Today's date, June 18th, marks a major day, not just in the history of the Household Cavalry, but in the history of Europe.
In the military campaign that followed (known as the Hundred Days), a series of running battles across Belgium culminated on Sunday 18th June 1815 at Waterloo, where Napoleon faced an Anglo-led army under the command of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. Aware that a Prussian army under the command of Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher was on its way, Napoleon chose to attack, hoping to defeat the British before the Prussians arrived to reinforce them. The battle was a savage and bloody affair, but the British held firm, fending off repeated attacks by the French throughout the course of the day at key points across the battlefield. With the arrival of Prussian troops in the early evening and the narrow defeat of his army's elite, the previously invincible Imperial Guard, when a combined British and Prussian counterattack on his right flank and centre overwhelmed the French lines, Napoleon conceded defeat and quit the field, his army effectively destroyed (records indicate French casualties ranged from 24-26,000, in comparison to the combined Allied casualties of around 22,000, 15,000 suffered by the British, 7,000 by the Prussians). Returning to Paris, Napoleon hoped to convince the French government to back him in fighting on, but he was instead met with outrage at the disaster that was Waterloo and, under the threat of being deposed, abdicated on June 22nd 1815.
- The sword wielded by Major Edward Kelly of the 1st Life Guards, with which he killed Colonel Habert of the 4th Cuirassiers during one of the savage cavalry clashes at Waterloo (winning him a knighthood of the Order of St. Anne, as well as the personal commendation of the Russian tsar), as well as the tail of Kelly's favourite bay mare, which carried him to safety despite a fatal lance injury to the head.
- The uniform of Sir Robert Hill, commanding officer of the Blues at Waterloo, including the musket ball removed from his arm on the field.
- A cast of the skull of Corporal John Shaw of the 2nd Life Guards; a veritable Hercules of a man, over 6ft tall with a career outside the army both as a boxer and a life model for the Royal Academy, Waterloo was Shaw's first and last battle; he died during one of the cavalry clashes, accounting for 10 French cavalrymen before he was cut down (when his sword shattered, Shaw resorted to clubbing enemies with his helmet and the broken hilt). Given a hero's burial on the battlefield, Shaw's body was later exhumed and casts of his bones made to feed the vogue in British society for souvenirs with a connection to the battlefield.
- The prosthetic leg of the Earl of Uxbridge. A musket wound sustained at Waterloo necessitated the amputation of his right leg below the knee; dissatisfied with the prosthesis provided for him, Uxbridge commissioned a fully articulated prosthetic leg which would be the standard of such until as late as 1914.