Scientists May Have Found Where the Bodies of Waterloo Went
On June 18, 1815, the Duke of Wellington defeated Napoleon’s army at Waterloo, marking the end of the First French Empire. For eight grueling hours, the armies exchanged cannon shots, gunfire and sabre strikes, leaving
50,000 soldiers captured, wounded or dead. The battle was one of the deadliest of the century, but to the bewilderment of archaeologists, only
one full skeleton has been found to this day.
In a study published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, an expert argues that the bodies haven’t been found because their bodies were used to make fertilizer.
Tony Pollard, author of the study and director of the Centre for Battlefield Archaeology at the University of Glasgow, used written accounts and artwork from early visitors to conclude that deceased soldiers were buried in several mass graves, each containing thousands of corpses.
“The bodies of the dead were clearly disposed of at numerous locations across the battlefield, so it is somewhat surprising that there is no reliable record of a mass grave ever being encountered,” says Pollard in a press release.
Pollard then collated newspaper clippings from the era to demonstrate that people commonly looted human bones and sold them to make fertilizer. For example, one clipping from
The London Observer in 1822 estimates that “more than a million bushels of ‘human and inhuman bones’ were imported from the continent of Europe into the port of Hull.”
“European battlefields may have provided a convenient source of bone that could be ground down into bone-meal, an effective form of fertilizer,” Pollard says in a press release. He adds that locals who watched or helped with the burials might have guided grave diggers to the grave sites.
“Many came to steal the belongings of the dead, some even stole teeth to make into dentures, while others came to simply observe what had happened,” Pollard says in a press release. “It’s likely that an agent of a purveyor of bones would arrive at the battlefield with high expectations of securing their prize.”
“On the basis of these accounts, backed up by the well attested importance of bone meal in the practice of agriculture, the emptying of mass graves at Waterloo in order to obtain bones seems feasible, and the likely conclusion,” Pollard concludes in a press release.
https://www.discovermagazine.com/th...-have-found-where-the-bodies-of-waterloo-went
From paywalled
Telegraph version:
“
The neighbourhood of Leipsic, Austerlitz, Waterloo, and of all the places where, during the late bloody war, the principal battles were fought, have been swept alike of the bones of the hero and of the horse which he rode.”
The account suggested most of the bones were sent to Doncaster, “...
and sold to farmers to manure their lands”.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...-finally-solve-mystery-missing-waterloo-dead/
maximus otter
