Album contenant un plan de la bataille de Waterloo: dressé par le général Baron de Jomini, et douze vues des environs du dit champ de bataille
Bruxelles: H. Gérard, [1850s?]
Atlas.5.84.19, [plate No. 9]

In many respects the battlefield at Waterloo remains well preserved after two hundred years. The most striking alteration to the topography was put in hand just a short time after the battle, when King William I of the Netherlands caused a monument in the form of a forty-metre high conical mound to be erected close to the spot where his son, the Prince of Orange, was wounded. The removal from nearby areas of the earth required to construct the mound—estimated at some 300,000 cubic metres—resulted in the destruction of significant features of the battlefield at the centre of the Allied line, including the banks of a sunken road that helped to make Wellington’s defensive position so strong. On a pedestal at the summit of the mound is a cast-iron statue of a lion with its paw resting on a globe; this was designed by Jean-François Van Geel and cast in iron at the foundry established in Liège by an inventor from Lancashire, William Cockerill (1759–1832). A lion is the principal feature of the royal coat of arms adopted by William I in 1815.