'My, my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender,’ sang Sweden’s fab four in their famous Eurovision Song Contest winner. Now this may come as a surprise, but you would be well advised not to rely on Abba to help with your history homework. If Benny and Bjorn actually laboured under this surrendering misapprehension when they wrote their song (songwriters are not hot on facts – happy to say anything as long as it rhymes), they would have discovered the truth when they subsequently paid a visit to the Wellington Museum in Waterloo, just south of Brussels in Belgium. View of Hougoumont farmhouse from The Lion's Mound or Butte du Lion on the battlefield of Waterloo, Belgium . Judging by the photo of Abba’s visit, prominently on view in the museum, the group seems to have been treated to a rapturous limousine procession through the town. My, my: the people of Waterloo must have been delighted. Napoleon certainly didn’t surrender at Waterloo. There was a long day’s fighting on that June day in 1815 and a very shaky start for the UK team, but thanks to some late-arriving Prussian assistance, the boy Wellington eventually done good. When Napoleon saw that things were going badly, he hot-footed it to Paris, where he later abdicated. Shortly afterwards, Boney was taken by the British to the remote Atlantic isle of St Helena, where he died six years later in circumstances that merited the forensic attentions of a Miss Marple. ‘Waterloo’ quickly entered the English language as a synonym for ‘a decisive defeat’. But while the British know what happened when Napoleon met his Waterloo, the French-speaking world is less convinced. Battle of Waterloo reenactors stand in historic costume, with rifles and flags . Belgium is divided into two halves: Flemish-speaking and French-speaking. It is unfortunate for anniversary-celebrating purposes that Waterloo lies in the French half where the locals are preparing to mark the bicentenary of the Battle of Waterloo – with Napoleon as the unchallenged star of the show. Local Anglo-Belgian entrepreneur Anthony Martin has invested a substantial financial stake in plans for marking the anniversary by turning a Templar hospice on the edge of the battlefield into a magnificent restaurant-cum-brewery (where he brews Waterloo beer, of course) and a museum looking at the surgical side of the battle (not for the squeamish). It would be fair to say that Mr Martin is not best pleased by the outbreak of Napoleon-worship. He points to the poster advertising the re-enactment event which will be taking place this summer over four days from June 18 to 21; the photograph shows a giant, heroic Napoleon towering over the smaller, less impressive figures of Wellington and Prussian leader Blucher. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ says Mr Martin. ‘The French-speaking world refuses to believe Napoleon lost the battle. A painting of the Battle of Waterloo; 2015 marks the 200th anniversary of the battle . As far as they’re concerned, he scored some sort of moral victory. He lost. But they won’t accept it.’ However, the French-speaking world – and especially the French – don’t figure very significantly in the numbers of tourists who visit the famous battlefield site every year. The British – and the English-speaking nations of the world – remain fascinated by the victory and the bloody manner in which it was achieved. Actually, horror-seeking tourists visited the battlefield almost before they had finished burying the bodies. Poet Lord Byron, something of a Bonaparte fan, suddenly found he had time to visit the battlefield when his lavish coach, modelled on Napoleon’s battle carriage, broke down on his journey from the Channel to the south. 'My, my! At Waterloo Napoleon did surrender!' Abba pictured in the town of Waterloo, Belgium in 1974 . In a Top Gear moment, Byron treated himself to a charge across the battleground on a large Cossack horse he had hired, making himself perhaps the first battlefield tourist. Hard on his heels came Poet Laureate Robert Southey; Sir Walter Scott; the artist Turner; and, a few years later, William Wordsworth. It’s worth recalling that Wordsworth, as a young man, had welcomed the French Revolution (‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive…’) but rapidly shifted his political stance to somewhere far to the right of Attila the Hun. Soon Waterloo was established as one of the great continental sights. It was British tourists visiting Waterloo who discovered the neglected city of Bruges – largely derelict after its access to the sea silted up – and helped to finance its restoration. There was an unmistakable sense that Waterloo had been a defining moment in history: Europe had been reshaped and, the odd Franco-German conflict apart, peace reigned for a century. The pleasure of the area around Waterloo is that in many ways it has barely changed. A statue sits atop the Lion's Mound, which commemorates the battlefield at Waterloo, Belgium . If you have time, follow the progress of the conflict along La Route Napoleon – what else? – from Beaumont, where he camped near the French border on June 14, to the fields south of Waterloo where he was defeated four days later. Despite facing superior forces with a hastily assembled army, it is extraordinary that Napoleon came very close to victory. Wellington reflected: ‘It has been a damned serious business. Blucher and I have lost 30,000 men – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life...’ Unbelievable for me was encountering the present Duke of Wellington in the flesh at Waterloo. He was attending the opening ceremony for a new exhibition at the Wellington Museum on the ‘Shared Destinies’ of Wellington and Napoleon, who fought each other often but never met. It runs until the end of July. My favourite exhibit is Lord Uxbridge’s wooden leg. At the end of the battle, Uxbridge was riding near Wellington when they came under cannon fire. ‘By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!’ announced Uxbridge, to which Wellington replied: ‘By God, sir, so you have!’ Uxbridge was taken to the town of Waterloo, where his right leg was amputated above the knee. His only recorded comment during the operation was: ‘The knives appear somewhat blunt.’ Presumably he had taken advantage of the pint of gin offered as anaesthetic to anyone facing an amputation. The severed leg was buried behind the house and its grave became a tourist attraction. Sadly it is no more, but you can see his wooden limb in the museum. Perhaps the most interesting sight on the battlefield is Hougoumont farm, whose heroic defence by the British is recognised as the pivotal moment of the battle. Efforts to restore the property and turn it into a museum were for a long time frustrated by lack of funds, but the project was rescued last year following the intervention of Chancellor George Osborne who, it turned out, was something of a battlefield enthusiast. An injection of £1 million has ensured Hougoumont will open to the public for the first time for the celebrations in June, with guests able to stay in a self-catering cottage within the farm – and as far as I could tell from my visit last month, Hougoumont is a Napoleon-free zone. May marks the 75th anniversary of Operation Dynamo, the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk . Dunkirk . While June marks the anniversary of a glorious victory, May sees the 75th anniversary of what has sometimes been referred to as a glorious failure: Operation Dynamo – the evacuation of Allied troops from the beaches near Dunkirk from May 26 to June 4, 1940. The extraordinary rescue, the largest evacuation in military history, saw 338,226 soldiers brought home to England in the face of ferocious bombing from German aircraft. Walk along the wide beach at Zuydcoote, a 15-minute drive from the centre of Dunkirk, and at first glance there is little to hint at the awful scenes of death and destruction here 75 years ago. I was there with Bruno Pruvost, a diver who has explored the wrecks on and near the beach – some of the 336 ‘little ships’ that set sail from England, answering the emergency call, but which never returned. At low tide you can visit the wreck of the Crested Eagle, a Thames river cruiser that picked up 600 men from the beach but was then bombed by a Stuka. With his ship in flames, the captain beached the ship with the hope of saving as many of his passengers as possible, . You can find out more about the Crested Eagle and the other ships at the excellent Memorial du Souvenir at Dunkirk. Also well worth visiting is the Fort des Dunes, built as part of a grand defensive line against possible German invasion in the 19th Century – and which played its part in the evacuation. Back on the beach at Zuydcoote, Bruno picked up a small black pellet from the beach: ‘Coal from the bunkers of sunken ships – this gets washed up all the time.’ The sea is still giving up its war souvenirs. Eurostar (eurostar.com, 08432 186186) offers nine daily services from London St Pancras International to Brussels from £72. Tickets to other Belgian stations start from £82. Hotel Pullman in Brussels (pullmanhotels.com) offers double rooms from about £73. Visit belgiumtheplaceto.be for further information on Brussels and Wallonia, and also waterloo2015.org for programme and tickets for the re-enactment. DFDS Seaways (dfdsseaways.co.uk, 0871 574 7235) sails up to 24 times a day between Dover and Dunkirk. Prices start from £39 each way for a car and up to nine people.
Contrary to the Abba  song, Napoleon did not surrender at Waterloo .
Templar hospice is being turned into a restaurant-cum-brewery, museum .
May sees the 75th anniversary of 'glorious failure' of Operation Dynamo .