The breastplate of cuirassier 23 years old Antoine Fraveau, struck and killed by a canonball. June, 1815, serving Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo

He was just 23 when a deadly cannonball struck him during one of the Waterloo skirmishes. He served as a of Napoleon's heavy cavalrymen during "The Hundred Days."  The Waterloo campaign is referred to as The Hundred Days, because such is the amount of time between Napoleon's return to France after his escape from the island of Elba and his final  defeat near the small town of Waterloo, Belgium.  Heavy calvarymen, such as Antoine Favreau, played a significant role in Napoleon's victories.  They would be wasted in the defeat which ended the Napoleonic Wars.


Favreau served as a Carabinier a Cheval -- a heavy cavalryman who wore armour on the battlefield.  Specifically, Favreau would have worn a helmet made of brass and iron with a red horsehair crest.  On his chest and back he wore  a brass and iron breast and backplate over his white tunic.  As a mounted man, he wore white leather riding pants and black riding boots that extended past the knee.  His primary weapon was a long, straight bladed sword, but he would also have carried a pair of pistols in holsters mounted on his saddle and a carbine.   The Carabiniers a Cheveaux must have been something to see with the sun shining off of their brass armour.

Napoleon was a master of battlefield tactics.  Many of his victories involved flanking maneuvers and deception   rather that brute force to win the day.  Waterloo was different.  At Waterloo, Napoleon would attempt brute strength to push Wellington and his multi-national army off of the field.   Much like Robert E. Lee, Napoleon attempted to defeat his enemy with massed  assaults on the flanks as well as the center. 

Napoleon was not well at Waterloo and the fates took advantage of his predicament.   In the afternoon when by chance Napoleon was indisposed, Wellington issued an order for his entire line to redeploy several yards to the rear.  Michel Ney, Napoleon's second in command, misinterpreted the redeployment to be a retreat.  As any good commander seeing a retreating enemy would,  Ney ordered the French cavalry to charge and rout the Anglo-Allied army. 

The night of June 17, 1815 was marked by torrential rain.  Thus, the ground was saturated when Ney's charge took place.  The French cavalrymen charged down the ridge, across the valley and up the opposite ridge to a plateau where they met the enemy infantry formed in squares.  In the days of linear tactics,  infantry  threatened by cavalry formed square.  The defensive position required the men in the  front rank of each side of the square to kneel with the butts of their muskets grounded and the bayonets angled upwards and out.  The remaining men faced out and fired at the cavalry.  Horses will not charge into the line of bayonets.  Thus, the charge is broken and the cavalrymen are picked off.  To defeat infantry in square,  either  infantry or artillery were brought up with the cavalry.  The infantry in square either stayed in square and were blown apart by musket or  cannon fire or the broke square and were run down and sabred by the cavalry. Because of the wet soil, the French cavalry could barely get above a gallop. They were under artillery fire the whole way and upon cresting the hill found infantry not retreating, but in square.  Looking behind, a French cavalryman saw neither supporting infantry or artillery.  No one had his back.  One charge and Ney should have known everything -- the soil is too wet to reach a charge,  British artillery is effective and, most importantly, the British are not retreating, but rather are formed in square.   While the initial charge was not improper, the successive charges ordered by Ney were.  Again and again the French cavalry were sent against the British squares.  Ney could have sent infantry and artillery support, but he didn't.  Ney could have ordered the British cannon hauled off or spiked (the British artillery man serviced their guns until the last second and then ran to the safety of the squares), but he didn't.  Rather, he wasted a valuable asset of Napoleon's army.  Ney failed his commander. While the French defeat cannot be blamed solely upon poor old Ney, he shares a good portion of the blame. The battlefield at Waterloo was roughly a mile deep by 2 miles wide, held nearly 200,000 men over the course of the day and and estimated 41,000 cannonballs we’re fired over the course of the battle.

But what about Antione Favreau?  Well, he died at Waterloo.  He suffered a mortal would when a cannon ball pierced his gleaming breast plate. A recent recruit, Fauveau’s height of 1.79 metres gave him the ideal stature for a heavy cavalry regiment. These, after all, were intended to be big men on big horses, riding down the enemy by the weight of their charge. The young man’s service papers also record that he had a “long, freckled face with a large forehead, blue eyes, hooked nose, and a small mouth”. Family legend has it that when his call-up papers arrived, François-Antoine was on the point of getting married, so his brother joined up, and died, in his place. Yet whoever was wearing it on 18 June 1815, this cuirass serves to emphasise the brutality of Napoleonic warfare at a most personal level.

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Corinthian helmet from the Battle of Marathon (490 BC) found with the warrior's skull inside.

The Corinthian helmet type is one of the most immediately recognisable types of helmet, romantically associated with the great heroes of Ancient Greece, even by the Ancient Greeks themselves who rapidly moved to helmet types with better visibility, but still depicted their heroes in these helmets. In modern portrayals of Ancient Greek warriors, it is always the Corinthian type that is depicted, although often modified to suit the look desired - for instance in one movie the helmet was modified to expose more of the face of the actor.

 It was a helmet made of bronze which in its later styles covered the entire head and neck, with slits for the eyes and mouth. A large curved projection protected the nape of the neck. Out of combat, a Greek hoplite would wear the helmet tipped upward for comfort. This practice gave rise to a series of variant forms in Italy, where the slits were almost closed, since the helmet was no longer pulled over the face but worn cap-like. Although the classical Corinthian helmet fell out of use among the Greeks in favour of more open types, the Italo-Corinthian types remained in use until the 1st century AD, being used, among others, by the Roman army.

This helmet was excavated by George Nugent-Grenville, 2nd Baron Nugent of Carlanstown, on the Plain of Marathon in 1834, according to letters from Sutton dated to 2 & 20 August 1826.

2500 years earlier, on the morning of September 17, 490 BC, some 10,000 Greeks stood assembled on the plain of Marathon, preparing to fight to the last man. Behind them lay everything they held dear: their city, their homes, their families. In front of the outnumbered Greeks stood the assembled forces of the Persian empire, a seemingly invincible army with revenge, pillage and plunder on its mind. The two sides faced each another directly, waiting for the fight to start. The Athenians stalled for days, anticipating reinforcements promised by Sparta. But they knew they could not wait for long. The Persians, expecting as easy a victory as they had won against enemies so many times before, were in no hurry.

The Greeks, knowing the time for battle had come, began to move forward. Ostensibly, they advanced with focus and purpose, but beneath this firm veneer, as they looked on a vastly larger enemy — at least twice their number — many must have been fearful of what was to come. The Persian archers sat with their bows drawn, ready to loose a barrage of arrows that would send fear and confusion through the Greek ranks .Eventually, though, the infantry on both sides engaged in battle. Moving towards each other and perhaps with the Greeks running the final 400 metres whilst undoubtedly under fire from the Persian archers, the two armies clashed.

Few hours later the bloody battle ended. Herodotus records that 6,400 Persian bodies were counted on the battlefield, and it is unknown how many more perished in the swamps. The Athenians lost 192 men and the Plataeans 11.

Pheidippides giving word of victory at the Battle of Marathon
Luc-Olivier Merson

One final legend of Marathon and one which has carried its name up to the present day is Herodotus’ account of a long-distance messenger (hēmerodromos) named Phidippides. He was sent to enlist the help of the Spartans before the battle and he ran to Sparta, first stopping at Athens, a total distance of 240 km (a feat repeated by an athlete in 1983 CE). Later sources, starting with Plutarch in the 1st century CE, confuse this story with another messenger sent from Marathon after the battle to announce victory and warn of the Persian fleet’s imminent arrival in Athens. In any case, it was from this second legend that a race - covering the same distance as the 42 kilometres between Marathon and Athens - was established in the first revival of the Olympic Games in 1896 CE to commemorate ancient Greek sporting ideals and the original games at Olympia. Fittingly, the first marathon race was won by a Greek, Spiridon Louis.

Mound (soros) in which the Athenian dead were buried after the battle

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