But it is during the torrid noontide heat that
the struggle, which rages all around, gradually
becomes fiercer and fiercer. Close columns of
men rush, one against the other, with the
impetuosity of a torrent. French regiments
engage, man to man, with the Austrian masses,
which grow more and more numerous and
menacing, and which energetically sustain the
attack, like walls of iron. Whole divisions
deposit their knapsacks on the ground, to be
freer in plying the enemy with the bayonet.
If one battalion be repulsed, another takes its
place immediately. Every hill, every eminence,
every ridge of rock, is the scene of a series of
obstinate combats. The dead lie in heaps, in the
ravines and on the rising ground. Austrians and
allies trample each other underfoot, murder each
other over bleeding corpses, fell each other
with the butt-ends of their guns, fracture
skulls, and rip up bellies with the sabre or the
bayonet. No quarter is given; it is a butchery,
a combat of wild beasts, furious and drunk with
blood. The wounded defend themselves to the
last extremity; those who have lost their arms,
seize their adversary by the throat, and tear
him with their teeth. The struggle is rendered
still more fearful by the approach of a squadron
of cavalry. It comes on at full gallop; the
horses crush the dead and the dying, beneath
their iron-shod feet; one poor wretch has his
jaw carried away, another his skull fractured; a
third, who might have been saved, had his chest
crushed in. Shouts of rage and howlings of
despair are overpowered by the neighing of the
horses. The artillery sweeps past, following the
cavalry at the top of its speed. It forces a
passage through the dead and the living,
indiscriminately scattered over the ground; brains
are spattered about, limbs are broken and brayed,
the ground is saturated with blood, and the plain
is bestrewn with fragments of human bodies.

The Austrian positions are excellent; they
are intrenched in the houses and the churches of
Medola, Solferino, and Cavriana. But nothing
checks, or suspends, or diminishes, the carnage;
there is wholesale slaughter, and slaughter in
detail; every hollow and slope is carried by the
bayonet; standing-ground is disputed foot by
foot. Villages are torn from the enemy, house
after house, farm after farm; each one of them
necessitates a siege; the doors, the windows,
and the court-yards are a frightful pell-mell of
throat-cutting.

The French grape-shot causes fearful disorder
in the Austrian masses; it covers the hills with
corpses, and extends its ravages to prodigious
distances, even to the remote reserves of the
German army. But, if the Austrians give way
a little, they only do so step by step, and very
soon resume the offensive. Their ranks re-form
incessantly, to be shortly broken up again. The
wind raises a deluge of dust with which the plain
is inundated; its clouds are so thick as to darken
the air and blind the combatants. If there seems
to be a lull in the strife here and there, it
soon breaks out again with increased violence.
Fresh reserves of Austrians immediately fill
the gaps made in their ranks by the fury of
attack, which is as obstinate as it is murderous.
The Zouaves rush forward, bayonet in hand,
bounding like tigers, and uttering wild cries.
The French cavalry dashes against the Austrian
cavalry; Hussars transfix Uhlans, and Uhlans
tear Hussars to pieces. The horses, excited by
the ardour of combat, themselves participate
their riders' fury, and madly bite the horses of
the enemy. At some points the rage is such
that, powder and shot being exhausted, and
muskets broken, the soldiers pound each other
with stones, and fight in single combat, man to
man. The Croats cut the throats of all who
fall into their clutches; they put the wounded
to death, knocking them on the head with the
butts of their guns: while the Algerian
sharpshooters (whose ferocity their leaders are unable
to restrain) retaliate in the same way on the
dying Austrians, whether officers or private
soldiers, and rush into the thickest of the fray
with savage howlings. The strongest positions
are taken, lost, and retaken, to be again lost
and reconquered. Everywhere, men are falling
by thousands, mutilated, riddled through and
through with bullets, mortally wounded by all
sorts of projectiles.

The spectator posted on the heights which
environ Castiglione, observes that Solferino, by
its position, has become the turning-point of the
battle. Who shall obtain possession of it? The
French officers, ever pushing forward, waving
their swords in the air, and drawing on by their
example the soldiers who follow them, are
decimated at the head of their battalions. The
orders they wear, and their epaulettes, make
them a mark for the Tyrolese sharpshooters.
Lieutenant de Guiseul, who carries the flag of
a regiment of the line, is surrounded with his
battalion by a force ten times superior; struck
by a shot, he rolls on the ground, pressing to
his breast his precious trust. A sergeant seizes
the flag, to save it from falling into the enemy's
hands; his head is carried away by a cannonball.
A captain who clutches the staff, a
moment afterwards stains with his blood the standard,
which is broken and torn. All who carry
it, whether subalterns or soldiers, fall in turn;
but the living and the dead form around it a
rampart with their bodies. The glorious relic
at last remains, all shattered and mutilated, in
the hands of a sergeant-major of Colonel
Abattucci's regiment.

At Guidizzolo, Prince Charles of Windischgrätz,
an Austrian colonel, braves certain death
by attempting, at the head of his regiment, to
retake and carry the strong position of Casa
Nuova. Mortally wounded, he still commands.
His soldiers sustain him; they carry him in
their arms; they remain motionless under a
shower of bullets, forming thus a last shelter
around him. They are certain of being killed;
but they will not abandon their colonel, who soon
breathes his last.

At the attack of Monte Fontana, the Algerian
sharpshooters are decimated, their colonels, Laure
and Herment, are killed, a great number of their