News-Info-Alerts

Re: Mass Grave of Napoleonic Troops Discovered

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: September 14, 2002

"Archaeologists Unearth More Remains of Napoleon's Troops in Lithuania
The Associated Press

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) - The skeletal remains of 100 more soldiers from Napoleon's ill-fated army that invaded Russia in 1812 have been uncovered at a site in Lithuania, archaeologists said.

The latest bodies were found about 100 yards from the mass grave accidentally discovered a year ago by road construction crews at a new housing development in central Vilnius, the capital of this ex-Soviet Baltic republic.

"This time we were quite sure we'd find something. It was expected," Arunas Barkus, a Lithuanian archaeologist said Friday by cell phone from inside the excavation pit. He said bones and skulls were poking through the sand.

Shards of French soldiers' uniforms and buttons also were found at the site, which Barkus said is in the shadow of a new apartment building.

At least 3,000 other skeletons could be in the new grave - about the size of a large swimming pool - which was found as scientists resumed searching the area this week. Work to recover the bones would take at least a month, Barkus said.

Experts have said the grave found last year was among the largest and most historically significant of its kind, with the remains of about 2,000 soldiers. At least 20,000 other skeletal remains may still be in the area, Barkus said.

Studies of the earlier bodies have helped explain how soldiers in Napoleon's 500,000-strong army perished in one of history's most catastrophic military campaigns. Just several thousand French soldiers survived the war.

When Napoleon's army marched into Lithuania bound for Moscow, it was one of the largest forces ever assembled. Six months later, what was left of it, some 40,000 men, retreated to Vilnius in freezing cold. Most quickly died.

Russians who reoccupied the area couldn't dig graves in the frozen ground, so they threw thousands of soldiers' bodies into a defensive trench dug earlier by the French - which the Lithuanian builders stumbled upon nearly 190 years later.

Barkus said both mass graves are part of the same trench complex.

The area was part of a Red Army military base until Lithuania regained its independence during the 1991 Soviet collapse.

© 2002, Media General Inc."