Napoleon: 'Unique' Site Reveals Bloody Cleanup After Emperor's Last Battle
An excavation has provided a snapshot into the gruesome aftermath of an epic battle that marked the final defeat of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
The dig took place at Mont-Saint-Jean farm in present-day Belgium, targeting an area that served as a field hospital during the Battle of Waterloo, which took place on June 18, 1815, in a location that was then part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The battle is notable as it ended a period of constant warfare lasting more than two decades between France and the other European powers and put a stop to Napoleon's attempts to dominate the continent.
The battle was fought between Napoleon's force, which numbered around 72,000 troops, and a European coalition army with a combined strength of roughly 118,000 soldiers that consisted of men from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Hanover, the Duchy of Nassau, the Duchy of Brunswick and the Kingdom of Prussia.
Field Marshal Gebhard von Blücher headed the Prussian force of the coalition army, while the rest of the troops were under the command of Anglo-Irish Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington.
Wellington's army set up the field hospital that was the target of the recent excavation at Mont-Saint-Jean. The dig was conducted by veteran support charity Waterloo Uncovered. In addition to archaeologists, it involved military veterans and serving personnel from the U.S., U.K. and the Netherlands who suffer from the mental and physical impacts of their service.
The excavation unearthed a "unique" trench that appears to have been dug to help clear the field hospital after the battle, during which tens of thousands of men and scores of horses were killed.
Inside the trench, the dig team found human and animal remains separated by a barrier of ammunition boxes stripped from soldiers' leather satchels.
At the northern end of the trench, the team uncovered the remains of an ox and at least seven horses. Some of the horses show signs of being butchered, while others appear to have been euthanized—likely shot in the head with a musket ball.
To the south, the team found a pile of amputated human limbs, many of which still contain evidence of removal by the surgeon's saw. These were laid alongside a complete human skeleton that was excavated in 2022—only the second ever found from the battle site.
On Friday morning, the team also lifted a cannonball embedded in the rib cage of a horse found at the northern end of the trench, Waterloo Uncovered spokesperson Hattie Ford told Newsweek.
"Initially, we believed that the horse was led still alive into the trench and was euthanized via a musket ball to the head like the other horses discovered there," Ford said.
But the team's metal detectorists did not find a musket ball in the animal's skull, meaning it was likely killed by the cannonball somewhere else and dragged into the trench afterward.
"I can't think of any other site that has this combination of elements—it's truly unique, within Napoleonic archaeology and beyond," archaeological director Tony Pollard with the University of Glasgow in Scotland said in a press release.
"The layout of the trench, with all animal remains on one side of the ammunition box barrier and all the human remains on the other, strongly suggests that the men who buried this individual attempted to offer him a level of dignity and respect despite the horrific scene they would have found themselves facing while clearing the field hospital of the dead."
