THE REAL ‘LAST SURVIVOR’ OF THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO

Time to put the story right

In the wake of our discovery of the Waterloo ‘Bones in the Attic’¹, I couldn't help noticing the famous photograph of the so-called ‘last survivor’ of the Battle of Waterloo, French veteran Louis-Victor Baillot, being pushed back into the social-media spotlight.

French veteran Louis-Victor Baillot, last living participant of the Battle of Waterloo?

The photo was taken in 1896 to document the 101-year old veteran’s decoration with the Legion d’Honneur and was much reprinted and copied thereafter. In the French and indeed the British press too, Baillot had made some appearances before that date; in 1893 his name was listed in a French register of centenarians and former soldiers of Napoleon’s Grande Armee, his own 100th birthday celebrations were widely reported and when he died in 1898 the French nation mourned the loss of the ‘dernier survivant de la bataille de Waterloo’, the last survivor of the Battle of Waterloo. The news of his death was also widely covered in Britain, where only some newspapers made it clear that Baillot was in fact the last French (!) veteran of Waterloo to pass away. The last British veteran of Waterloo, Maurice Shea (of the 73rd Foot), had already died seven years before, and I guess that in the eyes of the British public then (and indeed now), the matter was closed; after all Waterloo was a ‘British battle’, in which the British defeated the French, and in which the Prussian army arrived just in time to see Wellington order the victorious advance which broke Napoleon’s army. 

It might be due to this jingoistic mutilation of the history of the battle which, in addition to a certain linguistic barrier, led to the fact that the death of the actual ‘last survivor of Waterloo’ in 1899 went entirely unnoticed internationally.

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On 16 September 1899, the church bells of the little pomeranian town of Wolgast started ringing early in the morning and didn’t fall silent for most of the day. In the streets of the city and suburbs, flags were flown at half-mast and thousands of people had come from the surrounding area to pay their last respects to the well-known and much-loved 'Father Schmidt'. In fact participants arrived from all over Germany, many regiments had sent delegations of officers and 40 veteran, rifle and sports association with their flags and standards had joined the procession. Representing the Emperor, the President of the Government of Stralsund laid a magnificent wreath on the coffin which was then driven to the church of St. Petri, were two preachers held a long sermon and funeral speeches praising the services which ‘Father Schmidt’ had rendered to King and Fatherland. The act of lowering the decorated coffin, draped with the flags of Germany and Prussia, into the grave of the municipal cemetery marked the end of an era. The last veteran of the German Wars of Liberation, the wars against Napoleonic France, was no more. 

August Friedrich Schmidt in 1885.

August Friedrich Schmidt was born in Anklam, an old Hanseatic town in the Prussian province of Pomerania on 11 February 1795, as son of a watchmaker. In March 1813 he had followed the King’s call to arms and had joined the 1st Pomeranian Infantry-Regiment as a volunteer Jäger, receiving his baptism of fire in the Battle of Bautzen on 20-21 May. He then fought in the Battle of Großbeeren on 23 August and in the Battle of Dennewitz on 6 September 1813, in which the two comrades to his left and right were shot down during the advance on Görsdorf. After the battle Schmidt had helped to carry both to a field hospital and on his 100th birthday he vividly remembered and talked about the horrors he had witnessed there. Schmidt himself had never even been wounded, and except for a few bruises from having been hit repeatedly by musket butts during the street fighting in Görsdorf, he had always escaped with his skin intact. On 18 October 1813 Schmitt arrived on the battlefield of Leipzig and on the following day participated in the famous assaults on the gates of the city, witnessed the catastrophic explosion of the Elster bridge and the resulting destruction of the French rearguard. Finally, on 9-10 March 1814, Schmidt fought the French a last time in the Battle of Laon in France. When Napoleon returned from exile in 1815, Schmidt volunteered again and subsequently fought in the battles of Ligny and Waterloo. Returning to his native Pomerania he had established himself as a goldsmith in Wolgast and continued to work as such until he gradually lost the use of his eyes in his mid-80s. August Friedrich Schmidt, the last veteran soldier to have fought in the Battle of Waterloo passed away on 12 September 1899.

August Friedrich Schmidt shortly before his death, based on a now lost photograph. He is wearing the Prussian Order of the Crown 4th Class, awarded to him in 1895, his 1813 campaign medal and the 1863 ‘commemorative’ medal for the veterans of 1813-1814-1815.

VETERANS OF LIBERATION

In Prussia and Germany there was great public interest in the veterans of the Wars of Liberation. On 17 March 1863, the fiftieth anniversary of the King’s ‘An mein Volk’-appeal and the establishment of the Landwehr, as a ‘renewed token of appreciation for the warriors still living from the campaigns of 1813, 1814, 1815’, the Prussian King instituted another ‘war commemorative medal’. Over 50,000 men came forward to claim their reward. When the Union of Iron Cross holders was dissolved in 1872, it still counted more than 100 members decorated with the Iron Cross of 1813. At New Year 1888, 11 of them were still alive, the youngest of them being the Kaiser Wilhelm I himself. The last holder of the meaningful award passed away in 1890. In the same year, on the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, 49 Prussian veterans who had participated in it, were registered as being alive. In 1894, the ‘Kriegerzeitung’² Parole, reported that their number had reduced to six and suggested honouring them with some kind of official recognition, which was later granted in the form of six gilded porcelain coffee cups bearing the image of the Kaiser Wilhelm II. When one of those cups, which had been commissioned and made by KPM, the Royal Porcelain Factory in Berlin, was handed to ‘Father Schmidt’ he is reported to have remarked: ‘Well, I better make sure to be the last and won’t be jumping the queue!’. 

1. https://www.historyhit.com/bones-in-the-attic-the-forgotten-fallen-of-waterloo/

2. Newspaper for soldiers and veterans, lit: ‘warrior’s newspaper’