Beethoven, Wellington’s Victory
We left off last week at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 and now move 125 miles and 400 years to Waterloo. The Duke of Wellington complained a few years after the battle that the field had been so altered as to be unrecognizable. Certainly, the “Lion’s Mound,” an artificial conical hill constructed from 1820-1826 that now dominates the field, would be a shocking site to anyone present at the battle. They say it offers a splendid view of the rest of the battlefield, but I felt no great compulsion to climb it, and it was in any event locked and inaccessible at sunrise on a Sunday morning.
But one can walk or even drive most of the British line (very slowly) on a narrow, worn, and pitted cobblestone road. It runs along a ridgeline, and from there you can take in pretty much the entire field even though it covers a vast area. Imagining 125,000 French and English soldiers on the field is another matter. One can (one did!) traverse a dirt road across the center of the battlefield to reach the critical site of the Hougoumont farm.
The Battle of Waterloo was one of the most significant milestones in European history, finally defeating Napoleon and sending him into permanent exile. It has, of course, inspired some music, and no I’m not thinking about ABBA or Stonewall Jackson. Rather, Beethoven, who was once an admirer of Napoleon, composed his Wellington’s Victory (opus 91) to celebrate Napoleon’s defeat. Few would rank it as one of Beethoven’s masterworks, but it ranks high on the fun scale for both the musicians and the audience. Certainly more fun than anybody had on the battlefield.