lamentable evening, when all false self-glorification,
all fear of human opinion, were put aside!

During the action, temporary hospitals had
been established in the farms, houses, churches,
and convents of the neighbourhood, and even in
the open air, under the shade of trees. There,
the officers wounded in the morning received
a slight dressing, and, after them, the subalterns
and soldiers. All the French surgeons displayed
indefatigable devotion; several did not
allow themselves a moment's rest for more than
four-and-twenty hours. Two of them, who were
under the orders of Dr. Méry, the head surgeon
of the Garde, had so many limbs to amputate
and wounds to dress, that they fainted. In
another hospital, one of their colleagues, worn
out with fatigue, was obliged, in order to
continue his duties, to get his arms sustained by a
couple of soldiers.

During a battle, a red streamer, raised on high,
indicates the position of the wounded or the
ambulances of the regiments engaged in action;
and, by a tacit and mutual agreement, shots are
not fired in that direction. Nevertheless,
bomb-shells sometimes reach those places, and do not
spare either the attendants, or the waggons laden
with bread, wine, and meat to make broth for the
sick. Wounded soldiers who are still able to walk,
betake themselves, without further aid, to the
ambulances; the others are carried there by
means of litters or handbarrows, weakened as
they often are by loss of blood and the continued
privation of all assistance.

The heights which stretch from Castiglione
to Volta, sparkle with thousands of fires, fed
with the wreck of Austrian waggons, and with
branches of trees, torn off by the storm or by
cannon-balls. At these, the soldiers dry their
clothes, and fall asleep, overcome witli weariness,
on the stones or on the ground. But those who
are safe and sound cannot yet take repose; they
must go and find water, to make soup and coffee,
after passing the day without food and rest.

What touching episodes, what bitter
disappointments of every description! Whole
battalions are without provisions. There are
companies who had been ordered to throw off their
knapsacks, and who consequently are in want of
everything. Elsewhere, it is water which is
deficient; and the thirst is so intense that officers
and men betake themselves to muddy pools,
half filled with clotted blood. Some hussars,
returning to their bivouac, between ten and eleven
o'clock at night, because they were obliged to
fetch water and wood from great distances, met
with so many dying men on their way, entreating
them for drink, that they emptied almost all their
cans in fulfilling this charitable duty. Still, their
coffee is prepared at last; but it is scarcely ready,
before shots being heard in the distance, the
alarm is given. Instantly the hussars jump
on horseback and gallop off in that direction,
without having time to drink their coffee, which
is spilt in the tumult. They soon discover
that what they had taken for the enemy returning
to the charge, were shots fired by the French
outposts on their own men seeking for wood
and water, whom the sentinels mistook for
Austrians.

After this alarm, the harassed cavalry soldiers
returned to throw themselves on the ground and
sleep out the rest of the night; but they could
not get back without falling in with numbers
of wounded, who all begged for water. A
Tyrolese, who lay not far from their bivouac,
addressed them with supplications which could
not be granted; for water was absolutely wanting.
Next morning, they found him dead, with
his foaming mouth full of earth; his swollen
face all green and black. He had been writhing
in dreadful convulsions till morning, and the
nails of his clenched hands were turned back.
No one can paint the agonies of that night.

The sun of the 25th rose on one of the most
frightful spectacles imagination can conceive.
The field of battle is everywhere covered with
the bodies of men and horses; the roads, the
ditches, the ravines, the thickets, the meadows,
are strewn with dead men; the environs of
Solferino literally swarm with dead. The fields
are ravaged, the wheat and maize trampled
down, the hedges levelled, the orchards
destroyed, and from distance to distance there are
pools of blood. The villages are deserted, and
bear the marks of musketry, grenades, and
bomb-shells. The walls are cracked or split, or
battered in. The inhabitants, who have passed
nearly twenty hours concealed in their cellars,
without light and without victuals, begin to
creep out; and their air of stupor testifies to
the fright they have undergone. Around
Solferino, especially in the cemetery, the ground is
scattered with guns, knapsacks, caps, girdles,
cans, every article of equipment, and with
tattered garments stained with blood, as well as
with fragments of broken arms.

The unhappy wounded, who are taken up
during the whole of the day, are livid, pale,
prostrated in strength. Some, especially those
who have been severely mutilated, have a stupid
look, as if they were stunned. They fix upon
you their haggard eyes, without appearing to
understand what you say to them; but this
apparent prostration does not prevent their
being acutely conscious of their sufferings.
Others are restless, and agitated by a nervous
rocking to and fro, or a convulsive trembling.
Others, with gaping wounds in which inflammation
is already commencing, are mad with
pain; they entreat to be put out of their
misery, and with contracted features writhe in
the grasp of coming death. Further on, are
wretches who not only have been struck by
balls and exploded shells, but whose arms and
legs have been broken by the wheels of artillery
which have passed over their bodies. At
many spots, the dead are plundered by thieves,
who do not even respect the wounded still
surviving. The Lombard peasants are especially
greedy after shoes, which they brutally pull off
the dead men's swollen feet. The want of water
is more and more felt. The ditches are dry; the
soldiers in general have nothing to appease their
thirst but unwholesome and brackish fluid; and