Hemorrhoids, Strawberries, and the End of an Empire: Napoleon's Absolutely Terrible Thursday at Waterloo

On June 18th, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte was having what one might generously call a rather poor day at the office. While the Battle of Waterloo had technically begun the previous day, it was on this Thursday that the French Emperor's fate was definitively sealed in the Belgian mud. What makes this particular historical moment delightfully bizarre is not merely that Napoleon lost, but the cascade of absurd circumstances that contributed to his defeat. The Emperor, suffering from painful hemorrhoids, could barely sit on his horse and had to delay the start of battle until late morning. This gave the Prussian forces, whom Napoleon thought he had already dispatched, just enough time to arrive as reinforcements for Wellington's beleaguered army. Then there's the matter of Marshal Grouchy, who was supposed to be preventing those very Prussians from reaching the battlefield. Instead, Grouchy was several miles away, reportedly enjoying a plate of strawberries while debating with his officers whether the cannon fire he could clearly hear in the distance was something he should investigate. By the time he decided that yes, perhaps marching toward the sound of tens of thousands of men killing each other might be relevant to his duties, it was far too late. The French Imperial Guard, which had never been defeated in battle, made their final assault up a muddy slope only to be met with what Wellington described as the most perfect volley his troops ever fired. The Guard broke and ran, and with them went Napoleon's empire. Within a week, the man who had conquered most of Europe was abdicated for the second time, ultimately ending up on a rock in the South Atlantic where the most dangerous thing he could conquer was boredom.