The News from Waterloo. The race to tell Britain of Wellington Victory by Brian Cathcart.2015 307pg

 The race to tell Britain of Wellington Victory 5/11/18

There is a lot of myth on how this news reached London.
In Brussels there were first reports of defeat and the residents began to flee. The decisive battle was over at 8pm but even the next morning the news had not reached Brussels.
Optical telegraph started in France in 1793 this was a system relaying semaphore type signals and was adapted by the British Admiralty  in 1796.  Morse code 1837 was invented in America.
Roads in England were in a bad state until the Turnpike Act of 1766 and 1773.  In 1815 MacAdam improved the road surface.
News in the press in those days were "aggregator" relaying material from other papers or the parliamentary debates of the night before were in the press in the morning. A tax was paid on newspapers making them expensive so that the masses never got them. The Post Office had control of all information from abroad and if reports by passed them, the reporter could be accused of libel.
The battle had ended at 8pm.The person carrying the official Wellington letter was Major Henry Persy and this privilege indicated he was getting a promotion. The official news took a week to get there and the Post Office only delivered the soldiers letters later. Meanwhile in Ghent kings waited not knowing if they should flee from Napoleon. First  there was the battle of Quatra  Bras with big losses and a few days later Waterloo.
2 Napoleon eagles(like Roman ones) were sent to show victory. When Napoleon was sent to Elba Louis XVIII had all of these ceremoniously burned so these were new ones.
Printing had arrived in Fleet Street 300 years earlier when William Caxtons protégé Wynkyn de Worde set up a press.There were 54 papers in London at the time. An average paper  had a circulation of  5000, it was printed on cotton paper which was durable and was passed around and read for over a week.  James Perry a Scot built the Chronicle and he had predicted Napoleon's demise after the 1812 Russian disaster but he did not like Britain reinstating  ancien regime Bourbons and was considered unpatriotic. John Stoddard of the Post was extremely anti Napoleon. Printing could produce a maximum of 24 sheets an hour but The Times was the first to take the cylinder steam powered printing press that could print 1100 per hour.
In 1814 de Bourg had brought a false story that Paris  had fallen when it took another few month for this to happen so London was very skeptical when Daniel Sutton a shipper returned from Belgium and reported the Victory against Napoleon. Daniel Sutton's father was a physician who promoted small pox vaccinations.
The French press told of Napoleons victory so both in London and Paris there were celebrations. C arrived with news of the victory but was not believed he was correct even though he had left before the battle ended. It took almost a week after the battle till Persy arrived with the official news.
At this time Franz Mesmer described hypnotism.
Once Napoleon was on Elba, parliament  was demanding the benefits of peace as new taxes had be taken to pay for the war which was done half heartedly. Winning the war these bonds would be worth more. Britain instead of sending many troops had sent money for others countries to fight.
Now the government gave full support to the army by raising loans with government bonds. The 1812 War had ended and troops were brought directly from Louisiana to Belgium.
Nathan Rothchild made a lot of money by knowing ahead of the others of the Waterloo victory. In 1903 Jerome de Rothchild Nathan grandson said that Nathan owned boats that went to Europe and had asked the captains to bring back foreign newspapers and in a Dutch paper there was a report of the victory.
The Regent was the first to learn of a family loss as his brother in law Duke of Brunswick was killed..
        Henry Percy's ship too 26 hours to cross the channel in bad weather. It took till 1820 till steam paddle ships crosses and till after 1830 for the first locomotive. Francis Ronald in 1815in London discovered sending electical  impulses along a wire but the admiralty rejected his idea and it took till 1838 to get the electric telegraph.
Napoleon tried to escape to America but was blocked by the HMS Bellaorphon and sent to St. Helena. The French crown was given to Louis's XVIII son. Louis died in 1824.
The Prince Regent ruling in England from 1820 till 1830. Castlereagh took his own life in 1821. Strand bridge was renamed Waterloo Bridge in 1821. Wellington died in 1852 and over a million people watched the funeral procession. Henry Persy retired from the army in 1821 became an MP, he had 2 out of wedlock sons in France  that  were with him when he died in 1825. The economist David Ricardo did well on the government bonds. Nathan Rothschild claimed that he made wealth by buying and moving gold coin to the troops.