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Artist's rendition of the siege of Sebastopol. Topham/Topham Picturepoint/Press Association Images

Ghosts of Crimean War return with discovery of French cemetery

The average age of the dead found at a site in Sebastopol was less than 30 years – the discovery could indicate many more bodies were buried in the area.

THE DIN OF machinery mingled with the echo of the 19th century Crimean War when an excavator bucket stumbled upon the yellowed remains of long-dead French soldiers at a construction site in a southern Ukrainian port city.

The haunting find at Sebastopol’s Cane Bay beach in December revealed the site of a large cemetery of French soldiers who died in the war against the Russian Empire during the 1854-1856 Crimean War.

The discovery has highlighted how many bodies could still be lying under the ground from the brutal conflict where an alliance of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire fought against Russia in what many see as one of the world’s first modern conflicts.

“Dozens of bodies have been discovered so far and I think there will be more as the site is quite large,” said Olexander Natalich, a volunteer with the historical research group Dolg (Duty).

The group’s members rushed to the construction site in December when local residents informed them about the discovery.

Natalich said that they first thought the yellowed bones belonged to the Russian or German soldiers who fought in World War II when the strategic Black Sea city again saw fierce battles.

The siege of Sebastopol

But later they found fragments of a military greatcoat with buttons of the French Army 39th infantry regiment which took part in Sebastopol’s siege during the Crimean War.

Historical documents prove that a huge camp of the French army was stationed on the Cane Beach shore, said local museum director Arkady Baiburtsky.

The camp housed tens of thousands of people and included inns, shops, theatres and even brothels.

Forensic experts concluded that the remains belong to people who died more than 100 years ago.

“All this evidence lets us say that this is a hospital cemetery belonging to the French contingent,” Baiburtsky said.

“Bodies in individual graves – all dug to the same depth of 0.8 to 1.4 metres – face west,” the historian said. “This is the first discovery of such an important burial of the Western (soldiers).”

The average age of the deceased does not exceed 30 years, but due to the absence of personal belongings or documents, there is “close to zero chance” of establishing their identity, he added.

Final resting place

French diplomats visited Sebastopol in February. Dozens of plastic bags with the bones of their countrymen had been piled up by the construction site’s fence but were then moved to the local church.

The bodies will most likely find their final resting place in the nearby 19th century French military necropolis that was destroyed under the Soviet rule and restored in the 2000s by the French government.

The Crimean War saw Russian forces defeated by the coalition of British, French, Ottoman, and Sardinian troops in the competition between great world powers for the dominance over the falling Ottoman Empire’s territories.

According to different estimates, the French lost in the conflict between 45,000 and 95,000 dead – mainly due to infectious deceases such as cholera that spread due to the poor sanitation and water supply problems.

Founded in 1783 under the Russian Empress Catherine the Great as the Russian Fleet’s port, Sebastopol – as well as the entire Crimean Peninsula – now belongs to Ukraine which became an independent state after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

- © AFP, 2013

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    Mute Dodge Challenger
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 9:07 AM

    A shame that entire generations died in wars. And for what?

    The amount of people that died in WW1 alone was massive. It was called “The war to end all wars” yet another massive war occurred a couple of decades later with millions more dead.

    Imagine all the families that could have been that were destroyed by war. Lets pray that death on a massive scale never occurs again.

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    Mute АЛЕКСАНДРЪ ХАИШ
    Favourite АЛЕКСАНДРЪ ХАИШ
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 9:30 AM

    And at the end, the hero Russians saved the world from Nazis! God bless!

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    Mute Marist '59
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 9:37 AM

    60 Million dead in WW2.

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    Mute kieran fitzgerald
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 10:33 AM

    Yeeeeeaaaaaahhhh…………..”heroes”.

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    Mute Rebecca De Stanleigh
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 10:46 AM

    Under Stalin over 20 million people perished thanks to his red terror. God bless!

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    Mute Pat McCarthy
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 11:58 AM

    The hero Russians is a big overstatement. You can’t definitively say that the war would have been won without the combined allied effort. Had Germany defeated Great Britain whilst she was alone from 38-41 then the whole of the axis forces would have been free for Barbarossa.

    The nazis were only halted by the Russian winter before the tables began to turn. Britain stood defiant and held them in check before American industrialism and Russian armies turned the tide. One could have never won without the other.

    Also Russia had a mutual defense pact with the Germans up to the war and had no intention of war with Germany hence they were caught completely unawares when Germany invaded. Anyway I’m out.

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    Mute kieran fitzgerald
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 1:15 PM

    @Rebecca that’s what I meant, I wasn’t implying that the world would have been better off if Germany had won the war.

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    Mute Rebecca De Stanleigh
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 2:06 PM

    I was replying to the Russian fella!

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    Mute Debi-Nikita Rathbone-Rentzke
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 11:52 AM

    ‘Only the dead have seen the end of war’. Plato, 5th Century BC

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    Mute Jason Douglas
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 9:30 AM

    Fighting in their belief of that old lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

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    Mute Daniel R
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 12:24 PM

    All wars are completely unnecessary. How so many intelligent people listen to a small group of sociopaths is a tragedy beyond belief.

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    Mute Jason Culligan
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 5:34 PM

    Most of our modern medical system is built on the foundations of work during both world wars. The Nazi war machine gave us access to space decades before we should have. The need to fly warplanes through all weather gave us GPS.

    This is just some of the examples I can list off. The reality is that humanity is at its most productive and creative during war. If it wasn’t for war, we’d probably be somewhere around the Middle Ages right now.

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    Mute Daniel R
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 6:22 PM

    And under the control of the military industrial complex it will always remain that way. But if war is the cost of progress under that paradigm, you can leave me out of your phsycho trip thanks.

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    Mute Dermot Lane
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    Feb 23rd 2013, 10:05 PM

    When the crossbow was invented it was so effective that someone (the pope?) said “its the end of civilisation as we know it.” it is but one example of war based, or war inspired, technology. Wars are indeed good for economies and inventiveness. And good for population control at least from the perspective of the ” ruling classes” who happily offer up the “lower classes” as cannon fodder. the whole thrust of British policy in ww1 was based on the premise that the Germans would run out of young men ie canon fodder, before they did. Less lower classes = more control for the elites.
    Economies benefit from the arms production during, and the reconstruction after, wars. Look how many contracts Halliburton got in Iraq rant over.

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