Battle of Quatre Bras

The Battle of Quatre Bras was fought on 16 June 1815 during the opening of the Waterloo Campaign. Wellington’s Anglo-Allied forces struggled to hold the crossroads against Marshal Ney while the Prussians fought Napoleon at Ligny. The battle delayed the French advance but left Wellington dependent on the outcome of the wider campaign.

It works best for books that actually follow the campaign through the crossroads rather than novels that merely use Waterloo or the Hundred Days as historical memory.

Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Waterloo directly places Sharpe at Quatre Bras before Waterloo, and Georgette Heyer’s An Infamous Army follows Wellington’s army through the same campaign. Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma and Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables use Waterloo, not Quatre Bras, and are therefore better kept with the broader Waterloo context.