In 1813, after Emperor Napoleon's disastrous Russian campaign, the ‘Retirade’, the retreat of the French troops to the west, began. Their destination was the city of Mainz on the other side of the Rhine. Thousands of Napoleon's soldiers did not survive the retreat. Their mass graves were uncovered in Frankfurt-Rödelheim as part of a major excavation. The finds have now been archaeologically analysed and the skeletons anthropologically examined. The analysis impressively shows the horrors of war. A historical categorisation of the site within the Napoleonic conquest policy rounds off the scientific evaluation. This is the first time that such a focussed look has been taken at this topic of international significance.
Text: Bilingual German and French