On 18 June 1815, near the Belgian village of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte confronted an Allied coalition commanded by the Duke of Wellington and, later in the day, Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher. After escaping exile on Elba in March, Napoleon sought a swift victory that would fracture the Seventh Coalition before its armies could fully unite. His 72,000-strong Armée du Nord advanced through heavy rain that turned fields into clinging mud, slowing artillery and hampering cavalry char