France Finally Wins Battle of Waterloo 200 Years Late

Glad we can all agree on the big issues. JL

Alan Cowell reports in the New York Times:

A design for a 2 euro coin that would feature an image of the monument that commemorates the battlefield at Waterloo might undermine efforts to deepen cohesion among the eurozone countries — as if the 19 nations were not already divided by fiscal woes in Greece and German demands for belt-tightening.

It was to have been a commemoration that would have placed France’s humiliation at the Battle of Waterloo in every European’s purse or pocket. Instead, it turned into a tussle of a different kind, redolent of history’s long shadow, in which France finally emerged triumphant.

The events began as Belgium was casting around for a design for a 2 euro coin that would feature an image of the monument that commemorates the battlefield at Waterloo where, on June 18, 1815, Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the armies of Britain, its allies in what is now Belgium and the Netherlands, and Prussia.

In London, a railroad station was named for the battlefield, and the phrase “to meet one’s Waterloo” has entered the English-language lexicon as denoting a particularly cruel defeat.

But when Belgium produced its design for the coin, officials in Paris sent a letter to the European authorities to complain of its “negative” connotations, arguing that Waterloo’s place in European memory went far beyond the battlefield. Indeed, the officials said, French reactions to the coin might well undermine efforts to deepen cohesion among the eurozone countries — as if the 19 nations in the currency union were not already divided by fiscal woes in Greece and grumbling at German-led demands for belt-tightening.

The coin’s proposed design “appears prejudicial, in a context where the governments of the eurozone are trying to strengthen unity and cooperation throughout the monetary union,” the letter from Paris said.

And so, on Wednesday, Belgium withdrew its plan, news reports from Brussels said, offering France a victory at Waterloo, albeit two centuries later, and averting the prospect of a potentially divisive vote among European ministers.

The coin, which is worth about $2.13, was to have been part of ambitious commemorations in which France, from other perspectives, seems happy to join.

Even as the question of the coin bubbled up, France was preparing to transport the distinctive hat worn by Napoleon at Waterloo from a museum near Paris to be displayed in Belgium, the newspaper Le Monde reported.

It is axiomatic of history’s rose-tinted vision that nations offer differing accounts of victory and defeat, of who really did what and when. Particularly, since the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, or perhaps since the Norman invasion in 1066, France and Britain have sparred, sometimes as rivals, sometimes as allies, and sometimes as both at once.

And so, French discomfort at the proposed coin provoked harrumphs here in London. The French “really should recognize that this is a momentous event in Europe’s history and an important one for freedom and democracy — which I’d have thought the French Republic would have celebrated, rather than sought to prevent,” Sir Peter Luff, a Conservative lawmaker, told the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, referring to Waterloo.

Britain itself has no such qualms about commemorations in coinage. The Royal Mint is offering a special 5 pound coin showing Waterloo’s victors — the Duke of Wellington and Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher of Prussia — shaking hands in “the spirit of camaraderie,” as the mint’s website put it, a spirit that did not always endure.