Waterloo (1970 Film) - Trivia and Mistakes

Trivia and Mistakes

While the film portrayed the events of the "Hundred Days" quite faithfully, including some allusions to and scenes from the Battle of Ligny and of Quatre Bras, there were a few mistakes, presumably made for artistic purposes, and some characters act as ciphers for others. In the opening scene, where the marshals are attempting to persuade Napoleon to abdicate, Marshal Soult is present: in 1814, Soult was commanding the defence of Toulouse against Wellington's Army.

At the Duchess of Richmond's ball (which itself was held in something more like a barn than the magnificent ballroom depicted ), there is an entirely fictional romantic sub-plot with Lord Hay and one of the Duchess' daughters. At the ball itself, the style of dance and music is of the romantic period (with some baroque) while the events of the film are from the classical period.

More importantly, the movie depicts one of the battle's most decisive elements, the arrival of the Prussian army, rather superficially as they arrive to win the battle in short order: distant columns of Prussians are observed by the general staff of both armies, arriving on the battlefield at the very end of the day to change the outcome with a single blow. In reality, Prussians intervened in the battle and engaged the French in increasing strength.

Unlike the Prussians in the movie, arriving at the right flank of the French force, General Bülow's 4th corps attacked at the rear-right of the French lines at the village of Plancenoit. Napoleon first sent his reserve corps (under General Lobau) and then some elements of his Guard to engage and delay these Prussians, while maintaining his front line: these clashes in and around the village of Plancenoit were crucial to the battle. After a couple of hours, another Prussian corps arrived on the battlefield to link with the British army, sealing the fate of the French force.

William Ponsonby, before leading the British cavalry charge, tells Uxbridge that his father had been killed in battle by lancers, not least because he had been riding an inferior horse: in fact his father had been a politician who died of natural causes back in England, and he is simply foretelling his own fate in the battle.

The Duke of Gordon is depicted as leading his Gordon Highlanders into battle, and is described by the Duchess of Richmond as "uncle": in fact, he is a conflate character, representing the contributions of several members of the House of Gordon. The Duke at the time, the founder and colonel of the regiment, was the Duchess of Richmond's father, and he saw no active service overseas during the Napoleonic Wars; his son and the Duchess's brother, the Marquis of Huntly (later the 5th Duke) was a distinguished general, but also missed the Waterloo campaign; the senior representative of the family at the battle was in fact the Duchess's own twenty-three-year-old son, the Earl of March, who would eventually become the 5th Duke's heir in 1836, and who served as a major and an aide de camp to the Duke of Wellington; another branch of the family was represented by another ADC, Colonel Sir Alexander Gordon, aged twenty-eight or twenty-nine, the brother of the Earl of Aberdeen; in reality, both were young men similar in age and duty to Lord Hay. The field commander of the Gordon regiment during the campaign, Lieutenant Colonel, John Cameron of Fassiefern, had been killed at the battle of Quatre Bras on 16 June. The acting commander of the regiment during the battle appears to have been Major Donald MacDonald of Dalchosnie.