If you come across one of those 10 most decisive battles in human history lists … the Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815, invariably will be in there.

It was a victory for a coalition of forces, mostly British and Prussian, that marked the end of Napoleon’s bloody attempts to bring the whole of Europe under French control.

A year ago, the 200th anniversary was recognized with a large reenactment of the battle.

But the 201st anniversary? Not so much.

Waterloo still bears remembering, especially by the losers.

France has been a republic for most of the past 145 years, but the country has an odd blind spot in terms of its reverence for Napoleon Bonaparte, only too happy to celebrate the emperor’s numerous victories on one of Paris’s great landmarks, the Arc de Triomph.

But Waterloo? Napoleon’s biggest and last defeat?

The French would prefer not to be reminded.

A year ago, when Belgian authorities saw a chance to capitalize on the 200th anniversary of the battle, France peevishly blocked a Belgian plan to produce special two-euro coins commemorating the battle.

As I noted at greater length a year ago, France is still touchy about losing that battle — even if it meant an end to a system of one-man rule in a country now fiercely democratic.

A minister said, of Belgium’s coin plan, that Waterloo “had a deep and damaging resonance in the collective French consciousness”.

Well.

French hopes for limiting further damage to their collective consciousness is the years of time.

Some of us military history wonks will never forget Waterloo, just as we will not forget D-Day (1944) or the Battle of Agincourt (1415) or the Battle of Cannae (216 BC).

But once you get past the bicentennial of a big event, it seems as if humans tend not to remember as well as they had during this first couple of centuries.

If there were any reenactments of Waterloo this year … I see no mention of them on the web.

Waterloo may be on its way out of the cycle of history. Perhaps the 250th anniversary will be ignored completely. The French would like that.