1. I agree there, but that doesn't make it excusable, really.
2. The cavalry wasn't Belgian at all and the charge did not happen like described in Sharpe's waterloo.
The book is complete blabla anyway; I'm rereading it now, and yet again I'm surprises at the amount of historical errors.
3. Not sure what your point is. Belgium had been part of the HRE for some 200 years.
4. You are more then welcome to join in :p
Bylandt's brigade actually fell back from their dangerous position, on orders of general Perponcher. We call it a tactical retreat (they formed up between Picton and the Nassau brigade). Siborne calls it a complete rout. Now, kator, whats it in your opinion?
I'm glad you made it an opinion, because every retreat is "Tactical" anyone can claim that with any evidence as "Tactical" to one person is "Fleeing" in another.
For example Good and bad are just opinions and points of view, you will always have arguments on this and no-one is right at all as they are just opinonated sides of an argument.
The fact is through Neutrality "They retreated", this is un-refutable fact, no matter how you look at it plain and simple retreat, the Biased's come in through "Heroically" or "Cowardly". Now in order for for a "Break" the regiment must of lost cohesion at some point, in order to retreat Cohesion must be lost in order to turn around and move in the opposite direction of advancement.
"The Hussars were Dutch and the Red Lancers completely French - with the exception of a few senior Dutch officers" Did you or did you not say this? which would mean the French were lead by Dutch officers? Therefore countrymen?
Also about Belgium, Flanders was fought over by HRE, Spain and France through Burgundy and the Habsburg and Valois wars. Always loved that part of History, so much more going on.
In My opinion I'd call it a rout, why? because you never retreat unless you are loosing. For example the Blue Coats in the English Civil war, although outnumbered about 20 to one Sat in formation and kept fighting, wave after wave of parlimentarians until finally they broke and routed.
The only tactical retreat i've seen is a luring manouver when conflict dosn't really happen but infact lies are planted and are enforced to try and lure in an enemy, such as the battle of 1066 of Hastings (Although not really there at all) when the accidental routing of Williams left flank resulted in trapping of Saxon warriors ... to which he then used to purposefuly thin out the lines of Harold's Army.
In this case with the Dutch without having any purpose other than to save their own skins I would count it as Routing.
