On 28 May 1815, three weeks before the battle of Waterloo, officers and other ranks of the British army played a cricket match in a meadow outside Brussels. The Officers won by an innings. The match was recorded in a letter home from Captain Alexander Cavalié Mercer of the Royal Horse Artillery — whose Journal of the Waterloo Campaign is one of the great military memoirs of the period. The fixture is the most famous documented military cricket match of the Napoleonic era.
The British army had used cricket as a regimental sport throughout the Napoleonic period. The Brussels concentration of May-June 1815 produced an unusually documented run of fixtures.
Wellington's army had been concentrating around Brussels through May 1815 in anticipation of Napoleon's offensive. The British forces — billeted in villages around the city — used the long evenings for sport. Mercer's letter of 30 May describes a cricket match played two days earlier 'in a great meadow beside the Soignes wood, with a side of officers against the men of the Battery'. The Officers won by an innings; Mercer made 22. The match was followed by mess dinner at the regimental HQ.
May 1815
British army concentrates around Brussels
28 May 1815
Officers v Other Ranks cricket match
18 Jun 1815
Battle of Waterloo
1870
Mercer's Journal of the Waterloo Campaign published
“We had a famous match at cricket on Sunday in the meadow beside the wood. Our Officers beat the men by an innings. The men shall not have it so easy at our next try.”
Mercer's battery would distinguish itself at Waterloo on 18 June — three weeks after the cricket match. Several of the players were killed in the battle.
The most famous documented cricket match of the Napoleonic wars — played three weeks before Waterloo.
The Brussels match is the cricket fixture most often cited in histories of British military cricket. Its proximity to Waterloo gives it a memorial significance: a moment of normality in the days before catastrophe.
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1811-07-04
The 1811 Lord's season was the leanest of the Middle Ground years. With the Napoleonic blockade at its tightest, willow scarce, professionals diverted to militia service and the betting public's purses thin, only fourteen major matches were played at Lord's all summer. The 1811 season is the clearest measure of cricket's wartime contraction.
Officers vs Civilians
1812-12-15
By the close of 1812 cricket was being played regularly in both Madras and Bombay — the earliest documented fixtures in either Presidency. Garrison officers and civilian East India Company servants ran the matches; the Madras Gazette and Bombay Courier preserved the earliest scoresheets. The Calcutta game (documented 1804) had been joined by all three Presidency capitals.
Kent vs MCC
1813-09-09
On 9-10 September 1813 Kent played the MCC at the Vine, Sevenoaks — the first post-war major match at the historic Kent ground and the start of the Vine's revival as a regular major venue. The Vine had hosted little major cricket since 1808; the September 1813 fixture marked its return to the front rank.