Jean-Baptiste Decoster (guide)

Jean-Baptiste Decoster sketched from life at La Belle Alliance on 16 September 1815 by John James Masquerier.

Jean-Baptiste Decoster (1760–1826[1]) was an unwilling guide for Napoleon Bonaparte during the Battle of Waterloo and later became a tourist battle field guide in the years following the battle.

Biography

Jean-Baptiste Decoster was born in 1760 in the village of Korbeek-Lo near Leuven in Flemish Brabant. Early on 18 June 1815 after he had been to church, he went to the house of his brother, situated in Plancenoit. There he accosted by French staff officers and escorted to see Napoleon, who having ascertained that he knew the locality employed him as a local guide during the Battle of Waterloo. Decoster was an unwilling local guide for Napoleon Bonaparte, but his reminiscence form an important primary source for the locations where Napoleon resided during the battle.[1][2]

Decoster's house (c. 1900)

Decoster's house stood on the eastern side of the Waterloo–Genappe main road south of the junction with the minor road to Plancenoit (south La Belle Alliance and north the farm of Rossomme).[2]

According to Decoster Napoleon spent the early part of the Battle of Waterloo and around Rossomme and then at about 17:00 moved to a hillock or a mound close to Decoster's house, where he remained until about 19:00. He then moved forward with his staff officers and the unwilling Decoster, to a location in the valley to the north of La Belle Alliance (and so closer to the front line), and remained there during the attack by the French Imperial Guard. Then according to Decoster he accompanied Napoleon as far as Genappe during his flight after the retreat of the Guard and the general route that ensued.[2]

"Flight of Buonaparte from the field of Waterloo accompanied by his guide", engraving by George Cruikshank.

In the months after the battle he was sought out by battle field tourists, but does not seem to have realised that he could charge these tourists for his services until Sir Walter Scott took a deposition from him and suggested that tourists such as himself would be willing to pay Decoster for guidance around the battlefield and to hear his reminiscences about the day.[3] He died in 1826.[1]

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Cambridge University Library staff 2015.
  2. 1 2 3 Scott 1827, pp. 418–426.
  3. ↑ Scott 1827, pp. 175–176, 418.

References

Further reading

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