Waterloo Soldier

The remains were discovered in 2012 during archaeological excavations carried out on the construction site of a new car park created at the approach of the bicentenary of the battle in June 2015.

[1] It is believed the remains are those of a 23-year-old soldier from Hanover, fighting in the King's German Legion made of exiled Hanoverians who fought as part of the Duke of Wellington's army.

[6] This is due to a habit that was widespread in the 1830s and 1840s: human bones were considered as a great fertilizer for the soil to grow crops, with the consequence that the area around Waterloo was intensively searched for skeletons of soldiers.

[6][7][8][9] Historian John Sadler states that "Many who died that day in Waterloo were buried in shallow graves but their bodies were later disinterred and their skeletons taken.

[10] Fertiliser companies raided other Napoleonic battlefields like Austerlitz and Leipzig, where the bones of fallen soldiers and horses were removed and shipped, usually to Hull, and on to bone-grinders, many in Doncaster.

[1] The site is located a few hundred metres from the Farm of Mont-Saint-Jean, which that day housed an English field hospital (the infirmary of the Duke of Wellington's army), and close to the troops of the Sovereign Principality of the United Netherlands, of the Electorate of Hanover (the King's German Legion) and of Brunswick[1][13][15] A lead bullet found in the right lung was most likely the cause of death and, from the beginning, suggested that the skeleton belonged to a soldier who died during the Battle of Waterloo.

[16] The absence of metal buttons, on the other hand, indicates that the soldier was not wearing a uniform jacket when he was buried: it is possible that it was removed during the examination of his wounds.

[20] The dimensions of the femur of the individual indicate a height of approximately 1.61 m.[20][21] The soldier was relatively frail and slightly hunchbacked, which would have rendered him not acceptable for military service in most modern armies.

[27][22] The Welsh historian Gareth Glover, a Waterloo specialist, went further and advanced the identity of the deceased soldier by consulting archives:[6][29] for him, it would be Friedrich Brandt, 23 years old, a soldier of the King's German Legion, a unit composed of Hanoverians (Germans) loyal to the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland also the Elector of Hanover, George III.

[2] On the Belgian side, the institution insists the identity of the dead soldier is unknown,[2] and the decision is justified as follows: "The issue of his presence at the Memorial was discussed within the design team, as well as among the various researchers who were looking at him.

Ultimately, it seemed to everybody that the greatest homage that could be paid to him was to consider him, with the respect to which he is entitled and that the museum exhibit has sought to ensure, as the anonymous and silent representative of the men who perished that day in the same tragic circumstances".

[2] Gareth Glover stresses that the corpse "remains unnamed as the Belgian archaeologists will not agree that the box was 'definitely' belonging to the skeleton; although they offer no explanation why it was placed in the ground with the individual burial if it wasn't his property".