” It has been a damned serious business. Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing—the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life. – The Duke of Wellington, 19 June 1815, quoted by Thomas Creevey.
Curated by Mark Nicholls and John Wells, this exhibition, uses the rich variety of written records, maps and books that the University has acquired over the last 200 years to show us “the first
draft of history as it was being written in the days, months and years after the battle”, as Mark Nicholls co-curator explains:
“When Waterloo is talked about today, there is sometimes a tendency to view the battle as strictly France versus Britain; Napoleon versus Wellington. What the Library's exhibition reminds us is that the armies opposing Napoleon were very much a combined force of Allied troops – chiefly British, Netherlandish and Hanoverian, commanded by Wellington, and Prussians led by Blücher.”
The exhibition takes place at the Library's Milstein Exhibition Centre, and a large part of the exhibition material can also be seen online: military drill-books, manuscript letters, hand-coloured engravings, battlefield plans, printed mementos and tourist reminiscences, with very high quality scans of the documents allowing you to have a really close look at them.
Virtual exhibition
Cambridge Digital Library Collections
Read more about the exhibition here on the website of Cambridge University Library.
Several videos presenting various aspects of the exhibition are also available on You tube.
Introduction to the exhibition (video)
A Damned Serious Business. Mapping Waterloo (video)
A Damned Serious Business. La Haye Sainte Waterloo strongpoint (video)
Langue(s) : English