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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6281
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The bare bones of battle
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A story develops that I find truly shocking.
What happened to the dead of Waterloo ?
Exhumed from mass graves and ground down to make fertiliser for sugar beet agriculture, apparently .
This is not exactly a revelation : for a long time there’ve been lurid tales of “ Waterloo teeth “ supplied to the British suffering from dental decay. A ghastly thought ! But the plot thickens. It was the demand for sugar that caused a lot of that dental decay, and it was that very same demand that resulted in an explosion in the price of bone, as fertiliser for the sugar beet farming . This sugar beet became increasingly profitable to farm as a source of sugar. Closer to home than the cane grown produce of the West Indies, with iits controversial slave labour and its huge transport costs.
The hetacombs of the Napoleonic battlefields were a major source of supply of bones. This explains why Waterloo and other battlefields of that era do not yield the mass graves that we would expect.
Go to Solferino and you’ll see the huge ossuary where thousands of skeletons are on display. Obviously, Gettysburg and other civil war battlefields show respect for decent interment, with cemeteries to attest.
Is this attributable to a greater value placed on the respect for soldiers and humanitarian ethics as the nineteenth century moved on ?
Or might it be considerations of hygiene, or both ?
Macabre, but fascinating .
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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Brian Grafton
Victoria
BC Canada
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Posts: 4671
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The bare bones of battle
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Utterly fascinating, Phil! Can you give a link to the developing story, or am I being somewhat obtuse here?
Indulge me, please: this is not an attack or your post, since I know little about the dead at Waterloo, or at any of the other “dense” slaughtered in fixed, one-day battles when the clash of arms led to butchery. I also know little about botanical knowledge of the time (or of the current time, for that matter ). I certainly wasn’t aware that agricultural science was advanced to the level suggested. While accepting that farmers recognized the benefits of dunging and drainage and irrigation, I had thought even as late as 1815 there was sufficient misuse and overuse of good land to argue most agri-practices were based on lore rather than science. Am I raising issues where none exist?
At least some of the on-going wars between European powers through the last half of the 18th century was based on control of the spice and sugar trade. At least some argue that Barbados, in the late 18th century, was deemed by the British treasury to be more significant as a holding than the 13 North American colonies. So when did this realization that sugar beets could provide sugar to replace the cane sugar of the Caribbean appear? Clearly, it happened rather rapidly; British interests capable of funding a long war would not fight for cane harvests if local beet harvests would provide the same product. And how did folks – farmers, land barons, etc. – know that bone meal would improve the yield?
Beets had been around, I assume, for centuries: a national dish like Borscht does not appear rapidly, but typically only through a regular supply available to peasants in sufficient measure to keep them alive through the worst of times. I assume the bone meal provided nutrients to enhance the sweetness of the beets, or that it provided just correct the drainage for beet fields. But was there something else?
Sorry, but my post leaves behind one of the issues implicit in your post: why were the bodies of the dead of Waterloo not respected?
Cheers, Brian G
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"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Walt Kelly.
"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things" Bumper sticker.
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6281
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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Brian,
There is a podcast under the aegis of Dan Snow that deals with this. It left me astonished and actually rather disturbed. I’ll try and refer to the link.
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6281
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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A PM sent to you, Brian.
If you know how to pitch the link onto this thread, please do so.
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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DT509er
Santa Rosa
CA USA
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Posts: 1365
Joined: 2005
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The bare bones of battle
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Quote: A story develops that I find truly shocking.
What happened to the dead of Waterloo ?
Exhumed from mass graves and ground down to make fertiliser for sugar beet agriculture, apparently .
This is not exactly a revelation : for a long time there’ve been lurid tales of “ Waterloo teeth “ supplied to the British suffering from dental decay. A ghastly thought ! But the plot thickens. It was the demand for sugar that caused a lot of that dental decay, and it was that very same demand that resulted in an explosion in the price of bone, as fertiliser for the sugar beet farming . This sugar beet became increasingly profitable to farm as a source of sugar. Closer to home than the cane grown produce of the West Indies, with iits controversial slave labour and its huge transport costs.
The hetacombs of the Napoleonic battlefields were a major source of supply of bones. This explains why Waterloo and other battlefields of that era do not yield the mass graves that we would expect.
Go to Solferino and you’ll see the huge ossuary where thousands of skeletons are on display. Obviously, Gettysburg and other civil war battlefields show respect for decent interment, with cemeteries to attest.
Is this attributable to a greater value placed on the respect for soldiers and humanitarian ethics as the nineteenth century moved on ?
Or might it be considerations of hygiene, or both ?
Macabre, but fascinating .
Regards, Phil
And yet here I am worrying because people still do not wash their hands after a bathroom/loo/dunny use.
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"American parachutists-devils in baggy pants..." German officer, Italy 1944.
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” Lord Ernest Rutherford
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Brian Grafton
Victoria
BC Canada
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Posts: 4671
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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Phil, got your link. Hope to get time to listen this weekend.
Also hope this post works;
[Read More]
Cheers
Brian G
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"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Walt Kelly.
"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things" Bumper sticker.
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6281
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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Brilliant, Brian : thanks !
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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Brian Grafton
Victoria
BC Canada
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Posts: 4671
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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Phil, just got a chance to listen to your listed podcast on bones. Interesting listen, I will admit. But do these three/four scholars have a focus to their research?
The podcast was without doubt a wonderful collection of various interests on historical battlefields. But I will admit that, IMHO, these folks are prepared to argue that the history of the bones are important while not offering one indication of why the discussion is significant in itself.
I’ve never spent much time studying human remains, except to note how they have been dealt with in paleolithic and neolithic periods. How primitive humans treat the bodies of their dead is a marker of the comparative richness of their cultural, religious and social development. For some time, our various Christian faiths (and indeed other faiths, both of the Book and not) have made much of rites of burial. South; feet to the east; all kinds of probable nonsense.
So my question, based on your podcast, is something along the lines of: “What was it that allowed the recycling of human bones acceptable? Did this occur at other battles across Europe and the UK? Did it apply to ACW dead, or was that 50 year gap sufficient to change attitudes towards the war dead?”
With that kind of question, of course, comes the inevitable question of – say, between 1715 and 1815 – whether soldiers were seen as simple expendables, and therefore outside receiving respect at death provided to the multitude.
I don’t think this furthers the issues you wished to raise. Sorry. But I did find the podcast an interesting listen.
Cheers
Brian G
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"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Walt Kelly.
"The Best Things in Life Aren't Things" Bumper sticker.
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Phil Andrade
London
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Posts: 6281
Joined: 2004
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The bare bones of battle
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Good to see that you found it interesting, Brian.
Certainly this did not apply to the battlefields of the American Civil War : quite to the contrary, I’ve been astonished to read about the desperate efforts the soldiers of that war went to in order to recover and inter their dead comrades. Volunteer citizen armies, very often recruited from close knit communities, with kith and kin serving together: a recipe for upholding standards of decency in respect of striving for Christian burial.
This grisly Waterloo aftermath is , I’m convinced, a feature of the time and place, and is predicated on the demands of agriculture, especially the production of sugar by use of beets. The practice was facilitated by proximity of Northern European ports . Folklore has it that British merchants were conspicuous in the trade.
Fertiliser for Yorkshire farms was sought after. As to the lurid tales of dentures , who knows ?
Alas poor Yorik !
Might it be that the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire was in some way connected to the impact of this sugar beet production in France, Flanders and the Low Countries, the so called “ Cockpit of Europe” ?
West Indies sugar no longer so profitable with a source so near to hand ?
What a way to implement recycling !
It’s a thought, isn’t it, that the dead of Waterloo hastened the end of slavery ?
Regards, Phil
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"Egad, sir, I do not know whether you will die on the gallows or of the pox!"
"That will depend, my Lord, on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress."
Earl of Sandwich and John Wilkes
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