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Pick up a romance novel and you'll often get more than just a pleasant read – many fans of historical romance say their favorite books have given them a new grounding in history and geography by bringing long-lost people and places to life.

So I'd hazard a guess that few Americans under the age of 30 know much about Napoleon Bonaparte, beyond the fact that he was short and had a complex, unless they study history — or read romance.

But Napoleon was possibly the single most influential person in Europe during the early years of the 19th century, a man who came close to subjugating the entire continent — until he met his final defeat at the battle of Waterloo, exactly 200 years ago today.

And of course, the Battle of Waterloo forms a powerful backdrop to many Regency romances — so I thought I'd check in with some fabulous Regency authors and see how they felt this pivotal historical event affected the romance genre.

Loretta Chase

Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Lynda Chase

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Like a great many other writers who started in the traditional Regency genre, I was acutely conscious of the Napoleonic Wars in general (inspiration for all manner of spy stories) and Waterloo in particular. I've read about the battle, in detail, many times, and I always end up crying, as I do usually when studying any battle anywhere, for all that's lost, on both the winning and the losing sides.

Waterloo is probably the one single historical event that gave me a visceral understanding of heroism — the men forming their squares and filling in the gaps as their fellows were cut down; the men defending Hougoumont. Images form in my mind's eye of men falling in battle, and of the ugly aftermath which has been described time and again, and of the Duke of Wellington's grief. I think these images are at work, somewhere in the back of my mind, whenever I'm thinking about bravery and heroic behavior (of men and women), and that remarkable British sang-froid.

This notion of courage has fed into my characters, whether Waterloo is relevant to the story or not. But I did use Waterloo directly at least once, creating a hero suffering from PTSD, in Miss Wonderful. I think any writer who's spent time learning about Wellington, or who's studied the battle in any way must absorb and be inspired by a deep understanding of the bravery and desperation and hellishness of that long day.

Sabrina Jeffries

Surrender

by Amanda Quick

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Everything I know about the personal cost of Waterloo, I learned from Regency-set historical romances. Tales of wounded heroes finding love in the bleak aftermath of that battle were always more compelling to me than a dry history book describing the strategies of the campaign. And in reality, there were lots of wounded to go around — 10,000 from that battle alone.

Regency historicals are filled with heroes disabled both physically and psychologically by the horrors of that battle, of heroines who lost brothers, husbands, fathers, and cousins, coping with a very different landscape than the one they were taught to navigate in.

One of my favorite romances, Amanda Quick's Surrender, has a hero who lay for hours on the battlefield, wounded and unable to move, while human vultures looted the bodies of the dead. Regency historicals often make powerful statements about the cost of war, but in the end it's the stories of love triumphing over the horrors that stay with me.

Katharine Ashe

War veterans are a staple of romance, and in historical romance no other battle figures more prominently than Waterloo. The great battle hardens some heroes, honing their strengths and preparing them for the challenges that civilian life might throw at them (including the love of a feisty heroine). Vanessa Kelly's How to Plan a Wedding for a Royal Spy, which features a military intelligence officer, begins on the battlefield just after the French are routed, setting him up him to rout other villains back home.

An Infamous Army

A Novel of Love, War, Wellington and Waterloo

by Georgette Heyer

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Waterloo damages other fictional heroes, leaving them with emotional and physical scars that they carry into new sorts of combat at home (with the help of a feisty heroine). The hero in Caroline Linden's It Takes a Scandal heads off to war for glory and adventure but is wounded at Waterloo and returns home to face the devastation of his family and estate.

But Waterloo isn't always relegated to backstory. Romance novelists don't often throw heroes and heroines onto the fields of actual battles, but some of the genre's greatest writers have done so with Waterloo, to spectacular effect. Mary Jo Putney's Shattered Rainbows reveals the brittle glitter of the weeks before the battle, as officers and their wives in Brussels danced at balls up to the very eve of the fight, and also includes a thrilling description of the actual battle. The mother of the Regency sub-genre, Georgette Heyer, wrote such a fine treatment of the battle in An Infamous Army that it ended up on a reading list for students at Sandhurst, the British military academy.

In a snippet of dialogue between two officers in the midst of the fighting, Heyer sums up the glory, the horror, and the human reality of Waterloo:

"Well, I'm glad I was in it, anyway. To tell you the truth, I haven't liked it as much as I thought I should. It's seeing one's friends go, one after the other, and being so hellish frightened oneself."

"I know."

"Do you think we can hold out, Charles?"

"Yes, of course we can, and we will."

Honor, sacrifice, heroism, love that triumphs despite all: This is the stuff of wonderful historical romance. Epically huge and dramatic, Waterloo is the fiery inferno out of which great romance heroes stride, changed profoundly, but ultimately for the best.

battle of waterloo

Summer of Love

On the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte's most celebrated statement about food and warfare – "An army marches on its stomach" – is worth recalling.

Except there is no record of him saying it. Just as there is no record of Marie Antoinette saying, "Let them eat cake."

If he did say it, the words would have been as hollow as the stomachs of his soldiers. Though one of the greatest military generals of all time, Napoleon was surprisingly negligent about feeding his army.

His orders for the Grande Arme's rations were ample enough: "Soup, boiled beef, a roasted joint and some vegetables; no dessert." But bad roads and poor weather often prevented supply wagons from reaching campsites in time.

During the Italian campaign, in which the 27-year-old Napoleon made his name as a general by defeating a much larger Austrian army and its allies, his men simply foraged off the land or plundered nearby villages — a common military practice then.

Even while fighting the Russians in a poor country like Poland, conditions, though difficult, still allowed for humor. The French soldiers learned the Polish words: "Kleba? Niema." Meaning, "Bread? There's none." One day, as Napoleon passed a column of infantry, a hungry solider cried out, "Papa, kleba." "Niema," he shot back. "The whole column burst into shouts of laughter," his valet Louis Constant Wairy wrote in his memoirs, "and no further request was made."

But the suffering Napoleon's army underwent on his hottest and coldest campaigns – in Egypt and Russia – was no laughing matter.

The 1798 Egyptian misadventure was launched with such speed and secrecy, writes historian Philip Dwyer in Napoleon, The Path the Power, there was no time even to issue water canteens. As a result, the 55,000-strong army had to endure a three-day march from Alexandria to Cairo through burning sands, in thick European uniforms and carrying heavy armor. Thinking they would be able to forage like they had in Italy, many had thrown away their hard biscuits. Scores died of heat and thirst, while others, driven mad by hunger, thirst, sandstorms and Bedouin attacks, simply put a bullet through their own brains. When the army reached the Nile, there was water and food, but, furious and embittered, the men went on a killing and looting rampage.

i

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo. Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane hide caption

itoggle caption Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo.

Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Despite this harrowing tutorial in thirst, Napoleon embarked the very next year on an even more foolhardy 10-day march from Cairo to Syria. Again, there wasn't enough food. Water, carried in goatskins on camel back, was, according to one sergeant, "hot, disagreeable and dirty, like water from a cobbler's tub." And soldiers began to commit suicide. A stampede at a solitary well killed 30. The desperate men dug sea sorrel, ate it and developed dysentery.

And all for nothing. In Syria, the plague awaited them, and at the small but stubborn fortress at Acre (now in Israel), a coalition of Ottomans and English gave Napoleon his first taste of defeat, forcing him to retreat.

Equally grotesque was the 1812 Russia campaign. The Grande Arme was annihilated more by starvation and cold than by the Cossacks. With absolutely no food supplies and temperatures at 20 below zero, the ravenous men ate horseflesh seasoned with gunpowder, often fighting over a fallen horse's flank to tear out its liver, sometimes even before ascertaining whether the animal had died. Through the campaign, flocks of buzzards feasted on corpses of soldiers on the roads and battlefields.

The buzzards were not the only ones who ate well.

The late French historian Andre Castelot wrote in Napoleon that through the famine, Napoleon continued his daily repast of "white bread, Chambertin, beef or mutton, and his favorite rice with beans or lentils." But the valet Louis Wairy claimed that his distraught master, who ranted at his officers for not securing enough rations, ate like an ordinary soldier.

True, Napoleon was an indifferent eater (though fastidious about bread). He often skipped meals, eating only when hungry — usually calling for roast chicken, a dish he seems to have enjoyed. In the kitchens of his Tuileries Palace at Paris, chickens were constantly roasted on spits to suit his erratic hunger pangs. When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roast chickens wrapped in paper.

He had a soldier's impatience for fussy dinner rituals and "lacked much of eating decently; and always preferred his fingers to a fork or spoon," writes his valet. Nor did he have a nose for fine wine, being perfectly content to drink Chambertin diluted with water. At camp at Boulogne, he asked a marshal at his table what he thought of the wine being served. The marshal replied with tactful candor, "There is better," making the Emperor and other guests smile.

Only after his defeat at Waterloo, when he'd been permanently stripped of power, did Napoleon seem to revel in its meal-time trappings. On the island of St. Helena, as a prisoner of the British, he was served dinner every night by a uniformed butler who announced, "His Majesty is served." As footmen served soups, entrees, roasts, side-dishes and sweets on rare porcelain and silver plate, Napoleon – surrounded by a small group of officers in full dress uniform, with their wives in dcollet dresses – played the part of the emperor he no longer was.

What a change from the man who had bolted his breakfast in eight minutes, and dinner in 12. He normally ate his breakfast alone, but on that fateful, rain-soaked morning of June 18, 2015, he called what came to be known as his Breakfast Conference.

As the Duke of Wellington's redcoats waited outside the village of Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, Napoleon summoned his generals to the farmhouse where he had spent a sleepless night. Wellington, he told them with trademark bravado, was "a poor general." The English were "poor troops." His officers were unconvinced. But the Emperor assured them it would all be over by lunchtime.

Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn.

army food

Napoleon

food history

Napoleonic wars

Waterloo

On the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte's most celebrated statement about food and warfare – "An army marches on its stomach" – is worth recalling.

Except there is no record of him saying it. Just as there is no record of Marie Antoinette saying, "Let them eat cake."

If he did say it, the words would have been as hollow as the stomachs of his soldiers. Though one of the greatest military generals of all time, Napoleon was surprisingly negligent about feeding his army.

His orders for the Grande Arme's rations were ample enough: "Soup, boiled beef, a roasted joint and some vegetables; no dessert." But bad roads and poor weather often prevented supply wagons from reaching campsites in time.

During the Italian campaign, in which the 27-year-old Napoleon made his name as a general by defeating a much larger Austrian army and its allies, his men simply foraged off the land or plundered nearby villages — a common military practice then.

Even while fighting the Russians in a poor country like Poland, conditions, though difficult, still allowed for humor. The French soldiers learned the Polish words: "Kleba? Niema." Meaning, "Bread? There's none." One day, as Napoleon passed a column of infantry, a hungry solider cried out, "Papa, kleba." "Niema," he shot back. "The whole column burst into shouts of laughter," his valet Louis Constant Wairy wrote in his memoirs, "and no further request was made."

But the suffering Napoleon's army underwent on his hottest and coldest campaigns – in Egypt and Russia – was no laughing matter.

The 1798 Egyptian misadventure was launched with such speed and secrecy, writes historian Philip Dwyer in Napoleon, The Path the Power, there was no time even to issue water canteens. As a result, the 55,000-strong army had to endure a three-day march from Alexandria to Cairo through burning sands, in thick European uniforms and carrying heavy armor. Thinking they would be able to forage like they had in Italy, many had thrown away their hard biscuits. Scores died of heat and thirst, while others, driven mad by hunger, thirst, sandstorms and Bedouin attacks, simply put a bullet through their own brains. When the army reached the Nile, there was water and food, but, furious and embittered, the men went on a killing and looting rampage.

i

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo. Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane hide caption

itoggle caption Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo.

Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Despite this harrowing tutorial in thirst, Napoleon embarked the very next year on an even more foolhardy 10-day march from Cairo to Syria. Again, there wasn't enough food. Water, carried in goatskins on camel back, was, according to one sergeant, "hot, disagreeable and dirty, like water from a cobbler's tub." And soldiers began to commit suicide. A stampede at a solitary well killed 30. The desperate men dug sea sorrel, ate it and developed dysentery.

And all for nothing. In Syria, the plague awaited them, and at the small but stubborn fortress at Acre (now in Israel), a coalition of Ottomans and English gave Napoleon his first taste of defeat, forcing him to retreat.

Equally grotesque was the 1812 Russia campaign. The Grande Arme was annihilated more by starvation and cold than by the Cossacks. With absolutely no food supplies and temperatures at 20 below zero, the ravenous men ate horseflesh seasoned with gunpowder, often fighting over a fallen horse's flank to tear out its liver, sometimes even before ascertaining whether the animal had died. Through the campaign, flocks of buzzards feasted on corpses of soldiers on the roads and battlefields.

The buzzards were not the only ones who ate well.

The late French historian Andre Castelot wrote in Napoleon that through the famine, Napoleon continued his daily repast of "white bread, Chambertin, beef or mutton, and his favorite rice with beans or lentils." But the valet Louis Wairy claimed that his distraught master, who ranted at his officers for not securing enough rations, ate like an ordinary soldier.

True, Napoleon was an indifferent eater (though fastidious about bread). He often skipped meals, eating only when hungry — usually calling for roast chicken, a dish he seems to have enjoyed. In the kitchens of his Tuileries Palace at Paris, chickens were constantly roasted on spits to suit his erratic hunger pangs. When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roast chickens wrapped in paper.

He had a soldier's impatience for fussy dinner rituals and "lacked much of eating decently; and always preferred his fingers to a fork or spoon," writes his valet. Nor did he have a nose for fine wine, being perfectly content to drink Chambertin diluted with water. At camp at Boulogne, he asked a marshal at his table what he thought of the wine being served. The marshal replied with tactful candor, "There is better," making the Emperor and other guests smile.

Only after his defeat at Waterloo, when he'd been permanently stripped of power, did Napoleon seem to revel in its meal-time trappings. On the island of St. Helena, as a prisoner of the British, he was served dinner every night by a uniformed butler who announced, "His Majesty is served." As footmen served soups, entrees, roasts, side-dishes and sweets on rare porcelain and silver plate, Napoleon – surrounded by a small group of officers in full dress uniform, with their wives in dcollet dresses – played the part of the emperor he no longer was.

What a change from the man who had bolted his breakfast in eight minutes, and dinner in 12. He normally ate his breakfast alone, but on that fateful, rain-soaked morning of June 18, 2015, he called what came to be known as his Breakfast Conference.

As the Duke of Wellington's redcoats waited outside the village of Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, Napoleon summoned his generals to the farmhouse where he had spent a sleepless night. Wellington, he told them with trademark bravado, was "a poor general." The English were "poor troops." His officers were unconvinced. But the Emperor assured them it would all be over by lunchtime.

Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn.

army food

Napoleon

food history

Napoleonic wars

Waterloo

On a recent morning at Sakuma Brothers Farm, eight Latino workers sat on a bench seat behind a tractor, planting strawberry roots that will bear fruit in a few years. Dust masks and goggles covered their faces.

Sakuma Brothers runs fruit operations in Washington state and in California, selling berries to top brands like Driscoll's, Haagen-Dazs and Yoplait. The four-generation family farm is an institution in this part of the state.

But the farm lately has faced lawsuits, worker strikes and consumer boycotts, which have largely yielded victories for its workers. The disputes have caught the attention of farm owners and labor groups across the county. And a pending Washington State Supreme Court ruling on how Sakuma handles rest breaks could prompt farm workers to bring similar lawsuits against their employers elsewhere.

Some workers at Sakuma Brothers say that what's needed is a union contract. They're asking for a legally binding agreement on wages, and for a flat rate of $15 per hour for all harvesters, instead of the current system that pays workers by the pound for how much they pick — what's called a piece rate.

The Salt

Why Picking Your Berries For $8,000 A Year Hurts A Lot

They also want the contract to define a grievance system, medical coverage and payment of transportation costs for seasonal workers who migrate every year from California.

Ramon Torres, president of Familias Unidas Por la Justicia (Families United for Justice), says about 460 current and former Sakuma workers have joined this movement.

"We have families that have worked 10 to 11 years for Sakuma. Season after season, the same families come back to work here," Torres says. Those families want to keep working here – but with a guarantee of fair conditions and wages, he says.

Rosalinda Guillen, a longtime labor organizer, grew up in these fields and has helped Torres's group push for a contract.

The labor unrest flared up a few years back, when, for the first time, Sakuma brought in guest workers through the federal H-2A visa program. Local workers claimed the foreign crew displaced them and was paid better. The company disagreed. But the relationship became fraught, and longtime workers said they wanted to lock in some job security.

Flats of blueberries from Sakuma Brothers Farms are seen at Ballard Market in Seattle in 2013. Liz Jones/KUOW hide caption

itoggle caption Liz Jones/KUOW

"This company has ruined a lot of the trust and the goodwill that they used to have," Guillen said. "In order to build trust with workers again, they have to sign a union contract."

Historically, farm worker contracts are difficult to achieve. Only about 2 percent of farm workers in the county are part of a union. California is the only major farm state that offers a legal framework for this type of union to operate. Which means that Familias Unidas in Washington state is charting an unusual path.

Torres and Guillen say they're hopeful Sakuma will eventually come around.

"They say that they are a good neighbor and have been here as part of the Skagit Valley for five to six generations," Guillen says. "So have we."

Danny Weeden, Sakuma's new CEO, has inherited this labor dispute at Sakuma and says he's heard the workers' message. As the first non-Sakuma ever at the helm, he's one of the biggest changes at the farm this season. He came on to help the company at a turbulent time.

"For the most part we were doing the right things," Weeden says. "We needed to change some things, too. And we've done that. And we've addressed that. And we're going to continue to get better and better and better."

They fired some managers and intensified training workshops. They added new benefits, including a housing stipend for workers who don't live on the farm. They also plan to bring in more mobile health clinics and expand recreational programs. And – here's the big one – they revamped how field workers get paid.

Weeden said Sakuma will still pay based on production, but more than before. Everyone will earn at least $10 an hour; faster berry pickers could make up to $27 an hour. They will also now pay for rest breaks, which is an issue in yet another pending court decision.

"Our most valued resource on our farm are our people and our workers," Weeden says. "So that's why our mantra is caring and compliance. That's what's going to get us for the long-term success of this company."

Legal action prompted some of these changes. A federal class-action lawsuit forced Sakuma to pay out workers who said the farm shorted their wages. That settlement last year cost $850,000 and marked a rare win for farm labor. Familias Unidas has also won legal victories on claims that Sakuma retaliated against them in the company housing and in hiring practices.

As for the union, Weeden appears uninterested in further talks. He said that hit a dead end. And he says he believes the company is headed in a good direction.

Walking through the berry fields, Weeden and other managers say they rely heavily on the bilingual supervisors to help with worker issues. But they aim to get more directly involved, too.

On the walk, Rich Brim, company vice president, pulls out his phone.

"We believe in caring and compliance," he says, parroting a company mantra.

The phone interpreted into Spanish: "Creemos en el cuidado y el cumplimiento."

"I'll practice that one," Brim says. "And that's a guarantee."

Liz Jones is a reporter for NPR member station KUOW in Seattle. A version of this story first appeared on KUOW's website.

agriculture workers

labor