Day 89 19 June 2015 Waterloo

Today we slept in until 7.30AM – luxury.  We had breakfast with a few interesting characters nearby.  These were obviously Napoleonic enthusiasts or fanatics…just degrees of interpretation.

We experienced an interesting start to the day, Another adventure in buying tickets The ticket sellers have gone on strike today…….EXCELLENT. The last time we tried to buy tickets in France with a credit card we were unsuccessful.  The first machine we tried didn’t work but we tried another machine and it was successful – I dare not think of the alternative - a bus to the venue but no guarantee of return.  Thank goodness it worked!!!

Moving around the site we saw several British units marching in column, some with black armbands that I pointed out to Elizabeth but perhaps someone important had passed away or perhaps one of their colleagues.  At one point the band was playing “Waltzing Matilda” and there are 86 re-enactors from Australia and 5 from NZ. Elizabeth was quite impressed with the Scots Greys, this cavalry regiment only had grey coloured horses, hence their nickname, which is easier to remember than the 2^nd Dragoons (Royal North British).

Captions

British infantry column with the Lion Mount in the background.

Allied artillery practice firing.

Scots Greys

Their uniforms were immaculate.  There were a number of camp followers, largely women who in real-life operated canteens to sell goods to soldiers. Unsurprisingly there were a few ring-ins with the 6000 reenactors, there were Austrians, Russians and Saxons. There were also 300 cavalry and 100 canons involved.

Despite inadequate signage we managed to go into the Allied encampment and see the new Hougoumont memorial and museum.  The Hougoumont Farm was a working farm until 2003 when it was sold and has been partly restored into a museum. The Great Barn has been converted into a theatre which has a multi-media presentation which was quite OK. Unfortunately there was essentially no seating and given the numbers expected it was a bit of an ordinary and they could have fitted more people in the theatre.

Images of the Great Barn inside and out and the show had three panels that would come up and down and rotate.

Our seat in the stands was quite OK and the battlefield was a good facsimile with a mock-up of the farmhouse La Haye Sainte (white) and Chateaux Hougoumont (brown). It was a cool evening but it seemed colder. The show lasted from 8.00-10.00PM but it is still light although with the overcast conditions. The show was excellent, what surprised me wasn’t so much the number of re-enactors but the amount of artillery and musket fire.  The slow deliberate infantry movement and the firepower when the platoons fired and all the smoke produced.  From about 9.30 onwards the troops tend to move away from the stands and visibility is a little difficult.

Captions

The new Hougoumont memorial, showing to soldiers trying to keep the French out.The French Old Guard band.

D'Erlon French infantry columns advance against the Allied centre.  The French Grand Battery is on the ridge behind to the right.

Hougoumont (red) before the battle begins and the troops are deploying before it begins. 

The farmhouse La Haye Saint under French control. 

Too many photos to include.

With the show over, it did become very cold when we left. The crowd had shielded us from the 

wind.  Poor Elizabeth was shivering violently from the cold and the queues for the busses was very long.  We walked about 40 minutes to the station by which time Elizabeth had warmed up.  We hopped on a train even got a seat and the train left shortly afterwards.  We arrived back at the hotel at 11.30PM half an hour before I had anticipated so that was a bonus.  It was certainly an advantage having our accommodation in the railway station.