The carnage and horror of the battle of Waterloo have been laid bare in an excavation by military veterans and archaeologists that has uncovered amputated limbs and the remains of horses which were shot to be put out of their misery.
At least 20,000 men – and possibly many more – were killed in the epic 1815 battle when the British military officer the Duke of Wellington and a European alliance defeated Napoleon’s French forces in a decisive and bloody encounter that determined the power balance in Europe for nearly a century.
More than halfway through a two-week dig at Mont-Saint-Jean farm, in Belgium, which served as Wellington’s field hospital, researchers have uncovered 15 severed limbs, the skeletons of seven horses and one and a half cows, in addition to the three horses and complete human skeleton uncovered at the same site in 2022.
Large formations of men and horses vs immense cannon batteries firing large iron balls, barrels filled with shrapnel and chains… yeah, severed limbs will be a thing.
As squares of musket men fend off cavalry charges, horses will die a lot. If you ever get the chance go see the reinactment of the battle at waterloo… it is impressive.
Yeah the headline kind of implies that these were new revelations. It’s pretty much what you’d expect though.