Apart from providing the title for the greatest ever Eurovision Song Contest winners Abba, thirty five years ago, today is the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
On this day in 1815, the French under Napoleon and Marshall Ney were defeated by a coalition, including Prussians under Blücher and an Anglo-Allied army under Wellington.
It was to be Napoleon's last, and put an end to his rule as the French Emperor.
It was decisive inasmuch as it ended the series of wars that had convulsed Europe for more than 25 years, and ushered in almost half a century of peace in Europe; no major conflict was to occur until the Crimean War.
It was one of The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World wrote Sir Edward Creasy in 1851.
More interestingly, it was the subject of a thought-provoking essay by Trevelyan entitled "If Napoleon had Won the Battle of Waterloo", where he argued that Europe would have experienced a period of stability, but England would have undergone a domestic upheaval.
Makes you think.
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