Model for the Lion Mound Monument

This sculpture, created in 1822 by the Dutch artist Jean-François Van Geel, was the first step towards the massive monument, “The Lion Mound”, that now stands on the Waterloo battlefield. William I, King of the Netherlands, decided to build a monument mainly to honour his son, the Prince of Orange, who had been one of the Allied commanders. As it took shape, however, it was reimagined as a celebration of the Dutch, British, and German armies who fought.

The Lion’s Mound is built on the right flank of the Allied line, near where the Prince of Orange was shot and injured during the Battle of Waterloo. This colossal construction, begun in 1822 and not finished until 1825, required over ten million cubic feet of earth to be moved by hand. 2000 labourers, with 600 horses and hundreds of carts, dug up the valley south of Waterloo for the task. In doing so, they destroyed the sunken road which ran through the centre of the battlefield, and built over the ridge of Mont St. Jean which the Allied army had fought to defend. Visiting Waterloo in 1827, the Duke of Wellington was said to have been astonished by the complete transformation, exclaiming: “They have ruined my battlefield.”

Some objected to the desecration of the battlefield, others to disturbing the dead. The workers building the mound unearthed hundreds of corpses from Waterloo. A Reverend Falconer, visiting in 1825, recorded: “I picked up a human rib just disturbed from its resting place. [Soon] it was gone; someone more curious than myself had secured it as a relic.”

Atop the mound, which has 226 steps leading to the top, is the lion statue, based closely on Van Geel’s sculpture. The 4.4 metre high iron version had to be made in nine seperate pieces, cast in Liège and transported by sea and canal.

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