So What Happened After Waterloo? Quiz

Answer: His campaign coach and its contents

At the end of the battle the British and Allied troops more-or-less remained on the field, but the Prussian cavalry harried the retreating French for many miles. Taking no prisoners, they inflicted an awful slaughter on the totally disorganised French. The crush in Genappe was so bad that the French left behind nearly all their major equipment - guns, ambulances, carriages and so on. However the main prize was Napoleon's campaign coach and its contents, found by the fusiliers of the Prussian 15th Regiment.

The list of the contents of the coach makes fascinating reading. Inter alia, there was a large silver chronometer, a steel bedstead, a library of 800 books, a spare uniform, lists of spies and Bonapartist sympathisers in Brussels, silver and gold dinner services, a diamond headdress, a large quantity of unmounted diamonds - one the size of a pigeon's egg - and an imperial robe. A pair of Napoleon's silver spurs from the coach were given to the Prince Regent to add to his collection of arms and military accoutrements.

Answer: Napoleon's private treasury

The situation at Charleroi was as chaotic as that at Genappe, and the wagon holding Napoleon's private treasury was stranded on the wrong side of the bridge. It held about one million francs in gold and 200,000 francs in silver; this was being allocated to trusted men to carry over the bridge when shots rang out and panic ensued - "the Prussians are coming!".

The wagon was then looted and all the cash disappeared. Ironically the shots hadn't come from the Prussians but from thirsty French soldiers firing their muskets into unopened wine barrels.

Answer: It became a tourist attraction

When Uxbridge was hit it was immediately apparent that he was going to lose his leg. There are two versions of what happened next - either Uxbridge said to Wellington "By God sir, I've lost my leg" with Wellington replying "By God sir, so you have", or Wellington said to Uxbridge "By God sir, you've lost your leg" with Uxbridge replying "By God sir, so I have".

Either way, the amputated limb was buried in the garden of a house in Waterloo in a sort of shrine with a memorial "tombstone" reading: "Here lies the Leg of the illustrious and valiant Earl Uxbridge, Lieutenant-General of His Britannic Majesty, Commander in Chief of the English, Belgian and Dutch cavalry, wounded on the 18 June 1815 at the memorable battle of Waterloo, who, by his heroism, assisted in the triumph of the cause of mankind, gloriously decided by the resounding victory of the said day".

Remarkably the memorial became a major tourist attraction, especially among the upper reaches of European society: the King of Prussia and the Prince of Orange both visited it. The owner of the house and his family made a considerable income from visitors until 1878 when Uxbridge's son visited the house to find that the bones were not buried but were on open display. After much protest, the bones were removed and kept by the householder until 1938, when they were incinerated.

Answer: Two gold French army eagles

The two eagles captured on the field of Waterloo by Sergeant Charles Ewart of the Royal Scots Greys and Captain A.K. Clark of the 1st Royal Dragoons were taken to London by Major Percy and presented to the Prince Regent. They were tremendously important propaganda material, symbolic of the disaster that had befallen the French army. Percy was promoted to brevet lieutenant colonel as a reward for his service. The news was published in a special edition of "The London Gazette" on 22 June.

I live near a lovely Tudor house, Levens Hall in Cumbria, which is owned by the Bagot family. One of the Bagots married a niece of the Duke of Wellington, and she brought with her to the house an exceptional, highly-rated collection of Napoleonic memorabilia, including Napoleon's saddle and the Duke of Wellington's campaign bed. There's also a copy of the special edition of "The London Gazette".

There's no evidence that Percy wagered on his surviving the battle. However, soldiers throughout history have bet on their own survival, often creating organized pools or formal agreements called tontines in which they put money into a common fund before entering battle, with the last surviving members splitting the entire pot.

Answer: Princess Hortense de Beauharnais

The house was occupied at the time by Princess Hortense, the stepdaughter of Napoleon as the daughter of his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, who had died in May 1814. It seemed like an ideal refuge. Napoleon soon became aware that the commanders of the rapidly-advancing Prussian army were intent upon Napoleon's immediate execution, and Prussian forces, comprised of a cavalry regiment, two infantry battalions and half a battery of horse artillery, had been ordered to proceed to Malmaison to detain him.

However a visit from the commander of a still-loyal division of the Imperial Army, General Brayer, roused Napoleon into considering taking up arms again. He devised a plan for the defence of Paris, but this proposal was firmly rejected by the Commission of Government. Upon receiving this setback, Napoleon decided to leave France on 29 June.

Answer: United States of America

It seems that Napoleon's first thought about a place of exile was to consider going to the US. A number of American citizens living in Paris had written to him offering their services if he wanted to live there, in a fellow republican country. He then considered going to England, where he thought he would be treated well.

But on 22 June he ordered Admiral Decres to provide two ships at Rochefort, provisioned for sailing to America; this request was approved by the Commission of Government, the Members of which advised that he should go "with the utmost rapidity" to the US and that he should "depart immediately".

He ordered passports from the Police Minister, and also ordered that he be sent books about that country.

Answer: HMS Bellerophon

Launched in 1786, HMS Bellerophon was a 74-gun third-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy known to its crew as the "Billy Ruffian". She had been fighting the French for the entire duration of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, taking part in three major battles: the Glorious First of June (1794), the Battle of the Nile (1798) and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805).

The Bellerophon left Rochefort on 16 July with Napoleon aboard, bound for England. On 23 July she passed Ushant, the last piece of French land to be visible on this journey. Napoleon spent the morning on the poop deck watching the French coastline slowly recede from view. Arriving at Brixham on 23 July she was soon surrounded by small craft with people straining to see Napoleon, so on 26 July she sailed to Plymouth harbour where she was kept isolated from sightseers by two guardships.

The British government decided that Napoleon should be exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena with about two dozen followers and staff. Napoleon had hoped to be allowed to settle quietly in Britain, so he was bitterly disappointed by this. The Admiralty thought that the Bellerophon was unsuitable for the long voyage to the South Atlantic, so on 4 August she was ordered to sea to rendezvous with HMS Northumberland. On 7 August Napoleon thanked the officers and crew of the Bellerophon and transferred to the Northumberland; she then sailed for Saint Helena, arriving on 15 October. He had spent over three weeks on the Bellerophon without ever landing in England. As for the Bellerophon herself, she was converted to a prison ship in 1815. Later renamed "Captivity" in 1824, she was moved to Plymouth in 1826 and eventually sold for scrap in 1836. A number of famous paintings have been created based upon Napoleon's passage on HMS Bellerophon, particularly "Napoleon on Board the Bellerophon" (1880) by William Quiller Orchardson, and "Napoleon on the Bellerophon" (1815), an oil on canvas painting by Charles Lock Eastlake.

Answer: By walking out of the prison wearing his wife's clothes

The Comte de Lavalette was found guilty of treason on the grounds that the postal service had distributed pro-Bonapart literature before Napoleon's arrival in Paris. As a civilian he was sentenced to be guillotined, and he was confined to the Conciergerie until the sentence could be carried out. His wife asked the King for access to her husband, which was granted. Two days later, on the night before his execution, Lavalette walked out of the Conciergerie wearing his wife's clothes and accompanied by their 13-year-old daughter; he left his wife in the condemned cell wrapped in a cloak. Very soon he was in England, travelling thence to the Netherlands and Bavaria, where he was reunited with his wife a few months later. On 9 January 1816 there was a full formal execution ceremony carried out in Lavalette's absence: a gibbet was erected and the hangman attached a tablet to it detailing Lavalette's crimes.

All the Bonapartists proscribed for treason were found guilty and sentenced to death. However, only three were actually executed: Marshal Ney, General Mouton-Duvernet and General de La Bedoyere. The remaining 15 had all fled France. There were, however, a number of cases in which groups of Royalists acted outside the law. For example, in Bordeaux on 29 July twin brothers Cesar and Constantin Faucher - both generals - were seized and shot. Furthermore, Marshal Brune was captured by a baying mob in Avignon and shot - the post-mortem showed that he'd been hit in the back by a musket ball but the verdict was given as suicide! His body was hastily buried, but the mob exhumed it, dragged it to the river by the feet and threw it in. In parts of the country such as Nimes and Uzes this violence developed into sectarian attacks against Protestants, with hundreds being killed.

Answer: Venice

The Quadriga dated to Greece in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, and they originally stood somewhere in Rome before being moved to the Hippodrome in Constantinople. However in 1204 the soldiers of the Fourth Crusade had taken them to Venice, where they stood in front of St Mark's Cathedral. Francis I of Austria asked that they be returned there; the hostility of the Parisians to this humiliation was so strong that this process had to be guarded by 3,000 fully-armed soldiers equipped with cavalry and cannons.

About 1,200 paintings, statues and other works of art were taken from the Louvre and other places to be returned. Another piece that was returned to Venice was the "Lion of Venice", a bronze statue that originally stood in St Mark's Square. The late-1700's Quadriga that stood on top of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin had also been looted by Napoleon after the 1806 Prussian defeat at the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt, so this was also returned.

Answer: It was entombed at Les Invalides in Paris

Even after his death, Napoleon's remains were the cause or pretext for political unrest. In 1840 Adolphe Thiers, the President of the Council (prime minister) under King Louis Philippe I dreamed of the return of the remains as a grand political coup de théâtre, rehabilitating the Revolutionary and Imperial periods. When approached, the British government gave permission for the return of the remains to France. On 15 December 1840 a state funeral was held in Paris with 700,000 to 1,000,000 attendees lining the route of the funeral procession to the chapel of Les Invalides. The coffin was later placed in the cupola in St Jérôme's Chapel, where it remained until Napoleon's tomb was completed. In 1861 his remains were entombed in a sarcophagus in the crypt under the dome at Les Invalides.

The sarcophagus is massive, made from purple Shoksha quartzite mined in Russian Karelia. This rests upon a base of green granite from the Vosges, which in turn rests upon a slab of black marble quarried at Sainte-Luce in south-east France.