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The Battle of Waterloo (1815)

The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday 18th June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. An Imperial French army under the command of Emperor Napoleon was defeated by combined armies of the Seventh Coalition, an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington combined with a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher. It was the culminating battle of the Waterloo Campaign and Napoleon's last. The defeat at Waterloo put an end to Napoleon's rule as Emperor of the French and marked the end of his Hundred Days' return from exile.

Upon Napoleon's return to power in 1815, many states that had opposed him formed the Seventh Coalition and began to mobilise armies. Two large forces under Wellington and von Blücher assembled close to the northeastern border of France. Napoleon chose to attack in the hope of destroying them before they could join in a coordinated invasion of France with other members of the Coalition. The decisive engagement of this three-day Waterloo Campaign (16th-19th June 1815) occurred at the Battle of Waterloo. According to Wellington, the battle was ‘the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life’.

Napoleon delayed giving battle until noon on 18th June to allow the ground to dry. Wellington's army, positioned across the Brussels road on the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment, withstood repeated attacks by the French, until, in the evening, the Prussians arrived in force and broke through Napoleon's right flank. At that moment, Wellington's Anglo-allied army counter-attacked and drove the French army in disorder from the field. Pursuing Coalition forces entered France and restored Louis XVIII to the French throne. Napoleon abdicated, surrendered to the British, and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

The battlefield is in present-day Belgium, about eight miles (12 km) SSE of Brussels, and about a mile (1.6 km) from the town of Waterloo. The site of the battlefield is today dominated by a large monument, the Lion Mound. As this mound used earth from the battlefield itself, the original topography of the part of the battlefield around the mound has not been preserved.

The 3rd Anglo-Maratha War (1817-1818)

The 3rd Anglo-Maratha War was the final and decisive conflict between the British East India Company (EIC) and the Maratha Empire in India. The war left the Company in control of most of India. It began with an invasion of the Maratha territory by British East India Company troops and although the British were outnumbered the Maratha army was decimated. The troops were led by the Governor General Francis Rawdon-Hastings supported by a force under General Thomas Hislop.

The 1st Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842)

The 1st Anglo-Afghan War, also known by the British as the Disaster in Afghanistan, was fought between the British Empire and the Emirate of Afghanistan from 1839 to 1842. Initially the British intervened in a succession dispute between Emir Dost Mohammad (Barakzai) and former Emir Shah Sulah (Durrani), whom they installed on conquering Kabul in August 1839. The main British Indian force occupying Kabul along with their camp followers, having endured harsh winters as well, was almost completely annihilated during its 1842 retreat from Kabul. The British then sent an army of retribution to Kabul to avenge the destruction of their previous forces, defeated the Afghans and demolished parts of the capital. After recovering prisoners, they withdrew from Afghanistan by the end of the year. Dost Mohamed returned from exile in India to resume his rule.

It was one of the major conflicts during the Great Game, the 19th century competition for power and influence in central Asia between Britain and Russia.

The 1st Anglo-Sikh War (1845-1846)

The 1st Anglo-Sikh War (also known as the First Panjab Hind [British] War) was fought between the Sikh Empire and the East India Company in 1845 and 1846 in and around the Ferozepur district of Punjab. It resulted in partial subjugation of the Sikh kingdom and cession of Jammu and Kashmir as a separate princely state under British suzerainty.

The Crimean War (1853-1856)

The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to February 1856 in which Russia lost to an alliance between the Ottoman Empire, the United Kingdom, Sardinia and France. The immediate cause of the war involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, then a part of the Ottoman Empire. The French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Longer term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at the Ottoman Empire’s expense. The war stood out for the notoriously incompetent international butchery.

The Battle of the Alma (20th September 1854), which is usually considered the first battle of the Crimean War took place just south of the River Alma in the Crimea. An Anglo-French force under General St. Arnaud and Lord Raglan defeated General Menshikov's Russian army, which lost around 6,000 troops.

Battle of Alma by Horace Vernet

The Battle of Inkerman was fought on 5th November 1854 between the allied armies of Britain and France against the Imperial Russian Army. The battle broke the will of the Russian Army to defeat the allies in the field, and condemned the war to the Siege of Sevastopol. The role of troops fighting mostly on their own initiative due to the foggy conditions during the battle earned the engagement the name ‘The Soldier's Battle’.

Siege of Sevastopol by Franz Roubaud

The Siege of Sevastopol (sometimes rendered "Sebastopol") was a major siege during the Crimean War, lasting from September 1854 until September 1855. Leo Tolstoy's work The Sebastopol Sketches (1855-56) detailed the siege in a mixture of reportage and short fiction.

The Indian Mutiny (1857-1858)

The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a major but ultimately unsuccessful, uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10th May 1857 in the form of a mutiny of sepoys of the Company's army in the garrison town of Meerut, 40 miles north-east of Delhi (now Old Delhi). It then erupted into other mutinies and civilian rebellions chiefly in the upper Gangetic Plain and Central India though incidents of revolt also occurred farther north and east. The rebellion posed a considerable threat to British power in that region, and was contained only with the rebels' defeat in Gwalior on 20th June 1858. On 1st November 1858, the British granted amnesty to all rebels not involved in murder, though they did not declare the hostilities to have formally ended until 8th July 1859.

The Indian Mutiny was fed by resentments born of diverse perceptions, including invasive British-style social reforms, harsh land taxes, summary treatment of some rich landowners and princes, as well as scepticism about the improvements brought about by British rule. Many Indians rose against the British; however, many also fought for the British, and the majority remained seemingly compliant to British rule. Violence, which sometimes betrayed exceptional cruelty, was inflicted on both sides, on British officers, and civilians, including women and children, by the rebels, and on the rebels, and their supporters, including sometimes entire villages, by British reprisals; the cities of Delhi and Lucknow were laid waste in the fighting and the British retaliation.

Click to read details of Captain Clifford Henry Mecham.

Click to read details of Ensign Everard Aloysius Lisle Phillipps VC.

The 3rd Anglo-Ashanti War (1873-1874)

The Third Anglo-Ashanti War between the Ashanti and the British Empire lasted from 1873 to 1874. In 1871 Britain purchased the Dutch Gold Coast from the Dutch, including Elmina which was claimed by the Ashanti. The Ashanti invaded the new British protectorate.

General Garnet Wolseley with 2,500 British troops and several thousand West Indian and African troops (including some Fante) was sent against the Ashanti, and subsequently became a household name in Britain. The war was covered by war correspondents, including Henry Morton Stanley and G. A. Henty. Military and medical instructions were printed for the troops. The British government refused appeals to interfere with British armaments manufacturers who sold to both sides.

Wolseley went to the Gold Coast in 1873, and made his plans before the arrival of his troops in January 1874. He fought the Battle of Amoaful on January 31st of that year, and, after five days' fighting, ended with the Battle of Ordahsu. The capital, Kumasi, was abandoned by the Ashanti and was briefly occupied by the British and burned. The British were impressed by the size of the palace and the scope of its contents, including ‘rows of books in many languages’. The Asantahene, the ruler of the Ashanti, signed a harsh British treaty, the Treaty of Fomena in July 1874, to end the war. Among articles of the treaty between Queen Victoria, and Kofi Karikari, King of Ashanti, were that ‘The King of Ashanti promises to pay the sum of 50,000 ounces of approved gold as indemnity for the expenses he has occasioned to Her Majesty the Queen of England by the late war...’ The treaty also stated that ‘There shall be freedom of trade between Ashanti and Her Majesty's forts on the [Gold] Coast, all persons being at liberty to carry their merchandise from the Coast to Kumasi, or from that place to any of Her Majesty's possessions on the Coast’. Furthermore, the treaty stated that ‘The King of Ashanti guarantees that the road from Kumasi to the River Pra shall always be kept open...’. Wolseley completed the campaign in two months, and re-embarked the troops for home before the unhealthy season began. There were 300 British casualties.

The great Chief Amanquatia was among the killed. Admirable skill was shown in the position selected by Amanquatia, and the determination and generalship he displayed in the defence fully bore out his great reputation as an able tactician and gallant soldier’.

The Second Boer War (1899-1902)

The Second Boer War (11th October 1899 – 31st May 1902) was fought between the British Empire and two independent Boer states, the South African Republic (Republic of Transvaal) and the Orange Free State, over the Empire's influence in South Africa. The trigger of the war was the discovery of diamonds and gold in the Boer states. Initial Boer attacks were successful, and although British reinforcements later reversed these, the war continued for four years with Boer guerrilla warfare, until harsh British counter-measures including a scorched earth policy brought the Boers to terms.

Click to read details of soldiers surnames A-E

Click to read details of soldiers surnames F-Z

© Loughborough Carillon Tower and War Memorial Museum