Battle of Waterloo (1815)

On 18 June 1815, the Duke of Wellington's allied forces and Field Marshal Blucher's Prussian army defeated Napoleon Bonaparte near the Belgian village of Waterloo, ending 23 years of French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars that had consumed the lives of up to six million people. Napoleon was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died six years later. The Congress of Vienna that followed redrew the map of Europe, established the Concert of Europe as an early multilateral peace-keeping framework, and set borders that held — with modifications — for a century. The defeat was so complete that "Waterloo" became a byword for catastrophic failure in any field.