Battle of Waterloo Dig Turns Up 15 Limbs

At least 20,000 men lost their lives in the battle of Waterloo—and a handful of newly uncovered limbs belonging to a few of them is exposing the "carnage and horror" of the 1815 battle, reports the Guardian. The Duke of Wellington led the defeat of Napoleon, and military veterans and archaeologists who have been working at the site of his field hospital in Belgium say they have excavated 15 amputated limbs, the skeletons of seven horses, and one and a half cows, whose markings suggested they were butchered for food. The same site at Mont-Saint-Jean farm gave up three horses and a complete human skull two years prior.

Archaeologists described the excavation area as a "purposefully dug pit likely designed to quickly clear the hospital of gore." University of Glasgow archaeologist Tony Pollard said that when it comes to Napoleonic battlefields, this burial pit is unlike any other. "Nowhere else in the archaeological record do we have this combination of limbs, a burial, and euthanized horses." Historians believe about 500 limbs from soldiers who fought under Wellington were amputated at this location, and those on the dig say the sharpness of the cuts is striking. As for the fate of those men, it was "in the lap of the gods whether they lived or died." (More Waterloo stories.)