The Battle of Waterloo was a major and the last military engagement of the Napoleonic Wars.

It was fought between Napoleons army and the Seventh Coalition forces, led by theDuke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blcher, on June 18, 1815, near the Belgian town of Waterloo. The outcome of this fiercely-fought military encounter was a fatal blow inflicted by British forces on Napoleon, marking the end of his Hundred Days Campaign and his ambition to perpetuate himself as an emperor of a European dominant empire. One of the consequence of the Battle of Waterloo was the emergence of Great Britain as the worlds hegemonic power. Having been defeated, Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Saint Helena, in the middle of the Atlantic, where he spent the rest of his days until he died in 1821. Antecedents It can be said that the decline of Napoleons empire began with two fateful decisions he had made: 1) the invasion of Spain, which triggered the Peninsular War during which the Spaniards and Wellington showed that the French Army was not undefeatable as thousands of French troops were killed in the hands of the Spanish-British forces; 2) the Russian Campaignduring which hundred of thousands of French soldiers starved and were frozen to death in the harsh Russian winter. After the defeat he suffered at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, Napoleon had been forced to return to France while the Allies invaded France the following year. Having abdicated for the first time, the Emperor had been exiled to the island of Elba, in the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, after ten months of exile on the island he had managed to escape and returned to the continent where he obtained the support of the French troops that had been sent to arrest him. He reestablished himself in Paris as he began to reorganize and build up his army, initiating what is known as the Hundred Days Campaign to recover the power and prestige he had lost at Leipzig in 1813. Summary of the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon had decided that it was best to defeat the British forces first before the Prussian Army, led by Blcher, arrived in the field, and then deal with the Prussians afterwards in a second separate encounter. Telling his men to lie down until the right moment to avoid the deadly French artillery, Wellington deployed his men on top of the ridge of St Jean, making use of carefully deployed fire power to hold off the French assaults until the Prussians arrived. Napoleon ordered his men to charge up the hill. However, charge after charge of French infantry and cavalry was beaten back by British stiff tenacity and fire power. Then, as a last-ditch recourse, Napoleon ordered his Imperial Guard to go up the hill and attack the British lines. Although the Guard managed to breach through the first line, a British brigade that was hiding in a corn field surprised and attacked hard as the French guard began to fall back. Then, the Duke of Wellington ordered his troops to advance all along the line. At around 19:00 hours, just as the British forces began to counterattack, the Prussian cavalry charged into the battlefield and broke through Napoleons right flank as the retreating Imperial Guard formed a square around their Emperor and Generals to protect them. Napoleon and what remained of his army fled from the field. Nevertheless, Napoleon surrendered to the British, abdicating for the second and last time.