The Imperial Guard had never been beaten, and every soldier on both sides knew it. So when the Guard's final attack faltered against Wellington's line on the evening of June 18, 1815, and the unthinkable cry went up — "La Garde recule!", the Guard retreats — it broke more than a formation. French soldiers who had measured their own courage by the Guard's invincibility watched it recoil, and the conviction drained out of the whole army within minutes. Waterloo was decided less by the Guard's repulse than by what that repulse meant. This set freezes the human edge of that crisis: two officers, French and British, fighting it out sword to sword as the tide turns.

The two-figure set stages the clash directly — a British 1st Foot Guards officer in red coat and black shako trading cuts with a French Imperial Guard officer in dark blue and white, bare-headed, his bicorne knocked to the trampled grass, both swords up. Note the blued and gilt blades, the personal weapons of officers who bought their own. As the centerpiece of a Waterloo diorama it wants both sides around it: range a French Imperial Guard Company Officer with the advancing Guard on one flank, and on the other set the British 1st Foot Guards Colour behind a British 1st Foot Guard Standing Firing delivering the volley that broke the attack.

W. Britain model 36203. 1/30 scale (approximately 60mm), matte-painted metal. Two-figure set — French Imperial Guard officer and British 1st Foot Guards officer — on a single sculpted groundwork base. Boxed.