6 ft high in places.

The best preserved bit (and no-one goes there) is the Papelotte up to La Belle alliance lane. At its North end one is over 1oft below ground level… a real taste of what a sunken road actually meant.

Yes, the hussar skeleton is still there too. Totally wrong I feel.

"Yes, the hussar skeleton is still there too. Totally wrong I feel."

Indeed. My parents led me to believe it was a 'Johnny Foreigner, being a Catholic and all, puts a different value on life' -sort of thing.

Some weeks before, a man killed in a RTA at the bottom of our road in Mons was left there under a blanket all day. So, it made some sort of sense….

It was my first time abroad.

Appropriate emoticon.