"The ground between the wood and the Russian batteries, about a quarter of a mile, was a sheet of naked human bodies, which friends and foes had during the night mutually stripped, although numbers of these bodies still retained consciousness of their situation. It was a sight that the eye loathed, but from which it could not remove. " - Robert Wilson, British general after the battle of Heilsberg.

While this battle certainly didnt wield as many casualties as the big battles of the Napoleonic wars such as Leipzig, it gives us some information as to what happened with the bodies and even wounded soldiers. They were stripped off anything valuable, left naked on the battlefield. Testament to this is the article “Bone lesions from the ussuary of the Napoleonic battle of Marengo, Northern Italy” which reported that there were no remnants of any coins, buttons or uniforms to be found when looking at remnants of the battle of Marengo almost 200 years later. Garnering was done both by locals, victors or vanquished, and we have some accounts of scavengers looking for teeth specifically, as they were needed to make dentures out of ivory. After the battle of Waterloo there were so many of these teeth collected, that the British Dental Association Museum (there really are museums for anything) has sets of the made dentures in their repertoire today.

An ad in a British newspaper (also shown in the BDA museum) from 1792 stated the following.

" WANTED - Several human front teeth. To prevent unnecessary applications, those only are wanted that are sent from the Continent. Apply to Mr Woffendale, Dentist, No. 21, Dover-Street, Piccadily"

So the first part of "cleaning up" aka stripping the victims off valuables was done by soldiers, locals and scavengers looking for valuables.

The further steps in cleaning up a battlefield were burning and / or burying the bodies.

After the battle of Marengo we have the following account:

“We saw the battlefield covered with Austrian and French soldiers who were picking up the dead and placing them in piles and dragging them along with their musket straps. Men and horses were laid pell-mell in the same heap, and set on fire in order to preserve us from pestilence. The scattered bodies had a little earth thrown over them to cover them.”

So in some cases the burning was done by both parties, with the Austrians and French of course being on opposing sides when the battle started. After the French victory however they joined together and did their best - although in a chaotic manner as it is stated above - at cleaning up. The burying in this case was not done thoroughly. The degree at which the clearing of a battlegield was done was determined by a variety of factors, such as the weather, the number of surviving soldiers and of course the number of deaths. Marengo was a battle taking place in the middle of summer with “only” around 7000 casualties, so it stands as an example of rather fortunate circumstances.

In other cases however the dead were left to decompose. Especially during Napoleons Russia campaign there was little cleaning up done by soldiers.

"On this desolate spot lay thirty thousand half-devoured corpses; while a pile of skeletons on the summit of one of the hills overlooked the whole.”

was noted by French general Phillipe de Ségur two months after the battle of Borodino in Russia. With more casualties piling up after said battle and the conditions being less pleasant there was little cleaning up done.

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There are some paintings of the aftermath of Waterloo by Thomas Stoney who is responsible for the first known documentation of the battle according to the British Museum which show bare bodies lying on the ground. Accounts of burning also exist, sometimes in painting, for example a work with the sonorous title A view of the of the Chateau d`Hogoumont, workmen piling timber upon a pyre to burn the French dead, which - to no surprise - shows civilians burning the fallen of the battle.