Archaeology@Waterloo
The Material for the Construction of the Lion Mound
'Every one is aware that the variously inclined undulations of the plains, where the engagement between Napoleon and Wellington took place, are no longer what they were on June 18, 1815. By taking from this mournful field the wherewithal to make a monument to it, its real relief has been taken away, and history, disconcerted, no longer finds her bearings there. It has been disfigured for the sake of glorifying it. Wellington, when he beheld Waterloo once more, two years later, exclaimed, "They have altered my field of battle!" Where the great pyramid of earth, surmounted by the lion, rises to-day, there was a hillock which descended in an easy slope towards the Nivelles road, but which was almost an escarpment on the side of the highway to Genappe. The elevation of this escarpment can still be measured by the height of the two knolls of the two great sepulchres which enclose the road from Genappe to Brussels: one, the English tomb, is on the left; the other, the German tomb, is on the right. There is no French tomb. The whole of that plain is a sepulchre for France. Thanks to the thousands upon thousands of cartloads of earth employed in the hillock one hundred and fifty feet in height and half a mile in circumference, the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean is now accessible by an easy slope. On the day of battle, particularly on the side of La Haie-Sainte, it was abrupt and difficult of approach. The slope there is so steep that the English cannon could not see the farm, situated in the bottom of the valley, which was the centre of the combat. On the 18th of June, 1815, the rains had still farther increased this acclivity, the mud complicated the problem of the ascent, and the men not only slipped back, but stuck fast in the mire. Along the crest of the plateau ran a sort of trench whose presence it was impossible for the distant observer to divine.' Victor Hugo -"Les Miserables" 'Chapter VII. Napoleon in a Good Humor' ( http://www.online-literature.com/victor_hugo/les_miserables/77/ )
On Cotton's map of the battlefield (left), drawn for 'Cotton's Voice from Waterloo' (1854) he depicts a broad black line around the area now containing the Lion Mound. In the associated key (by the red circle beneath the map) he states that this is the 'Boundary of the ground taken to form the mound of the Lion'. The map is a relatively accurate copy of the actual area and so one might assume that the line is also an accurate representation of the edge of this area of disturbance (The red line shows new data - see below)
When the data from a LIDAR survey (http://geoportail.wallonie.be/) of the area is analysed (upper left) one can see that this line is still evident in the disturbed soil (highlighted upper right). It is not, however, in the same location as that shown on the Cotton map as a sumperimposition of the LIDAR interpretation clearly shows (see Cotton map above). The LIDAR data is therefore a true and accurate location of the boundary of this area as suggested by the Cotton map.
Judging by the height of one of the fractions of unclaimed ground, on which the Gordon Monument now stands, (shown top right on the LIDAR data, and in the old illustration, left) the extent of this removal becomes evident.