On this day, a battle to decide the fate of an empire was being fought in Waterloo, a little-known town in Belgium.,He watched, unmoved, as tens of thousands of soldiers from all corners of France, resplendent in their fine uniforms, fought to the death for him. In his twenty years of military service, he had long since become accustomed to conquest and glory, to danger and death; such scenes no longer stirred him.,And today, after repeated attacks still failed to break through the lines laid out by British commander Arthur Wellesley, he began to sense that he could not offer victory to France again.。