Edward Orme (1775–1848)
Historic, military, and naval anecdotes, of personal valour, bravery, and particular incidents which occurred to the armies of Great Britain and her allies, in the last long-contested war, terminating with the Battle of Waterloo…
London: Edward Orme, 1819
Harley-Mason.a.78, plate opposite p. 9

The title of this book made mention of Britain’s allies, and several of its illustrations portrayed Napoleon’s continental adversaries, but in the ‘Introduction’ to the anecdotes on Waterloo it seems to have been more than Edward Orme could manage to set the battle in a wider European context. The victory ‘obtained by the Duke of Wellington’ was ‘beyond a doubt one of the most glorious achieved by this, or any other country.… A single blow was struck by the uplifted arm of England, and France was shaken to her centre: she reeled from her pinnacle of glory, and the stupendous fabric of her military reputation crumbled into ruins! The ancient, and often vaunted deeds of Cressy, Poitiers, and Agincourt, were revived: the hosts of France shrunk trembling, abashed and humiliated, before the dauntless intrepidity and steady valour of Englishmen.’ Four years after the battle, Orme was setting a high standard for the vein of bombastic and ungenerous rhetoric which has occasionally marred Anglocentric accounts of the campaign. The image facing this text, an engraving by M. Dubourg after John Augustus Atkinson, is captioned ‘The Battle of Waterloo decided by the Duke of Wellington’ and shows a favourite subject for British illustrators, the repulse of the Imperial Guard towards the end of the day and the general advance being signalled by Wellington.

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