Next Question: Battle of Waterloo: Terrain?

Suggest you get hold of a copy of The Waterloo Companion by Mark Adkin, which contains a wealth of material on the battlefield and the state of the ground on the day. 

The Waterloo film, good though it is (in parts) was filmed largely in Spain I believe, and cannot be taken as a good reference for the ground conditions in Belgium on 18th June 1815 - a close viewing of the film shows that in some shots there is dust being raised by cavalry, not possible at Waterloo after a night of heavy rain!  And the 'dead short grass' you mention...well, it is Spain, so a bit on the dry side.


One of the other things that we need to be aware of is that the crops grown across much of the battlefield were much taller than modern planting, and although beaten down by weather and human (and equine) trampling, would also present a bit of churned up mass of vegetation to add to the damp and the mud.  Those colourful uniforms would not have stood much of a chance...hence, for instance, references to the red dye of British/Hanoverian uniforms running in the wet.  By 5pm it would all be getting a bit messy, is my best guess.

Yes, you're right, Ukraine not Spain...my memory is not what it was.  I believe that particular efforts were made during the filming to saturate the ground, although not 100% successful.

We saw it in the film of course but "On the Fields of Glory also says "Maitland's British 1st footgaurds were lying in line four deep. Wellington was on horseback behind them. As soon as the 3rd chasseurs were 50 to 60 paces away, they saw a wall of redcoats rise from the golden cornfields in front". "On the Fields of Glory" also reports how Miss Charlotte Waldie, who visited the battlefield in July 1815 reported walking through patches of corn as tall as herself near the wood at Hougoumont, and how a howitzer shell that blew Sergeant William Lawrence of the 40th foot off his feet and killed two other men did not do greater damage because much of the force of the blast was soaked up by the soggy ground.

"The Waterloo Companion" has panoramic photos of the battlefield as it is today. Every bit of ground not occupied by a tree, building or road appears to have been ploughed and is under crop of some sort.

Adkin says that at the time of the battle "While much of the battlefield was covered in high standing crops of wheat, rye, barley and oats, there were also patches of potatoes, peas, plough, clover - even a low light green hemp with a pale blue flower. Adkin goes on to say that most of the area was devoted to arable farming, that the crops of wheat and rye had grown as high as the withers of the horses (about 1.5m), and thart after they had been trampled by men, horses and guns for a couple of hours they had been beaten flat into what one officer called the "consistency of an Indian mat" .

He also says that the flattened crops retained the water of the previous night's downpour, which only ended shortly before dawn, and this and the lack of sunshine afterwards resulted in the battlefield being a quagmire of ankle deep mud. He proposes that the reason the French cavalry attacks did not even reach a canter was partially due to the fact that they had to travel uphill to reach the British position and that the ground was soft, soggy and mostly covered in wet corn.