Waterloo or not...

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Incredible as it may seem!~after Waterloo there was a run on false teeth …


Waterloo Teeth – the latest fashion

They say that, on the day after the battle, you couldn’t find a pair of pliers for love nor money. Not for fifty miles around. The new fashion – in London, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and New York – was for dentures fitted with real teeth. And there, on those few square miles of Belgian soil, lay no less than 50,000 potential donors, most of them dead, the rest so close to it that it didn’t much matter. It was the Etruscans, apparently, who first invented dentures – around 700 BC. Teeth from another person or an animal, such as an ox, were inserted into a band of gold with a metal pin and fitted on to the remaining teeth. Dentures remained an option only for the wealthy as they were expensive to make. They appeared again in the 18th Century when sugar addiction had taken a dreadful toll of Europe’s teeth. Fans became popular, not to keep their owners cool, but to waft away the stench of gum disease. False teeth became popular once more. And perhaps the most famous complete set of dentures was that owned by George Washington. It’s pure myth that they were made of wood, of course. In truth, each tooth was carved from ivory, set into lead, and spring-loaded. Uncomfortable! After Waterloo, battlefield casualties became the main source of denture teeth until after the American Civil War. And, after Waterloo, a good incisor could fetch as much as two guineas – the equivalent, today, of around £300.
.

The valiant dead used for fertilize

The most recently discovered casualty of the battle was found in 2012 under a car park during the reconstruction of the Waterloo visitor centre. Historian Gareth Glover has pieced together all the available clues discovered with the skeleton and believes that the soldier was Friedrich Brandt, a Hanoverian fighting with the King’s German Legion. Brandt apparently suffered from curvature of the spine but he was killed by a musket ball – still lodged in his ribs when his body was found. This is the first completely intact skeleton to be found on the site for almost 200 years. And that’s no surprise since, until about fifty years after the battle, companies considered it “fair game” to dig up battlefield dead from their mass graves and grind down their bones for sale to local farmers as fertilizer!

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Please see https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q...5&&FORM=VRDGAR which is an excellent piece of detective work... and fascinating comparison of the cannon used by both sides and the effect of the weather. The film also discusses the ground vital to Wellingtons troops and how it was disastrous for Napoleon. Battle casualties and how the British quality of treatment had improved is discussed. The point when Ney who had taken over on the battlefield is examined showing a shocking error of judgement when he ordered a huge attack based on the false personal belief that the British were in retreat. This video is highly recommended.

[Jim McDougall]

Ibrahim thank you for the most interesting look into some of the other aspects of the various 'uses' and perspectives involved in both human remains and battlefield debris outside the 'souvenir' phenomenon.
While it is sometimes difficult to consider the rather dark and sometimes grisly elements of these circumstances, we remember that the weapons we study are also commonly involved in battles and warfare. Looking into the entire scope of these contexts is sometimes necessary for historians of arms, simply for perspective and understanding of the times, though many might consider such views sensationalized and reprehensible.

As someone who has gone through many historic references on battles and military history of campaigns, I always appreciate these insights, however harsh they might seem, as I more appreciate what these people went through.

I think of the apocryphal quote by Robert E. Lee , Confederate General (1862) ..
"...it is well that war is so terrible- lest we grow too fond of it".

And on the opposing Union side, General William Sherman,
"...war is hell".
That brief version removes the full context of what he actually said..
"...I am tired and sick of war. It's glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for vengeance and desolation. War is hell. "

[kronckew]

The only thing worse than a battle lost is a battle won. Arthur Wellesley, Aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, 1815.

Wellesley deliberately picked the battlefield, Napoleon was not at his best and did NOT know the field. The Duke planned the whole thing, including feigning the retreat, but it still was a close thing and had the Prussians been a bit late, or the intervening ground not soggy, we might all be speaking French.

Of course, he couldn't have done it without Col. Sharpe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4_1a6pBPIU

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Armour of a cuirasse du carabinier holed by a cannonball ..Waterloo.

[kronckew]

OUCH!

Bet that stung. probably for not very long tho. It's just a flesh wound.

A little duck tape, bit of baling wire, and some brass paint & the curass will be almost like new