Bones discovered in Waterloo two centuries after the battle

Historians estimate that more than 20,000 soldiers were killed at Waterloo, 20 km south of Brussels, on June 18, 1815 alone, when the mainly Anglo-Dutch allied troops under the authority of the Duke of Wellington pushed back Napoleonic battalions.

This is one of the worst armed confrontations in history, which put an end to Bonaparte's dreams of a great empire.

There were also tens of thousands of injuries.

An archaeological mission led by British researchers has unearthed new human bones at the site of the Battle of Waterloo, Belgium, a discovery described as "incredibly rare" more than two centuries after the fact.

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The discovery of new bones was made around the farm of Mont Saint-Jean, where the English Wellington had established at the time the main field hospital of the Allies.

“We found what looks like a complete human skeleton.

And, next to that, another amputated leg.

We don't know if the body was brought here by the neighborhood or if it was an injured person who died in hospital,"

said Tony Pollard, a professor at the University of Glasgow, one of the directors of the assignment.

“On the Napoleonic battlefields, this kind of very old trace is incredibly rare.

This is the first time that we have faced a large pit

,” added the archaeologist.

This excavation project, which associates the administration of the Walloon region with the charity Waterloo Uncovered - bringing together archaeologists, archeology students, soldiers and veterans - was launched in 2015 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the battle.

Already in 2019, the remains of three amputated legs had been discovered on the site.

The search campaign was then interrupted due to the coronavirus crisis.

It is supposed to be repeated every year in Waterloo for two weeks, said the Belga press agency.

Eva Collignon, a Belgian archaeologist associated with the mission, explained that the bones discovered had probably been gathered

in a ditch near the field hospital, so high was the number of victims.