CNN —
Bones believed to belong to soldiers killed at the Battle of Waterloo have been discovered in an attic in Belgium.
Scientists are now analyzing the human remains to learn more about the identity of the deceased.
The battle was fought on June 18, 1815 near the village of Waterloo, south of Brussels. Napoleon Bonaparte was finally defeated here by the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-strong Allied army, supported by 45,000 Prussians under Gebhard von Blücher.
Although more than 10,000 men are believed to have died during the battle, only two bodies have been discovered so far.
Historians recently revealed that many of those killed at Waterloo were later dug up by farmers who sold their remains to the sugar industry for use in the industrial process.
Last November, Bernard Wilkin, a senior researcher at the State Archives of Belgium, was giving a lecture in Waterloo on the process – in which the bones were used as a kind of charcoal in sugar purification – when something amazing happened.
After the lecture, he told CNN, “This old man came up to me and said, ‘Dr. Wilkin, I have bones of those Prussians in my attic.'”
The man, who wishes to remain anonymous, showed Wilkin pictures of the bones and invited him to his home near the battlefield at Plancenoit, where Napoleon’s forces faced the Prussians.
A few days later, Wilkin visited the man at his home and faced the remains the man had had since the 1980s. He explained that he was running a “small private museum” at the time and was given the remains to display by a friend who had found them a few years earlier.
Although he was a collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, the man told Wilkin he “ethically” couldn’t bring himself to display the remains, so he stored them in his attic.
Wilkin said of the man, who lives alone: ”He suddenly decided that he was old and could die in the next few years, and he was afraid of what would happen to the bones. When he saw the research we published last summer, he thought, ‘This guy knows bones and the Napoleonic Wars and he works for the government.’”
Wilkin said he felt a “mixture of surprise and emotion” when he saw the remains.
“One of the skulls is badly damaged by a sword or a bayonet, so it was a very brutal way of dying,” he said.
Initial testing indicated that the remains belonged to at least four soldiers. Items found near the bones, including leather and bone buttons, and the location where they were found suggested that some of the dead were Prussian soldiers.
Wilkin said, “At the end of the day he gave me all the boxes to study with. One of his requests was for me to give her a dignified burial.”
That’s certainly the plan, but right now the remains are undergoing extensive forensic testing in Liege, where Wilkin is stationed. Scientists hope to extract DNA to identify the dead. They also hope to make facial reconstructions of at least one of the skulls.
Rob Schäfer, a German military historian, is working with Wilkin to try to learn more about the soldiers, while also working with the German War Graves Commission Association.
He told CNN, “What fascinates me the most is that when you look at art from the 19th century, where there is conflict, it’s all very interesting and abstract. As a casual observer, one might get the impression that it wasn’t all that bad, but this one particular skull with massive facial trauma shows for the first time just how violent the age really was.”
Schäfer told CNN there was a 20 to 30 percent chance of extracting DNA from the remains.
He said: “It’s a long road, but if we’re successful, the next goal is to get the DNA loaded into databases so people can get in touch if they find they’re related.”
After finding the bones in the attic, another surprise awaited Wilkin.
“When I was visiting, the man said to me, ‘By the way, I have another friend who probably has four British soldiers who he spotted at the (metal) detector next to Lion’s Mound (on the battlefield)’,” he said .
“I was flabbergasted, that got really crazy.”
Wilkin told CNN these bones were later examined by Dominique Bosquet, an archaeologist with the Walloon Heritage Authority. They have since been moved to Brussels, where they are being studied by Bosquet and a team from the Natural History Museum and the University of Brussels.
The finds have led Wilkin and his colleagues to believe that more people living near the battlefield may have skeletons in their closets.
“It’s very clear that we need to talk to the people who have lived there for generations,” he said, adding, “We’re pretty sure more bones need to be returned to the Belgian authorities.”