Commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo concluded

200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo concluded on 20 June 2015. The anniversary that began on 18 June 2015 concluded with a re-enactment of the moment when the news of the allied victory reached London.

A horse-drawn chaise post retracted the route taken in 1815 from Old Royal Naval College, in Greenwich, to St James's Square, where news from Belgium was delivered to the Prince Regent.

The anniversary was celebrated to remember the June 1815 battle in which Napoleon’s French army was defeated by Duke of Wellington’s allied forces of British, Dutch, Belgian and German soldiers. The news of victory in the battlefield was carried on by Major Harry Percy at Broadstairs in Kent from where it was carried on the Prince Regent in London.

Battle of Waterloo
The Battle of Waterloo was fought on 18 June 1815 near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, the then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The battle was fought between the French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte and armies of the Seventh Coalition, comprising an Anglo-allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blucher.

Napoleon’s French army was defeated in the war and this defeat helped in bringing an end to the Napoleonic era of European history.

After the war, Napoleon was sent into exile to Saint Helena, a remote island in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa. He lived quietly in Helena for six years and later died on 5 May 1821, likely due to stomach cancer.

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