Watercolours from Waterloo: Charles Bell paintings to go on loan

“Johnnie! How can we let this pass? Here is such an occasion of seeing gun-shot wounds come to our very door. Let us go!”

These were the words of the Scottish surgeon, anatomist and neurologist Charles Bell to his brother-in-law on hearing news of the Battle of Waterloo.

Leaving for Belgium on 26 June 1815, Bell took with him his surgical instruments and a sketchbook, in which he could document the injuries he witnessed and tended to. In 1836, he turned his sketches into a series of stunning watercolours, which are on deposit at the Wellcome Library from the [Royal] Army Medical Services Museum. Four of these watercolours are to go on loan to the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany in Bonn for a major exhibition, 'Napoleon und Europa: Traum und Trauma' ('Napoleon and Europe: Dream and Trauma'), which will run from 17 December 2010 to 25 April 2011.

The watercolours provide us with a graphic representation of the dreadful injuries suffered by soldiers fighting at Waterloo. The images of missing arms, protruding intestines and gaping wounds to the chest and neck - together with the pained expressions on the soldiers' faces - all convey the horror of the scenes witnessed by Bell and other surgeons in the battlefield hospitals.

Bell wrote descriptions to accompany his paintings. For one, of a soldier suffering from a head wound, he noted:

"...On the fifth day after the battle was insensible. A portion of the frontal bone, an inch in diameter, was found driven into the brain, and it stood perpendicularly; not possible to extract it, from its being firmly wedged. Trepanning performed. Quite insensible during the operation and showed no sensibility until on the next day, being bled, he shrank….On the removal of the bone a quantity of blood and brain came out, and coagulum was scooped out from betwixt the skull and dura mater. Three days after the operation he became more sensible, and has been improving."

Although the eventual fate of the soldier described above is not known, it seems that he may have fared better than most of Bell's other patients. At Waterloo, the mortality rate of amputations carried out by Bell ran at approximately 90 per cent - a high figure even for the 1800s. Bell went on to have a successful career, however; he was given a knighthood in 1831 and even lent his name to the medical condition of Bell's Palsy, which he described in 1821. These watercolours are yet another string to this prolific and influential man's bow.

Image: Gunshot fracture of skull, Wanstell, Caserne Elizabeth (RAMC/95/4)

'Napoleon und Europa: Traum und Trauma' ('Napoleon and Europe: Dream and Trauma'), Kunst- und Ausstellungshalleder Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn, 17 December - 25 April 2011.

Authors: Rowan de Saulles and Helen Wakely

Napoleonic advancement in the Wellcome Library

Popular fascination with Napoleon’s military aristocracy, the two dozen or so assorted sons of small tradesman and junior army officers of the old regime who rose to Marshal’s rank, riches and titles on the back of Bonaparte’s campaigns, shows no sign of diminishing. The individual qualities and personalities of these men are perhaps less the focus of interest than the phenomenon of exponential career advancement that they represent; indeed military historians generally consign them as a group to the ranks of the second rate.

One or two however stand out, among them Jean Lannes (1769-1809), Duc de Montebello, one of the few among Napoleon’s underlings who proved competent as an independent commander-in-chief as well as in a subordinate role to Bonaparte himself. Lannes was also the first of Napoleon’s marshals to die from enemy action. He was struck by ricocheting shot on the field of Essling outside Vienna on 22 May 1809. His shattered leg was amputated by Dominique Larrey, surgeon-in-chief of the Guard, but septicaemia set in some time later and on 30 May Lannes expired after three days of delirium and agony.

The Wellcome Library holds a collection of Larrey’s letters home to his wife Charlotte, one of which, written from Vienna on 1 June, describes the last days of Marshal Lannes in some detail:

"I spent three nights and three days at his side without interruption. I tried with all my care, energy and skill but still he died. The blood lost before the operation and the shock to his entire system had weakened him fatally. On opening his body the ventricles of his heart were found to be entirely devoid of blood. I lost him on the 9th day after his injury … his death has upset me a great deal".

Part of the reason for Larrey’s discomfiture was the loss of Lannes’s advocacy on his behalf as he made his career in the cut-throat world of Napoleonic army politics. Not only did one need all the high-placed friends one could get, it was also no doubt unsettling to contemplate failure to save the life of one of Napoleon’s favourite marshals. Larrey was on tenterhooks of expectation of a barony, which had apparently been promised but somehow had not yet materialised. However, always alert to turning events to his advantage he was soon negotiating with the director of the Louvre for a part in the proposed monumental painting of the death of Lannes.

The Wellcome Library’s Larrey manuscripts, along with other relics of the Napoleonic wars, were formerly part of the renowned Bibliotheca Lindesiana, the collection of Alexander William Crawford Lindsay (1812-1880), earl of Crawford and of Balcarres, and his son James Ludovic Lindsay (1847-1913), the 26th earl of Crawford. Towards the end of the nineteenth century financial pressures led to the dispersal of much of the library; in 1900 all the manuscripts apart from the French revolutionary and Napoleonic documents were sold to Mrs Rylands and are now in the John Rylands Library of the University of Manchester. The remaining material was finally sold at auction by the 27th earl and several lots were acquired by Sir Henry Wellcome for his collection.

Larrey’s correspondence is catalogued as Western MSS. 5316-5320 and can be consulted in the Wellcome Library’s Rare Materials Room.

Author: Richard Aspin