Battle of Waterloo and withdrew in good order—though at the cost of 33,000 French troops that never reached the Waterloo battlefield. Wellington sent describing the battle to England on 19 June 1815; it arrived in London on 21 June 1815 and was published as a "London Gazette Extraordinary" on 22 June. Wellington, Blücher and other Coalition forces advanced upon Paris. Napoleon announced his second abdication on 24 June 1815. In the final skirmish of the Napoleonic Wars, Marshal Davout, Napoleon's minister of war, was defeated by Blücher at Issy on 3 July 1815. Allegedly, Napoleon tried to escape to North America, but the
Waterloo Campaign: Quatre Bras to Waterloo Brussels: the Mont-Saint-Jean escarpment near the village of Waterloo. On this position he might rely upon the aid of a sufficient portion of Blücher's forces from Wavre which combined with his own would enable the Coalition to confront Napoleon and his main army with a numerical superiority at a decisive point. Wellington was familiar with the topography of the position having identified it as a possible battle site a year previously while surveying the territory around Brussels. Shortly after the departure of the patrol of the 10th Hussars, along the Namur road, Wellington received some despatches from England, to which