The Battle of Waterloo, fought just south of Brussels on 18 June 1815, was the final defeat of the Emperor Napoleon, and the beginning of a period of stability in Europe. This photograph was taken in 1880 and shows the last survivors of the battle at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea near London. From left to right they are Naish Hanney (b.1792) (seated), John McKay (b.1785), Benjamin Bumstead (b.1798) (seated), Robert Norton (b.1790) and Sampson Webb (b.1798) (seated). The men depicted are in their eighties and nineties, and something of each of their lives is known. John McKay, the oldest of the survivors, had been thirty at the time of the battle and was a veteran of the Peninsular War, having been badly wounded at the Siege of Badajoz (1812). Benjamin Bumstead was a labourer who had enlisted only a year before the Battle of Waterloo, aged seventeen, where he fought with the 73rd Foot Regiment. He was invalided out of the army in 1820 as a result of a wound to his ankle. The photograph, which is attributed to Charles Hinxman, was purchased by Queen Victoria, who was interested in both the Royal Hospital and the Napoleonic Wars.





Provenance Acquired by Queen Victoria