1. The Lion’s Mound, Waterloo - 11 Sept 1900 | Glass Plates
It has been 206 years to the day since the Battle of Waterloo, but it is not until 85 years after this historic clash that our humble story begins…
In the early autumn of 1900, a hobbyist photographer embarked on a grand tour across Western Europe. Travelling from the lowlands of Belgium to the mountains of Switzerland, this tourist captured some of the major and minor sights that dotted the landscape of the era on photographic glass plates. While the identity of this photographer is unknown, their journey remains; charted in several boxes containing a collection of delicate 3¼ × 4¼ inch glass negatives. Besides the images themselves, the photographer also kept a precise list, written in tiny but easily legible handwriting, noting down the location and date of each photo. It was this detail that most excited me when I first viewed them. Who doesn’t love a list?
It is a testament to this tourist’s passion for both travel and the complicated process of early photography that this journey can be followed step-by-step through these photographs, providing a glimpse into the past and showing how the modern landscape has changed in the last dozen decades. It is this journey that will be explored in the tentatively titled ‘1900 Glass Plates’ project. I hope you’ll join me.
The first list of three
The subject of this first labelled glass plate is the Lion’s Mound that dominates the former battlefield of Waterloo. Oddly, it should be noted, this is not the first image by date, with the first list of 15 photographs jumping from the 11th September 1900 to the 12th to the 10th to the 9th. The other lists follow a clearer chronology, so this was either a peculiar mistake in organising, likely when they got home from their travels on the continent, or a deliberate choice, for whatever reason, to place Waterloo at the start of their journey.
In any case, the listing for this photograph does not name it as “The Lion’s Mound” but rather, “1. – Monument erected on centre of battlefield of Waterloo, 11 Sept 1900”. It shows a wide shot of the monument on a somewhat overcast September day. Standing beside the statue at the top of the mound there appears to be a small group of people, but otherwise it is empty of crowds. As opposed to some of the later photos we shall explore, this view is very similar to what you’d see today if you stood on the same spot – although the grass is a tad tidier now, the management keeping it at an appropriately militaristic short trim. Apart from that, the Lion still stands overlooking the same landscape depicted in the photo.
Before going a little deeper into the history of this landscape, I’ll begin here by explaining that what interests me about these glass plates is not merely the images themselves – although they are of course fascinating – but also the opportunity to explore its subjects. As such, the subject of this photo raises two questions: What is the history of the Lion’s Mound? And why might the photographer have chosen it as the first image – numerically not chronologically – of their journey?
The History of the Lion’s Mound
The Lion’s Mound memorializes both the Battle of Waterloo, which took place on 18th June 1815, and the Battle of Quatre Bras, which was a preliminary engagement between the French and Seventh Coalition forces that occurred just a couple of days earlier on 16th June. The Seventh Coalition had been formed earlier that year in March following Napoleon’s escape from the island of Elba and his reclaiming of military power in France. The Coalition was headed by four major European military powers: the United Kingdom, Austria, Prussia, and Russia, as well a number of minor powers, notably for the Lion’s Mound that of the newly formed Kingdom of the Netherlands. This period between March and June 1815, from Napoleon’s regaining of power to his defeat at Waterloo, has come to be known as the Hundred Days.
Construction of the Lion’s Mound - Illustration by Jean-Baptiste-Ambroise-Marcellin Jobard
When construction for the mound began, it was envisioned primarily as a monument to the achievements of the Prince of Orange, later William II of the Netherlands, known fondly by British as Slender Billy. At the time of the Battle of Waterloo, the Prince of Orange was twenty years old and a general in the British Army, leading the I Corps under the command of Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington. The Prince of Orange’s father had been crowned king of the newly formed Kingdom of the Netherlands just three months before the battle, and his son’s notable position on the victorious side on this epoch-making day was something that his father could use to secure his son’s reputation. And, of course, with reputation comes dynastic security. As such, the location of the mound was specifically chosen to immortalise the spot where the Prince of Orange was unhorsed after being hit in his left shoulder by a musket ball.
Construction was ordered by William I in 1820, building began in 1823, and it was completed in 1826. It is a conical mound 43m in height and 520m in circumference with 226 steps to the top. The mound is certainly dominating, perhaps a little too much in some people’s estimation – one of those people being the Duke of Wellington himself, who, when revisiting the site in 1828, supposedly exclaimed, “They have altered my field of battle!” This quotation may be somewhat apocryphal, and possibly pure invention by Victor Hugo in Les Misérables. Nevertheless, the scale of the monument makes it difficult to fully comprehend the battlefield as it would have looked in 1815, with much of the ten million cubic feet of dirt needed for the construction coming from the strategically significant Mont St. Jean ridge, which the allies had defended. Furthermore, the sunken road that ran through the centre of the battlefield was erased. While the Duke of Wellington may have baulked at the alteration of his field of battle, archaeologists today still struggle to reconstruct how exactly the site would have looked on that historic June day.
Therefore, while the Lion’s Mound memorializes the Battle of Waterloo, the monumental scale of its construction irrevocably transformed the former battlefield, and although the Lion’s Mound itself is often visited as the memorial to the Coalition forces that had defeated Napoleon, its primary purpose was to glorify the Prince of Orange by his canny father, who may have been trying to ensure that the British did not claim all the credit for the victory.
“They have altered my field of battle!”
It may also be worth noting that Belgium did not gain independence from the Netherlands until 1830, so Waterloo was part William I’s kingdom to alter as he wished.
Close-up of the Lion’s Mound
The statue atop the mound was sculpted by Jean-Louis Van Geel (1787–1852) in the style of the Medici lions, with one of its forepaws rested on an orb. The lion is gazing from its promontory towards France, the defeated foe, to symbolize the strength of the Seventh Coalition against Napoleon’s attempts at continental domination. The lion is also the heraldic animal on the Royal Coat of Arms of both the United Kingdom and the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which serves to represent the power of traditional monarchy – the divine right of kings – over the revolutionary zeal that was flaring up across Europe; Napoleon coming to power as a figurehead following the French Revolution in the 1790s. By displaying the kingly lion’s dominance, roaring towards troublesome France, it sends the clear message that the stability of hereditary monarchy triumphs over the turbulence of meritocratic revolution.
Visiting the Lion’s Mound in 1900
As this traveller was almost certainly English (specifically from either Dorset or Hampshire, but we’ll get into this in later posts), the victory at Waterloo would still be thought of with a sense of national pride as a semi-recent triumph that secured peace for many decades under the de-facto Pax Britannica. This relative period of peace – relative being a significant caveat – stretched from the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, which marked the turning point when the British Empire became the unquestionable global superpower, until the Great War erupted in 1914, fourteen years after this image was taken. For the photographer, this journey to the Lion’s Mound was likely a pilgrimage of sorts. Within this historic context, it’s understandable that Waterloo was chosen as one of the must-see sites on the continent for any subject of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, for understanding Britain’s position on the world stage.
I will also add here that I have spent the past few years studying aspects of the Great War, so it feels a little strange to observe that this traveller was closer in time to Waterloo than we are to the First World War now. If the Great War does not seem so long ago to me, then the Napoleonic Wars may not have been so distant for them.
As I continue to post more on these Glass Plates, more images and more information will be revealed. It’s exciting to begin this project that has been in bubbling away in my thoughts for a number of years now. This project will be in collaboration with photographer Aleksandar Nenad Zecevic of Zeko Media (https://zeko.no/), who’ll be restoring each of the images as we move forward.
It is a little strange to be writing of international travel when the U.K. is still ostensibly in lockdown, but as the world begins to open up more freely again, perhaps we can all reconnect with the love of travel that these glass plates represent.
I hope you’ll join me again on this journey.
1900 Glass Plates: This project explores a series of glass plates from the year 1900 with the eventual goal of travelling the same route as the photographer. It will be a varied journey that will stretch from simple blog posts examining each photo to videos and more. This project is in collaboration with photographer Aleksandar Nenad Zecevic, who’ll be restoring the photographs to bring out details dimmed by time. More to follow.
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