Professor Tony Pollard, Director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, has been leading Waterloo Uncovered’s excavations on the battlefield since 2015. The dig has thrown new light on some of the critical events of the battle and about the people who fought in it. In this lecture, the first in a new series, Tony sets the scene for the bitter and bloody fighting that consumed the Chateau of Hougoumont, one of the Duke of Wellington’s key allied positions.