Monitoring Desk
ISLAMABAD/BELGIUM: After more than 200 years of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, the skeletal remains of soldiers killed on that famed battleground continue to fascinate Belgian experts and researchers, who use them to look back at that historical period.
One such historian, Bernard Wilkin, exclaimed, “so many bones; it’s unique!” as he stood in front of a table of forensic pathologists holding three femurs, two skulls, and hip bones.
He was in an autopsy room in eastern Belgium, where tests were being conducted on the skeletal remains to find out which four soldiers belonged to which regions came from.
Half a dozen European nationalities represented the battle of Waterloo
That is a challenge as half a dozen European nationalities were represented in the military ranks at the battle of Waterloo, located 20 kilometers south of Brussels. Around 20,000 soldiers died in that battle on June 18, 1815, which ended Napoleon Bonaparte’s plans to conquer Europe and establish a vast empire.
Since then, historians have studied the conflict. Thanks to developments in the fields of genetics, medicine, and scanning, researchers can now piece together pages from the past from the remains buried in the ground.
Archeological excavations have helped recover some of those remains. For instance, one last year allowed the reconstruction of a skeleton discovered close to a field hospital the British Duke of Wellington had established. Wilkin was able to access the remains through a different path.
