How Did The Battle Of Waterloo Changed By Industrialization?

Industrialization changed a lot about european society from the way people work, interact with each other, and even fight. Two battles- Waterloo and the Somme- can adequately illustrate the difference caused by this period of increased industrialization. Although Waterloo was an emotionally traumatizing experience for soldiers, it contained one thing that industrialization destroyed for the soldiers of WW1- hope. The machine gun, created in the time of industrialization, allowed rates of survival to plummet during the battle of the Somme comparative to the battle of Waterloo. At Waterloo, weapons primarily consisted of muskets and swords. Because of this, “Waterloo wounds… had been simple and single: penetrations or perforations… If the bleeding caused was not too severe… the patient’s chances of survival were better than we would expect”(Keegan 268). Most of the wounds inflicted during Waterloo, if not immediately deathly, could be patched up through …show more content…
Keegan explains how soldiers in the Somme, terrified of their prospects on the battlefield, often purposefully injure themselves: “a number of soldiers inflicted wounds on themselves to avoid having to ‘jump the parapet’” (Keegan 275). He goes so far as to say that a self inflicted wound is “a phenomenon produced by the First World War”(Keegan 275). These soldiers would try to find ways that they could get out of fighting, as opposed to the battle of Waterloo where individuals were inspired to keep fighting because of their belief and respect for their general, whom many soldiers cite as having been not only everywhere on the battlefield, but specifically wherever fighting was hardest. This battle of Waterloo is remembered as heroic to have been in although terrifying in many ways. The battle of the Somme, however, is simply remembered by the few survivors as having been a massacre at some