Wellington wrote the dispatch from Waterloo and entrusted its delivery to London (with two French ‘eagles’ captured at the battle) to his ADC Major Henry Percy, son of the Duke of Northumberland, one of the few of the general’s ADCs to survive the day’s carnage unscathed. Waterloo, the end of an era, Waterloo, the fall of a Prometheus. Unemployment, financial upheaval, violently suppressed social unrest, such as the sadly infamous uprising at Peterloo, which got its name (derived from that of Waterloo) because of the 15 deaths and 400 injuries among the civilian protesters at Peter’s Fields in Manchester in 1819. The end of the war, and the subsequent demobilisation of tens of thousands of men resulted in a surplus of workers on the market, which was itself in a state of over-production due to the end of hostilities. The organiser of the exhibition made a profit of £35,000. 250,000 visitors climbed all over Napoleon’s carriage that had been captured in the evening of Waterloo. The whole range of their variety was, ” Wellington and Blücher,” “Victory,” “G.P.R.,” and “G.R.” The transparencies were very few, and very bad.” * 7 July was proclaimed as a day of general thanksgiving. They were not general, nor very magnificent. John Quincy Adams was decidedly underwhelmed by the celebrations: “In the evening we all rode round the streets to see the illuminations for the great victory of the 18th. On the part of the public (and the government) however, the other hand, there was great rejoicing at the news – cries of joy, fireworks, bonfires, and the ringing of church bells. There was great embarrassment on the Left. ‘Unfortunately’, news arrived during that same evening – accompanied by several captured French ‘eagles’ – that the Emperor had been defeated. At the end of June 1815, two politicians (Lord Grey and Sir Robert Wilson) were explaining to a packed audience at Brooks’s, a liberal club in London, that Napoleon had won at Waterloo and that his 200,000 men had crossed the Sambre.
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