File No.:
Case File # 20 Title: "The dead soldiers
in the Waterloo well" Subject:
Post 1815 Waterloo battle tale
having it that 300 French
casualties had been thrown into
a water well
on the Hougoumont
Farm located in the center of
the battlefield. Investigation made at:
Hougoumont Farm, Chemin du
Goumont 1, 1420 Braine-l'Alleud,
Belgium GPS Location:
50°40'15.1"N 4°23'40.8"E Period Covered: 18JUN1815 Date:15FEB2019 Case Classification:
Battlefield myth Status of Case: Solved
Introduction:
In his book "Les Misérables" written
in 1862, Belgian author Victor Hugo
described that after the Battle of
Waterloo on 18JUN1815 the bodies of
three hundred French soldiers had
been thrown down a well in
Hougoumont, as a quick burial to
protect the survivors from an
outbreak of diseases. This is the
story:
"This well was deep, and it was
turned into a sepulcher. Three
hundred dead bodies were cast into
it. With too much haste perhaps.
Were they all dead? Legend says they
were not.
It seems that on the night
succeeding the interment, feeble
voices were heard calling from the
well."
Although Les Misérables is known to
contain a number of historical
inaccuracies, the tale of 300 French
soldiers in the Hougoumont Farm
became a legend. In early 20th
century postcards tourists are
reminded of the "puits aux cadavres"
and that bodies were thrown in the
well because the fire of the farm
hadn’t consumed all the dead.
Several contemporary publications
state that this story is a myth.
This agency looked into it.
(click to enlarge) Monument in
honor of Belgian author Victor
Hugo on the Waterloo battlefield
REASON FOR INVESTIGATION: In recent publications, the
myth of 300 corpses thrown into the
Hougoumont well is usually
considered untrue for three reasons: 1) No human remains were
found in the well when it was dug
out in the 1980's. 2) It is unlikely that 19th
century contemporaries would dispose
of cadavers (either animal or human)
in a potable water source; rendering
it poisonous. 3) The volume of the
Hougoumont water well would not be
sufficient to accommodate the mortal
remains of 300 French soldiers.
We didn’t find grounds to contest
the first two reasons for the
unlikelihood of the myth which
Victor Hugo created,
but we will
describe them here. We did however
investigate the claim that 300
soldiers would never fit in the
well.
SYNOPSIS: 1) No human remains in the well
On page 118 of author Gareth
Glover's 2014 book "Waterloo. Myth
and Reality" (Pen and Sword,
ISBN
978-1-78159-356-1) we read:
"The draw well at Hougoumont
Victor Hugo, in his epic description
of the battle, promoted the French
claim that numbers of dead and
wounded Frenchmen were heartlessly
thrown into the deep well of
Hougoumont to save burying them:
'
300 bodies were thrown down the
well … the faint cries of those not
yet dead haunting the memory …'
However in 1985 Derek Saunders
rediscovered and excavated the draw
well -
and discovered a few animal
bones but not a single human bone.
Another Victor Hugo myth debunked!"
2) Improbability of corpses
deliberately thrown in a
drinking water source
In "Waterloo Busting the Myths:
History essay, Untold Stories" (Jourdan
Publishing, 2015, ISBN
2390090907, 9782390090908)
historian Yves Vander Cruysen
wrote:
"Captain Mercer himself said
that his men discovered, on the
day after the battle, a good
well of uncontaminated water at
Hougoumont and they filled their
canteens there. He also went in
person to the scene to gather
enough
for the needy. The most
compelling evidence was supplied
by the archaeologist Derek P.
Saunders.
Performing deep
underground excavations in and
around the well, in 1980 and
1982, also having completely
emptied the well, he concluded
that it did not contain the
slightest sing of human remains.
QED …"
This is the description of
Station 6 “Well” within the
precinct walls, booklet of the
Hougoumont Project,
Tempora™ (as
issued to this agency in the
Hougoumont farm on January 30th
2016):
"The Hougoumont well has
become legendary.
In his novel, Les Misérables,
Victor Hugo wrote that the
bodies of French prisoners were
thrown into the well:
[…]
Considering that the well was
the only source of water for
Hougoumont, it is unthinkable
that it would be used as a
burial pit.
Somehow, the well and the wooden
dovecote that surrounded it
survived the battle, but by the
time the first photographs of
Hougoumont were taken only the
stone base remained and, perhaps
because of the grim
reputation
accorded it by Hugo, by the end
of the 19th century the entire
structure had gone.
In 1985 the
shaft was excavated by Derek
Saunders who found nothing but a
few sheeps’' ones.
Today, the
well head is flush with the
ground and the shaft protected
by a grating.
Today the farm has been restored
and a sign at an exhibit, shown
as the original wheel of the
Hougoumont farm
well, also says
that it is unthinkable that this
water source would be used as a
burial pit."
3) Well not large enough to hold
300 dead men
In an article titled "Excavations at
Hougoumont, The well or Les Puits
des Morts" published in The Journal
of the Waterloo Committee, Volume 5,
No. 2, September 1983 it is
reasoned:
"[...] Given a well with a depth
of some 60 feet, 300 bodies would
produce not only a filled and packed
well but a swaying column of bodies
extending some 77 feet above the
ground. To be fair one can only
assume that Victor
Hugo was only
repeating a story told to him by the
peasants who lived at Hougoumont in
1861, some of whom
claimed to have
been nearby on the 18th June 1815.
It does not take much imagination to
realise that the disposal of 300
bodies down a well at Hougoumont is
a most unlikely and impracticable
method of disposal.
There are
numerous accounts and contemporary
prints illustrating the common sense
attitude,
which was to strip the
body of all that may be sold or of
use,
then dig a shallow grave
immediately alongside and when
finished tip the body in and cover.
Why move or carry the body any
distance?
Apart from those wounded outside and
brought in, there would have been
very few dead inside the farm,
the
great majority were attackers who
fell outside the wall, it is on
record that most of these were
heaped up together with brushwood
from the badly damaged adjacent wood
and cremated.
These notes are being written at the
end of May 1983 whilst preparations
are under way for the dig to
commence
in June."
Dimensions of the Hougoumont well
in 1983
In the same Journal of the Waterloo
Committee, Derek P. Saunders (whose
initials are DPS) then Chairman of
the Association of Friends of the
Waterloo Committee, reports on his
excavation work at Hougoumont from
11JUN1983 to 21JUN1983:
"[...] DPS then climbed down to
fix the ladders – with an overlap to
enable one to step comfortably from
one
ladder to another on the way to
the bottom – found that all our
ladders together did not reach!
Had
to untie and then re-fix, by the way
an extra ladder was expected to
arrive from Germany.
No water at the
bottom of the well but whole area
very wet and slippery from the
months of rain preceeding our
arrival. 52’-0” to the bottom of the
well.
[...] Sunday 12th June – Very hot at
the top of the well and cold and
dark at the bottom. – diameter of
well now 5’-0” .
[...] Monday 13th June. -
[...] Gordon digging uncovered water at
the same depth as 1982 – level
remaining all day as we gradually
removed the fill – eventually
working from an ever decreasing
island, with 10” of water in the
remainder of the well.
[...] Friday 17th June.
[...] met the leader of a party
of ‘French cavalry’ who upon
learning of our activity advised us
that there was no water in the well.
"only rainwater".
[...] Saturday 18th June 83
[...]
Perhaps I should pause here &
endeavour to give an impression of
the conditions at the bottom of the
well. Imagine, you are over 50
feet below the ground, standing in a
stone chamber about 5 ft in
diameter,
narrowing off to 4 ft
diameter just above head level.
[...] We are nearly down to the 1815
level now and one becomes conscious
of a strong feeling for the history
of
the well that you are standing in
– originally excavated in 1380,
several centuries have passed by,
[...] Once again, I must say
‘incredibly’' it is still possible
to work at the bottom of the well
without the aid of artificial light.
To continue (no it is not over yet)
having at last got this stone on its
end into the bucket & secured it to
the handle with a piece of string –
you shout "take it away – slowly"
the distance from the pulley to the
bottom is now over 60 feet and the
pendulum effect is quite
pronouncing."
Current dimensions of the
Hougoumont well
Saunders report described the well
as 60 feet deep and 4 to 5 feet in
diameter in 1983.
The establishment that there were no
human remains in the well 170 years
after the battle and that it is a
bad
form to drop corpses into a used
water supply, still does not prove
it didn't happen.
Therefore this
agency obtained permission from the
owners of the Hougoumont Farm to
measure the depth and diameter of
the well.
(click
to enlarge) Measuring the depth and the
diameter through the bars protecting
the well shaft
On Friday 15FEB2019 we visited
Hougoumont and lowered a measuring
tape with a strong flashlight
attached to it, down the well. The
weather was clear with bright
sunlight and we were able to see the
bottom
of the well in the light of
the flashlight and also with the use
of a light sensitive camera.
We discovered that the bottom
of the well was dry with only tree
leaves, some wooden sticks and a
tennis ball there.
We also used an endoscope camera
to film the descent into the well:
Now & Then comparisons of the
well in early 20th century picture
postcards
(click
to enlarge) Postcards
attracting battlefield tourists,
capitalizing on the cadaver well
myth
For this publication we
use the continental European metric
system for measuring and
calculation.
We found that the well is 15 meters
and 70 centimeters deep and that the
diameter at ground level is 1 meter
and 31 centimeters, measured towards
the south gate and 1 meter and 36
centimeter measured towards the
formal gardens (average of 1 meter
33 1/2 centimeters).
(click
to enlarge) Depth (measured
twice for certainty) and diameter in
two directions
Volume of the Hougoumont well
The formula for calculating the
volume of a cylinder is π (pi or
3,1416) x (radius or half of the
diameter)² x height.
The Hougoumont well has a volume of
3,1416 x 66.8² x 1570 =
22(,009149)m³.
Math of the Myth: Volume of 300
human bodies Humans stacked in a cylindrical
shape are best visualized through
the 1930’s monolith sculpture by the
Norwegian artist Gustav Vigeland
(11APR1869 - 12MAR1943) in the
museum park in Oslo named after him:
On the highest point of the park, on
the Monolith Plateau, rise circular
stairs towards the sculpture.
The figural part, with 121 human
figures, male and female, is 14.12
meters tall and the total height,
including the plinth, is 17.3
meters.
To establish if 300 French military
aged (average of 22 years old) men
in the early 19th century would fit
in the cylindrical shaft of the
Hougoumont well we first discovered
that their average height would have
been 164,1 centimeters as published
in Steckel, Richard H. and Roderick
Floud (Eds.)
Health and Welfare during
Industrialization; University of
Chicago, 1997 ISBN 0-226-77156-3.
At 164 centimeters one 22 year old
soldier would weigh 61,025 kilograms
based on the
average of the Robinson, Miller,
Devine and Hamwi (ideal body weight)
formulas 300 men would then
weigh 18.307,5 kilograms.
Various sources put the
average density of a human body at
1.01 gram per cubic centimeters or
1 010 kilogram per cubic meter (m³)
which means that 300 men (18.307,5 /
1.01) had a net volume of
18(,126237) m³
CONCLUSION: The net volume of 300 French
Napoleonic soldiers is less than the
space inside the Hougoumont water
well.
But human bodies are not liquid.
Human body volume is only useful for
calculating the amount of water it
displaces when submerged.
Because of their form, human bodies
inevitably have pockets of air
between parts or between other
bodies
inside a given room such as a mass
grave.
Both body volume and air in pockets
will increase if uniforms and
military
equipment were left with the dead
soldiers.
Also the soldiers were allegedly
thrown into the well rather than
being neatly stacked in it from the
bottom up to ground level.
Animations of what
human bodies thrown in a well would
look like. Left: showing space between
bodies; Right: bodies
compressed due to gravity and
decomposition.
From: History Cold Case "The
bodies in the well "(2011)
There would have been considerably
more air in between each body than
the difference in volumes of the
total of
men and the interior of the well.
It is therefore impossible
to dispose of 300 recently deceased
soldiers inside the Hougoumont well.
Alternative mass grave for French
soldiers killed in action
The area outside the south gate of
Hougoumont, currently a car park,
has long been associated with a mass
grave thanks to the post-battle
illustrations by British artists
Denis Dighton and Rowse. In the
1820’s they painted scenes
of a mass burial and a mass burning
in front of the south gate:
Mass burial scene by Denis Dighton
(left) and mass burning scene by
Rowse (right)
In 2016 the local heritage authority
at Waterloo was asked by the owner
of Hougoumont to excavate the car
park
to ascertain whether the burials
existed as depicted. The
Waterloo Uncovered Project was
asked to aid in the excavations.
Seven trenches were excavated in
this area, and no evidence of any
mass graves were discovered. Instead
it seemed to have been used a 20th
century dumping ground by the local
farmers, with no evidence of
skeletal material at all; beyond the
possible toe bone of a cow.
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