For Great Britain, Waterloo became a symbol of British ascendancy while for France it was remembered as a military disaster. But what is the truth? Sifting through 200 years of legendry and propaganda, Timothy Fitzpatrick looks at how Wellington and Napoleon reframed the outcome of the battle to their own advantage, while a wide array of writers—Victor Hugo, Walter Scott, and Carl von Clausewitz—created nationalistic reinterpretations of Waterloo.