Christopher Plummer died recently. I wish someone would have interviewed him about his experiences on this film.

The Coldstream Guards tend to take the glory for Hougoumont, and though they undoubtedly deserve praise, the Scots Guards (or 3rd Foot Guards as they were known then) and KGL troops who were also there often get overlooked

28:30 - an amazing piece of editing there on the part of the film editors. I never would have noticed if you hadn't said anything. Great stuff!

Underrated review and underrated channel. Great work mate!

The references to General Lambert are generally wrong. Lambert's Brigade, which had just arrived from the disastrous New Orleans campaign, was to the right of the Anglo Allied line and did not get involved till later. The 27th Inniskilling Fusiliers, which piggy dude is part of, were part of that Brigade and yet it is heavily implied that the 27th and 92nd Gordon Highlanders were Brigaded together under Picton's command - which they absolutely weren't. The Gordon's were in Sir Dennis Pack's Brigade of Peninsular veterans, alongside 1st Royal Scots, 42nd Black Watch and the 44th East Essex, to the left center of Wellington's line, behind Bijlandt's Dutch Belgian infantry brigade.

The leading characters were played by famous actors, such as Jack Hawkins (Picton), they 'dubbed' their own voices.

Thank you so much for this wonderful upload and very detailed described commenting on this masterpiece!!! Absolutely right mentioned the "Totenkopf" (Death's head) of the Prussian.

Rod Steiger played Napoleon - wonderful actor, he was also superb in A Fistful Of Dynamite as a Mexican Revolutionary.

12:10 concerning the proximity of the ranks I bring a quote from Ney's biography (The Bravest of the Brave) "At two Ney gave the order to attack and himself led the advance with D'Erlon beside him. The four divisions of the 1st Corps, more than 20,000 bayonets, had been drawn up in four massive columns, each with the front of a battalion. these huge columns had come into fashion in the French Army in the later campaigns of the Empire. As the old veterans of the earlier wars disappeared, and the ranks began to be filled with young soldiers, it was found to be easier to move them under fire when they were thus packed together in solid masses, in which the men were as it were locked up, and as long as the formation held its compact lines even those who hesitated to advance had to go on. But it was a formation that diminished the firing front, and at the same time made a huge target for hostile artillery."

Nearly all the scenes of fighting within walls in this movie are meant to be of Hougoumont, not La Haye Sainte, which is actually almost completely ignored except for those tiny segments - the French taking the farmhouse and the British retaking it. No detail, not much more than an excerpt.

Napoleon's mamluke bodyguard actually declined to accompany him to waterloo.

By the way, I don't think you caught it - the Prussians are charging the wrong way. Their sabers are in their LEFT hands. I suspect that they shot the charge scene for the battle of Ligny, didn't use it, then recycled it for the end of the Battle of Waterloo.

in reality it was french lancers that charged the scotts grey not polish lancers, and the old guard wasn't at the front actually , it was young and middle guard regiments. Interesting fact : the young and middle guard were only guards because the officers were from the old guard , but they weren't elite soldiers .

So the guys in the red outlining are the 1ER Grenadiers

the Actor playing Picton ( Jack Hawkins )had Throat cancer at the time of filming

Re: The Merde guy - that's General Pierre Cambronne. Popular history has him saying "la mott de Cambronne" aka Merde, other accounts have him being captured rather miserably by General H Halkett. After the war, he was in prison in England where he became quite popular and roundly denied that he had ever uttered the infamous badass "Merde".

I Respect for the poor killed horses in battle. R.I.P ⛪✝️🐴🐎➕💐💧😞😢😔🙏🤲🇬🇧

I felt sorry for that British Horse Artilleryman that died about 4 times.

Old Guard are true soldiers

I know a few of these songs cause I heard them in guts an black powder the 92nd one is cock o the north an the bargain comander by the top hat guy was playing a song something left me behind idk I can’t remembe

Try Gettysburg. That was a major battle that determined the war.

Very underated review!

Colonel Sir William Howe De Lancey was Wellington's Quartermaster General, being specially requested by the Iron Duke to avoid having to deal with the annoying and rather incompetent Sir Hudson Lowe - yes THAT Sir Hudson Lowe. De Lancey fatefully cut short his honeymoon with his new young wife Magdalen Hall, Lady de Lancey, to fight at Waterloo where he was mortally wounded. His wife searched the battlefield for him, found him at last but sadly there was nothing that could be done to save him. I don't think there's a "Delaney" listed. Perhaps you meant "Lord Hay"? By the way, De Lancey was actually an AMERICAN. His family were longstanding New York upper class, with a close relative marrying General Sir William Draper, the conqueror of Manila during the Seven Years War, and an uncle I believe it is, leading the notorious De Lancey Brigade of "Cowboys" during the American Revolution on the British side. De Lancey's full first name was WILLIAM HOWE - named after the overall British commander in the American Revolution from 1776 to 1778 I believe it was.

So a Old Guard soldier got a stute of him all cause he said “SHIT” at the British

30:15 I'm not going to definitively say you're wrong but I'm fairly certain that's not a Pour le Merite given that that is a Prussian award, and it doesn't look like one. I don't know what it IS though if it's not.

One MAJOR problem with the movie Waterloo is Bondarchuk drew very VERY VVEEERRRYYYYY heavily from a published work of FICTION - none other than Victor Hugo's Les Miserables! There is a long drawn out and very detailed (and quite inaccurate overall) chapter in Les Miserables (at the start of Cosette's story) narrating the entire battle of Waterloo. Victor Hugo goes into very minute detail and describes a LOT of the fictional aspects that found their way into Bondarchuk's movie - the British squares hiding cannon inside and then opening up to fire, then closing up again. The last square of the Imperial Guard being massacred by very close range artillery. The Scots Grey's and only the Scots Grey's charging. The piper being cut down in the middle of the square by a trapped cuirassier. That's one of the weaknesses of Bondarchuk's movie - it does have a pretty sizable amount of fiction interlaced within. That being said, it's far and away more accurate than that more contemporary Napoleonic movie that was just released.

The rather ridiculous UP Guards/Now Maitland scene is Bondarchuk's very hilarious misunderstanding of British platoon fire tactics. The British would fire alternately by groups within a Regiment to unleash a nonstop rolling volley - as one group of platoons fired, another group would be reloading. Also the French Guard were rather horribly enfiladed by Dutch troops of Chasse's Division, the massive 52nd Light Infantry under Colborne (probably the biggest British unit on the field with over a thousand men) plus Maitland's Guards. They poured concentrated fire into the advancing Imperial Guard until la Garde Recule.

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He’s Irish born in Ireland