Upstaging the Prussians

‘The victor writes the history,’ says Peter Hofschröer in his latest attempt to rewrite it himself. ‘Rarely has this old adage been more apposite than when applied to Wellington and Waterloo.’ In his two previous books, the second of which is called 1815, The Waterloo Campaign: The German Victory, he argued that the Duke of Wellington deliberately let the initial French attack fall on the Prussians, dallying at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball instead of going to their assistance, then subsequently concealing the evidence and claiming the victory at Waterloo three days later entirely for himself and British arms, whereas the battle was won by increasing pressure from the Prussians on the French right, and by the German troops in British pay. All is rehearsed again in this pocket-size book subtitled ‘The Duke, the Model Maker and the Secret of Waterloo’.

The Duke’s version of events, laid out in his Waterloo dispatch, went unchallenged, in Britain at least, for many years.