Here, Worsley is not only deliberately going for pretty pathetic non-news click-bait but is being downright inaccurate as well, and is probably showing her inexperience with the subject of both Waterloo and Wellington by doing so. https://twitter.com/tonyangeluk/status/1322166387041861637

For a start, no cables in 1815. Then Everyone. EVERYONE! Trumpeted the victory in a national light for the folks at home, be their Prussian, Dutch or British. Then they all slapped each other on the backs internationally reinforcing diplomatic ties. So give me a break on this.

If you read the Waterloo dispatch, which presumably the authors of the article have? Then you’ll find ample acknowledgment of the Dutch and Prussians, and give the Duke a break, he was writing this just hours after the battle ended.

Then onto this tired old nugget. First, national identify is a perilous argument here. Ethnic Germans dominated, sure, but 11K Hanoverians & 6K KGL had as their elector, the King of Great Britain. The Dutch and Brunswick contingents were mostly equipped with British equipment.

‘Britain had been badly bruised during the Napoleonic Wars and badly needed a victory’ .... as opposed to the six years of victories doled out annually by Wellington between 1808-1814, not counting back to the RN’s successes at sea going back farther?

The argument about who won Waterloo is tired and needs to be put to bed. The argument itself didn’t even become a big deal until the 1830’s or so, and the idea of a British victory only became a thing (in Britain) during the Victorian era.

The nature of battles and how they are remembered ensures that some will pass into national memory, and as such, national involvement will become inflated, but none of that is considered here as a natural course of veterans passing into old age etc.

So in a word or two, the BBC historian should have thought of something more original to say about Waterloo, and something a bit more accurate would have been nice too.