Pod Insights Dan Snow's History Hit The Battle of Waterloo About this episode Dan is joined by his dad, veteran broadcaster Peter Snow, to tell the incredible story of the clash between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington on June 18, 1815. This showdown - packed with heroic last stands, strategic genius, and catastrophic missteps - shattered Napoleon’s dreams of empire.
This episode marks exactly 10 years of Dan Snow's History Hit, and in it, Dan and Peter reflect on the very first episode of the podcast they did together and everything that has come since.
Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal Patmore
You can now find Dan Snow's History Hit on YouTube! Watch episodes every Friday here https://www.youtube.com/@DSHHPodcast.
Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.
We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.
You can also email the podcast directly at [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript 11,114 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dan Snow? Hey friends, if you love this podcast and want to decide what history we cover, then you need to become a Dan Snow's History Hit subscriber. Pitch your topic and if I like it, we'll make it into a subscriber exclusive episode. So far, we've covered the English Reformation, the Hudson Bay Company, the Trail of Tears, all of which have been decided by dedicated subscribers. So take the reins of your favourite podcast by heading over to historyhit.com/subscribe or sign up in your podcast player.
0:32 Speaker 01 Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric and on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households, yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.
1:14 Speaker 01 Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
1:33 Dan Snow? Hi folks, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. The reason I'm giggling slightly is because I've been told that I've now said that 1,649 times, because today marks exactly 10 years since I started doing this podcast. It all began in June 2015, back before podcasts were really a thing, before my youngest child existed, when Obama was in the White House, Britain was in the EU, Queen Elizabeth was on the throne, before the pandemic. Different world, I mean, Xi and Putin were in power. Well, you know, not everything's changed. I recorded an episode and it was just me and my dad in a cheap hotel room and we went
2:17 Dan Snow? straight to a subject we knew pretty well, and that was the Battle of Waterloo. We've just written a book about it for the 200th anniversary. And our setup was certainly a little more primitive than it is now.
2:29 Dan Snow? I'm Dan Snow and this is History Hit.
2:33 Speaker 02 Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty. We want one thing. The German radio has just announced that Hitler is dead.
2:44 Dan Snow? So here we are, Dan. This is our first ever podcast.
2:46 Speaker 03 Isn't this exciting, Dan?
2:48 Dan Snow? Very exciting, full of firsts over here, the Snow boys getting it all done. And we've chosen the best topic ever to have as our first podcast, haven't we?
2:56 Speaker 03 The Battle of Waterloo, one of the most extraordinary moments in history. Just one day when history was decided for the next 100 years.
3:03 Dan Snow? When we recorded that, I just could not have imagined this would become a huge podcast and one that would enable us at Team History Hit to launch all the other podcasts, launch our streaming TV service, to make documentaries for the world's biggest TV channels. And it would also, most importantly, it would let me and my team travel to every continent, making podcasts, making documentaries about all the history that we really love and that you love. It's 6:30 in the morning and my team, Yana, my trusty producer, some of the History Hit TV folk, and I are heading out to Belgium because we're going to the battlefield of Waterloo. I'm now walking down one of the side waddies, the ravines in the Valley of the Kings.
3:46 Dan Snow? This place was carved out of landscape by infrequent but dramatic rainstorms that turned this dry landscape into a raging torrent of water. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit and for this mini-series, I'm taking you with me to Rome. This is somewhere completely new to me, the Peruvian Andes. I'm following a trail taken by a remarkable man, Horum Bingham. I'm right here at the beginning of the adventure, everybody. I'm walking through Beijing Station and like every other documentary or podcast you've ever heard, I'm afraid I have to repeat the cliche because it's true. This country is enormous. Today on Dan Snow's History Hit, we've got a first. We're doing something a little bit different.
4:29 Dan Snow? We have chosen the most important hour and a half of D-Day and we are going to tell the story as it happened. We're going to go minute by minute. So in theory, if you hit play on this episode... He tells me they have seen the acoustic signature of a shipwreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. It has to be Endurance. It's inconceivable. It could be anything else.
4:52 Dan Snow? Without you listeners, this would not be a thing. You've made all that happen, so thank you. It wasn't all smooth sailing, of course. We all know about Mariana, the producer, the enormous footwear challenges that she faced. This is the sound of the new forest in winter. The new forest can be less of a forest and more of a bog. And as ever, Mariana de Forges has refused to wear wellie boots. She's wearing shoes and is soaking alongside me. Are you enjoying those, yeah?
5:25 Dan Snow? And then there was the period when I got braces and everyone told me I'd be fine, and it wasn't really fine. And that is something in turn that Mariana never lets me forget. A few miles north of the town of Hastings, Duke William of Normandy pitted his forces against King Harold of England. The battle that took place on that bloody ridge would be known as Hastings.
5:50 Dan Snow? I think I can admit on this big anniversary that race is realistically worse than occasionally inappropriate footwear.
5:59 Dan Snow? But thank you to you guys because you stuck with me and we made it through. Thank you. I'd love to know, is there anyone out there, in fact, who's been listening to the show for 10 years and what your favourite episode has been? You can email me and the team on [email protected] . And we've got no plans to give up. There's plenty of history out there, folks. But for now, I want to revisit that first episode. We've cleaned it up a little, but this is me and my dad telling you the story of the Battle of Waterloo that took place on the 18th of June 1815, on the rolling landscape just south the village of Waterloo in what is now Belgium. That Titanic clash that saw Emperor Napoleon of France...
6:43 Dan Snow? Faced the Allied armies, the Duke of Wellington and Marshal Bluka. For over 10 hours, something like 180,000 soldiers clashed in a terrible battle. It was appropriate that it was my dad and I doing this together. It was he that gave me that love of history. He took me to every battlefield and church and museum within 150 miles of our house growing up. I don't think I really enjoyed it that much at first, but then I got Stockholm syndrome and here I am now indoctrinating all of you guys as well. I owe everything to my dad and it's a huge honour to launch the podcast with him and it's a great honour to have him back on the pod to mark this 10 year anniversary.
7:40 Dan Snow? So what we're going to do on this podcast, everybody, is we are going to talk through the story of the Battle of Waterloo, fought 200 years ago this June. And dad is going to be the part of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican tyrant. I'm going to be the Duke of Wellington and we're going to take you through this battle that changed history and will forever be remembered as one of the most dramatic and bloody battles of the early modern era. So I suppose we should also say, dad, you and I have been obsessed with this battle since I was a little boy and I remember being six years old. You took me to the battlefield and we agreed, it was 30 years ago, that's depressing, and we agreed that we'd come back for the Bicentenary if we were both still around. And we were, we went back this summer, didn't we? I was getting on to see. That's still around, dad.
8:24 Dan Snow? Yes, I'll be around for the next 50 years, you and I, don't worry. Damn right. Go on. Well, okay, so let's start with the commanders. I'm Wellington, I'll start. Wellington, 46 years old. He'd fought something like twenty-four battles and sieges before Waterloo, only one of which you can consider a bit of a defeat, the Siege of Burgos, would you say?
8:43 Speaker 03 Correct, the Siege of Burgos was a real disaster.
8:45 Dan Snow? Okay.
8:45 Speaker 03 With the wrong guns.
8:46 Dan Snow? Okay, well, there you go. So always take the right guns, people. And but he'd fought across India, Portugal, Spain, southern France as a commander, and achieved a string of stunning victories against many of Napoleon's senior generals, but never against Napoleon Baudart himself. This was the first time they'd meet on the battlefield. He was known to his officers as the peer, because he was very, very grand, very aristocratic. And he rode a horse called Copenhagen. And whereas Napoleon was very lavish with praise and lavish with the rewards, and Wellington was very tight, very disciplined, very cold, very hard. And as an old man, he said that someone said to him, did you have any regrets? And he said, yes, I should have given more praise.
9:27 Dan Snow? So he's an austere, intelligent, remote, but hugely respected commander.
9:34 Speaker 03 And Napoleon, by contrast, of course, is absolutely drowned in charisma. He was so popular with his troops. So remember that this man had been defeated, utterly defeated in Moscow and Russia in eighteen twelve, and Leipzig in eighteen thirteen, and of course he abdicated in eighteen fourteen. But back he bounced in eighteen fifteen, only a hundred days before Waterloo. He bounced back and he was immediately carried on the shoulders of his of his army, right back to Paris, where in a great surge of popularity, put an army of three hundred thousand men together, an extraordinary triumph for a man who was a hugely successful general until eighteen twelve. But then he came back and there he was. Everybody thought, God, this dreadful king who had succeeded him,
10:19 Speaker 03 Louis the Eighteenth, had come back and he'd been a disaster. And there was Napoleon Baudart back again, unbelievably, taking this army back to attack the the coalition of allies who got together. Wellington and all the other Prussians and the Russians and the Austrians all got together. But Napoleon was going to beat them to it. So he drove up, he whammed up with his army across the Belgian border. He was going to defeat the allies one by one. By one that he was going to give to Brussels by the night of the eighteenth of June.
10:47 Dan Snow? Now, I should say who the allies were. So we got the all of the enemies of France have come together. They've declared Napoleon Bonaparte an outlaw. The Spanish, some of the Italian kingdoms, the Austrians, the Russians, the Prussians, many of the German nations and the British. And they've all forming armies, the Austrians and the Russians, for example, hundreds of thousands of men marching from Central Europe towards the borders of France. But the the the target that Napoleon goes for first is is the army commanded by my man, the Duke of Wellington, uh, and his Prussian allies next door. So they are in southern Belgium. Marshal Blücher commanding the Prussians, which is a big, powerful state in Germany. Uh, and the Duke of Wellington commanding an allied army made up of Brits.
11:30 Dan Snow? And as we'd now call them, Dutch and Belgian troops and many German troops as well. Only one third of Wellington's army was British, British and Irish. The rest, two thirds, were Dutch, Belgian and from German little countries. Uh, and next door to him was General Blücher, as I said, Marshal Blücher with this with this big force of Prussians. They were spread out across southern Belgium, waiting for Napoleon to make his move. And they were pretty surprised by the speed and secrecy with which he made his move. He crossed the border, the British and the Prussian armies are still coalescing, they're mobilizing, they're bringing their guys to a central point. And Wellington, I suppose you could argue, is slightly caught on the bounce.
12:09 Speaker 03 Yes, tell me, have we just imagined the scene of the fifteenth of June, eighteen fifteen? It's an extraordinary moment in history when this man with hundred thousand troops, the Poland-Bonaparte, crosses the Belgian frontier, knowing that he faces in the end something like a million allied men put together in this coalition army. But he's determined to hit them one by one, and he starts by going for Blücher. Blücher's a bit closer to him when he crosses the border, so he's going to hit Blücher first, he's going to destroy Blücher, and then he's going to destroy Wellington. You've got to admire the hot spar, the cheek of this amazingly competent general.
12:44 Dan Snow? He was damned.
12:45 Speaker 03 His strategy was brilliant. So first of all, he goes for Blücher. Sixteenth of June, eighteen fifteen, he attacked Blücher at the Battle of Ligny, and he really damaged and crippled Blücher's army. And he thought to himself, I've done it. I'm going to send off Marshal Grucci, chasing Blücher, uh, he's going to get off the field, I've got him out of the way. Now I can turn on Wellington.
13:08 Dan Snow? Wellington, when he heard confirmed news of where Napoleon had crossed the border into what is now Belgium, Wellington was at a big party in Brussels, the Duchess of Richmond's Ball, the most famous ball in history, where many of the finest dandies of the British Army were dancing the night away with their girlfriends and wives, not at the same time, I hope, and he received news, he ordered Picton, who was one of his best subordinate generals, to march south as fast as he could to try and hold the crossroads at Katrebrah, which meant that he would try and conform to the movements of the Prussians, as you might say, that he and the Prussians would be joined and they could join forces and they could together overwhelm Napoleon. The problem is, by the time Wellington's men
13:48 Dan Snow? got to Katrebrah in enough force, Napoleon was already giving the Prussians a good beating and there were elements of Napoleon's army, again, pressing up the road to Brussels at Katrebrah. So the British are involved in their own battle, they're unable to go and help the Prussians as much they might like to have done, because they're involved with their own battle at Katrebrah, where they're being attacked by the ferocious Marshal Ney.
14:08 Speaker 03 So far then, brilliant for Napoleon, he's doing a wonderful job, he's knocked off the Prussians, he's got Marshal Ney confronting Wellington at Katrebrah, but now things begin to go wrong, because he sent to reinforce Ney, he sent General Delors with some 20,000 men, but unbelievably, Delors marched backwards and forwards, never actually joining Ney and never actually rejoining Napoleon to attack the Prussians. And so Ney was desperately under-resourced when he faced Wellington at Katrebrah.
14:40 Dan Snow? Wellington, it should be said, he's got a big allied army, he was very distrustful of many of the elements of his army, he called it an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and as I say, two-thirds of it were foreign troops who'd never fought under, or many of them had never fought under his command before. So he is being particularly cautious in the Waterloo campaign, not just because he's never faced Napoleon before, but also because he's not entirely happy with the raw materials under his command. But Wellington, on the night of the 16th of June, it is clear that the Prussians have been driven back. It is clear that Wellington has held his own against Marshal Nair, but soon, if he stays there, because the Prussians have been driven back to his east, Napoleon can swing round and smash into Wellington's flank. So Wellington withdraws, which is a very hard thing to do, to withdraw in the face of the enemy,
15:25 Dan Snow? but he does it very effectively. Marshal Nair and Napoleon make a terrible mistake letting him withdraw so easily. The weather is appalling and they march north. And it's about, how far is it, Dad, from Catrebrat to? Ten miles. Ten miles or so. Catrebrat to Waterloo. He marches north to a ridge that he's identified the year before, when he was riding across the landscape looking for useful defensive features. And it's a long ridge known as Mont Saint Jean, which is just south of the village of Waterloo. And that is where Wellington has decided that if he can't hold them at Catrebrat, he will retreat and he will hold them on this ridge at Waterloo until the Prussians can come and help him by marching to his aid.
16:08 Speaker 03 Well, Napoleon's missed a trick because as Dan says, he did allow Wellington to withdraw to Mont Saint Jean. It was foolish of him not to attack Wellington as soon as he'd destroyed Bluga. He just thought that, um, I've got to give my guys a rest. I've got to let them relax. It was absolutely dreadful wet day, the 17th of June, the day before Waterloo, the day after the Battle of Ligny, which the Posen had won. He didn't take the opportunity of hitting Wellington as he pulled back to Waterloo. It was a big mistake. Anyway, he started pulling his guns up. But of course, the rain of the 17th of June meant everything was muddy. His huge guns, he had twice as many guns as Wellington. He pulled them up slowly up towards Waterloo to face that ridge where Wellington was placed.
16:53 Speaker 03 He still was very confident, though, that he could hit Wellington. And he was very confident indeed that the Prussians were now eliminated from any battle.
17:02 Dan Snow? Well, let's see if they were or not. On the 17th of June, and the day before Waterloo, Wellington's withdrawing his troops north. It's brutal. Some of the officers are still wearing their dancing shoes from the Duchess of Richmond's ball. They're hungry, the logistics in many cases haven't caught up with them. Then at the evening of the 17th of June, an absolute downpour. Find any shelter they can on this ridge. Outside Waterloo, I've got one surgeon here who wrote, "We were up to our knees in mud and stinking water. We had no choice but to settle down in the mud and filth as best we could, men and horses shaking with cold." A private from the Guards, Private Clay, wrote, "All four of us crept under the cover, taking the remainder of our equipment with us. The storm continued with equal force and our covering became very quickly soaked." So terrible conditions to spend the night before a huge battle.
17:46 Dan Snow? In the morning, all through the night, Wellington is making his disposition. Now critically, in that night, this is the most important moment, the Prussians send messages to Wellington and vice versa that allows Wellington to believe that the Prussians, although they've been defeated, they're still near enough to Wellington, near enough in the east, that they can come to his aid the next day. And Marshal Blücher, despite quite big disagreements within his senior command, says, "I am going to help Wellington. If he makes a stand at Waterloo, I will send perhaps up to 30,000, 40,000 troops to help him defeat Napoleon." Armed with that knowledge, Wellington tells his army that night to make preparations to make a stand on this ridge and make a decisive go at stopping Napoleon the following day.
18:27 Speaker 03 Just get a picture of the numbers involved here. Facing each other at Waterloo on that ridge and Napoleon coming up with his troops, you've got 70,000 on each side. But don't forget, Wellington's detached about 30,000 to guard his right flank in case Napoleon stayed something over there. And Napoleon has sent off Marshal Grucci with some 30,000 troops to look after the Prussians. So you've got Napoleon and Wellington facing each other with the same number of troops, some 70,000. But the Prussians promising to reinforce Wellington with some 40,000 and Napoleon 30,000 men way off chasing unsuccessfully the Prussians.
19:06 Dan Snow? Chasing their tail. On the 18th of June, a day that will live in infamy, the day of the Battle of Waterloo, Wellington woke up at 3am. The first thing he did was write to his mistress. Isn't that right, Daddy? She was in Brussels.
19:19 Speaker 03 Yes.
19:20 Dan Snow? Slightly unprofessional. He wrote to her saying, "I'm feeling fairly confident about the battle, but you may wish to head to the Channel coast and get on a ship and head back to Britain just in case." He then mounted his horse Copenhagen at 6am and he was in the saddle, by the way, for the next 16 hours. He spent 16 hours in the saddle. At the end of it, he got off his horse and Copenhagen gave him a kick. By the end of the battle, it's quite interesting here, he'd had nine hours sleep in the previous seventy-two, and in the previous seventy-two hours, he'd spent fifty-seven of them in the saddle, so an extraordinary physical performance by the Duke of Wellington. And much more impressive, you've got to say, Dad, than Napoleon Bonaparte, who was actually, well, only a few months younger, almost the same age.
19:59 Speaker 03 Napoleon was the same age as Wellington from forty-five, forty-six. There's no question, Napoleon had passed his best. I mean, he'd been defeated in Russia, he'd been defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, and he'd lost some of that shine that he had, some of that flair. And he, in fact, spent most of these last three days rather behind the front line, sitting in a great big chair, actually, at Waterloo, and watching what was going on, and leaving most of the decisions, unfortunately, to rather second-rate generals who were under him, Marshal Sout and Marshal Ney. Ney was a very reckless, very hot-headed character, to whom Napoleon left most of the command and arrangement of the Battle of Waterloo. That was really Napoleon's problem.
20:43 Dan Snow? But Napoleon had health problems, didn't he? He was said to have stomach ulcers and said to have had pretty bad piles of excitement in the south, which made riding a horse rather unpleasant.
20:52 Speaker 03 But he was seen riding his horse up and down the front line. I mean, he was still enormously popular with his troops, that was his great bonus.
20:58 Dan Snow? So Wellington gets into the saddle at about six and starts making his final deployments. Now, it's very interesting, his second-in-command was the Earl of Uxbridge, in charge of his cavalry, and Uxbridge said to him, he asked him if he had a plan, and Wellington replied, "Well, Bonaparte has not given me any idea of his projects, as my plans depend on his, how can you expect me to tell you what mine are?" So he was just going to fight a defensive battle, he was going to respond to the situations as they arose, as Napoleon threw attacking soldiers at him. Wellington had seventy thousand men, our dad said, that's about fifty thousand infantry, just under fifteen thousand cavalry, and about a hundred and fifty guns, would you say, so about half the number of guns of Napoleon. Napoleon was a gunner, he trained as a gunner, he was a gunner as a young man.
21:42 Dan Snow? He once said, "It is with guns that one makes war." So he was going to blast a big hole in Wellington's lines, and Wellington knew it. Thirty per cent of Wellington's army was British, as I said. Only 7,000 of them were his Peninsula War veterans, so only 1 in 10 of Wellington's troops were his absolute trusted veterans who'd followed him across the peninsula. And he placed most of his infantry behind the crest of this ridge, Mont Saint Jean. So he hid them away from the French they couldn't see. He would also place experienced units mixed up with inexperienced units, foreign units and British units mixed in, Dutch, German, British units, all mixed in. So there was less chance of panic seizing hold and ripping through his army. Quick thing about the guys who fought, the British infantrymen were paid about 13 pence
22:26 Dan Snow? a day, about 20 pounds a year. They actually received less than half that because most of it was deducted for uniforms and breakages and equipment losses and things. Now, they were eating because they would have had a meal that morning, a pound of beef a day, about a pound and a half of bread, and you got a pint of wine or a third of a pint of gin. And the gin ration was issued at the beginning of the battle, and after the battalion had its gin ration, the rest of it was poured away into the ground, and there's accounts of men looking sadly as the rest of the gin is poured into the earth. The average age we think of Wellington's men is about 27 years old. The youngest infantrymen we know about were about 17, the oldest about 44, and the sergeants, the grizzled sergeants with 10 or 15 years' experience were about 36 years old.
23:08 Dan Snow? They were the backbone of Wellington's army. The front, Wellington's front line, was only about 3,000 metres long. So Wellington, in the saddle all day, riding Copenhagen, could be everywhere where the action was hottest. And it's one of the last great battles of history when the action was so compressed in such a tiny piece of territory.
23:28 Speaker 03 Napoleon, on the morning of the 18th of June, after the dreadful rain all night, it was a sunny morning, and Napoleon got up, had breakfast, and summoned his generals together and said, "Right, this is going to be as easy as having our breakfast defeating this man Wellington. He's no good as a general, he's got a terrible army, we're going to destroy them." And he was very confident. He said, "We'll go straight up this road, we'll be in Brussels for supper tonight, and I'm going to go straight at him. No mucking about, no manoeuvres, no clever tactics, we'll just go straight at these British and their allies." Have no trouble getting there. And he decided that what he would do was start off his grand battery. As Dan said, he had nearly twice as many guns as the Brits. He had about two hundred and fifty.
24:11 Speaker 03 And they were lined up, a grand battery, huge number of these massive cannon facing the British on the ridge. Of course, the problem was they couldn't see the British because they were behind down behind the ridge. So he started these guns firing round about midday. And as those guns were firing, he decided to attack one of Wellington's forward positions. A place called the farm at Hugumont. Where Wellington had moved some small number of people, a battalion of guys, the Coldstream Guards. Forward to garrison this farm, which held his right flank. And Napoleon, one of his brothers, actually Jerome Bonaparte, he threw him at this farm and said, right. Take that farm. That will distract Wellington and then allow me to hammer the real right hand, right fist.
24:54 Speaker 03 I'm going to hammer at Wellington's left hand side on the east side of Wellington's line. I'm going to do that later in the day, but the meanwhile, I want that farm attacked. So that Wellington is distracted by this attack.
25:05 Dan Snow? So he's going to feint left and then punch with his right.
25:07 Speaker 03 That's right.
25:08 Dan Snow? Now, it all comes down to whether Wellington will weaken his centre, weaken his positions and the rest of the line to support this sort of fortified farmhouse right on the western edge of his line. The Brits are always worried about their connections with the sea, with the navy, the channel and home. So Napoleon's thinking, if I can make him nervous about his western flank, he might weaken the rest of his line. Now, luckily for Wellington, the Coldstream Guards in Hugumol performed exceedingly well and managed to hold off this attack. In fact, what was meant to be a feint, a sort of a, what was meant to be a diversionary attack, ended up taking the attention of huge numbers of Frenchmen as all day. They became increasingly obsessed with taking this huge farmhouse.
25:48 Speaker 03 Yes, and we just look at these numbers again, we had in the farmhouse, something like twelve hundred top whack. British soldiers, the Coldstreamers and a few allies in the farm attacked by up to ten thousand Frenchmen. You had Jerome Bonaparte's division, some three thousand men, four thousand men. Then they had to be reinforced by General Fois' division, another three or four thousand men. In the end, you had some ten thousand men on Napoleon's left flank attacking this farm without success.
26:17 Dan Snow? The French do manage to encircle it. They drive the defenders out of the orchard. They're attacking the great thick walls of this chateau. And indeed, one French officer, a lieutenant Le Gros, whose nickname was Lan Forcer, the Enforcer, a huge giant man, he managed to break through the north gates of Hugamont. Now, he sounds like a pretty tough individual. And indeed, it was all a very decisive moment in the battle because he breaks in. Then the Coldstreamers respond by desperately closing the gates. They do manage to get those gates closed again, and they hunt down and kill all the Frenchmen, including the Enforcer, who managed to get in through the gates of Hugamont. All except for little drummer boy, who's the best. Drummer boy survived and tells the story. And Wellington later wrote, "Success at Waterloo depended on closing the gates at Hugamont."
27:00 Dan Snow? Because had they lost that big anchoring defensive position on Wellington's western flank, it might have forced Wellington to send more and more troops over the west, which would have weakened him for Napoleon's great punch that was coming up.
27:15 Dan Snow? You're listening to the 10th anniversary episode of Dan Snow's History. Stay with us for more after this.
27:25 Dan Snow? This episode is brought to you by TikTok. I never thought about the history of coffee. You make it, you drink it, nothing more to it. Then I've had a TikTok video about how people in the 1700s would pour their coffee into saucers to let it cool before drinking it. I love that sort of discovery, a detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized. Now I wonder what all baffled historians about us: mugs. It's a ceramic vessel, but crucially, it has a handle. Well, that's the joy of TikTok, folks. You look for one thing and find yourself somewhere completely different. Your next discovery is waiting on TikTok. Learn more at tiktok.com/discovermore.
28:07 Dan Snow? This episode is brought to you by Deckagon. If you've ever been trapped in phone tree hell, pushing zero fifty times while a voice robot pretends not to hear you, you know true psychological warfare. It's brutal, folks. Thankfully, that kind of horror is now confined to the history books. Customer service has evolved. Deckagon helps companies create personalized, concierge-style customer experiences with AI agents across chat, email, voice, and SMS. They're available 24/7, feel natural to talk to, and can resolve customer requests on their own, so businesses can keep up with requests without losing their personal touch. Plus, because workflows can be updated using natural language, teams can make changes themselves.
28:50 Dan Snow? Deckagon gives your team full visibility into why agents make decisions and what's happening across every conversation, helping to power millions of conversations every day. Ready to transform your customer support? Go to deckagon.ai/dansnow to see what Deckagon can do for your team. That's deckagon.ai/dansnow. Check Deckagon out at deckagon.ai/dansnow.
29:19 Speaker 01 Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs. Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life
30:05 Speaker 01 can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
30:17 Dan Snow? Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Colosseum? Find out on the Ancients podcast from History Hit. Twice a week, join me Tristan Hughes as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians to the Celts to the Romans, and visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were. That's the Ancients from History Hit.
30:58 Speaker 03 The Poguen, having failed to take Hugemont, but seeing that Wellington was pretty distracted by it, or hoping he was pretty distracted by it, although Wellington hadn't sent many reinforcements to Hugemont, he decided to make his main attack on the east side, on Wellington's left flank. And so he said to General Delon, he said, "Right, now is the time to go, and I want you to go and hammer that ridge and take all of your corps, your first corps, up that ridge." And we're talking here about 18,000 French infantry, in columns, long lines of troops, but many ranks deep, going up this ridge, pushing their way, brushing their way, forcing their way through the six-foot-high flax,
31:41 Speaker 03 and also mud, absolutely, the thing was absolutely sheeted with mud, the ground. And so they had to sweat up this hill, carrying their packs and their muskets and their ball ammunition. It must have been a heck of a job. Anyway, when they got to the top of the hill, suddenly they saw in front of them, of course, they saw the British line, and then they attacked.
32:01 Dan Snow? And this is, well, they do quite well at this point. The British and Allied line is driven back, it seems, even though the French took a terrible beating from the canister shot, which was big boxes of, effectively, big musket balls that you jammed into a cannon, you turned the whole thing basically into a giant shotgun, and it would blast out at close range, this terrible spray of balls ripping through the French ranks. Then thousands of Brits and Allies sprang up from the barley and fired their muskets at very close range to the French, and the French say it caused a terrible slaughter. But even so, the weight of this attack did start to drive units back, didn't it, Dad? It did start to, and it meant that the Earl of Uxbridge, the Duke of Wellington's cavalry commander...
32:43 Dan Snow? Thought the critical moment had arrived and unleashed a mighty cavalry charge.
32:48 Speaker 03 Well, the saddest thing for the Brits was the death of General Pickton, who was commanding that division on the front line of the Brits. And he, the Frenchman, had to shoot him in the head. And it was in fact looking extremely dicey for the Brits, as you say.
32:59 Dan Snow? It was looking dicey. It looked like Napoleon's plan might have succeeded. Fate left, punch right. At the moment, the right punch was driving the Brits back. But a mighty cavalry attack was unleashed. And it is one of the most extraordinary and iconic moments, I think, certainly in British military history. The cavalry roared forward. It's said that many of the Highland infantrymen grabbed the stirrups as they passed and sort of went hurtling into the battle, holding on to the horsemen. But I'm not sure if that's true.
33:25 Speaker 03 Having Scotland forever.
33:27 Dan Snow? Scotland forever. And they fell upon the French infantry attack and annihilated it, completely scattered it. Very, very successful. But then everything went completely mad. The cavalry, as they often did, and Wellington had complained about this many times in the past, they went too far. They charged down into the valley. Their blood was up and they decided to charge up the other side of the valley towards Napoleon's centre to try and smash up his grand battery. Frankly, try and charge down to Paris. Wellington once said, "I have never been more annoyed than by this. Our cavalry officers have acquired the trick of galloping at everything. They never consider the situation, never think of manoeuvring before an enemy and never keep back or provide a reserve." And it's exactly what the cavalry did here.
34:08 Speaker 03 Well, it's important to say that the horse is run out of breath. They're what is called blown. After some 400, 500 metres, they get terribly out of breath. And the French were able to counter-attack. As this cavalry charge went way beyond where it need to have gone, right up to the French guns, in came the French cavalry, who were standing there just behind the guns. And they were able to hammer into the British cavalry and do them serious damage.
34:33 Dan Snow? But in the meantime, the British had captured two eagles. They'd got rid of this infantry attack. One was famously captured by Sergeant Charles Ewett. And there's some great stories. Corporal Shaw in The Second Life Guard, the cavalryman, he was a huge man, a prizefighter, a boxer. He was apparently wildly drunk on gin. He took part in a mad charge up to the centre of the French line, cut down 10 men, broke his sword, used his helmet as a club. And then he in turn was cut down and shot and crawled off where he bled to death in horrible conditions during the following night. Another man, Sergeant Major Marshall, was dragged and slashed and beaten across the battlefield. He was hit with nineteen lance and saber wounds and he lay for two days and three nights wounded on the battlefield and he was actually used as a foothold by French artillerymen trying
35:15 Dan Snow? to get some purchase in the muddy ground. We know this story because he survived, he claimed a pension that survives the document and he survived on a pension of two shillings a day in Belfast for another seven years. Ponsonby, one of the commanders, Dad, of the Hazars, what was Ponsonby commanding?
35:30 Speaker 03 He was a light dragoon.
35:31 Dan Snow? Light dragoon. He was stabbed in both arms, slashed in the head, stabbed in the back with a lance and then he lay on the battlefield in this terrible state. He was robbed twice by various soldiers who advancing and retreating, but he was given a drink of wine by a passing Frenchman, which he always thought might have saved his life. So incredible stories. At this stage of the afternoon, Napoleon's attack on both flanks hasn't succeeded, although they've come close, hasn't succeeded. It's sort of on as even at this point, right Dan?
35:59 Speaker 03 Napoleon still has two huge weapons at his elbow. He has his Imperial Guard, some ten thousand men who were simply unbeatable, he reckoned. They hadn't been beaten in war before, they were standing by to do what they could. He also had, I mean, talking numbers again, Dan talked about this dramatic and colourful and brave charge by the British cavalry. There were some three thousand British heavy cavalry charging into Daort's men and indeed destroying, as Dan said, Daort's advance. But Napoleon now had nine thousand heavy cavalry, whom he now sent in against the British infantry on that ridge. And at three o'clock in the afternoon, between three and five roughly, there was this huge
36:43 Speaker 03 set of charges by this French cavalry, these two French cavalry corps. An extraordinary sight it must have made. One soldier looking at it, actually from the British side, described it as watching a huge sea approaching, great waves breaking, the crest of the waves breaking and this roaring, crashing sea coming towards you. It must have been an extraordinary sight. And they run up the hill and they attacked the British infantry squares. British infantry turned into squares, didn't they, Dan, at this point?
37:13 Dan Snow? Yeah, the British infantry went from lines into squares, so they had Three hundred and sixty degree defence, they look very vulnerable, little thin red lines stretched around four sides, but actually they were real strong points. Muskets planted in the soil or into your laps with bayonets on the end, razor sharp steel on the end, and horses won't commit suicide, they won't charge into those bayonets. And so they're just hedges of steel, sharpened steel, in these little hedgehog-like blocks on the battlefield. It must have looked absolutely extraordinary. And indeed, it's the great moment of the Waterloo film by Dino di Laurentiis, when you get a helicopter shot of all those squares formed up and the cavalry surging around them. Sergeant William Lawrence was ordered to take the colour in one square, carry the flag. He said, "It's a job I did not like at all.
37:56 Dan Snow? There had been before me that day fourteen sergeants already killed and wounded, one in charge of these colours, with officers in proportion, and the staff and the colours themselves almost cut to pieces." Another eyewitness wrote, "Our square was a perfect hospital, being full of dead and dying soldiers." And Wellington was galloping in and out of these squares, inspiring the men, checking the situation at right at the front line. And the French cavalry would charge right up, they'd get within ten or fifteen yards, they'd have to pull up, they couldn't charge home in these squares, they couldn't charge onto these steel hedges, as I said. And they'd fire their carbines, their weapons, they'd shout "Vive l'Empereur", and they hoped that the sheer morale effect of galloping up would break the squares apart, but it didn't. The British held firm. And the French, in the end, ended up wasting quite a lot of their cavalry, didn't they
38:41 Dan Snow? then?
38:42 Speaker 03 Oh, the French cavalry were decimated by this series of terrifying charges, which certainly weakened Wellington, but it certainly weakened Napoleon as well. Now, on the Napoleon side, Napoleon, he got well back from the front line in this battle, as we've said already. And he had beside him one of his staff officers, and just before the cavalry charge began, he looked over to his right, he looked over to the east of the battlefield, and appearing out of the woods on the right-hand side, he saw some men. And he said, "Who are they?", to his staff officer. The staff officer said, "Sir, I think that's Grouchy coming back to help us." And Napoleon said, "Hmm, if it's Grouchy, fine, but there's one problem. Those men are not wearing blue, they're wearing black. Those men are Prussians."
39:26 Speaker 03 And so between them, they decided the only thing to do at this stage was to get the word round the French army that Grouchy was indeed coming to help them. And if anybody saw these soldiers coming in on the east side, they would be told that they were Grouchy's men. So the word went round the French army, voila, Grouchy, there is Grouchy coming to help us. And that worked for some time through the afternoon. Anyway, so Napoleon through the afternoon is throwing his cavalry at Wellington's Ridge, hoping to weaken the centre. He's also waiting to assemble his main group, the Imperial Guard, but he's very worried indeed about the Prussians. And round about five or six o'clock in the afternoon, there was one big French success. Dan's mentioned the squares were successfully
40:11 Speaker 03 holding on against the cavalry, but there's another farm called La Haye Sainte, right in the middle of the British line, slightly forward of the British line on the ridge, just about a hundred metres down the road towards the French line. And some of the remains of Delon's corps, who'd have been attacked by the British cavalry and had to run back and retreat from their failed attack on the ridge earlier all the day, they managed to capture La Haye Sainte. Wellington's line now looked very, very dangerously exposed indeed.
40:41 Dan Snow? So La Haye Sainte, the big fortified farmhouse that anchored right in the centre of the line, protected by the King's German Legion, garrisoned by the King's German Legion, a bunch of Germans and Hanoverians in the service of the British Army. Because of course at that time, George III was still the Elector of Hanover, still an important German prince in his own right.
40:58 Speaker 03 They were firing rifles. We haven't mentioned rifles, have we?
41:01 Dan Snow? We.
41:01 Speaker 03 Grouchy's army was equipped with a number of rifle regiments, wasn't it, Dan?
41:04 Dan Snow? It was, yeah. Rifles accurate to around 300 metres, we say, Dad, whereas muskets only accurate to about 80 metres. So muskets could only be used in a great mass and you just fire a lot of balls down the range and see, you hope they hit someone. But rifles, you could actually shoot and kill people at 300 metres. So again, what we're also beginning to see there was the beginning of that increasing range of warfare, of lethality, from being on the battlefield, seeing the whites of someone's eyes, to being able to kill someone from a big distance. And you see that at Waterloo, 300 metres. In the First World War, you can kill someone from miles away. And of course, today, you can kill someone. Sitting in Nevada, you can kill someone on the other side of the world.
41:38 Speaker 03 Indeed, rifles, but of course, no machine guns, no really mass, massive weapon you can kill.
41:44 Dan Snow? You get bigger range, great, you get much more accuracy, but you can only fire it, what, twice a minute, and whereas the muskets, three times a minute.
41:50 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
41:51 Dan Snow? Less rate of fire, worst rate of fire. But the King's German Legion, garrisoning La Hayssant, this farmhouse, they burnt the gates the night before for firewood, the fools. So there were no gates on La Hayssant, that partly helped the French get in, but mainly because the King's German Legion ran out of ammunition. They were not properly sparred with ammunition, that was a big mistake on the Allied side. This farmhouse has fallen, his centre is in grave problems. Wellington, at this terrible moment of crisis, friends and colleagues dying around him, it's remarkable that he wasn't injured, he was in the thickest of the fighting all day. He simply said coolly, "There are no orders, except to stand firm to the last man." He needed night to come for the fighting to finish, or he needed the Prussians to come, either would save him. If neither came in time, the chances are, he would lose his battle against Napoleon Bonaparte.
42:35 Speaker 03 This is a massive moment for Napoleon. He moved forward his artillery, he moved forward at least two or three batteries of artillery, up to in front of La Hayssant, further forward than the farm that he has captured. And they started shelling the British from about two or three hundred yards range. And the twenty-seventh regiment of foot, the inner skillings, were totally, almost totally destroyed. There was the most horrendous massacre of the inner skillings. Wellington was in serious trouble. And, "Nour shall nay," and I said to Napoleon, he said, "Look, sir, if you give me the troops now, I can go and hit Wellington's line, we've captured the farm, the artillery are now hammering his centre, we can break through, and we will indeed be in Brussels for dinner tonight."
43:19 Speaker 03 But Napoleon said, "Hang on, which troops? I haven't got any troops left." Because Blücher's men had appeared on his right, and they had started attacking his right. Napoleon had had to divert an entire corps, under General Lobo, twenty thousand men that had to shift to the right to face the Prussians. And now, just before six o'clock, when he captured La Hayssant, Napoleon had to divert no fewer.
43:46 Speaker 03 Then eight regiments of his Imperial Guard to defend his right hand side. This was a disastrous moment for Napoleon. So he was actually eating into his reserve, his key Imperial Guard, to send them off to defend his right hand side against Lucca. And what he wanted to do, of course, was to attack Wellington in the center. And so a battle then raged at a village called Plomb Saint Loi on Napoleon's right. And they had to say no to Né. And so it was a vital moment between six and seven, when Wellington was desperately exposed when Napoleon failed to attack him.
44:26 Speaker 03 You're listening to the Battle of Waterloo. Stay with us for more after this.
44:38 Speaker 04 Pessimism, it's never going to improve a disconnected healthcare system. Next. So what will? At Optum, we're working every day to connect primary, specialty, and pharmacy care, and help lower prescription costs. Will we fix it all overnight? No, but we'll wake up trying again and again, until healthcare works as one for everyone. That's healthy optimism. Learn more at Optum.com.
45:08 Speaker 01 Hi, everyone. It's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.
45:50 Speaker 01 Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska. And in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
46:16 Dan Snow? But then Napoleon does attack him.
46:18 Speaker 03 Well, yes, we now get to about seven o'clock, seven thirty in the evening, when Napoleon, amazingly, he finds that his young guard and his old guard, sent off to the right to defend this village of Plessis Noir, is holding on successfully. They're holding the Prussians back. They are incredibly impressive professional French troops. Many of the Prussians are young recruits. So although the Prussians had the numbers, and those numbers were increasing all the time, that was the problem for the French. They had the numbers, but they didn't have the professional skill that the French side had, defending Napoleon's right. And so Napoleon said, "Right. Nay, I can afford to put nine battalions of the Imperial Guard into a final throw against Wellington Centre."
47:02 Speaker 03 So he marched himself. He went up the road, leading the Imperial Guard himself up towards the ridge. At a certain moment, Nay said, "Sire, I think you should go back now and leave it to me." And so Nay, as usual, Nay who lost five horses. He was riding five horses that day, one after the other got killed. He himself survived. He led the Imperial Guard up the hill. And they went up that hill, tramp, tramp, tramp, up the hill. These terrifying-looking men, all of them over six foot tall, specially chose them for their height and physique, with great big mustachios. They make a wonderful picture when you look at the pictures now of the old days in Waterloo. These Imperial Guardsmen marching up the hill. They were really invincible.
47:44 Speaker 03 They marched up the hill, or they thought they were, up the hill, determined to hammer through Wellington Centre.
47:49 Dan Snow? This is the decisive moment of the Battle of Waterloo. The climactic moment of generations of warfare. The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, it's all coming to a head right now. Unfortunately for Napoleon, his attack, this final attack of his guard, his elite, was going to fall against the British First Guards Division, also the elite of Wellington's army. Peninsula War veterans mixed with some younger units. Now, they were hidden in the wheat, in lines of about four deep. As the French Imperial Guard reached the top of the ridge... The high water mark of Napoleon's campaign. Wellington, who of course was exactly there at the spot, taking close personal command, shouted, "Now Maitland, now's your time." And that's to the commander of the Guards Brigade.
48:33 Dan Snow? And the British jumped up out of the wheat, surprising the French attackers. At some points, the line there only 25 metres away. One British soldier wrote, "They loomed most formidably. When I thought of their character and saw their noble bearing, I certainly thought we're in for a very slashing business." And he was absolutely right. About 1,400 British and Allied soldiers fired a massive volley at point blank range. The old expression, "You've got to see the whites of their eyes," comes from the late 18th century, but it's designed for this period when you're using muskets. If you want to hit someone, you've got to be sure you're going to see the whites of their eyes first. You can almost touch them. And they fire a massive volley, which wipes out the forward ranks and some of the most important officers of this large French attack.
49:18 Dan Snow? After brutal volleys at toe to toe, we're not certain how long it lasted, but it was incredible intensity of warfare. The French turn around and retreat.
49:30 Speaker 03 And the word goes around the huge French army. Many of them still surviving in their regiments and are hoping to fight back at the Brits. The word goes around, "Le garde recule." The guard is pulling back. Something that's never been heard said before. The Imperial Guard was pulling back. And at that same moment, the success of the French on the right of the village of Pauvre Sainte Noire, keeping the Russians off, it collapsed as well. The Prussians broke through at Pauvre Sainte Noire. Wellington and his men charged down the hill and the French army was between the hours of 8.30 and 9 o'clock, was turned from apparent success against the British ridge into total rout and the French position completely collapsed. The Imperial Guard surrendered.
50:15 Speaker 03 Napoleon himself got into his coach and drove off down south towards Paris. It was an utter and total defeat.
50:22 Dan Snow? It was a triumph of British musketry, which was widely regarded as some of the best in the world. They could fire three rounds a minute in these giant volleys. The thin red line, a thin red line which didn't look as dramatic as big attacking columns and masses of men, but made sure that every man could bring his musket to bear, so no one was wasted, you could maximise your firepower. And the field of Waterloo was covered with corpses. Nowhere did I see carcasses so heaped upon each other, wrote one British veteran about the French, particularly the French Guards in that last struggle. The casualties at Waterloo were appalling, forty-five thousand casualties in all probably. The Guards up on the ridge we just talked about, we think the British Guards up on the ridge suffered about fifty percent casualties, half the men were killed.
51:05 Dan Snow? In all, the British Army lost around a quarter of its men, around seventeen thousand killed, wounded and missing. A third of its officers were killed, and historians guess that the French lost around thirty thousand men, which is around thirty percent of their army. Stunningly high casualties. Bear in mind, those who weren't killed outright would lie screaming in agony on the battlefield and couldn't expect much in the way of surgical attention. They might get a limb sawed off to prevent gangrene spreading by a surgeon whose blade was dulled by the day's activities without anaesthetic. Wellington had lost friends and colleagues and he famously said, next to a battle, "Lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained." So although he'd won a battle, he was very sad and indeed appalled by what he saw on
51:50 Dan Snow? that battlefield. But it was the end of the Emperor Napoleon. The Allied troops marched into northern France and within a few weeks had managed to take Paris. Napoleon was desperate, he fled from Paris, got to the coast and attempted to make it through to America, didn't he?
52:08 Speaker 03 He'd like to go to America, he'd like to follow a French ship to take him to America, but he ended, poor Napoleon, he ended surrendering to a British ship, AGMS Pelerifin. Pelerifin took him to Plymouth and there he wrote a letter to the Prince Regent in polite language pleading for asylum in Britain. And the Prince Regent sent a message back, having consulted Lord Liverpool's government, and said, "No, certainly not, there's no way we're going to give you asylum. We already see what happened when we sent you to Elba, that wasn't a great success. We're going to send you to the most remote part of the entire..." World, we're going to send you the island of Saint Helena, eight thousand miles away in the South Atlantic, where there's no way you'll be able to escape. And so poor old Napoleon was sent down there and he was, he lived in a rather smart house called Longwood.
52:53 Speaker 03 He spent his retirement writing his memoirs, a rather self illusion, persuading himself and his readers that he'd been let down by all his generals and that Wellington could have defeated him and it was all the sad ending to an extraordinary great career. And he died in eighteen twenty one, six years after the Battle of Waterloo he died, everybody reckons of stomach cancer.
53:14 Dan Snow? Wellington went on to become one of the senior figures of the British, well the probably senior figure of the British state. He was Prime Minister in the late eighteen twenties, he wasn't a very good Prime Minister. After one cabinet meeting, which meant to be quite sort of a collective activity, he wrote, I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay around and discuss them. So he wasn't really suited to civilian political life, but he was a Titanic figure, he cast a very long shadow over subsequent British history. He died at age eighty three in eighteen fifty two. That, ladies and gentlemen, is our description of the Battle of Waterloo. But I suppose we should quickly say, why was it so important? It confirmed several great things that had come out of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic
53:59 Dan Snow? Wars. It had confirmed that France's dreams of carving out an empire which stretched way back over a hundred years in Western Europe and become a superstate in Western Europe were decisively brought to an end. It confirmed Britain as the hegemonic global power with colonies and naval reach that stretched right across the globe and a huge industrial and commercial power that would go on to grow in the nineteenth century. Importantly, it confirmed Prussia was the most powerful North German state and it would go on, swallow up the rest of Germany and eventually become the German Empire and result in the mighty German state of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. So it was a battle that in many ways set the seal on a political settlement that would
54:44 Dan Snow? last almost a hundred years until nineteen fourteen, when all the parts were shattered and had to be put back together again.
54:59 Dan Snow? Okay Dad, I'm gonna put this on, I get these clever little things.
55:04 Dan Snow? Have you seen these before? Have you seen these?
55:07 Speaker 03 Are these on the microphone?
55:08 Dan Snow? Yeah.
55:10 Dan Snow? They're good, aren't they?
55:11 Speaker 03 Yes.
55:13 Dan Snow? It's all changed, all changed, hasn't it?
55:15 Speaker 03 Absolutely extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary.
55:19 Dan Snow? Right, so here we go, ten years on, do you remember recording that first episode?
55:23 Speaker 03 Very well, very well. Extraordinary, Mortimer's always been the greatest battle of all time, really. I just find it extraordinary story. The way it came and went and the way it's so nearly won and lost by either side. Makes a wonderful, wonderful story.
55:41 Dan Snow? Did you know what I was doing, recording audio onto that iPad in that hotel room?
55:47 Speaker 03 I thought it was nonsense. I thought nobody would listen to a podcast, I remember that, certainly. And I thought you were mad to desert terrestrial television and all those wonderful BBC opportunities you had. But yes, no podcasting, which I am now a complete fanatic for.
56:01 Dan Snow? You are a podcast obsessive, aren't you?
56:03 Speaker 03 Yes, I very, very much so. I go for walks and listen to podcasts the whole time. I can't go for a walk without a podcast in my ear. Very important, makes the walk so much more exciting. It's a lovely experience. I mean, he was junky and that still, I'm afraid, is separate from my podcasting junkiness.
56:22 Speaker 03 I mean, podcasting-
56:23 Dan Snow? It's parallel interest.
56:24 Speaker 03 Yes, I'm fascinated by the podcast because I like people giving their interpretation of the news, their account of it, their commentary on it. And I greatly admire the newsagents. I think the rest of politics is excellent.
56:39 Dan Snow? Has it been funny watching History Hit on all these different platforms and Instagram and YouTube, all popping up in these weird places? You've had to catch up on all the different platforms, haven't you Dad?
56:47 Speaker 03 Yes, I'm very bad at that.
56:48 Dan Snow? You'll get it Instagram?
56:50 Speaker 03 Instagram, yes, but I still get lost on Instagram. I tune into Instagram and within a few minutes, I see a virtually naked woman standing there. No, it was ridiculous. I mean, it's just absurd. I want pictures of the family, but I can't find it. But History Hit is great fun, I love History Hit. It's so rich in texture and different stories and moments in history. And it's really superb, the enthusiasm of the people who do it, tremendous.
57:20 Dan Snow? Listen to my podcast. What episodes do you like of the podcast? Is it the ones that, as you described it once, I just talk all the time? Or do you like it when I interview the experts? Or is it fun when I do the ones that are the current affairs history crossovers? When I explain, you know, why Canada isn't the 51st state? Which ones do you like?
57:34 Speaker 03 I love the white canvas, not the 51st state, or why it shouldn't be. And I love you commenting on what you think of it. That's, that's what I like about podcasting. I like it when you have done your own research. And I meant the Admiral Coe, and I mean not Admiral Coe.
57:48 Dan Snow? Admiral Cochrane.
57:49 Speaker 03 Cochrane, a wonderful Cochrane. No, I thought Cochrane was very good because you'd done the research yourself. And you were in your inimitable way, telling us the story of Cochrane. Your words, your description, your study, your research.
58:04 Dan Snow? Dad, is your podcast player still stuck on 0.75 speed? So I sound like I've got a slight.
58:11 Speaker 03 Yes, I mean, terrible state. Now, I've now learned to press 1.0.
58:16 Dan Snow? For about, for a few months, or if not years, Dad was listening on 0.75, wondering why I was being so pedestrian in my delivery.
58:23 Speaker 03 Quite true. Pathetic. But actually, since my, since my hearing is not on that great, 0.75 is very useful.
58:32 Dan Snow? All right, Dad, we'll see you again in 10 years' time.
58:35 Speaker 03 Okay, well, shall be bad. Look forward to it. When I should be 97. Can't wait.
58:44 Dan Snow? Well, all that remains to be said is thank you to all of you for listening, for keeping this podcast going. And I want to assure you that I'm looking forward to the next 10 years with as much excitement as I approached the last decade. There's so much moisture to tell. We're going to go on some more adventures, folks. See you next time.
59:09 Dan Snow? Thank you so much to you for listening to this episode of Dan Snow's History It. We could not make this podcast without you. That's actually true. So make sure, if you want to keep it going, that is, to hit follow in your podcast player right now. You'll get new episodes dropped into your podcast library automatically by the power of tech. You can listen anywhere you get your pods, Apple, Spotify, even BBC Sounds. Imagine a world, just imagine, where you never miss an episode of this podcast. I mean, it's there. The technology makes that possible. That could be your reality right now if you hit follow it. See you next time.
59:53 Speaker 01 Hi everyone, it's Katie Couric. And on my podcast, Next Question, we love stories about how women are taking control of their lives. They are increasingly leading financial decisions in their households. Yet, many say they don't feel fully prepared for the long-term financial choices ahead. Real confidence comes from knowing your financial future is protected, whatever happens. Pacific Life has helped generations protect what matters today and prepare for tomorrow with life insurance and lifetime income solutions. It's a promise Pacific Life has kept for nearly 160 years, so its customers can keep theirs.
1:00:35 Speaker 01 Ask a financial professional about how Pacific Life can help you create a more confident financial future. Pacific Life Insurance Company, Omaha, Nebraska, and in New York, Pacific Life and Annuity, Phoenix, Arizona.
1:00:54 Dan Snow? Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentaries on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III. We've got hundreds of hours of original documentaries, plus new releases every week. And there's always something more to discover. Sign up to join us in historic locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com/subscribe.
Previous Iran & Israel: Allies to Enemies Next The Mysteries of Easter Island Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
