Ball of the Duchess of Richmond
The Duchess of Richmond's ball was held in Brussels on June 15, 1815, the eve of the Battle of Quatre-Bras and three days before the Battle of Waterloo . Although the 224 attendees were only 25 percent of women, the British historian described him Elizabeth Pakenham as "the most famous ball in history" ( "the most famous ball of history").
The ball
The social event was organized by the Duchess Charlotte of Richmond. She was in Brussels with her husband, Charles Lennox , the fourth Duke of Richmond. In view of the rule of the Hundred Days, he was entrusted with the defense of the city against Napoleon Bonaparte . The location was the first floor of the Richmonds-inhabited house, which was north of downtown, probably on rue de la Blanchisserie.
On the same day there had already been a skirmish between the troops of Karl Bernhard von Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach and Marshal Michel Neys , in the course of which the former managed to keep the crossing at Quatre-Bras .
While the festivities were still in progress, the Duke of Wellington received dispatches that reported that the allied Prussians had met the French at Fleurus . In the battle of Quatre-Bras that followed the next day , Wellington managed to maintain his position, but could not unite with the Prussians, who were defeated at the same time in the Battle of Ligny . Two days later the decisive battle at Waterloo broke out.
Present
Prominent guests included the Duke of Wellington, Prince Wilhelm of Orange-Nassau (later King of the Netherlands), Prince Wilhelm Friedrich Karl of Orange-Nassau , Duke Friedrich Wilhelm of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel , Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Nassau-Weilburg , Duke Ludwig von Arenberg , General Miguel Ricardo de Álava , General Edward Somerset and General Thomas Picton . Both Picton and the Duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg were supposed to die in the next three days: Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig, known as the "Black Duke", died the next day at Quatre-Bras, Picton two days later at Waterloo.
reception
The ball is mentioned in Sir Walter Scott's Paul's Letters to his Kinsfolk , William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage . John Everett Millais painted The Black Brunswicker in 1860 , which is said to refer to the ball. The same is true of Henry Nelson O'Neil's painting Before Waterloo from 1868. In 1870 Robert Alexander Hillingford painted The Duchess of Richmond's Ball .
The event is portrayed in the film The Rothschilds (1940) . The ball is also shown in Sergei Bondarchuk's 1970 film Waterloo .
Bernard Cornwell's book Sharpes Waterloo uses the ball as the setting.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Marian Füssel : Waterloo 1815.Beck , Munich 2015, ISBN 3-406-67672-3 , p. 30.
- ↑ Max Hastings (Ed.): The Oxford Book of Military Anecdotes. Oxford University Press 1985, ISBN 0-19-214107-4 , p. 194.
literature
- Elizabeth Longford: Wellington. The Years of the Sword. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London 1969, ISBN 0-297-17917-9 .
Web links
- The guest list of the ball (PDF; 130 kB)