You Wouldn’t Want To Get Injured in the Napoleonic Wars
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- Опубліковано 19 жов 2024
- 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.
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As a Portuguese, I witnessed that these old practices are still ongoing in the current medical procedures in Portuguese hospitals.
Not to mention the patients' waiting line for treatment and lack of medical staff and support while paying expensive bills not always covered by its decaying health care system.
My ancestor who got shot in the arm whilst in the Scots guards during the peninsula campaign, made it back to Chesea hospital which has list of casualties online
"The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld"
*sweet banjo going at it*
If you hear a banjo, run.
Waltzing out like nothing happened 😂
@@THECHEESELORD69 the first generation American-French Cajuns Catching stray brits in the swamps after the battle of 1812
@@Plxusibleoh shit thats dark..
@@MrPanzerDragoonyeah, like he was heading off to the chow room.
Line infrantry urban combat was probably insane.
100s of infantry with bang spears going street to street, door to door.
I’m borrowing that name. Bang spears is a good one!
more spear than bang with the rate of fire to be fair
3 shots a minune - that's fine soldiery @@GoldBean2752
Were insane.
Not probably or was.
Prob didn’t happen as often as you think hence why they fought in fields . The musket was nearly 5 feet long and heavy af. Urban combat would essentially just be melee at that point
I'm guessing they didn't have anaesthetics yet either, I'd honestly rather take my chances rather than amputate.
Yeah. Anaesthetics didn’t come around until way later.
@@Imnot_abotactually, they started using chloroform in like the 1830s?ish. Which is not to far in the future from Napoleon. Not that that helps these boys. But still a cool fact.
didn't they used drugs like opium in place of proper anesthetics?
@@mostdefinitelynotadurianyeah but it was pretty useless cuz dosage didn't exist
its called alchohol, and alot of it, also id argue gangrene is worse than the amputation, its a nasty ways to go through of course you could amputate and then get gangrene anyway!
Napoleonic ptsd prolly went crazy
They drank like fish for a reason
Almost 50% of women in London were alcoholics in the Napoleonic wars, I can't imagine what that figure is for men coming back after the war.
Idk how true this is, but I've heard it was actually lower because those who did survive had a longer journey home where they were able to be used to normal life over time.
The higher quality of life and radical social changes of the modern day have made it even more difficult for men in war to adjust to living back home. Back then, it was not as difficult.
A British Guardsman of Waterloo suffered ptsd from closing doors due to his experiences at La Haye Sainte, holding the battered gate against waves of French
Didn't the French have a more sophisticated system of field hospitals? The ambulances for the wounded were army personnel at least.
They had. People like Larrey or Begin played an important role
Ambulances were reserved for high officers.
@@walideg5304Ambulances were absolutely not reserved for officers, the whole point of Larrey’s ambulance system was to treat the severity of injuries and not social rank. Yes, in the Ancien Regime there was aristocratic preference but this was abolished by the Revolution.
Larrey’s ambulances transported according to severity of injury only, and that included enemy wounded. A fact which saved his life because Prussian general Blücher’s own son was saved by the medical corps, Blücher would go on to save Larrey from an extra judicial execution after Waterloo in thanks for this service.
In any case, yes the French ambulance and field hospital system was well in advance of any in the world since the eastern Roman Empire fell (which previously maintained a system of stretcher bearers and field hospitals).
It was the goal of the Service de Santée to evacuate the wounded in under 30 mins, and the nurse-stretcher bearers would brave gun fire to bring the wounded to the ambulances as opposed to the normal manner in which the wounded would only be collected after the battle or would have to self-evacuate.
@@GRBoi1993 Damn
@@GRBoi1993 Good information
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.
Tell me. How many who fell at Borodino were treated to this level?
@@Lorgar64 idk, how many Germans at Stalingrad were?
@@czechchineseamerican How is that relevant? I'm asking about French field hospitals in an area they secured.
Sewell and Nightingale during the Crimean war also played a role in bettering the treatment of HM Armed Forces wounded
Sewell and Nightingale during the Crimean war also played a role in bettering the treatment of HM Armed Forces wounded
Amputation of a limb?
Now that’s soldiering
I was wondering how long I'd have to scroll for this lol
One needed a high capacitance for pain.
just started watching Sharpe again on dvd. Currently on Gold. Brilliant series
There is no now, only that’s soldiering
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.
Wrong.
@@ToneWoN I hate comments like yours. Elaborate if you want to be a smartass
@@ToneWoN always happy to learn more. Do you have reading for me?
@@ilyac3185 Florence Nightingale was a English nurse who is famous for organising and advancing field hospitals during the cimeran war
@@ilyac3185I’m sure she’s a saint maybe I could be wrong
I’m so glad I was born after this
Dude, it got worse after then.
I’d probably prefer to pass rather than going to a 1 star hospital reviewed as a “shocking spectacle”
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
Where did you read/hear this?
That doesn't inspire confidence. :/
You can set a compound fracture and hope they survive the infection. However, a shattered bone from a ball impact was unsalvageable. They didn't have the tech to set and stabilize a bone enough to allow full regrowth and bone attachment. Today that requires a number of stainless steel (no rusting) pins and braces that function as the bone.
And the infection of course was also an issue. Amputation was just the safer course by a large margin.
@@randallsanchez3161 surgeons could do alot of great things back then, but the thing is, they only have so much time to save maybe a hundred injured guys, he’s gonna do the fastest fix, not the most effective
@@randallsanchez3161 Very true. You obviously know the subject very well.
Imagine giving modern anesthetics to soldiers during the Napoleon wars. You would be considering a genius in medicine.
Would probably result in a new kind of opium epidemic, too.
@@theguybehindyou4762 That actually happened in the aftermath of the US Civil War. That was the first conflict that saw large scale use of Morphine, and while it must have seemed like a miracle when the alternative was a shot of whisky and a belt to bite on while someone sawed your leg off, it ended up having pretty catastrophic consequences after the fact.
@@matthewn4896 Factor in a poor understanding of PTSD and I'm not surprised.
@@matthewn4896what kind of consequences?
@@ronanchristiana.belleza9270 Thousands and thousands of morphine addicts.
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.
Sounds like an average Tuesday for any injured soldier before the 20th century (before kid to late that is)
Honestly i'd very much rather charge into battle and be instantly turned into a bloody pulp from grapeshot than undergo early 19th century surgery.
I totally agree with u but remember or think about it your choice in about 300 years time when our tech seems primitive and out dated the smart phone will be seen as the dumb phone today cars are flying etc our medical care will also look horrific
@@geraintjones6612 Skin grafts and tendon/muscle's being surgically moved to a more important spot already makes me wince. I can imagine that people in the future with lab grown replacements would be pretty sick at the idea of those things we have now.
@@blorb32 Grapeshot use was pretty rare. Having a 7pdr cannon ball blow a hole through part of your chest the size of a bowling ball (exit wounds are larger than the ball/bullet) and then several of your buddies behind, was the most common cannon related death.
Cannon also cut off a number of limbs.
"GIVEM STEEEEL LADS....GIVEM STEEEEL"
FREDRICK'S GONE AND YOUR NEXT 😂😂
G&B
i was searching for the g&b comment lol
@@cheesy_mayo_studios same lmaoooo
The thing about musketball is. They can shatter bones inside. Once tone shattered into pieces. Theres nothing a surgeon can do beside amputation.
I gotta say those green uniforms are the best looking uniforms from that era, period.
Which country are these green uniforms?
@@lolllama1504 British, the rifle regiment
The Portuguese Caçadores(light infantry/rifles) also had a very neat uniform.
They served alongside the British rifle units and were equally effective.
Green is a traditional hunter colour. Regiments that used Baker Rifles were basically just Jäger regiments. They always wore green.
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.
"few" yes thats definitely coming from an anglo
"few" lmao the French make anything better than you, heck even the trains that is your invention(the only good thing you did) the French are the best at making it
@@smal750don’t fret, you also do better at importing millions of muslims and terrorists than the Anglos do, and that already says a lot!
Ngl the sounds of the muskets firing sounds fire
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.
Time to watch sharpe again from beginning to end..🔥🔥
get the DVD box set out. Really enjoyed seeing all the recognisable characters. Nairn, Leroy, Dunnett, Ducos, Hawkswill, Ayres.
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.
pro tip: WHY DO YOU NOT HAVE SAPPERS ON YOUR TEAM?!
Amputation of whatever limb, you say
What's their limit on amputating limbs?
As long as it’s not the head the surgeon says fair game!
No more than four, I reckon.
"You haven’t an arm and you haven’t a leg,
You’re an eyeless, noseless, chickenless egg;
You’ll have to be put with a bowl to beg:
Och, Johnny, I hardly knew ye! "
Four is doable, five is the limit.
@gus23a 2 arms, 2 legs, and one head are pretty doable, I suppose
Cheerful background music though😂
I think people really underestimate the amount of skill it takes to remove a man's leg, that is currently in the process of killing him, without killing him.
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.
In defence of Napoleonic Era doctors: would you rather be dead?
Yeah, me too
Well usually you got the same experience either way, bleeding out in pain on the battlefield, or bleeding out in pain right next to the battlefield. Pick your poison
Of course I d like to be dead rather than amputated without anaesthetics
@@barraspaziatrice7816 so you want to
Lose the chance to be able to do the things you want to do in life?
@@THECHEESELORD69 absolutely. I'm not really afraid of death, it's just the natural ending of this whole experience.
@@barraspaziatrice7816 that’s understandable. A bit silly to me but that’s your choice
“Welcome to our field hospital son. It’ll be just a minute. Bite hard.”🔪🪓
Jean Paul Larrey turned field medicine around for Napoleons troops. His management of amputations was revolutionary for the time
So basically you're likely to see more carnage in the hospital than the actual battlefield
You don't know about cannons. Bayonets charging. Flames. Plenty more ways to die, you just lack imagination.
More soldiers have died from disease than anything else in war time. That includes infections of wounds.
Modern day:
"IVE BEEN SHOT!"
"ILL PATCH YOUR WOUND TO STOP THE BLEEDING!"
Napoleonic war:
"Sir I've been hit."
*"Amputation."*
You know what they say: those who can't disinfect, dismember.
Not really true - modern day involves exploration debriedement and washout of the wound followed by repair of sturctures (if possilbe) and treatment with antibiotics under anaesthesia. None of which was possible in Napoleonic times, source control and amputation was the best treatment available.
@@tomriley5790 that's the joke
@@tomriley5790 yeah, besides amputation occurs even on modern conflicts in large scale, just look at ukraine, levels reaching ww1 numbers.
The driver of the farm cart must have a 1 star rating on Uber Carts
You would too if most people died before tipping
The knowledge of disease or infection, bacteria, viruses or how to treat or prevent them was nonexistent. This wouldn't change until the 1880s.
Btw they amputated because they thought bullets were poisonous, so it was kinda for nothing
idk what's worse, being killed or survive.
"The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld"
Now that's sobering.
The fate of Stonewall Jackson
Happened to my great great grandfather during the Civil War. A bullet passed through his abdomen and he was tossed onto a cart.
I read one account that the mortality rate for wounded soldiers in field hospitals was about twice that of soldiers who whose wounds were treated by their mates or camp followers. This is probably true because hospitals were dirty, the surgical instruments and cloths were used on patient after patient without washing, certainly no sterilisation, contributing to the spread of infection of which so many died within days. People were perfectly aware of infections and the causes, so home and folk remedies were of some help.
Home of an folk remedies were of no help...
And what’s with the guys who just decided they want cut off limbs all day for a living?
Probably decent money being a surgeon. Food was taken care of, at least.
every war brings ptsd. Even the knights screamed throughout their sleep
Not surprising amputation was preferred. No antibiotics, no way to sufficiently wash out and cleanse a cavity to prevent sepsis. People have to remember that surgical techniques and treatments just weren’t on the level of what we had after the advent of antibiotics. It was truly a revolution in health and one we need to safeguard against microbial resistance.
Could just develop more but pharmaceuticals would rather take free money,
I’d rather just go out fighting than get my limbs cut off alive with no anesthesia.
Imagine being told “it gets worse” after getting shot with 69 caliber bullet in you’re chest
The Marine Recruiter called asking for my Son and I said : "He can't talk to you because he enjoys living too much".
Learning everyday Something new
“The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld.”
- *A guy who either watched or suffered getting a limb cut off while wide awake.*
not an easy life... enjoyed the this clip *LIKED* and *SUBSCRIBED*
Now That’s good soldiering
At that point I’d try and patch it up myself…..probably mess it up and wouldn’t have a clue in the idea of getting lead out of me but I’d be to scared to go to the doctor
Used to love watching sharpe
Here's forty shillings on the drum
For those who volunteer to come,
To 'list and fight the foe today
Over the Hills and far away
O'er the hills and o'er the Main
Through Flanders, Portugal and Spain
King George commands and we obey
Over the hills and far away
When duty calls me I must go
To stand and face another foe
But part of me will always stray
Over the hills and far away
If I should fall to rise no more
As many comrades did before
Then ask the pipes and drums to play
Over the hills and far away
Then fall in lads behind the drum
With colours blazing like the sun
Along the road to come what may
Over the hills and far away
Rifleman Dodd is one of my favorite books
I think you wouldn't want to get injured in any war, friend
Where do your reenactors obtain their Baker rifles?? Pretty cool kit!!
Could you even survive the trip home if severely wounded? I would probably keep one cartridge for myself.
Reminds me of the stories of piles of limbs during the civil war here in the US from all the amputations
That’s a great scene in the beginning that was nice
I can’t think of a single time in history I’d want to experience being injured during a battle or war.
Human history...
It can be quite depressing.
The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld.
Homer: "The most shocking spectacle you've ever beheld.....so far.
Eternally grateful I was born in an era with UA-cam and PlayStation.
Horrific injury but survivable kinds of treatment without anesthesia at those times must have felt like dying countless times. Damnnnnn
They would look at our worst crises and dismiss them as first world problems.
@mirroredvoid8394 I meant in comparison
"That's the neat part, you don't!" An answer to many relevant questions.
One injury I sustained in the last few years was called a lisfranc injury. Discovered by Jacques Lisfranc de St. Marin. This was discovered during the Napoleonic wars. Treatment was to cut the front of the foot off and shove them on their way. I had 10 screws and 2 plates holding the foot together.
As a portuguese that know history very well i can also say "most shocking spectable i ever heard"
Damn
Not to mention that most musket ball bullets were in the range of 30-40 mm caliber. It wouldn't just go theough you. It would break though you.
Swift and bold.
The war at Linhas de Torres at Lisbon's entrance, held by Wellington was crucial to learn about Napoleonic strategy, which after well-learned, was determinant to win later on for Napoleon's capture and downfall.
Ref. Wellington and the Lines of Torres Vedras: The Defence of Lisbon during the Peninsular War, 1807-1814 (From Reason to Revolution) Paperback - 28 Dec. 2021
Fun fact. Muskets were slow but incredibly devastating to flesh even stronger than most pistols and rifles of today, short only from point blank shotgun sounds in certain cases if you were shot in a member, you re almost certainly losing it or bleeding and getting worse until you agonizingly die of sepsis
Boy am I glad I was born during this time, despite today's problems
"I'm not dead yet!"
"System of care" Sounds familiar
So, don’t get shot.
Now that's soldiering!
Napoleon personally awards medals to a number of British surgeons.
They knew this could happen and they'd still commit to doing bayonet charges
Napoleonic Field Hospitals are more akin to the backside of conventional butchershops than actual surgical theatres
Memory's of Sean bean seeing those uniforms
Maréchal Jean Lannes was hit by a cannon ball which knocked his legs off by the knees, one clean off and the other had to be amputated. He died about 9 days later from infections of the wounds.
Imagine lying there for 9 days in agony.
At least Napoleon visited him and said his farewells and wrote Lannes wife a beautiful letter with his condolences.
Then you have napoleons Marshals walking around full of holes like Swiss cheese like it was nothing.
Rifle men? Those were few and far between
I always thought that the only reason we see it as 'bad' is because we live in an era where medical treatment are painless, detailed and fast. If they too think it was THAT bad, then it must be worse than we could imagine.
Over the hills and far away
It's crazy how they don't hide from a gun back then and just face the enemy while they shoot.
Volley fire, best way to get results. Unless you have a rifle, but the poors all got smoothbore muskets. So, stay in formation and hope your RNG is better than the other guys. But for riflemen, they actually did hide. Their uniforms were earthy colors like green and brown like the one shown in the video, since they were snipers.
That said, these tactics remained in use way too long after Napoleon's day, like pretty much up to the next century almost. A British observer of the American Civil War noted the troops on both sides didn't often stay in formation and sought cover, and chalked this up to a lack of discipline.
Yes, that must've been awful.
Crazy that it took humans 5000+ years to figure out keeping hospitals and surgans and surgical instruments clean was important...
The riflemen dying at start has really good ragdoll physics
and remember, this is also before anesthesia so they would give you something to bite on, hold you down, and saw off the affected limb while you screamed your head off.
I'm grateful to be born now and not then.
For the Americans that are here in the comments this also is the same time period as the war of 1812. There's a famous song about Andrew Jackson and people marching with him to win the Battle of New Orleans and the British are retreating. I also heard some of the iconic 91st rifles we're at that battle.
95th rifles
"The most shocking spectacle I ever beheld" coming from someone who survived Napoleonic era military campaigns , is saying something
I don’t want to get injured in any war thank you very much
Imagine the horrifying sounds and everything.
Imagine getting a small bullet wound in your arm and then the medics used a saw to rip your entire arm off (you're still awake)
nightingale, the goat, you know you know
You could say, it cost them an arm and a leg..
War and peace describes field hospitals pretty well.
Back then would have been absolutely hell.