Allied coalition held
Britain plus Prussia on one day.
Darker cells mean a higher score for this topic on that metric.
Scale22
Intensity65
Duration6
Tech shift25
Political impact82
Cultural memory80
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Quick answers
Are the scores a ranking of nations or armies?
No. Scores are browsing aids inside an era-bounded atlas — not live league tables of countries.
How many casualties?
About 40,000-50,000 killed and wounded is the usual combined band for the day.
Did Wellington win alone?
No. Blucher's Prussians were decisive in the afternoon. Wellington said as much.
Why did Napoleon lose?
Coalition numbers, a delayed start, failed combined-arms in the centre, and Prussian arrival -- not a single farmhouse.
What happened next?
Second abdication, Allied occupation, St Helena, and Vienna's settlement confirmed.
Why is it so famous in English?
It was the last battle, near a newspaper city, with a British-led army. Leipzig was larger and less English.
The Concert of Europe got a battlefield stamp. British nineteenth-century self-confidence got a Sunday.
French politics got a second founding myth of defeat to argue about until 1848 and after.
Lessons
Napoleonic wars close (English dating)
1815 as a full stop.
A proverb is born
"Waterloo" as defeat.
Keep the cost as a range
about 40,000-50,000 dead and wounded in one day, usual band Battle of Waterloo is not improved by a fake precise integer.
Memory is national
US/UK/AU/CA rites and the memory of Ridge south of Brussels, present-day Belgium will not match. Name the difference when teaching Battle of Waterloo.
Unresolved
Census still a band
"about 40,000-50,000 dead and wounded in one day, usual band" remains a band. New archives refine Battle of Waterloo; they do not un-happen 18 June 1815.
Archives uneven
Files on Battle of Waterloo remain unevenly open across Ridge south of Brussels, present-day Belgium. William of Orange's paper trail is not the same as Napoleon's.
Nearest-run thing
Wellington's caption -- a proverb.
Teaching hours
English classroom hours on Battle of Waterloo still disagree with hours in Ridge south of Brussels, present-day Belgium. Is this a tactics manual? is often the gap.
Shifts
Return
Mar-Jun 1815: Elba to Belgium.
The ridge
18 June day: Hougoumont to the Guard.
Memory
After: Lion, films, re-enactors.
Afterlife of the name
Battle of Waterloo left institutions and stories that outlasted 18 June 1815. Napoleon became a caption; Ridge south of Brussels, present-day Belgium kept the rubble or the letterhead.
Outlook
Scholarship
New archives will refine Battle of Waterloo (Hougoumont, Abdication) without un-happening 18 June 1815.
Memory handover
As witnesses die, museums and film carry Battle of Waterloo. Blucher and Michel Ney will keep being recast.
This atlas
Battle of Waterloo stays a historical file -- a dated campaign, not a live order of battle or a method.
Risk
closed battle
Waterloo is historically closed. Residual risk is national myth -- a British solo -- and a tourist mound that rewrote the ground.
"Waterloo" as a verb is this battle's linguistic export.
Staff colleges taught the day until 1914 made other days.