Re-enactment of the 1815 Battle of Waterloo between the French army led by Napoleon and the Allied armies led by the Duke of Wellington and Field-Marshal Blucher, in Waterloo, yesterday. On June 18, 1815, Napoleon led his 72,000-strong army into battle with 120,000 mostly British and Prussian soldiers at Waterloo. For a long time the two forces remained in a bloody embrace, but at the end of the afternoon the French army was routed at the hands of the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Blucher.