Battle of Waterloo

A coalition force commanded by the Duke of Wellington and Prussian forces under Field Marshal Blücher defeats Napoleon at Waterloo in present-day Belgium. Four days later Napoleon abdicates for the second and final time and is exiled to Saint Helena, ending his Hundred Days return from exile. The battle definitively ended the series of wars that had convulsed Europe since the French Revolution of the early 1790s. It set a historical milestone between serial European wars and decades of relative peace, often referred to as the Pax Britannica.