Most French casualty returns are incomplete or disordered, although Scipion preserves comparatively useful records. British administrative records make their own losses easier to confirm, even though discrepancies remain. Roughly seven thousand French losses, including about three thousand prisoners, should therefore be read as an approximation rather than an exact count. The British total of about twelve hundred is firmer, illustrating how archival survival shapes apparently precise battle statistics.
Notable Point · 2:51:44-2:52:37
Why the French casualty total remains approximate
Uneven surviving records make French losses less certain than British losses and require the battle's casualty totals to be treated as estimates.