Waterloo!

 

18TH JUNE 1815 – ON THIS DAY IN ROYAL WELCH HISTORY

Battle of Waterloo, Belgium, 1815

During the battle the RWF in Mitchell’s Brigade was moved into the first line which they

anchored on its right flank and covered Hougoumont. This was to the immediate right of the main line of attack of the French cavalry. It was during one of these attacks that the commanding officer, Colonel Sir Henry Ellis, was fatally wounded. The Regiment suffered much from the French guns and suffered 100 casualties. WATERLOO was granted as a battle honour.

One contemporary account of the battle records a meeting of the Duke of Wellington with the Regiment on the field.

“How cruelly the long strain told on the British squares is shown by one incident. Wellington had ridden up to the 23rd, and, peering through the smoke, saw what seemed to be a body of men a few score yards in advance. “What square is that?” He asked. It was a square of the dead. The 23rd had held that position until the ranks of the living were congested and embarrassed by the numbers of the slain. The colonel had drawn the survivors a little distance back to get clear standing-room, but the outline of a square, made up of the slain, still marked the original position of the regiment.”