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Tag Archives: Battle of Waterloo

I’m late with my blog today, but I have a good excuse. I’m just back from a trip out of town for the First Birthday of THE CUTEST GRANDSON EVER. It was wonderful.

Last week I skipped out on a regular blog because I was finishing writing my Work In Progress. I’m happy to report Work Is Done and turned in. And, I discovered in my research that Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon lost.

Of course, I knew that beforehand. Who didn’t?

2012247I’ve researched the battle several times, having used it in other books, my Three Soldiers Series, for example. Even if I don’t use the battle in the story, I need to know things like what regiments fought at Waterloo, if I am writing about a Waterloo veteran.

For writing about Brussels before Waterloo, I relied heavily on two sources:

Waterloo Days by Charlotte Ann Eaton (free on Google Books) -This book is a memoir written by a traveler to Brussels who arrived the day of the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball

jpegNew Picture of Brussels by J.B. Romberg (also free on Google Books) – a travel guide, written in 1820

For details of the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, I used two rather obvious sources:

The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball by David Miller
Dancing Into Battle by Nick Foulkes

For the battle itself:

MV5BNTc4MTk5NDk5Nl5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjk2NjQzMTE@._V1_SX214_AL_The Battle: A New History of Waterloo by Alessandro Barbero
Waterloo: Day of Battle by David Howarth – This book tells the story of the battle from the perspective of the soldiers fighting it, which makes it ideal. It is my favorite book about Waterloo.

But even before I delved into the books, I needed to get myself in the mindset of Waterloo. I did this by watching YouTube videos, which I first found on Number One London. Look HERE for bunches of Waterloo videos, including the Waterloo movie starring Rod Steiger as Napoleon and Christopher Plummer as Wellington.

You’ll have to wait until 2015 to find out how well I did with this research!

Hugh Westleigh, the hero of A Lady of Notoriety was a Waterloo veteran. You can get your copy of that book now.

Do you have a favorite research book? Or a favorite nonfiction history book?

329251_yekran_setka_nastrojka_indeec_perya_televizor_1920x1080_(www.GdeFon.ru)

I need to finish my book today, the start of a new series of four books. The series will be called The Scandalous Summerfields and I’ll be talking more about it and about this book as time goes on.

At this point in the book, my hero and heroine are in Brussels and it is the eve of the Battle of Waterloo. It seems fitting, then, that I should entertain you with images of the battle.
Battle_of_Waterloo_1815_11

ScotsGreys

1024px-Wellington_at_Waterloo_Hillingford

Flameng_Francois_Napoleon_After_The_Battle_Of_Waterloo

I’ll be back with a proper blog next week!

Posted in Research | Tagged | 2 Replies

1200px-The_Duchess_of_Richmond's_Ball_by_Robert_Alexander_HillingfordI am down to the last week before my current WIP will (hopefully!) be done and am getting close to the Battle of Waterloo. My hero and heroine are both in Brussels and are planning to attend the Duchess of Richmond’s Ball, that famous ball that took place the evening that Wellington learned that Napoleon was on the march in Belgium. So I’ve been immersing myself in Waterloo Youtube videos and reading about the ball.

Did you know for years the actual location of the ball was the subject of debate? It was long thought to have taken place in the Hotel de Ville in the Grand Place in Brussels, not because there was any evidence to that fact, though.

Other locations suggested were the Duke of Richmond’s coach house and stables. In the Illustrated London News in the mid-nineteenth century, the location of the ball was listed as being at the Maison du Roi, the king’s palace, a grand location, but, again, totally false.

Henry-Nelson-O'Neil_Before-Waterloo_1868

The true location is described by a very credible source–The Duchess’s daughter who was present at the ball.

She says:

My mother’s now famous ball took place in a large room on the ground floor, on the left of the entrance, connected with the rest of the house by an anteroom. It had been used by the coach builder, from whom the house was hired, to put carriages in, but it was papered before we came there; and I recollect the paper — a trellis pattern with roses. My sisters used the room as a schoolroom, and we used to play battledore and shuttlecock there on a wet day.*

The house the Richmonds rented was on the Rue de la Blanchisserie, so named because a laundry once existed on the site. Wellington used to refer to the residence as “the Wash House,” which he thought was pretty funny and the Duchess of Richmond, a prickly sort of woman, didn’t. In any event, her daughter’s description was pretty clear that it wasn’t any of those other places.

For a beautiful description of the ball, see Amanda’s 2008 Risky Regencies blog

By the way, in my YouTube viewing I discovered two other pretty blatant errors. In one video, they stated the date of the Battle of Waterloo to be July 18, 1815 instead of June 18 (who am I to remark upon that? My book Chivalrous Captain, Rebel Mistress contained the same mistake, a typo, in my case). Another video kept calling Wellington the “future Duke of Wellington,” but he received that title in 1814 after Napoleon’s first abdication.

And while we are on the subject, I am ALL ENVY at Susanna’s plans to attend the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo!!!

*from The Duchess of Richmond’s Ball 15 June 1815 by David Miller

Have you come across any grievous historical errors lately?

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