In the early hours of June 19, 1815, more than 50,000 men and 7,000 horses lay dead or wounded on a battlefield just south of Brussels. In the days that followed, the battlegrounds would be looted, the dead buried, and the area overrun by tourists, while victorious British and Prussian armies occupied Paris. As he evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield, Paul O'Keeffe explains how the news of Napoleon's defeat had already begun to shape the consciousness of the coming era.