18 June in military history: Battle of Waterloo, 1815

The Duke of Wellington's Anglo-allied army and Marshal Blücher's Prussians defeated Napoleon on 18 June 1815. The French army fled in confusion, and Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to St Helena.

The sources differ. The National Army Museum gives nearly 40,000 French killed, wounded or captured and 22,000 Allied casualties; Houssaye estimates 25,000 to 27,000 French killed or wounded and 8,000 to 10,000 taken prisoner.

It was fought in June 1576 at the Haldighati pass in the Aravalli hills near Udaipur, between Mewar and the Mughal Empire. The Akbarnama dates it to the day its translator gives, with a question mark, as 18 June 1576, without saying which calendar; the Gale encyclopedia gives 21 June and Tod's Mewar annals give July 1576.

The Mughal army under Man Singh held the field after Maharana Pratap's elephant was taken and he left the field wounded. But the Mughals did not pursue him, Pratap was never captured, and he later won back most of Mewar.

No. Akbar was not at Haldighati: the Mughal army was led by Raja Man Singh of Amber, and it held the field.

The sources differ. Badauni, who rode with the Mughal army, counts nearly 500 killed, 150 of them Muslims; the Akbarnama gives about 150 ghāzīs dead on the imperial side and more than 500 "distinguished men" of the enemy; Tod's Mewar tradition says only 8,000 of 22,000 Rajputs left the field alive.

He escaped to the hills. Akbar marched towards Gogunda in October 1576 but could not catch him, and Pratap won back all of Mewar except Chitor, Ajmer and Mandalgarh before his death in 1597.