In June 1815, Waterloo, twenty kilometers from Brussels, Belgium, was in the height of summer.
This weather was terrible for artillery wagons, because the soft mud in the marshes would swallow the wheels and damage the axles.
Every so often, the soldiers had to stop and repair the axles. Most of them came from farming families and had grown up doing handiwork around the farm with their fathers, so repairing an axle was no challenge. Still, having to stop for repairs every few steps left them exhausted and disheartened.
The sound of hammers echoed throughout the marshes. This was unlike the Battle of Austerlitz ten years earlier.
It had been winter then, and the weather had also been terrible. Heavy snow fell from the sky, and the slush was probably knee-deep, much like the marshes near Waterloo. It was equally hard to move through, yet for some reason, most people had still marched forward full of energy.
Those whirling snowflakes had looked no different from the snow in Russia, except they had not been as dense, and the wind had not cut quite as sharply.
How could there be a place on this planet so much like hell?
How many had died of cold during the retreat? How many had starved to death? And how many had died in battle?
Before it came to that, Napoleon Bonaparte had had other choices. He could have retreated earlier instead of foolishly waiting for peace talks. The Russians had burned Moscow to the ground—what was there left to negotiate?
Or he could have requisitioned the remaining food that had not been burned. What happened to those Russian civilians was not something people in France should have worried about.
After remarrying and having a child, Napoleon seemed to have grown softhearted.
Perhaps the great