Wellington's mud-streaked Waterloo battle cloak up for auction

The Guardian ^ | June 17, 2015

[beaversmom]

A plain dark cloak still streaked with mud from the battle of Waterloo – which the Duke of Wellington is said to have draped around the shoulders of Lady Caroline Lamb when he was one of the most famous, and she one of the most infamous people in Europe – is to be sold for the first time in 200 years.

The victor of Waterloo and the tempestuous aristocrat, who was once served up naked in a silver dish at a dinner, had a brief fling in Brussels in the weeks after the battle on 18 June 1815 which changed the course of European history and ended Napoléon Bonaparte’s power forever.

Both were married, but notorious for a string of affairs: a different Sotheby’s sale next month includes a portrait of the Iron Duke by a French artist, given in the same period to another society mistress, Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. Her husband was subsequently talked out of suing Wellington, and later fought a duel after horsewhipping another of her lovers in St James’s Street in London.

Wellington and Lamb had met in London but came across each other again in Brussels, when she was nursing her brother who had been injured in the battle. Lamb, nicknamed the Sprite, was widely regarded as still being half-deranged by the breakup of her most famous affair, with the poet Lord Byron. After that split she had slashed her arms, stalked Byron in public, broken into his home disguised as a pageboy, and in 1816 published a thinly disguised account of the affair in her novel Glenarvon.

In a letter included in the auction, another society lady in Brussels commented acidly of Lamb’s arrival to minister to her brother: “The surgeon told her the best thing she could do would be to hold...

[dp0622]

pretty cool :)
I could fill a couple of pages from what I’ve learned from people on this board. And that’s just what I remember or understood :)

[beaversmom]

I could fill a couple of pages from what I’ve learned from people on this board. And that’s just what I remember or understood :)

Me the same. Some very smart people here. :)

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Then you should see the Russian production of WAR AND PEACE directed by Sergei Bondarchuk and the Dino De Laurentiis of Waterloo also directed by Bondarchuk!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_%281970_film%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_and_Peace_%28film_series%29

I just got through with Waterloo and what a film! Fifteen thousand real soldiers on the battlefield, not computer GCIs!

[beaversmom]

Just glad it’s not streaked with something else.

[beaversmom]

Someone mentioned earlier about this movie on another thread. Wouldn’t happen to be on NetFlix, would it? ;)

[Politicalkiddo]

My interest in the Napoleonic Wars was actually the result of several different things. It started off with reading Jane Austen novels and progressed from there. I found I wanted to learn about the Regency period in England and, of course, the war with Napoleon was a major part of this time period. It also intertwines with my addiction with ancient Egypt and how Napoleon’s French Campaign of Egypt led to the discovery of the Rosetta stone. I then decided to research Napoleon after having to study Waterloo in school and I’ve watched several documentaries about him. Furthermore, my studies of the French Revolution and how Napoleon managed to take over the French government because of the internal conflicts also interested me. I am a history nut, though, and anything historical will probably intrigue me. ;)

[Politicalkiddo]

Thanks! I will look into it. :)

[beaversmom]

Thanks for sharing! Wonderful on your learning. Enjoyed reading your personal blurb on your homepage, too.

[Politicalkiddo]

Thanks. :) Glad you enjoyed it.

[naturalman1975]

Earlier tonight my FReeper friend informed me that the guards in England with the tall, fuzzy black hats are called the Grenadier Guards.

Well, seeing your are learning history and seem to be enjoying it, I'll add to that.

Some of the guards in England with the tall, fuzzy black hats (called the Bearskin, sometimes mistakenly called the Busby (which is a smaller hat)) are Grenadier Guards.

Others are Coldstream Guards, Scots Guards, Irish Guards, and Welsh Guards, and together they make up the five Guards Regiments or the Foot Guards (for a brief period during the First World War, there was a sixth Foot Guard Regiment, the Machine Gun Guards).

All five regiments wear the same red coat and bearskin uniform as their dress uniform, although they have slight differences (different badges, different coloured plumes in the bearskins and famously the buttons on the front are worn differently - Grenadiers wear their buttons singly, Coldstream Guards in pairs, Scots Guards in groups of three, Irish Guards in groups of four, and the Welsh Guards in Groups of five.)

[beaversmom]

Thanks! Found a Wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_Guards

My brain overfloweth tonight. :)

[StoneWall Brigade]

Yeah I’d make all kinds of bids if I had the money.

[X Fretensis]

Supposedly, the bearskins were picked up as souviners by the Grenadiers after they defeated Napoleon’s Old Guard at Waterloo. After the battle they were granted the privilege to wear them as part of the Grenadier uniform. That is the legend anyway.

[wally_bert]

Thank you for the education.

[XRdsRev]

“Because they are wearing the bearskins hats taken from the French at Waterloo.”

British Grenadiers wore tall bearskin caps long before Waterloo.