Napoleon's Return and the Stakes at Waterloo
By June 1815, Europe had already celebrated Napoleon's defeat once. He had been exiled to the island of Elba in 1814, and the great powers had exhaled. Then, in March 1815, he escaped, marched back into France, and rebuilt his army within weeks. This period — the Hundred Days — terrified the continent. If Napoleon reached full strength again, years of war would resume.
The Allied coalition moved quickly. The Duke of Wellington commanded a multinational force of British, Dutch, Belgian, and German troops in modern-day Belgium. Prussian forces under Field Marshal Blücher operated nearby. Napoleon's plan was characteristically bold: strike each army separately before they could combine. He nearly succeeded. On June 16, he badly mauled the Prussians at Ligny. Now only Wellington stood between him and Brussels.
The morning of June 18 brought rain and mud to the fields south of the village of Waterloo. Napoleon delayed his attack to let the ground dry. That delay would prove fateful.
The French Attack and the Breaking Point
Shortly after midday, Napoleon launched his main infantry assault against the Allied center-left. The divisions of Lieutenant General Drouet d'Erlon — roughly 16,000 men — advanced in large, dense columns toward the ridge where Wellington's army waited. These formations were powerful and psychologically intimidating. The ground shook as they came forward.
They struck hard. The brigades of Generals Bylandt and Kempt suffered devastating casualties. Bylandt's Dutch-Belgian troops, already shaken by earlier skirmishing, broke and fell back. French infantry crested the ridge and began pushing into the Allied line. For a few minutes, the center genuinely threatened to collapse. This was the crisis Wellington's army could not survive alone.
The Charge That Changed Everything
At this moment, Lieutenant General Henry Paget, Earl of Uxbridge, commanded the Allied cavalry reserve. He made a rapid decision. He ordered two heavy cavalry brigades forward simultaneously: the Household Brigade on the right and the Union Brigade on the left.
The Union Brigade was named for the nations it represented — English (1st Royal Dragoons), Scottish (Royal Scots Greys), and Irish (6th Inniskilling Dragoons). These were large, powerful horses carrying armored troopers with heavy sabers. Sergeant Charles Ewart of the Scots Greys became famous that day for personally capturing the eagle standard of the 45th French Infantry Regiment in brutal hand-to-hand combat — a moment that became one of the most iconic images of the entire Napoleonic Wars.
The charge was devastating. D'Erlon's columns, which had been so fearsome advancing uphill, were catastrophically vulnerable once disrupted. Cavalry moving at speed against infantry already in disorder becomes a slaughter. Two full French divisions were shattered, thousands of prisoners were taken, and two eagle standards were lost — a humiliation for the French army.
Too Far, Too Fast
This is where triumph turned to tragedy. The momentum of a successful cavalry charge is almost impossible to control, and the Union Brigade's troopers rode far beyond the Allied lines, down the slope, and directly toward the French grand battery — dozens of artillery pieces. French lancers and cuirassiers, fresh and organized, were waiting.
The Union Brigade's horses were blown — exhausted from the charge. The men were scattered across a wide area. When the French cavalry counterattacked, the British troopers could not form to defend themselves. Uxbridge rode forward personally trying to sound the recall, but the trumpets were lost in the noise and chaos. The brigade was cut apart. Among the killed was General William Ponsonby, the brigade's commander, reportedly lanced from his horse while trying to escape across muddy ground.
Of roughly 2,500 men who charged, the Union Brigade lost nearly half — killed, wounded, or captured.
Why It Still Matters
The charge of the Union Brigade illustrates one of the central tensions in Napoleonic warfare: the difference between a decisive stroke and a controlled one. The brigade accomplished exactly what it was sent to do, and then went further than any commander intended.
Wellington held his line that afternoon, the Prussians arrived in force by evening, and Napoleon's army collapsed under a final Allied advance. The whole long war ended within days.
The Union Brigade's charge bought Wellington perhaps an hour — possibly more — of stability at the most dangerous moment of the battle. In a contest decided by margins that thin, that was enough.