After a night of torrential rain, the Duke of Wellington's coalition held its ground against repeated French assaults near the Belgian village of Waterloo. The late arrival of Prussian forces under Blücher tipped the battle decisively, and Napoleon's Grande Armée collapsed into rout by evening. Napoleon abdicated four days later and was exiled to Saint Helena.
Napoleon had returned from exile on Elba only a hundred days earlier, and Europe's monarchs assembled fresh armies to stop him. He gambled on striking Wellington and Blücher before they could unite, but rain-soaked fields delayed his artillery and, crucially, delayed his attack until midday, buying time for the Prussians to march to Wellington's aid.
The fighting around the farmhouses of La Haie Sainte and Hougoumont was ferocious and often hand-to-hand; Hougoumont's garrison held out against overwhelming odds for hours. When the Imperial Guard, Napoleon's elite reserve, finally advanced in late afternoon and was repulsed, panic spread through the French ranks.
The battle cost roughly 41,000 casualties combined in a single day. Wellington reportedly called it 'the nearest run thing you ever saw.' The phrase 'meeting one's Waterloo' entered languages worldwide as shorthand for a final, crushing defeat.