Since Wednesday 4 September a team of British archeologists has been at work on and around the site of the Battle of Waterloo in the Walloon Brabant municipality of Braine-l’Alleud. It was there that 209 years ago in 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the British, Dutch, Hanoverian forces under the command of the British Duke of Wellington and Prussian forces under the command of Field Marshall von Blücher.
The excavations are primarily taking place at a site where a farmhouse stood at the time of the Battle of Waterloo.
The farmhouse was used by British troops used as a field hospital. In the past, the remains of amputated legs and arms of what are believed to have been British soldiers have been found several times in the vicinity of the site.
The British archaeologists hope that these latest excavations will provide more information about how seriously injured soldiers were treated and cared for at the field hospital 209 years ago.
Although this is their primary aim the archeologist say that any other finds that provide information of the Battle from a British perspective are also very welcome. The excavations that got under way on Wednesday are expected to continue for around another week.