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, Belgium road towards Brussels explains why the battle took place just south of Waterloo. It was important for the allies to stop Napoleon from reaching Brussels, just away, and Waterloo was the last settlement to cross before negotiating the forest and getting to Brussels. In 1977, the second half of the hamlet of Chenois was detached from Braine-l’Alleud and became part of Waterloo together with a part of the hamlet next to the Lion. In 1995, the province of Brabant was divided to match the limits of the regions created in 1980 (Wallonia, Brussels, Flanders). The part in which Waterloo is