Wellington's Smallest Victory:
The Duke, the Model Maker
and the Secret of Waterloo

Napoleonic Newsdesk

by Paul Chamberlain, UK

Faber & Faber Ltd. are pleased to announce that they have signed Peter Hofschröer to write this new work on an aspect of the Duke of Wellington and Waterloo that has not been examined in great detail before.

Visitors to the National Army Museum in London cannot fail to be impressed by the enormous, beautifully detailed diorama on display there. In front of you unfold some four hundred square feet of miniature farmland (the scale is 9 feet to the mile). Populating that landscape are some 75,000 tin-lead soldiers, each one 10 mm high and hand-painted with absolute regimental accuracy.

In 1830, Lord Hill, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, approached Lieutenant William Siborne, an officer known to specialise in topography and model making, and asked him to construct what would become the greatest military model ever made. This three-dimensional depiction of the most significant battle ever fought by the Great Duke -- perhaps the most important battle of our modern era -- was to be displayed in a special room in a planned new military museum.

Siborne, who had not advanced beyond the rank of Lieutenant he had obtained fifteen years ago, jumped at this opportunity. He worked away at this monumental project for the next eight years, devoting to it every minute of his spare time. The Model became an obsession, the sole reason for his life; he was fanatical about even the most minor details. Moreover, when it was finally exhibited in 1838 at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London, 100,000 people visited his Model. However, while the Model brought Siborne fame, it did not make his fortune. His determination to get the facts right had not made him popular in high places.

Early on in the planning of the Model, Siborne had decided to show the positions of the troops at the very crisis of the battle -- at 7.15 p.m., when Napoleon's Imperial Guard made its final assault on Wellington's centre. He went to amazing lengths to verify the exact disposition of the troops, whether they are British, German, Netherlanders or French. He spent months living on site, painstakingly surveying the battlefield. The vast archive of the letters he exchanged with veterans from all sides -- there are six volumes of correspondence at the British Library -- formed the basis for his classic History of the Campaign, which is still in print.

In 1836, the Duke of Wellington had looked over Siborne's plans of the battle, and pronounced them accurately drawn. But when the Model came to be exhibited in 1838, the Duke refused any suggestion that he should join the visiting crowds: 'That is a question I have often been asked, to which I don't want to give an answer, because I don't want to injure the man. But if you want to know my opinion, it's all farce, fudge!'

Far from not wanting to 'injure the man', we now know Wellington blocked Siborne's attempts to obtain the promotion promised for his work, and foiled Siborne's requests to the government to fund this mammoth project. Why should Wellington set out to blacken Siborne's name?

The extraordinary story of what happened to Siborne -- why Wellington turned against him, why in desperation he removed 40,000 Prussian soldiers from his beloved Model (leaving just 8,000), why he died a bitterly disappointed man -- has never been told. Despite copious amounts of documentation, Wellington's biographers have contrived to overlook this episode. It is surely time someone spoke up for Siborne and his dogged if naïve determination to create a perfect representation of that evening in 1815. These revelations about Wellington's attempt to control his public image -- and what this tells us about what was a crucial turning point in history - will cause considerable controversy. Subject to confirmation, this book will be launched at the Napoleonic Fair on Sunday 4th April 2004.

Napoleonic News Desk

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