Napoleon lives on at Waterloo

Press, 31 August 1985, Page 19

Napoleon lives on at Waterloo

By J

MAVIS AIREY,

, who spent several years

working as a freelance journalist in Brussels.

Visitors to Waterloo these days could be forgiven for thinking that Napoleon had won the famous battle.

Such is Bonaparte’s hold on the imaginations of French-speaking Europeans that it is his face, not Wellington’s or Blucher’s, that stares out of the tea towels, novelties, and post cards in the souvenir shops that fringe the battlefield 18 kilometres south of Brussels. Tourists sip their coffee in the Cafe Napoleon. Garish posters of his exploits lure them into the ramshackle cinema. He features prominently in the “Diorama,” a rather effective circular, larger-than-life-size mural of the battle which takes up a whole building. Even the learned-looking histories in the book stalls bear his familiar figure on the dust jacket. Nearby, the Ferme de Caillow, where Napoleon spent the night before the battle, has been turned into a museum to the hero, with his tiny four-poster bed, a pair of boots, and the bowl in which he washed all lovingly preserved.

True there are monuments dotted about the countryside to others, like the Belgians, the Hanoverians, and the Prussians, who helped shape that slice of history, but they are discreet by comparison.

The excellent Wellington museum is far from the battlefield in the village of Waterloo itself. But the eager tourists who spill out of their coaches, armed with guidebooks to retrace their hero’s steps, find the modern site bears little resemblance to the field where Wellington, separated from bis Prussian allies, faced the might of France on that rainy morning of J une 18, 1815. The area has been flattened. The

contours, ridges, and sunken lanes which were so tactically important have been bulldozed to find the 300,000 cubic metres of earth needed to build the grandiose Lion Monument which now dominates the battlefield.

Visitors climbing the 400 steps to the top could be forgiven for thinking that this monument, too, is in honour of Napoleon. There is nothing obvious to disabuse them. Then a careful reading of the guidebook reveals that the landmark actually commemorates the Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch-Belgian troops (Belgium was part of the Netherlands at the

time), who was wounded here. His role in the battle was, in fact, not particularly glorious, but evidently someone somewhere in the newly emergent Belgian State thought it was an appropriate tribute. And if the historians mourn the desecration of the site, the monument does serve as an excellent vantage point from which to pick out the old farms, now beautifully restored, around which the battle once raged: La Haie Sainte, used by Wellington and defended by the Germans against Marshall Ney’s fierce assaults; la Belle Alliance, where Napoleon promised his lieu-

tenants they would sleep that night in Brussels, and where Wellington and Blucher celebrated their victory, Hougoumont, scene of the first French assault, and a bloody, fruitless struggle. To the east, the ancient Foret de Soignes has survived Napoleon’s depredations. At one stage he cut down 22,000 of its oaks to build a fleet to attack England. On a clear day, one can see the town of Wavre, where Napoleon stationed Grouchy to hold off the Prussian army. But Blucher eluded him, and by evening had arrived at Waterloo to save the day for Wellington. Stretching south, the modern road follows the route of Napoleon’s long and bitter retreat to Paris.

In the placid Belgian countryside of today it takes a real effort of imagination to replace green fields with a sea of mud, and browsing sheep and cattle with 50,000 dead and wounded men and the remains of their horses.

The historians say that Waterloo marked the end of Napoleon’s career, but I am not so sure. The message of the souvenir shops may not be all that far from the truth.

In some ways Napoleon may have proved the real victor at Waterloo.

The Napoleonic Code and the bureaucracy it spawned permeates the legal, social, and educational fabric of Belgian and much European society to this day. The self-styled capital of Europe, Brussels plays host to the perfect Napoleonic institution: the European Economic Community. With its burgeoning bureaucracy and a finger in every pie, the E.E.C. is as fitting a tribute as even the megalomaniac Bonaparte could wish.