This book tells the panoramic story of Waterloo, from its causes to its aftermath, told through uniquely interwoven narratives drawn from the diaries, letters, reminiscences, and great novels of participants and witnesses -- published in time for the 200th anniversary of the battle. With Bonaparte's escape from Elba in February 1815, the world was jolted from the profound peace it had experienced for eleven months back into the frenzied panic of a war it believed had ended. David Crane captures the mixture of excitement and fear that gripped England in the final days of a war that opened up complex divisions in its society -- from Liverpool merchants who celebrated the end of hostilities with America and stood allied against another war, to the children of the Romantic Age who felt torn between their own patriotism and a lingering hero-worship that no crime of Napoleon's could eradicate. And he gives us an unprecedented, revelatory hour-by-hour account of the day of the battle. Focusing as much upon the boys and men torn from their farms and flocks as on the aristocratic families who provided Wellington with his officers, Went the Day Well? is a remarkable portrait of an entire nation engaged in a battle that changed the history of our world. - Publisher.