On July 14, 1877, during the war between Turkey and Russia, General Tergankassoff informed his government at St. Petersburg, by despatch, that the air in and about Bayazid was so contaminated by the decomposition of the dead, that it would not only be unwise, but also dangerous, to prolong the stay of the troops there.
On August 24 of the same year, the naval correspondent of the London Times stated that thousands of soldiers who fell in the Shipka Pass were so superficially inhumed that relics of the dead, such as arms and knees, protruded from the earth-heaps.
On the 14th of September following, the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph declared that the stenches of the villages around Hasankioe were unendurable; that the retreating invaders had cut off the water-supply by filling up the wells with corpses; and that in consequence the water had to be brought from a great distance. And on the seventeenth of the same month, the Times correspondent reported that fever had broken out at Kezanlik; and that, within 600 yards of his tent, some hundreds of uninhumed dead could be seen, relics of the battle which took place some weeks previously. In order to lessen the danger, the couriers passing along the Yemi Saghra road had actually to ride with camphor in their mouths. This state of things is not only deplorable, but pre-eminently shameful.
It is plain from the above that interment en masse, as it is practiced during war at the present time, is very unsatisfactory, and often leads to disastrous consequences. Unfortunately, burial in single graves is impossible, for several reasons. In the first place, it would take up too much time; secondly, too much room; and, thirdly, it would remove too many men from the ranks of the combatants. Nothing remains to us, therefore, but to look about us for some other mode of disposing of the dead. The list of methods from which we may select one is not very large. Various schemes have been proposed. One erratic genius actually proposed to blow up the victims of human strife with dynamite. Of all the ways of disposing of the slain, none is so good and advantageous as cremation. History records many instances in which cremation was made use of to destroy the dead after a battle.
Mr. Wm. Eassie reports: “During the wars between the English and the Burgundians and the French,—the latter led by Joan of Arc,—the dead were on one occasion piled up outside the city of Paris, and consumed in one huge pyre.”
Twelve days after the battle of Paris, on the 30th of March, 1814, 4000 horses, killed during the combat, were burnt by the Germans in the environs of Paris,—the woods of Montfaucon.
In the battle at Rivas, Nicaragua, on the 28th of June, 1855, between government troops and Walker’s Filibusters, the latter lost their commander, 12 officers, and 100 men, all of whom were cremated.
Many dead were reduced to ashes by the Carlists, after the battle of Cuenca.
More than 40,000 human and animal remains had been inhumed in a very superficial manner after the battle of Sedan, during the late Franco-Prussian War. In consequence, the Belgian villages in the neighborhood were visited by epidemics and infectious diseases. The Belgian government was petitioned to remove the evil. It despatched Colonel Creteur to examine into the grievances, and, if possible, remove them. One’s hair stands on end when one reads the report of the colonel on the condition of the Sedan battle-field. The only way to remedy the evil was to destroy the dangerous cadavers by cremation, which was a difficult task, under the circumstances, but which was nevertheless accomplished by the ingenious Creteur. The colonel’s report is full of horrible facts. The bodies of German soldiers in a trench at Laid-Trou were covered so little by earth that carnivorous animals had already devoured part of the hands and faces. Rain-water had caused 30 large pits, containing the remains of Bavarians, to cave in, and had laid bare the bodies. Between Belan and Bazailles, the owners of a field had leveled the elevation of a Bavarian grave. Relics of the dead protruded from the ground. The bodies were covered only by a thin layer of earth, in which corn flourished luxuriantly. Wild bears, foxes, and dogs, relishing the human flesh, helped to scratch away the soil over the remains, as did the numerous crows upon the pit in which the horses had been buried. Dogs, having once feasted on this fare, would not eat anything else. Creteur at first could not obtain men to carry out his plans, as every one who attempted to open the trenches contracted phlyctæna, an eruption of the skin. Finally, by promising good pay, he enlisted 27 workmen, whom he endeavored to protect by saturating their clothing and moistening the graves with a solution of carbolic acid. But this only intensified the phlyctæna. He then determined to cover the graves with a layer of chloride of lime, and to pour diluted muriatic acid upon them subsequently. By this means he succeeded in laying bare the topmost layer of the corpses. He then had large quantities of coal tar poured into the pit, which trickled down among the bodies to the bottom, thoroughly covering the remains. He then had more chloride of lime heaped upon the corpses, and finally had bundles of hay, previously saturated with kerosene, thrown burning into the pit. Creteur declares that from 200 to 300 bodies were consumed within 50 to 60 minutes. The smoke, impregnated with the smell of the carbolic acid that was formed by the combination of the chloride of lime and coal tar, was not offensive, and proved entirely harmless to the workmen. About one-fourth of all the contents remained in the pits, consisting of calcined bones and a dry mass. These were again covered with chloride of lime, and then the trenches were closed. In this way, 45,855 human and equine bodies were disposed of.
