198th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo

Today is the 198th Anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, as a teenager I re-fought Waterloo more times than I can remember using 1/72nd scale Esci and Airfix plastic figures. Unfortunately I have no photos of those games, so instead here is a bunch of some of my favourite paintings of the battle:

At the same time the Battle of Wavre was being fought between the French and Prussians, unfortunately I have been unable to locate any pictures of the engagement, so here is the map of the battle instead:

I was working in the Liddle First World War archive recently for material for my dissertation and came across a set of letters and a diary which both mentioned 'Waterloo Day', both from 1915. Then it struck me that the men in the trenches were celebrating the centenary of that battle as they were facing their once allies, the Germans. The fact that it was mentioned in the two sources meant that it must have been a big deal, similar to the coming centenary of the First World War. One of the letters described how the men on the front line had made dummies of the Kaiser and propped them on the parapet so the German snipers could shoot holes in them!