Editing Battle of Waterloo (section)

==Legacy==

=== The battlefield today ===
{{further|List of Waterloo Battlefield locations}}
[[File:0 Braine-l'Alleud 051012 (1).JPG|thumb|The ''{{lang|fr|Butte du Lion}}'' ("[[Lion's Mound]]") overlooking the battlefield of Waterloo]]

==== Landmarks ====
Some portions of the terrain on the battlefield have been altered from their 1815 appearance. Tourism began the day after the battle, with Captain Mercer noting that on 19 June "a carriage drove on the ground from Brussels, the inmates of which, alighting, proceeded to examine the field".{{sfn|Mercer|1870a|p=345}} In 1820, the Netherlands' King [[William I of the Netherlands|William I]] ordered the construction of a monument. The [[Lion's Mound]], a giant artificial hill, was constructed here using {{convert|300000|m3|cuyd}} of earth taken from the ridge at the centre of the British line, effectively removing the southern bank of Wellington's sunken road.

{{blockquote|Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the plains, where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place, are no longer what they were on 18&nbsp;June 1815. By taking from this mournful field the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real relief has been taken away, and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings there. It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later, exclaimed, "They have altered my field of battle!" Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion, rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe. The elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other, the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France.|[[Victor Hugo]], ''[[Les Misérables]]''.{{sfn|Hugo|1862|loc=Chapter VII: Napoleon in a Good Humor}}}}

The alleged remark by Wellington about the alteration of the battlefield as described by Hugo was never documented, however.<ref>{{cite news |last=Shute |first=Joe |date=2 August 2013 |title=Rescuing the farm where Wellington won the battle of Waterloo |journal=Daily Telegraph |language=en-GB |url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10218931/Rescuing-the-farm-where-Wellington-won-the-battle-of-Waterloo.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130804162246/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/10218931/Rescuing-the-farm-where-Wellington-won-the-battle-of-Waterloo.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=4 August 2013 |access-date=17 January 2018 |issn=0307-1235}}</ref>

Other terrain features and notable landmarks on the field have remained virtually unchanged since the battle. These include the rolling farmland to the east of the Brussels–Charleroi Road as well as the buildings at Hougoumont, La Haye Sainte, and La Belle Alliance.

==== Monuments ====
Apart from the Lion's Mound, there are several more conventional but noteworthy monuments throughout the battlefield. A cluster of monuments at the Brussels–Charleroi and Braine L'Alleud–Ohain crossroads marks the mass graves of British, Dutch, Hanoverian and King's German Legion troops. A monument to the French dead, entitled ''L'Aigle blessé'' ("The Wounded Eagle"), marks the location where it is believed one of the Imperial Guard units formed a square during the closing moments of the battle.{{sfn|Hoorebeeke|2007|pp=6–21}}

A monument to the Prussian dead is located in the village of Plancenoit on the site where one of their artillery batteries took position. The [[Guillaume Philibert Duhesme|Duhesme]] mausoleum is one among the few graves of the fallen. It is located at the side of Saint Martin's Church in Ways, a hamlet in the municipality of [[Genappe]]. Seventeen fallen officers are buried in the crypt of the [[Brussels Cemetery#The British Waterloo Campaign Monument|British Monument]] in the [[Brussels Cemetery]] in [[Evere]].{{sfn|Hoorebeeke|2007|pp=6–21}}

Had the French won the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon planned to commemorate the victory by building a pyramid of white stones, akin to the pyramids he had seen during his [[French campaign in Egypt and Syria|invasion of Egypt in 1798]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Scurr |first1=Ruth |title=Napoleon: A Life in Gardens and Shadows |date=2022 |publisher=Vintage |page=78}}</ref>

==== Remains ====
[[File:'Oorlogsleed', woman and child at the Battle of Waterloo.jpg|thumb|A female [[sutler]] with her dead Dutch husband, by [[Jacobus Josephus Eeckhout]].]]
After the battle, the bodies of the tens of thousands who died were hastily buried in mass graves across the battlefield{{snd}}a process that took at least ten days, according to accounts by those who visited the battlefield just after the battle.<ref name=":0">{{cite journal |last=Pollard |first=Tony |date=2022-06-17 |title=These spots of excavation tell: using early visitor accounts to map the missing graves of waterloo |journal=Journal of Conflict Archaeology |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=75–113 |doi=10.1080/15740773.2021.2051895 |s2cid=249833895 |issn=1574-0773 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Remarkably, there is no record of any such mass grave being discovered in the 20th and 21st centuries; only two complete human skeletons have been found.<ref name=Kuta1>{{cite web |last=Kuta |first=Sarah |date=2021-07-21 |title=Archaeologists Uncover Rare Human Skeleton at Waterloo |publisher=Smithsonian Magazine |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-rare-human-skeleton-waterloo-battlefield-180980439/ |accessdate=26 January 2023 |archive-date=26 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230126014401/https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-rare-human-skeleton-waterloo-battlefield-180980439/ |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name=":0" />

The remains of a soldier thought to be 23-year-old Friederich Brandt were discovered in 2012.{{sfn|Dunn|2015}} He was a slightly hunchbacked infantryman, {{convert|1.60|m}} tall, and was hit in the chest by a French bullet. His coins, rifle and position on the battlefield identified him as an Hanoverian fighting in the King's German Legion.{{sfn|Peel|2012}} In 2022 a second skeleton was found in a ditch near a former field hospital by the Waterloo Uncovered charity.<ref name="Kuta1" /> In December 2022, the historians Dr. [[Bernard Wilkin]] (Belgium) and Robin Schäfer (Germany), assisted by Belgian archaeologist Dominique Bosquet, discovered and recovered the largest assembly of remains of Waterloo battlefield casualties found in recent times. In the aftermath of the historian's research into the fate of the fallen once buried on the Waterloo battlefield (see below), several local individuals had come forward who were in the possession of human remains recovered on it. Forensic examination has shown that these remains belonged to at least four soldiers, some of whom are likely to be Prussian. Another set of human remains, initially discovered on the central battlefield by illegal metal detecting and consisting of the remains of six British soldiers, was also recovered by the team. Objects found with the casualties on the central battlefield point to the fact that at least one of them served in the First Foot Guards.<ref name="Kolirin1">{{cite news |last=Hemicker |first=Lorenz |date=2023-01-24 |title=Tote Preußen auf dem Dachboden Seit Jahrzehnten suchen Forscher Überreste der Gefallenen von Waterloo. Nun ist ein deutsch-belgisches Team auf eine Sensation gestoßen. |url=https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/geschichte/schlacht-von-waterloo-forscher-finden-ueberreste-von-preussischen-soldaten-18622829.html |accessdate=26 January 2023 |newspaper=Faz.net |publisher= |archive-date=26 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230126080403/https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/geschichte/schlacht-von-waterloo-forscher-finden-ueberreste-von-preussischen-soldaten-18622829.html |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{Cite news |last=Blackburn |first=Jack |date=25 January 2023 |title=Battle of Waterloo Bones found in Attic |work=[[The Times]] |url=https://www.thetimes.com/uk/science/article/human-bones-remains-found-attic-battle-waterloo-9qgkcqzh7 |access-date=26 January 2023 |archive-date=26 January 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230126080403/https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/human-bones-remains-found-attic-battle-waterloo-9qgkcqzh7 |url-status=live }}</ref>

A possible reason for the absence of human remains in any quantity is that European battlefields of the time were often scoured for bones to make [[bone meal]], which was much in demand as a [[fertilizer]] before the discovery of [[superphosphate]]s in the 1840s.<ref name=":0" /> [[Bernard Wilkin]] and Robin Schäfer, supported by the British archaeologist Tony Pollard, concluded that in the aftermath of the conflict, local farmers dug up the corpses of horses and men and sold them to the [[Waterloo sugar factory]]. There, the ground-down bones were fired in kilns to make bone-char, which was then used to filter sugar syrup as part of the production process.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Homann |first1=Arne |last2=Wilkin |first2=Bernard |last3=Schäfer |first3=Robin |title=Die Toten von Waterloo: Aus dem Massengrab in die Zuckerfabrik? |url=https://www.academia.edu/102550987 |journal=Archäologie in Deutschland |date=January 2023 |volume=2023 |issue=3 (Juni-Juli) |pages=44–45}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Schäfer |first1=Robin |last2=Wilkin |first2=Bernard |date=2023-01-01 |title=The real fate of the Waterloo fallen. The exploitation of bones in 19th century Belgium |url=https://www.academia.edu/111460708 |journal=Journal of Belgian History}}</ref>

===Monuments outside Waterloo===
A number of memorials and celebratory structures exist in the territories held by the belligerents at Waterloo. Some of these were built in the 19th century to commemorate the Battle. These monuments include the [[Waterloo Monument]] in Scotland, the [[Waterloo Column]] in Hanover and the [[Waterloo-Tor]] in [[Osnabrück]]. There are also monuments commemorating individuals prominently involved in the Battle. These include the [[Picton Monument, Carmarthen|Picton Monument]] in Wales, commemorating [[Sir Thomas Picton|Picton's]]  life and also his death at Waterloo, and [[Wellington's Column]] in Liverpool, which bears the image of [[Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington|Wellington's]] charge at Waterloo.

===Coin controversy===
As part of the bicentennial celebration of the battle, in 2015 [[Belgium]] minted a two-[[euro]] coin depicting the Lion monument over a map of the field of battle. France officially protested against this issue of coins, while the Belgian government noted that the French mint sells souvenir medals at Waterloo.{{sfn|Torfs|2015}} After 180,000 coins were minted but not released, the issue was melted. Instead, Belgium issued an identical commemorative coin in the non-standard value of {{sfrac|2|1|2}} euros. Legally valid only within the issuing country it was minted in brass, packaged, and sold by the Belgian mint for 6 euros. A ten-euro coin, showing Wellington, Blücher, their troops and the silhouette of Napoleon, was also available in silver for 42 euros.{{sfn|Kottasova|2015}}