THE Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, at once despatched an army under the command of Arthur Wellesley, now the Duke of Wellington, for a final reckoning. To prevent the British from joining up with General Blücher’s Prussians — several European states were as anxious as Britain was — Napoleon intercepted Wellington in the mud and rain at Waterloo in Belgium on June 18, 1815.
The British were severely tested all day, so much so that Wellington was heard to sigh ‘Oh that night, or Blücher, would come!’ Happily, towards the evening Prussian troops burst onto the battlefield, and together they put the French to flight. It was, said Wellington, ‘the nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life’. Afterwards he would often declare, remembering the bloody scene, that a great victory was the worst thing in the world, except a defeat.
A month later, Napoleon gave himself up to Captain Frederick Maitland on board HMS Bellerophon.* This time there was no sensational escape. Napoleon was banished to the island of St Helena, where he died six years later.
Bellerophon is a figure from the Greek myths: see Bellerophon and the Chimera. The ship saw action at The Glorious First of June, and with Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile and The Battle of Trafalgar. The name was consequently used by several steam locomotives of the Victorian era.