The Battle of Waterloo: The British Squares Receiving the Charge of the French Cuirassiers The Battle of Waterloo: The British Squares Receiving the Charge of the French Cuirassiers The Battle of Waterloo: The British Squares Receiving the Charge of the French Cuirassiers is an 1874 oil painting by French artist Henri Félix Emmanuel Philippoteaux. It depicts a scene from the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815, with squares of red-coated infantry from Sir Thomas Picton's British 5th Division to the left being charged by cavalrymen of the French 5th and 10th Cuirassiers in blue uniforms to the right. The main British unit is one of Highland infantry, with the colour party and a
Battle of Waterloo and drive it back towards the sea. The historian Andrew Roberts notes that "It is a curious fact about the Battle of Waterloo that no one is absolutely certain when it actually began". Wellington recorded in his dispatches that at "about ten o'clock [Napoleon] commenced a furious attack upon our post at Hougoumont". Other sources state that the attack began around 11:30. The house and its immediate environs were defended by four light companies of Guards, and the wood and park by Hanoverian "Jäger" and the 1/2nd Nassau. The initial attack by Bauduin's brigade emptied the wood and park, but