author
William Siborne
1797–1849
A British Army officer turned military historian, he became best known for his painstaking work on the Battle of Waterloo. His detailed research and famous battlefield model helped shape how later generations understood the campaign.
1 Audiobook
The Waterloo Campaign, 1815
by William Siborne
About the author
Born on 15 October 1797, William Siborne served as a British Army officer and later became a military historian. He is chiefly remembered for his work on the Waterloo campaign, a subject he pursued with unusual care and determination.
In 1830, he received official approval to create a model of the Battle of Waterloo. To do it properly, he took leave from the Army and spent eight months surveying the battlefield, gathering the kind of detail that made his reconstruction stand out. That project led to the large Waterloo model for which he is still widely known.
Siborne also wrote a major history of the campaign, helping fix Waterloo in the public imagination not just as a famous battle, but as an event that could be studied troop by troop and hour by hour. He died on 9 January 1849, but his research remained an important reference point for later historians.