00148.

NORTH GATE DIORAMA.

With six figures from a Gibb painting. 

£85.00p.

A superbly detailed diorama which recreates what is considered the turning point in the battle of Waterloo, when the gates at Hougoumont were closed against the French. The date was June the 18th 1815 and Wellington later acknowledged upon this incident  "rested the outcome of the day" as French troops desperately fought to get inside the courtyard of the Château  to add their weight to the struggle already raging inside. Major James Macdonell and three other Coldstreamers fought and hacked their way to the gate. It was a desperately close thing but they succeeded in closing the gate and dropping an enormous wooden bar across it. At the end of that day, less than 2000 men in all had taken the sting out of Reille's corps, and kept more than 10,000 Frenchmen occupied in an attack which Napoleon had only meant to be a diversion.