Hanoverian Monument

Hanoverian war memorial on the Waterloo battlefield, erected 1818 — honors the King German Legion at the siege of La Haye Sainte.

The Hanoverian Monument stands near the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte on the Waterloo battlefield in Belgium, just meters from where Hanoverian troops fought one of the bloodiest close-quarters engagements of the battle on 18 June 1815. It was erected in 1818 by surviving officers of the King's German Legion — an elite British unit composed almost exclusively of Hanoverians. The monument commemorates 42 fallen German officers, including Colonel Christian von Ompteda, who died defending the farmhouse. La Haye Sainte was held by a small German garrison for hours against vastly superior French forces — a fight that military historians still cite as a tactical case study. Today the monument is protected as a Walloon cultural heritage site and lies along one of the marked walking routes across the Waterloo battlefield.