The Battle of Waterloo, fought on June 18, 1815, was the last battle of the Napoleonic wars, signaling Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat against a joint coalition of European forces. Napoleon rose to power in the wake of the French Revolution. In one year, he went from being the head of the army of the interior to being the commander in chief of the troops in Italy where, in 1796, he forced the Austrian military to retreat before conquering the land himself. In 1804, Napoleon crowned himself emperor of France.
The Napoleonic wars were an effort by much of Europe to curtail Bonaparte’s expanding empire. The Battle of Waterloo marked for England the end of over twenty two years of constant fighting during which five million died. During the battle, the Duke of Wellington led an army 68,000 strong which comprised the British, Dutch, Belgian, and German forces. Around 45,000 Prussians also fought Bonaparte under the leadership of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. After an arduous battle, the polyglot army emerged victorious, though they suffered around 23,000 casualties. The French suffered 25,000 casualties and the loss of 9,000 captured men. After the defeat, Napoleon returned to Paris where he renounced the throne.
Though J.S. Mill does not directly discuss the battle in his Autobiography, he makes clear his distaste for Napoleon’s empire. When discussing a visit paid in Paris to a family friend, Mill describes him as “a man of the later period of the French Revolution, a fine specimen of the best kind of French Republican, one of those who had never bent the knee to Bonaparte though courted by him to do so; a truly upright, brave, and enlightened man.” In 1820, the war was still recent enough that Mill comfortably determines what he thinks of a person’s character based on their conduct under Napoleon’s empire.
Sources
Penguin Edition of Autobiography by J.S. Mill: Page 63
https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Waterloo
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-waterloo
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/italy-under-napoleon/