The famous Battle of Waterloo was fought 12 miles outside Brussels. The battlefield lies south of Brussels in present-day Belgium, near the town of Waterloo, although the fighting itself took place mainly around the Mont-Saint-Jean ridge and nearby farms.
The battle occurred on June 18, 1815, during the Napoleonic Wars. French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte faced a coalition army commanded by the Duke of Wellington, with Prussian forces led by Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher arriving to reinforce the Allied position.
Waterloo was Napoleon’s final battle and ended his attempt to regain power during the Hundred Days after his escape from exile on Elba. The Allied victory led to his second abdication and permanent exile to Saint Helena.
A frequent geographic misconception is that the entire battle was fought inside the town of Waterloo. The battlefield is roughly 15 kilometers, or about 9 miles, south of Brussels and about 2 kilometers from Waterloo; older English descriptions commonly give the distance as approximately 12 miles. The quiz’s answer, Brussels, is therefore the canonical city reference.