The Battle of Waterloo, June 18th 1815, was fought by an allied army containing British, Dutch, Belgian, Prussian and Hanoverian soldiers.
Facing them was Napoleon’s French army, ready to fight again for the Emperor who had escaped from Elba only one hundred days before.
A day of bloody fighting ended in defeat for Napoleon, put paid to his domination of Europe and left thousands of soldiers dead on the battlefield. “Nothing’” said the Duke of Wellington, the Allied commander, “ except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.”
One of the most famous battles in European history, Waterloo and its protagonists continue to fascinate – as the many commemorative events planned for 2015 bear witness.
Combining musical enthusiasm with historical research, our programme of songs associated with the battle aims to provide a distinctive and authentic accompaniment to the commemorations.
Our repertoire includes songs heard during the battle itself, a song composed on the march from Brussels to Paris, broadsides responding to the news of the victory, songs about young women whose lovers have marched away to fight, and ballads lamenting the human cost of the battle. We also sing popular military airs, a range of broadsides celebrating Napoleon and several French and German marching songs.
A sample: ‘Lillibulero’, ‘Garryowen’, ‘British Grenadiers’, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, ‘Le Conscrit de 1810’, ‘Le Chanson de l’Oignon’, ‘Das Reiterlied’, ‘Ein Schifflein Sah Ich Fahren’, ‘Hey Johnny Cope’, ‘Now’s the Day and Now’s the Hour’, ‘The Eighteenth of June’, ‘The White Cockade’, ‘With Wellington We’ll Go’, ‘Boney’s Total Defeat’, ‘Young William of the Royal Waggon Train’, ‘Napoleon’s Farewell’.