Napoleonic era
Complete Battle of Waterloo skeleton found
The rest of this dead person has not been disturbed for 200 years, which is a big exception.
© chris van [email protected] / PR
200 years after the Battle of Waterloo, only the second skeleton was found – because the corpses of tens of thousands of dead were horribly recycled after the battle.
More than 50,000 dead are said to have covered the fields around the towns of Waterloo and La Belle Alliance near Brussels when Napoleon’s last battle was over. Contemporary witnesses, writers and painters conjured up the horror of the next day, when the dead and the dying were slowly uncovered by ground fog. And yet the discovery of a skeleton is a sensation, it is only the second that archaeologists have found in all these years. There is a macabre reason for this. All those who fell for the glory and honor of the fatherland were turned into fertilizer in the years following the battle. Nothing remained of them. Before that, the teeth of the dead were broken out, they were exported to England and sold there as a macabre souvenir – as a hero’s teeth.
Hospital at the heart of the battle
The second complete skeleton from the Battle of Waterloo has now been found not far from the Mont Saint-Jean homestead. Mont Saint-Jean is on the same street as La Belle Alliance and La Haye Sante – in the center of the battle but behind Wellington’s line. A field hospital was set up there. ‘For us, this is an incredibly important discovery as only a single skeleton has been excavated to date,’ said Prof Tony Pollard, the project’s archaeological director.
He assumes that around 6,000 injured people were treated in the field hospital. The nationality of the deceased has not yet been clarified. British, Belgians and French were treated in the hospital. Limbs that had already been amputated were found at the site in 2019. The remains of three horses have now been found next to the dead man.
Contrary to what has been suggested, Pollard does not believe that the remains were simply dumped indiscriminately in a ditch. The carefully executed excavation indicates that this was a real grave and that the body was not simply buried. The horses were apparently injured and, when they could not be helped, were killed there. Veronique Moulaert, a Belgian archaeologist, said: “This complete skeleton changes the way we see these finds, because before it was considered hospital rubbish. Now we can see that they dug a big pit back then. They put a lot of work into it – the horses are on one side, the limbs in the middle and the whole skeleton on the other.” The fields where the battle raged were always used for agriculture. The associated movements of the soil meant that today only a few “undisturbed” finds are possible.
intervention of the Prussians
The heaviest fighting of the battle raged along the road just before the homestead. Napoleon threw everything he had against Wellington’s line here. The New Guard and eventually the veterans of the Old Guard. Under the onslaught of the Guards, the Allies’ position threatened to break in the afternoon. Wellington is said to have exclaimed. “I wish it were night or the Prussians were coming!” Luckily for him, the Prussians appeared on the opposite side of the battlefield. Their impetuous flank attack decided the battle. Wellington later judged succinctly that Waterloo had been a close affair.
Napoleon’s era ended because of the negligence of his Marshal Emmanuel de Grouchy. He was supposed to pursue the Prussians under Blücher and prevent a union with Wellington. Though Grouchy heard the thunder of battle, he trotted after the Prussian army instead of putting his 50,000 soldiers between them and Napoleon. Fittingly, when Grouchy made the fatal decision, he was munching on a bowl of strawberries with whipped cream and champagne.