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These Times History Took a Turn for the Batty

Khalid Elhassan November 3, 2019 34 min

5. The Undignified Fate of the Fallen of Waterloo

Nowadays, we are used to the notion of honoring and lauding those killed in war. That can be readily seen in the solemnity surrounding the various memorials of the Unknown Soldier around the world, or in the reverence and care attendant upon the upkeep of war cemeteries.

However, it was not always like that. Take the Battle of Waterloo, 1815, which ended decades of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and established the broad outlines of European geopolitics for nearly a century. As seen below, the fallen of that battle literally ended up getting sold as fertilizer.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.