Aug 2021 'The Life and Times of Thomas Chapman - a soldier

Today we had a really interesting foray into military history as our very own Bob Sadler presented the  illustrated recent research from an ambitious school project on the realities of being a soldier at the time of the famous battle of Waterloo.  Ref : The Waterloo 200 project involved Melbourn Village College in this countrywide project.

'The Life and Times of Thomas Chapman.'

It turns out that Thomas Chapman is Bobs great, great, great grandfather !

We all had to admit that our knowledge of the reality of war in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo was very sketchy so the story of Thomas Chapman was a real revelation.

It was a time when Napolean was bent on world domination. He saw Britain as a powerful enemy and did everything he could to cut off our trade routes with europe.

We were very involved with Portugal and so he invaded Spain, put his brother on the throne, and Wellington was sent to lead the allied coalition forces and many skirmishes ensued between the two large armies.

To this day Spain celebrates each year 3rd May - the anniversary of the first battle - despite losing !  It then took 6 years to finally decide the campaign when Wellington won at the Battle of Waterloo.