A slightly later start for us today as there was less for to
see as we had to see, mainly the French bivouacs today. The weather was still overcast but at least
there was no rain that had been forecasted a few days ago. We did discover that
this year’s Wellington is a New Zealander. We discovered this through a news
report and also found out that a 77 year old Canadian re-enactor had died of a
heart attack two days ago. We visited the French bivouacs which were a long
distance from the battlefield. The
shuttle bus took us there but only bought us halfway back because they had
closed the road for pedestrian traffic, we then had to walk a couple of
kilometres back. We wondered about those
people with mobility issues who couldn’t get back. We saw the French troops having lunch after
their roll call and we caught the aftermath of Napoleon’s meal with his entourage
and saw him present medals to a couple of soldiers.
Before the show began there was a minutes silence for a
re-enactor, a 77 year old Canadian who suffered a heart attack on 18 June (the
actual anniversary of the battle). That
explained the black arm bands we saw the day before. As sad as it is, at least he was doing
something that he enjoyed. His family I
guess will always remember that he died on the anniversary of the battle. The disposition of forces was a little
different as now to our left there was a battery of artillery and they seem to
be using a white wall to represent the fighting around Placenoit, the troops
seemed a little closer and the light was better than the day before. Napoleon even rode around the rear of the
Allied position, much to the delight of the crowd.
There seemed a lot more firepower tonight as smoke hung both
over the battlefield but also the Lion Mount that was shrouded in smoke. We could still smell the smoke at the bus
queue when we and that’s about 300 metres away.
The Lion Monument was shrouded in smoke.
Apparently they fired off 4 tonnes of gunpowder during the entire event
and it showed.
We left at 9.30PM because the re-enactment degenerates into
constant firing and they move away from us.
There seemed to be much more firing tonight as there is a lot of
smoke. The trickle of people behind the
stands was more like a swarm by the time we got there but there didn’t seem that
many people were leaving the stands.
We queued and it wasn’t long before we could hop on a bus
but there were too many people at the train station so we were delayed in
leaving. Luckily we got on to the train
and in fact they had delayed it and we were about the last wo on, in fact the
door had a train and it went immediately after we got on, the doors had closed
and I had to press the button for us to hop on.
It was nice they delayed the train for just the two of us!
Below us the French monument to the fallen.
We arrived at the station about 10.30PM and went off to our
room. Elizabeth rang room service and we
had a filling meal of mushroom soup and bread.
It had been an amazing two days despite the cold of the first night and
the difficulty of negotiating transport.
I’m sure this is the biggest re-enactment ever seen in Europe but I’m
sure the Civil War ones in the USA would be much larger. (50% bigger).
AMAZING!
The musket firing was impressive with relatively few troops. The yellow smoke was a first aid signal as a re-enactor is injured. The bottom picture is Roustam Raza who was the Emperor's Mameluke's PA. The Mamelukes ruled Egypt.
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