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No visit to Waterloo in 2020 but some impressions from my last one

At the end of last year I decided to visit the Waterloo battlefield during the first three or four month of 2020. A time when not so much tourists would be there. It's only a two hours drive away, but somehow I did not manage to visit it again since the early nineties.

They have a new museum now that I wanted to see and we planned a kind of hiking tour round the battlefield. Chateau Hougoumont was also an important point on the list since it wasn't open to visitors back in the days because it still was a working farm or something.

And then the hurly-burly began. I saw it coming. From the second week of January I followed it closely by reading the live ticker of a chinese newspaper (in english). It was alarming from the beginning. By the end of the month, exactly on the 30th, we began to stockpile. We called it "slow prepp" : always buying some extra stuff while grocery shopping. May sound strange but toilet paper was not on my list. But that never was a problem. The shitocalypse didn't happen.

Soon it was clear that we had to drop our plan to make a trip to Waterloo. And everything else, including our holidays. Here we are now, so many month later and not a little bit better. Will it be safe next year? No, forget it. Not everybody is as carefull as we are and it will go on.

So here - as a compensation - some of my photos from my Waterloo trip in the early nineties. I think between 1990 and 1993. Scanned from old dias. Please don't mind the quality. I wasn't a good potographer, the pictures are just snapshots and were not meant to be published. And by the way, it's very sad but you can't purchase a good dia-scanner anymore. (If you have one, keep it. Or scan your dias now before it gives up the ghost.)

The Emperor waiting for the battle. Is he still sitting there and waiting for me to make a better photo of him?

A display with 54mm miniatures. Showing the fight at the door of the Chateau.

Not the young guard, not the middle guard, its the Old Grumpy Guard!


La Haie Sainte. When I was there the gate stood wide open and I was able to take a closer look. At that time one corner of the southern wall (to the left of the gate) still looked liked beeing destroyed in the battle. But who knows, two centuries is a long time.

A typical museum display...

... and here a silly one. I am not an expert but this does not look like the wound from a bullet.

And suddenly, a group of reenactors came along.

I like the pose of the guy on the right. He is still in his role.

The mystery of the missing house

Sounds like the title of a 'famous five' story, but this photo drove me mad. In my memory it was "La Belle Alliance". A museum and I remembered that I photographed a small ossuary in the backyard.

I did not photograph it from the front. Photos were expensive back then. But I also cannot say why I took this view from the backside.

The ossuary


But when I checked it on goggle maps and streetview I saw that my memory was wrong. Belle Alliance has only one storey, it couldn't be this house. I searched and (virtually) 'drove' the road up and down and I was nearly sure that the house had gone like some of the houses that stood around the place of the new museum. But finally I found it, the "Dernier Quartier General de Napoleon" (Napoleons Last Headquarter). A small museum about 2km south of Belle Alliance (and the 'front')  and nearly 4km away from the lion monument. It is interesting, Napoleons headquarter does not appear on most historic maps of the battle because it is a little bit too far to the south. (In another post I will show you what special advantage this place had.)


Was this the place where I took a photo of the (original) emperors bed? How would you sleep before a big battle? I would not be able to close my eyes for a minute.

I would really like to compare what I saw back then with the status of today. But Waterloo is so near and so far away now.


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