William Siborne William Siborne , Sibourne or Siborn ( 15 October 1797 – 9 January 1849 ) was a British officer and military historian whose most notable work was a history of the Waterloo campaign . Early life . William Siborne was the son of Benjamin Siborne , a captain in the 9th ( East Norfolk ) regiment born in Greenwich circa 1771 . His father had been wounded at the battle of Nivelle in the Peninsular War . William Siborne graduated from the Royal Military College , Sandhurst in 1814 , having been commissioned as an ensign in the same regiment ( renamed the 9th Regiment of Foot in 1782 ) on 9 September 1813 , before it joined the 2nd battalion at Canterbury then Chatham and finally Sheerness in 1815 . Military career . In August 1815 , he was sent to France to join the Duke of Wellington ' s army of occupation , doing duty in the Camp of Boulogne , near Paris . He obtained the rank of lieutenant in November 1815 , but was put on half pay from March 1817 , when his regiment was reduced to one battalion . In September 1820 , he undertook a secret mission in Germany on behalf of the Treasury . Two years later , he published his first book , " Instructions for Civil and Military Surveyors in Topographical Plan - drawing " . In July 1824 , he married Helen Aitken , daughter of a Scottish banker and colonel of the militia . They subsequently had a son and daughter . On 11 November 1824 , he was gazetted to the 47th ( Lancashire ) regiment , this being backdated to November 1815 , and went on leave in Europe . In March 1826 , he was appointed as assistant military secretary to the Commander - in - Chief , Ireland ( first Lieutenant - General Sir George Murray , then Sir John Byng , then Sir Richard Hussey Vivian and finally Sir Edward Blakeney ) , holding this post until 1843 . In 1827 , he published his second book , " A Practical Treatise on Topographical Surveying and Drawing " , which was dedicated to his commander - in - chief Sir George Murray . History of Waterloo . Early in 1830 , Rowland Hill , 1st Viscount Hill , then commander - in - chief Britain , commissioned Siborne to construct a model of the battle of Waterloo . Siborne carried out extensive research , writing to officers in the allied forces present to obtain information on the positions of the troops at the crisis of the battle at 7 p . m . His attempts to get the same information from the ministry of war in Paris were politely ignored , while the Prince of Orange kindly supplied him with information on the Netherlands forces . The replies to the circular he sent out and the subsequent correspondence amount to the largest single collection of primary source material on the subject ever assembled . The British Museum purchased the collection after his death and it is now in the British Library . He spent eight months at the farm of La Haye - Sainte surveying the entire battlefield . The actual model took until 1838 to complete , partly because Siborne still had his main military duties to fulfill . Progress was interrupted in 1833 , by the new ministry ' s refusal to allocate new funds . Siborne financed the model himself from then onwards . During the construction of the Large Model , Peter Hofschroer claimed in a controversial book that Siborne earned the enmity of the Duke of Wellington , as Siborne ' s research called into question parts of the duke ' s version of events at Waterloo . This , claims Hofshroer , led to Siborne ' s attempts to get the government to honour its obligation to him being thwarted , his attempts to obtain his captaincy being obstructed and a smear campaign being undertaken against him . The final total cost was around £3000 , which Siborne had considerable difficulty in recovering , as the exhibitor of its first public display in London cheated him of much of his share of the revenues . Siborne also built a smaller model of a portion of the battlefield on a larger scale . The main model was purchased by the Royal United Service Institution after his death , and is now in the Changing the World gallery at the National Army Museum , London . The smaller , or so - called New Model , is on display at the Royal Armouries Museum . Siborne made use of the considerable amount of material he assembled to write his third book , a history of the Waterloo campaign . It was first published in 1844 , and the 4th edition is still in print today . On 31 January 1840 , he purchased an unattached captaincy , although this was on half pay . He was now exhausted by his efforts but friends in the army obtained a sinecure for him as Secretary and Adjutant of the Royal Military Asylum at Chelsea . He took up his post in November 1843 , where he remained until his death . He is buried at Brompton Cemetery . His second son Henry Taylor Siborne later published a selection of the letters in his collection .