The dream of a “Parallel Waterloo”

All this may seem to suggest that there was an extraordinary agreement with the past... Philippe Raxhon prefers to refer to the phenomenon as “a strategy of memory dilution”. “Such a reading of the event would have been unheard of in the 19th century! It is therefore obvious that the mechanisms involved in memory have a great ability to adapt to circumstances. Strongly opposing memories can develop into consensus due to historical circumstances: this can serve us as a lesson for understanding an entire series of memory aberrations. A notable example would be the way in which Germany and France viewed the First and Second World Wars in the context of European construction, with the enormous efforts made by Germany to come to terms with Nazism. The sight of Mitterrand shaking hands with Helmut Kohl before the monument at Verdun was an unprecedented image: no contemporary of the period between the two World Wars could have imagined such an event”, he reminds us.

This memory dilution is all the more obvious when taken in the context of the heat of battle: Every day it is necessary to adapt the interpretation of past events to circumstances. Even more surprising is the fact that this reinterpretation works perfectly well, despite the surprising, not to say, shaky character of the analogy. This is because, in 1915, it was not only alliances that changed: even the way of waging war changed, a kind of war which now had an industrial character where swords and horses no longer have their place. “Herein lies the question: why does an anachronism become effective at a given moment”? The historian asks. The beginning of the answer to this question can be found in the powerful symbol simultaneously created by the concordance of dates and the superimposing of territories. “The month of August 1914 was an excellent example of the war of movement: the Belgian troops resisted around Liege and then retreated; the Germans tried to take Namur while the English came from Ostend seeking to rejoin the French who were arriving from the Ardennes – the objective of this being to create a gathering on the Sambre, the English from Mons and the French from Charleroi. The armies advanced towards each other in geographical proximity to Waterloo. On August 20^th, the Germans were at Brussels and, from there, they entered the region of the famous battlefield”.

 It did not take much for this spatio-temporal collusion to stir up the fantasy of a “second Waterloo”. “The newspapers and participants in the war including the generals themselves, have the feeling of marching towards a remake of the battle of Waterloo. There is the illusion that one day, the war will end and it will be possible to return home”, comments Philippe Raxhon. “The battle of Waterloo has an archetypal quality. It attracts attention because it is a perfect scenario: the very events of the battle itself are actually scripted to produce a story that is complete with twists and turns, a climax, a tragedy, strong actors”, explains the historian. But the narrative of the Waterloo “masterpiece” – which has all the qualities necessary for it to be applied to the modern era – cannot hide the carnage: in an area of four square kilometers and in a single day, there were 35,00 wounded, 12,000 men and 10,000 horses killed. In other words it was a battlefield littered with corpses.

The horizon of a war

Such a decisive battle as we know did not occur in 1914. However the worm was already in the fruit: Waterloo was to be on the horizon of the Great War, and this included its “bloody” character and its broken bodies. “When trench warfare began after 1915, you might be forgiven for thinking that Waterloo was no longer a glorious memory. Yet in fact it was! Through the courage of the combatants of Waterloo the national imaginations were mobilized. For England, it was the memory of Wellington’s line which did not yield and ‘mutated’ into a trench instead”, illustrates Philippe Raxhon. As for the Belgian soldier, he who had such a bad reputation in the English history of the 19th century – he had behaved badly and was Francophile which made him unreliable - , he retrospectively became a courageous combatant during the Belgian resistance of August 14th. An English journalist even went so far as to suggest that when due thought was given to the battle, it was probably thanks to the Belgians that Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo! “Right up to the end of the war, Waterloo was still being evoked. This is summarized in the caricature of Napoleon and Wellington beside each other with the following caption "Now we are side by side”, continues Philippe Raxhon. In November 1918, while a jubilant Brussels celebrates the entry of King Albert the First into the city, English soldiers found the time to go to Waterloo to pay tribute to the combatants. “Even in the madness of victory, the ‘dismal plain’ remains present”.

The grip of Waterloo would in fact continue after the war. “During the 19th century, the English and the Prussians were placed on the same pedestal. After the First World War, everything possible was done to separate Wellington and Blücher, the following question remained: how would it be possible to celebrate the British army while at the same time pouring scorn on its German contingent”? Explains Philippe Raxhon. The newspapers took on the task by explaining that Wellington himself disdained the German soldiers who were more violent than the others and behaved badly with regard to the civilian population – the accusation was clearly aimed at later events - , and they didn’t respect the prisoners. “The image of the brutal Prussian became commonplace after this. In the 1970 film "Waterloo" by the Russian director Bondartchouk, Blücher is depicted as a rough old man who has a brutal attitude. But what needs to be understood is the fact that behind the black uniforms of the Prussians are the Germans of both world wars”, explains Philippe Raxhon. “Look at the situation today: the figurines of Napoleon sell like hot cakes; indeed one may even buy a statue of Wellington. But who will buy a figurine of Blücher”? The historian asks. This is an excellent example of the plasticity of memory, capable of reinterpreting history in a partisan way. Waterloo shows that at this time of the bicentenary, it is still the souvenir shop that asks the most absorbing questions.

(1) Bloody centenary. The Battle of Waterloo in the First World War, by Philippe Raxhon, Editions Luc Pire, 220 p., around one hundred illustrations. See Facebook page for the book.