Battle of Waterloo
Napoleon thus described his Waterloo campaign: ‘I sensed that Fortune was abandoning me. I no longer had in me the feeling of ultimate success. And if one is not prepared to take risks when the time is right, one ends up doing nothing.’ He added, ‘In war, the game is always with him who commits the fewest faults.’ In the Waterloo campaign, the general who committed the fewest faults was Wellington.
Waterloo is the costliest single battle of the Napoleonic Wars after Borodino. ‘Incomprehensible day,’ Napoleon would later say.