#36, Battle of Waterloo: Napoleon's Final Gamble Killed an Empire in Nine Hours
Waterloo on June 18, 1815, killed or wounded approximately 55,000 soldiers in nine hours, 25,000 French, 15,000 Allied (British, Dutch, Belgian, German), and 7,000 Prussians. Napoleon's 72,000-strong Armée du Nord attacked the Duke of Wellington's 68,000 Allied troops positioned along a ridge near the Belgian village of Waterloo, and the result ended 23 years of nearly continuous European warfare.
Napoleon delayed his attack until noon to let the rain-soaked ground dry, a decision that gave Blücher's Prussian army time to march to Wellington's rescue. Marshal Ney's massed cavalry charges, 9,000 horsemen surging up the slope in waves, broke against British infantry squares that held like granite. The French Imperial Guard, Napoleon's elite reserve that had never been defeated, was committed at 7:30 PM in a last desperate push. When Wellington's line stood firm and the Guard retreated, the cry went up: "La Garde recule!", the Guard is falling back. The French army dissolved. Napoleon abdicated four days later and was exiled to St. Helena, where he died in 1821. Waterloo reshaped the map of Europe and inaugurated a century of relative peace.
