We are fortunate indeed that both of Captain William Siborne's Waterloo Models, made a century and a half ago, have survived the ravages of time and are on public display today. The 'Large Model', showing the positions on the Waterloo battlefield at the crisis of 7pm, is on display at the National Army Museum in London. The 'New Model', showing Uxbridge's great cavalry charge made between 1pm and 2pm, is on display at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. These models spent much of their existence in storage in various places and could easily have ended up destroyed, but thanks to certain enlightened people, they survived and were carefully and expertly restored before being made available today. Siborne himself went through many trials and tribulations to get these models made and exhibited, and much has been written about both the man and the models. However, little of this has been based on fact, so perhaps a brief reappraisal of William Siborne, his life, his times and his achievements can help to put the record straight.
William Siborne was born into a small family, his father Benjamin, a serving officer in the 9th Foot. Benjamin, lacking the means to purchase promotion, rose only to the rank of Captain. William joined the British army in 1813 and was posted to France shortly after the Waterloo Campaign. His interest in the battle was no doubt sharpened by conversations with veterans of those dramatic days. On returning from France in 1817, Siborne was placed on half pay. Being a talented officer with a leaning towards topography, he did not remain idle and he published his first book on the subject in 1822. Two years later, Siborne was gazetted lieutenant in the 47th Foot, with his promotion backdated to 1815. In March 1826, he was appointed Assistant Military Secretary to Sir George Murray, the Peninsula veteran and one time Quartermaster-General (chief-of-staff) to Wellington, then Commander-in-Chief Ireland. The two men certainly got on well. Siborne's ability made him a trusted aide and his second work on topography, published in 1827, was dedicated to his chief. Siborne's intellect and his skills in topography attracted attention from the highest authorities in the army. In 1830, Lord 'Daddy' Hill of Peninsula fame, then Commander-in-Chief Britain, commissioned Siborne to make a model of the battle of Waterloo, to be funded by the state and dedicated to Britain's Great Commander, now the 1st Duke of Wellington and serving as Prime Minister. It is likely that Murray recommended Siborne to Hill.
Siborne probably could not believe his luck. This model, the 'Large Model', was going to be one of the finest entertainments in Regency Britain and would assure him fame for life, if not beyond. In the century before film and the sophisticated electronic media of today, a massive, highly detailed model of the most popular recent event in British history would attract substantial attention. Siborne, known for his attention to accurate detail, would be in his element. He went to Belgium and spent several months at La Haye Sainte to survey the field. On his return, he set about constructing a model of the terrain. In March 1833, Siborne submitted his first statement of expenses to the Treasury. However, in November 1830, Earl Grey's administration had replaced Wellington's and there seemed to be no record of the agreement made with Siborne. After several weeks of corresponding with Edward Ellice, the new Secretary at War, Siborne obtained a refund of his expenses to date, but was told that there would be no further funding of the model. This presented him with a dilemma as, on the basis of the agreement made with Lord Hill and authorised by Waterloo veteran Sir Henry Hardinge, then Secretary at War, Siborne had contracted out much of the work for the model and owed money to the various tradesmen involved. For much of the remainder of 1833, Siborne, supported by a number of fellow officers, pressed the government for payment. Sir James Stewart at the Treasury declined Siborne's application that December. Sir Hussey Vivian, who had replaced Murray as Commander-in-Chief Ireland in 1831, then appealed to FitzRoy Somerset, the Military Secretary at the Horse Guards, on behalf of Siborne. Vivian had a high opinion of this Military Secretary and the two men became life-long friends, but Vivian's appeal does not appear to have been successful. However, Siborne had made a number of commitments that he felt obliged to fulfil and decided to continue working on the model at his own expense, no doubt expecting Hill and Hardinge to keep their word and that, with a change of government, funds would become available.
To help finance the completion of this project, Siborne sent out a Proposal in January 1834 to selected people, particularly the senior commanders at Waterloo. He asked them to subscribe at least £20, which would then be repaid with interest out of the proceeds of the exhibition of the model. This fund-raising activity seems to have alleviated Siborne's immediate financial problems.
By November 1834, work on the model had progressed so far that Siborne was now at the stage of considering how to establish the positions of the soldiers he wanted to place on it. He had decided to represent the battle at its crisis; that is at about 7pm when the Imperial Guard made the final attack on Wellington's centre. Siborne obtained permission from FitzRoy Somerset to send out a circular to surviving officers. This consisted of a printed form and plan of the battlefield asking the recipient to mark the position of his unit at the time in question. Siborne hoped to determine in this way, as far as was possible so many years after the event, the actual positions of all the units involved in this part of the battle. Incidentally, Siborne kept the correspondence conducted as a result of this circular and it is available for study in the Manuscripts Department of the British Library in London. His son Herbert, who maintained the family tradition of military service and rose to the rank of major-general, later edited and in 1891 published a selection of these letters in a volume known as the Waterloo Letters. Like his father's History, this work is rarely out-of-print.
Vivian pointed out to Siborne that by showing the battle at the moment of crisis, he would have to include the Prussians. Siborne was aware of this, but could not anticipate the consequences of his decision. FitzRoy Somerset was among those whom Siborne sent his circular. His enquiry was forwarded to Sir James Willoughby Gordon, Quartermaster-General at the Horse Guards. Gordon expressed his own concerns about the time that Siborne had chosen to portray on his model. He believed it better for Siborne to show the commencement of the action so the viewer could then use Wellington's Waterloo Despatch, the report on the battle that the Duke wrote the day after it, to follow the subsequent moves. Gordon feared that showing the Crisis would undermine the authority of the despatch. Furthermore, he considered it unlikely that Siborne would be able to get accurate information on the positions of the troops at this time. Siborne replied that there was likely to be as much confusion about the positions at the start of the battle as over later positions. In any case, he promised he would send the resulting plan of the positions to Wellington himself for approval before completing the model. The debate prompted by Siborne's circular led to a series of articles in the United Service Journal starting in 1836.
True to his word, in October 1836, Siborne sent the Duke a copy of the final plan. Wellington wrote a Memorandum endorsing it, but indicated that he could not really remember with any accuracy where any of the troops were. It seems that this information did not get back to Siborne, because later that month he was summoned to see FitzRoy Somerset, and possibly Wellington himself, for a confidential discussion on the position of the Prussian forces on the model. It would seem that somebody had pointed out to Wellington that the positions given to the Prussians by Siborne conflicted with the Duke's account in his despatch. In fact Wellington had played down the role of his Prussian allies in the battle to maximise his own. Siborne had taken the trouble to read the published Prussian authorities on the battle and had engaged in correspondence with the Prussian General Staff and crosschecked their comments with the French authorities, so he was sure of his facts. He was aware that his model conflicted with the high authority of the Duke's despatch, but was confident he could justify this. However, Siborne, who was in Dublin at the time, did not take up the invitation to come to England to see Wellington. He simply could not pay for the trip as all his funds were being spent on the construction of the model.
By 1837 Siborne was, no doubt, beginning to regret his decision to continue making the model out of his own pocket in expectation that the Government would meet its obligations to him. At the beginning of January, Siborne, supported by Vivian, applied to the Secretary at War for a loan to be repaid from the proceeds of exhibiting the model, which promised to be very lucrative indeed. This application was rejected. At some stage Siborne took out a bank loan covered by a life insurance to finance the project. The repayments drained his funds. However, he still anticipated being able to recover his investment with the income from the exhibition of the model.
Finally, the first model went on display in October 1838 in the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London. A detailed Guide was published at the same time. The model later went on tour around the country, being displayed in major cities including Glasgow. The public response was sensational with around 100,000 people paying to see it. The £5,000 raised should easily have covered the debt of £3,000 he had incurred, but poor Siborne was unlucky again. Somehow, little of the revenue generated reached his pocket, the lion's share apparently going to the organisers of the Exhibition. Desperate to get out of his predicament, Siborne petitioned the Treasury in 1839 to refund his costs. This application too was rejected. One wonders if the high authority that objected to the too prominent positions of the Prussians influenced this decision. Siborne now had a serious problem with no immediate prospect of an easy solution. In 1841, he went as far as petitioning Parliament for reimbursement. Murray wrote in support, but Hardinge rejected the application. In September, Siborne made a first attempt to sell the model, approaching the Royal Dublin Society and then Hardinge. This was unsuccessful. Siborne needed to find some other way to raise money to repay his debts.
Now that the model was finished and had shown itself to be highly popular, Siborne worked further on completing the history of the campaign he had planned earlier. This became a great classic and is in print today, over 150 years after it was first published. In 1842, he wrote to various prominent people asking them to subscribe to the history. The first edition was published in 1844 and was such a success that it sold out almost immediately. That August it was reprinted with minor amendments.
At that time Siborne started his next project, a larger scale model of only part of the battlefield. After corresponding with the Marquess of Anglesey (commander of the cavalry at Waterloo), he started work on a model of the great charge, eventually producing the 'New Model' that can be seen at the Royal Armouries in Leeds. As Siborne had no funds to make this model, one assumes that Anglesey financed it. The next year, the 'Large Model' was exhibited again, this time alongside the 'New Model'. This was the one time that both models were displayed together. The guide for the original exhibition was republished along with a Guide to the New Model. It appears that Siborne's financial difficulties now eased a little.
In 1846, the model was sent for display in Berlin, then the capital of Prussia, and it remained there most of the year. Although these several exhibitions must have brought some income to Siborne, he evidently still had financial difficulties. He again attempted to raise subscriptions and Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, was one of several prominent people that offered him substantial sums. A number of the regiments portrayed on the model also offered to subscribe. Siborne has been accused of altering the model according to the sums offered, but there is no evidence of this. On the contrary, the spotlight of publicity was shining on him so brightly that he would have had no chance of doing this without it being noticed even if he had been inclined to. It is not clear if Siborne ever took up the subscriptions offered because in 1847 he made two further attempts to sell the model, first to the Prussians and then to the United Service Institution (the USI, now known as the Royal United Services Institute). The Prussians declined, but the USI indicated interest and negotiations continued throughout 1848. However, Siborne died in January 1849 before the funding could be raised. His gravestone can still be seen in Brompton Cemetery, London.
The USI housed Britain's main military museum of the Victorian era, the United Services Museum. It was certainly the right place to house a work of the magnitude of Siborne's 'Large Model'. During 1850, plans were made for building a Waterloo Model Room as part of an extension of the facilities. That August, the funds required for the model's purchase had been raised and a month later, the council of the USI formally approved its acquisition, paying just over £2,000 for it. The Model went on permanent display in the museum in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, and it remained there until 1962. A revised Guide was published in 1851, reprinted in 1872 and again, with revisions, in 1909. Sadly, Siborne did not live to see his model being given pride of place in Britain's main military museum at the time of the peak of his country's greatness in the 19th century.
After more than a century on public display, the 'Large Model' eventually had to give way to the needs of the Government for an entertainment centre. The model was broken down into its 39 constituent parts and sent to the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, for storage. There it remained until 1975 when it was inspected by a number of experts, including Dr David Chandler, then Head of War Studies at the RMA, with a view to having it restored and put on public display. A number of practical problems needed to be solved, including, as ever, financing the project and finding a suitable location. Ironically, these were the same problems Siborne faced at the very beginning of the affair. Fortunately, both were resolved. Volunteers under expert supervision restored the model to its former glory and since 1990, the model has been on display at the National Army Museum in London. Unfortunately, lack of space made it impossible for the model to be displayed in such a way that it can be viewed from all sides.
The movements of the 'New Model' immediately after its exhibition in 1845 are difficult to ascertain. It was apparently displayed in Germany in 1848 and was sent to Dublin in 1851, where it appears to have gone into storage. However, in 1907, it was displayed in Dublin at the Irish International Exhibition. Later that year, it was offered to the Staff College at Camberley where it remained until 1925. From there, it went to the Tower of London, where it was displayed from 1935 to 1964. It then went to Dover Castle before being withdrawn from display for restoration in 1983. It was ceremonially re-opened at Dover Castle in 1985 before being sent to the new Royal Armouries in Leeds, where it went on display in 1996.
by Peter Hofschröer
Further reading
Chandler, David, General Military: Waterloo: The Hundred Days (Osprey, 2001)
Hofschröer, Peter, Men-at-Arms 381: Prussian Staff & Specialist Troops 1791–1815 (Osprey, 2003)
Hofschröer, Peter, Campaign 87: Lützen and Bautzen 1813 (Osprey, 2001)
Hofschröer, Peter, Campaign 25: Leipzig 1813 (Osprey, 1993)
Hofschröer, Peter, Men-at-Arms 206: The Hanoverian Army of the Napoleonic Wars (Osprey, 1989)
Hofschröer, Peter, Men-at-Arms 192: Prussian Reserve, Militia & Irregular Troops 1806–15 (Osprey, 1987)
Hofschröer, Peter, Men-at-Arms 152: Prussian Line Infantry 1792–1815 (Osprey, 1984)
Siborne, William, History of the Waterloo Campaign, reprinted London, 1995
Siborne, Herbert, Waterloo Letters, reprinted London, 1993
Siborne, William, Guide to the Model of the Battle of Waterloo now exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London, 1838
Siborne, William, Guide to Captain Siborne's original Large Waterloo Model representing the entire Field with the whole of the Armies engaged when the Duke of Wellington with the British Troops repulsed Napoleons Imperial Guard, and gained the Glorious Victory of Waterloo, London, 1845
Siborne, William, Guide to Captain Siborne's New Waterloo Model representing the Splendid Charge between one and two o'clock by the British Heavy Cavalry under the Marquess of Anglesey, and by the British Infantry under Sir Thomas Picton, London, 1845
Wootton, Geoffrey, Campaign 15: Waterloo 1815 (Osprey, 1992)