The battle of Waterloo began at 1120h (all times fiven are local) on 18 June 1815 when French artillery opened fire on the mixed Britsch, German and Dutch forces of Wellington's army. At the close of the day over 47.000 soldiers had been killed or wounded, all within a horrifying small area of 6.5 km by 3.5 km. Victory lay with Wellington and his Prussian ally. Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher, and the outcome set the seal on European history for much of the nineteenth century. Yet Warerloo is not a battle in isolation, it was part of a three-day engagement that ebbed and flowed across the rolling countryside of southern Belgium.