You Wouldn’t Want To Get Injured in the Napoleonic Wars

In this video, Louee from Survive History explains what would happen to soldiers wounded in battle during the Napoleonic Wars. You'd be loaded onto a farm cart for transport away from the frontier, before ending up at a military field hospital. Here, amputation of the affected limb awaited.

[TheZeldaCinema]

"The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld"

*sweet banjo going at it*

[acephoenix]

Line infrantry urban combat was probably insane.

100s of infantry with bang spears going street to street, door to door.

[GRBoi]

Well this is true for the British Army, but not the French Army. The British wouldn’t put much thought into the caring and convalescence of their war wounded until 1875 when they finally established an ambulance corp for the rapid retrieval of the wounded and their care.

France on the other hand began its ambulance and field hospital program in 1797, under the dual supervision of Dr. (And later Baron) Dominique Jean Larrey and Dr. LP Percy. They had specially constructed ambulances to reduce the rockiness of the roads and fields, developed triage, and had specially trained crews.

It is a cliché that “most bullet wounds were inoperable”, but Larrey himself records of ~1200+ men of the Middle Guard with abdominal injuries only 85 died of their wounds post-op. The surgeons of the French Army were surprisingly sophisticated and well organised relative to their contemporaries.

[onii-chandaisuki]

I'm guessing they didn't have anaesthetics yet either, I'd honestly rather take my chances rather than amputate.

[BountyFlamor]

Didn't the French have a more sophisticated system of field hospitals? The ambulances for the wounded were army personnel at least.

[ilyac]

The only 2 nations who got field hospitals down by the end of the wars were the French and Russians. And by that I mean they had doctors that traveled with them, ample brandy, triage formalize by Baron Larry’s and understood concepts of ventilation, maximum patient density per sq foot when possible and drainage.

[Dman]

Amputation of a limb?

Now that’s soldiering

[tardwrangler]

I’d probably prefer to pass rather than going to a 1 star hospital reviewed as a “shocking spectacle”

[christianc]

God, I couldn’t imagine getting your limb sawed off while conscious and feeling every cut of the jagged teeth of the blade. Then the worst came next. The constant pain, the possibility of infection, and the lack of quality of life for the rest of existence.

[aetius]

The thing about musketball is. They can shatter bones inside. Once tone shattered into pieces. Theres nothing a surgeon can do beside amputation.

[Bountyhopper]

Most surgeons could repair limbs that’s been badly damaged, but in a field hospital with hundreds of men lining up, they needed to do the quickest route to save the man’s life. A good surgeon can have a limb removed in about 2 minutes

[krunken_isok]

Imagine giving modern anesthetics to soldiers during the Napoleon wars. You would be considering a genius in medicine.

[hypernova]

I got my wisdom teeth removed yesterday, the first day of recovery sucks ass, but the process of pulling them out felt like a walk through the park, short, painless and not really uncomfortable (except for the numbness the anesthesia gives, which I hate). During the process I was thinking about how lucky I am to go through this in the XXI century and not before.

[MisterRorschach]

I gotta say those green uniforms are the best looking uniforms from that era, period.

[RichardHarrow-nk]

"GIVEM STEEEEL LADS....GIVEM STEEEEL"

[CindersVale]

I learned quite a bit first through the 1993 - 1997 British television series Sharpe, which led me to read Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels. Sharpe's sergeant, Patrick Haper, believed in using maggots to clean wounds. Both the books and the series are excellent.

[BrotatoeGod]

Amputation of whatever limb, you say

What's their limit on amputating limbs?

[randolphstead]

As a school boy growing up in 1960's Toronto I recall visiting historic Fort York, a fort on Lake Ontario during the War of 1812. I still recall the horror from viewing the surgical implements: basically a wooden table covered with knives and saws.

Progress in battlefield medicine began to accelerate during the American Civil War. Proper military hospitals were seen as vital to maintaining the numbers of soldiers in the ranks. I recall reading in one book about the horrors of battlefield evacuation, as covered in this video. Somebody decided to put proper suspension on army ambulance wagons and thick bedding so as to reduce jolting the wounded as the wagons rolled along the primitive tracks that passed for roads.

[josephradley]

One of the few things the French did better than the British.
The ambulance.
A purpose built wagon with decent suspension for the comfort of the wounded.

[EthanA-ptcf]

Ngl the sounds of the muskets firing sounds fire