The skeletons of 200 French soldiers who were fighting for Napoléon Bonaparte in 1813 have been found during construction work in Frankfurt, Germany, according to local officials.

“We estimate that about 200 people were buried here,” Olaf Cunitz, the city’s head of town planning, said on Thursday, talking at the site in Frankfurt’s western Rödelheim district. He said they were probably soldiers from the Grande Armée returning from Russia in 1813.

The French troops had fought battles that claimed 15,000 lives around Frankfurt in October of that year, Cunitz said.

The dead had probably succumbed to battle wounds or to the typhus epidemic that had decimated their army at the time, though this had yet to be scientifically verified, he added.

Andrea Hampel, the heritage and historic monuments director in Frankfurt, said it was certain that the “tombs were erected in an emergency”. Hampel said the skeletons were aligned in a row, without funeral articles, in a north-south orientation – not an east-west axis as was common for European Christians at the time – suggesting they were buried in haste. The soldiers were buried in coffins, however, which had kept the skeletons well preserved.

More than 30 skeletons have been excavated, and work to dig up the rest was expected to take four to six weeks, said the site manager, Juergen Langendorf.