I did not find Napoleon in the Paris Pantheon. Perhaps advisedly, the greatest Frenchman of them all, in terms of consequence, has not been placed in that noble edifice inscribed Aux grands hommes la patrie reconnaissante - "From a grateful fatherland, in honour of great men". But I found him down the street a little, in a solitary splendrous tomb in the Hotel des Invalides, a building remarkably similar in its original purpose and design to our Royal Hospital, Kilmainham.
It was 184 years ago today, on June 18th, 1815, that Napoleon met his Waterloo, and the weather played no insignificant part in that event. The month of June that year was changeable, and on the 17th a small but very active low moved eastwards along the English Channel. The depression was remarkable for its very heavy rainfall,
which continued until 8 a.m the following day and turned the fields of Belgium into quagmire.
Napoleon's objective at that time was to fend off an invasion of France by the Prussian Marshal Blucher and the Duke of Wellington, through Belgium. His success as a general rested largely on his ability to find the spot where maximum advantage might be gained, and react instantly to the ebb and flow of fortune at different places on a battlefield. For these tactics dry ground and a firm footing are essential, and both were denied him when he faced the army of the Duke of Wellington near the village of Waterloo, just south of Brussels.
On the morning of June 18th, with the fields a sea of mud, it was apparent that the French artillery and cavalry could not advance across the fields in any sort of order. Having surveyed the dismal scene the Emperor postponed attack, in the hope that the sun might appear and dry the soil. But the sun did not come out, and the ground did not dry up. It was almost noon before Napoleon accepted the inevitable - and ordered an advance.
Until mid-afternoon the battle went in favour of the French. But the four-hour delay turned out to be decisive. It had allowed Prussian reinforcements under Blucher the time they needed to arrive in Waterloo, and when they appeared at 4 p.m., the tide of battle turned.
"It was a damned nice thing," Wellington was heard to say afterwards, "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life". But it ended in defeat for the Emperor Napoleon, and he spent the rest of his life on lonely St Helena island. He died there in 1821, and in 1840 they brought him back to the Hotel des Invalides.