Who commanded the Anglo-allied army at Waterloo?

The Duke of Wellington commanded the Anglo-allied army at Waterloo. He was Arthur Wellesley, a British field marshal and statesman who had already earned fame fighting Napoleon’s forces during the Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal.

Wellington’s army was not exclusively British. It included troops from Britain, the Netherlands, Hanover, Brunswick, and Nassau, making “Anglo-allied” a more accurate description than simply “British army.” Wellington positioned this coalition force on a defensive ridge near Mont-Saint-Jean, south of the village of Waterloo, and coordinated its resistance to repeated French attacks.

A common mix-up is Lord Uxbridge, who commanded the allied cavalry, or Sir Thomas Picton, a senior infantry commander who was killed during the battle. George III was the British king, not the field commander. Wellington’s defensive leadership, combined with the arrival of Prussian forces under Gebhard von Blücher, helped defeat Napoleon and bring the Napoleonic Wars to their decisive close.