It was the battle the English have remembered ever since - and the French have done their best to try and forget.

Waterloo, where Napoleon was finally defeated by the army of his nemesis the Duke of Wellington in 1815, remains one of the most iconic episodes in British military history.

And now on the 197th anniversary the battle itself was once again played out by enthusiasts in the original battlefield in Belgium.

The numbers were not quite as vast as they were almost two hundred years ago when 120,000 mostly British and Prussian troops took on the 72,000-strong Grand Army of Napoleon.

And nor, thankfully, were the casualties the same: an estimated 32,000 soldiers were killed in the one-day battle in 1815.
But the uniforms, down to the finest details from the buttons on their uniforms down to the blades on their bayonets, remained the same.

And no one would have trouble recognising Wellington's iconic uniform as he paraded around the battlefield once again.

Several thousand military enthusiasts from across Europe, armed with heavy guns and supported by cavalry took part in the life-sized reconstruction of the defeat that marked the end of an era for Napoleon and secured Wellington's place in the annals of British history.