Blog Number 48

There was report in several newspapers yesterday (18th June, the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo), of a report by Professor Tony Pollard of Glasgow University regarding one of the great mysteries of the battle. He is a professor of conflict history and archaeology. The mystery is: what happened to all the bodies? Not, I hasten to add,  were they not incinerated  or buried, but why are there no bones left for modern archaeologists working on Waterloo to find? 

And his theory has shaken my understanding of the battle and its aftermath.

(Incidentally, there is a very good book on the aftermath by Paul O'Keefe titled,  no surprises, " Waterloo - The Aftermath.")

It is  matter of record that looters and thieves were active virtually as soon as the last shots were fired and the French army chased from the field. Within hours the bodies were stripped of everything, including in some cases, teeth.

Professor Pollard's view,  is both startling and gruesome, beyond macabre. It is quite likely the bones were dug up from the very visible graves that peppered the fields and turned into fertiliser, thence imported for manuring farms in Britain and other countries. Not just bones from Waterloo but also from other Napoleonic battle fields.  Apparently this is not a new theory but seems to be the emerging reason for the lack of discoveries on the field itself. The mind's imaginings of mass graves being opened up after a suitable period for decomposition and the contents being loaded up and carted off down the Brussels Road make me shudder. 

It seems incredible at this remote distance in time to imagine a trade in dead soldier's bones for crop fertiliser. The later Victorian practice of sending children up chimney's with brushes to sweep soot hardly registers in comparison. I can understand horses being "recycled" in the modern parlance , in this way but the bodies themselves seems horrific, beyond callous. 

But perhaps I'm being naive? I write fiction set in Roman Britain, so what do I imagine happened to the vanquished of those times? Well, they lived in more brutal times than the soldiers of George, the Prince Regent. I guess brutal is as brutal does. A green and pleasant land indeed.