who commanded british forces at the battle of waterloo
Battle of Waterloo The Battle of Waterloo was fought on Sunday, 18 June 1815, near Waterloo in present-day Belgium, then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. A French army under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte was defeated by two of the armies of the Seventh Coalition: a British-led Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Prince of Wahlstatt. The battle marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
Alexander I of Russia The campaign was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. The reputation of Napoleon was severely shaken, and French hegemony in Europe was dramatically weakened. The Grande ArmÃ©e, made up of French and allied invasion forces, was reduced to a fraction of its initial strength. These events triggered a major shift in European politics. France's ally Prussia, soon followed by Austria, broke their imposed alliance with France[32] and switched sides. This triggered the War of the Sixth Coalition.
Battle of Singapore During the weeks preceding the invasion, the Allied force suffered a number of both subdued and openly disruptive disagreements amongst its senior commanders,[38] as well as pressure from the Australian Prime Minister, John Curtin.[39] Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival, commander of the garrison, had 85,000 soldiers, the equivalent, on paper at least, of just over four divisions.[Note 5][41] Of this figure, 15,000 men were employed in logistical, administrative, or other non-combatant roles. The remaining force was a mix of front-line and second-line troops. There were 45 infantry battalions—21 Indian, 13 British, six Australian, four Indian States Forces assigned to airfield defence, 3 Straits Settlements Volunteer Force, and 2 Malayan. In addition, there were two British machine-gun battalions, one Australian, and a British reconnaissance battalion.[42] The newly arrived British 18th Infantry Division—under Major-General Merton Beckwith-Smith[43][44]—was at full strength, but lacked experience and appropriate training.[45] The rest of the force was of mixed quality, condition, training, equipment, and morale. Lionel Wigmore, the Australian official historian of the Malayan Campaign, wrote "Only one of the Indian battalions was up to numerical strength, three (in the 44th Brigade) had recently arrived in a semi-trained condition, nine had been hastily reorganised with a large intake of raw recruits, and four were being re-formed but were far from being fit for action. Six of the United Kingdom battalions (in the 54th and 55th Brigades of the 18th Division) had only just landed in Malaya, and the other seven battalions were under-manned. Of the Australian battalions, three had drawn heavily upon recently-arrived, practically-untrained recruits. The Malay battalions had not been in action, and the Straits Settlements Volunteers were only sketchily trained . Further, losses on the mainland had resulted in a general shortage of equipment."[44]
Battle of Passchendaele In a German General Staff publication, it was written that "Germany had been brought near to certain destruction (sicheren Untergang) by the Flanders battle of 1917".[145] In his Memoirs of 1938, Lloyd George wrote, "Passchendaele was indeed one of the greatest disasters of the war ... No soldier of any intelligence now defends this senseless campaign ...".[146] In 1939, G. C. Wynne wrote that the British had eventually reached Passchendaele Ridge and captured Flandern I Stellung; beyond them were Flandern II and Flandern III (which was nearing completion). The German submarine bases on the coast had not been captured but the objective of diverting the Germans from the French further south, while they recovered from the Nivelle Offensive in April, had succeeded.[147] In 1997, Griffith wrote that the bite and hold system kept moving until November, because the BEF had developed a workable system of offensive tactics, against which the Germans ultimately had no answer.[148] A decade later, Sheldon wrote that relative casualty figures were irrelevant, because the German army could not afford great numbers of losses or to lose the initiative by being compelled to fight another defensive battle, on ground of the Allies' choosing. The Third Battle of Ypres pinned the German army to Flanders and caused unsustainable casualties.[149]