Britain spent more than two decades at war with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France between 1793 and 1815. The decisive sea battle was Trafalgar on 21 October 1805, when Admiral Lord Nelson destroyed the combined French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar in southern Spain — but was killed in the moment of victory. His column in the centre of London commemorates him.
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On land the climax was the Battle of Waterloo in modern Belgium on 18 June 1815. The Duke of Wellington, in command of a multinational allied force and supported by the Prussian army of Marshal Blücher, defeated Napoleon's last army. Napoleon was exiled to St Helena, where he died.
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