The life in the napoleonic army - interdisciplinary investigation of a mass grave from Kassel, Hesse

In 2008, a mass grave was found on the grounds of the University of Kassel, Germany. There was no evidence helping to identify them or throwing light on the cause of their death. Mainly due to 14C age determination and initial hints on age and sex distribution, historians hypothesized that they had been soldiers of Napoleon’s army who died in an epidemic in the winter of 1813/14. To test this assumption, morphological and molecular analyses were carried out on the skeletal elements which were comingled in an emergency excavation. The morphological analyses comprised an age and sex determination as well as a macro- and micro-morphological inspection for pathological deviations after the commingled bones had been assembled as individuals. The molecular investigations aimed to identify the geographic origin of the remains due to Y-chromosomal haplotyping as well as the investigation of bacterial DNA linked to the postulated epidemic. Altogether, 126 individuals could be identified, only one of them female. Most of the individuals died at the age between 20 and 30. Although the skeletal elements in some cases reveal some features which are linked to general physical stress, no evidence of trauma related to a possible cause of death could be found. The greatest similarities revealed by Y-haplogroup and haplotype distribution were to populations that live in what are now the Benelux countries or the Alsace, supporting the theory that the individuals indeed were part of Napoleonic troops. In some bones, the bacteria Bartonella quintana and Salmonella typhi could be detected, further supporting the postulated epidemic event. Due to the results of this thesis, the identity of the individuals of the mass grave as soldiers of Napoleon’s army who died in an epidemic could be scientifically confirmed