17. ‘The Field of Waterloo’ / ‘Le Champ de Bataille de Waterloo’ (1817) By John Heaviside Clark (1771-1863) Engraved by Matthew Dubourg (active 1786-1838)

By John Heaviside Clark (1771-1863)  Engraved by Matthew Dubourg active 1786-1838. Published 18 January 1817

Over the years I’ve often wondered about this painting. It depicts the place where Napoleon was finally defeated, giving rise to the expression that ‘he met his Waterloo’.  

It certainly doesn’t look like the aftermath of a glorious British victory. The artist, known in his lifetime as ‘Waterloo Clark’ because of his numerous sketches of the battlefield, has portrayed the event as a human catastrophe.

In a letter of 1815 Wellington lamented the loss of so many gallant friends in the battle. Perhaps he was reflecting on the waste of all human lives in war when he wrote: ‘Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.’ 

Clark’s painting portrays the immense scale of devastation on the battlefield. Grim scenes are taking place wherever you look.     

 

Soldiers of different nationalities are clearly identified by their uniforms.

 

Former enemies, dead and dying, now lie one on top of the other in a chaotic mass.

 

A weeping child and distraught women hint at the battle’s catastrophic impact on families, while, next to them and central to the scene, are the non-combattants who will try to restore some kind of order.

 

Burials are being carried out on a mass scale with bodies being unceremoniously thrown into pits.

 

In the distance, bodies are being stripped naked of clothing and valuables by locals. Could that flash of lightning suggest divine anger that the Christian message of peace has been forgotten?  

 

A bird amidst the war-torn branches of a tree, its foliage drooping, flaps its wings angrily at a scene of human folly.

 

Two centuries ago, the village of Waterloo just outside Brussels became a major tourist attraction. A desperate clash of nations over a few days in June 1815, on a field a few miles from the Belgian capital, had decided the world’s future. Visitors came in their thousands, perhaps to reflect on its political significance but also to gawp at any remaining evidence of the bloodbath.

Yet not until the 20^th century did European governments work together to avoid war, when the League of Nations was created on 10 January 1920 as a response to the bloodshed of WW1.

It is true that the Battle of Waterloo was followed by the Congress of Vienna from 1814-1815 but this attempt by victorious European governments to bring order to the continent has been seen by historians as a reactionary move for the benefit of traditional monarchs.

Portrait of King Louis XVIII in 1814 by the French painter Robert Lefèvre (1755-1830). Image credit: Wikipedia

With Napoleon defeated, a king was restored to the French throne. Louis XVIII, it has been said, was brought back to France ‘in the baggage of the Allies’.

The conservative leaders of the Congress were seeking to restrain or eliminate the republicanism and revolution which had upended the constitutional order of the European old regime, and which continued to threaten it.

European governments may not have set up the 19^th century equivalent of the United Nations, but the sheer numbers of dead, dying, and wounded – around 55,000 of them across some four square miles of the battlefield – must have been felt by ordinary people. For years, the legacy of Waterloo would have been seen in its crippled victims all over Europe and in many parishes in Britain.

The Torriano family memorial © Stephen MacDonald-Brown (WMR-99714)

In East Budleigh’s All Saints Church a memorial commemorates the Torriano family.  William Edward Torriano was awarded the Waterloo Medal for his part in the battle. He had entered the 71^st  Regiment, Highland Infantry, and served from July 1811 to April 1814 in the Peninsular War under the Duke of Wellington, being wounded on three occasions.   

On 18 June 1815, the final day of the Battle of Waterloo, a group of soldiers under Torriano’s command captured one of the French cannon and turned it on the retreating Imperial Guard. It was reputed to be the last French cannon fired on the day. 

From Britain, visitors to the field of Waterloo included not only artists like Clark but more famous names like J.M.W.Turner and the poet Lord Byron. 

‘Waterloo Clark’ joined them and others of his time in their shock at the waste of human life.  The bleak view of war expressed by such artists and writers in the aftermath of Waterloo is in stark contrast to the glorification of the military, as expressed in late Victorian England by painters such as Richard Caton Woodville.  

Continued at https://peaceatsalemchapelbudleigh.blogspot.com/2022/10/18-field-of-waterloo-1818-by-joseph.html