WATERLOO AFTER THE GLORY
◗ Michael Crumplin & Gareth Glover
◗ Helion & Company (2022)
◗ £29.95
◗ 312 pages (softback)
◗ ISBN:9781915070920
◗ helion.co.uk
Subtitled Hospital Sketches and Reports on the Wounded, this is a softback edition of Helion’s original 2019 hardback edition, Number 32 in their From Reason to Revolution 1721-1815 series. An eightpage Medical Glossary precedes the text, essential for fully understanding the reports on the wounded as they are written in early nineteenth century medical terminology and also reflect the contemporary understanding of such matters as the appropriate treatment of wounds and infection.
The first chapter covers the Evolution of the Military Medical Services in the Low Countries 1792-1815. Next is a description of the Immediate Battlefield Support for the Wounded during the Waterloo Campaign, which was often conspicuous by its absence.
The Dispersal of the British, Netherlands (Dutch-Belgian), Prussian and French Medical Staff During and After the Battle is followed by a description of the Definitive Medical Care and the Hospitals for the Allied Wounded in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The chapter on Mont St Jean Field Hospital will be of particular interest to those visiting the battlefield, who should see the museum of surgery set up by Michael Crumplin at the farm itself.
The next two chapters give Details of the Principal Receiving Hospitals extant in Brussels and Antwerp after Waterloo and The Report of Observations made in the British Military Hospitals in Belgium after the Battle of Waterloo.
The heart of the book is the Hospital Returns Collected by John Thomson from the Hospitals in Brussels, followed by the Thomson’s Line Drawings which comprise reproductions of 177 drawings of the sites and appearance of patients’wounds, accompanied by Thomson’s original note of the individual, the unit to which he belonged (if known), in which hospital he was being treated and a brief explanation of the injury and the treatment administered. Further notes in italics give information the authors have found about the identification of the patient, his treatment, and its outcome.
The following chapter, Specific Case Studies recorded by Dr Thomson, contains his notes about twenty-five patients from the Allied hospitals in Brussels and Antwerp, of whom fifteen died, with additional modern comments. Chapter 11 gives details of forty-four Other Named Cases from Waterloo, recorded by the military surgeons George James Guthrie and John Hennen, ranging from Major General Sir Colin Halkett, wounded in the face by a musket ball, to an‘Unknown Hanoverian Soldier’wounded not only by a grapeshot that had killed his comrade but also by three coins from the latter’s pocket.
There are nineteen black and white illustrations, reproductions of contemporary portraits, scenes, maps to show the sites of the main hospitals in Brussels and Antwerp used after Waterloo, and twenty-three black and white photographs, both old and modern, of places such as Mont St Jean farm and the St Pierre Hospital in Brussels, together with many hospitals or buildings used as hospitals.
An appendix gives the List of Pensions Awarded to Officers for Wounds Received at the Battles of Quatre Bras and Waterloo by regiment and is followed by a short bibliography.
This book describes aspects of Napoleonic warfare that brightly painted figures marching over tabletop battlefields and die rolls can never portray, but that we wargamers should never forget: the pain, trauma, disabilities, and often lingering deaths suffered by those who were real, not toy, soldiers.