An overnight downpour had left the fields soggy, and Napoleon, instead of striking at nine, as he had planned, held off until midday, giving the Prussians crucial time to reach Wellington as backup. Underestimating his enemies’ capabilities and overestimating his own, he assumed that the woods behind the British would block their retreat, but Wellington had strategically used the forest to hide more soldiers. The whole affair will not be more serious than swallowing one’s breakfast.” Over breakfast, Napoleon predicted, “If my orders are well executed, we will sleep in Brussels this evening.” When his chief of staff offered a word of caution, Napoleon snapped, “Wellington is a bad general and the English are bad troops. His nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, occupied a slope across the fields, with a mere sixty-seven thousand troops. His seventy-three thousand troops were camped on a ridge near a tavern called La Belle Alliance. On the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte was full of catastrophic confidence.
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