I could mention any number of isolated acts and incidents to prove the high character of the French Army and the courage of its officers and men, but mention must ' also be made of the humanity of simple troopers.(6) Their kindness and sympathy towards defeated or captured enemies were as fine as their fearlessness and bravery. It is a recognized fact that really first-rate soldiers are gentle and polite, just as any other really distinguished people are; French officers are usually not only amiable, but chivalrous and generous. They well deserve the praise of General von Salm, who was made prisoner by the French at the battle of Nerwinde, and treated with every courtesy by the Marshal de Luxembourg. He said to the Chevalier du Rozel: "What a nation you are! You fight like lions, and once you have beaten your enemies you treat them as though they were your best friends!"

The Quartermaster's Department continued to collect the wounded, and remove them, whether their wounds had been dressed or no, on stretchers or chairs strapped to mule saddles, to field hospitals. From there they were sent to whatever town or centre was nearest to the place where they had been wounded or found. Every church, convent, house, public square, court, street or pathway in these villages was turned into a temporary hospital. Many sufferers were taken to Carpenedolo, Castel, Goffredo, Medola, Guidizzolo, Volta, and all the surrounding places, but the largest number went to Castiglione, whither the less severely injured had managed to drag themselves alone.

The long procession of Commissary carts filed in, loaded with soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and even commissioned officers, all ranks mixed up together; cavalrymen, infantrymen, artillerymen, all bleeding, exhausted, torn, and covered with dust. Then came the mules, at a trot that made the miserable wounded they carried cry out again and again in pain. One man had a fractured leg, and it seemed almost completely severed from his body, so that each jolt of the cart made his suffering more agonizing. Another had a broken arm which he held and protected with the good one. A corporal, whose arm had been pierced through by the stick of a Congreve rocket, had pulled the stick out himself, and used it to walk to Castiglione with. Some died on the way, and their bodies were left beside the road to be buried later.

From Castiglione the wounded were supposed to go on to hospitals in Brescia, Cremona, Bergama and Milan, to be given regular care, or undergo any amputations that might be necessary. But the Austrians had requisitioned and removed all the carts in the neighborhood, and since the French army's means of transport were absolutely insufficient for such a fearful number of wounded, they had to be kept waiting in the field ambulances for two or three days before they could be taken to Castiglione.

The crowding in Castiglione(7) became something unspeakable. The town was completely transformed into a vast improvised hospital for French and Austrians. On the Friday, hospital headquarters had been established there, and wagons full of lint, equipment and medicines had been unpacked. The townspeople gave all the blankets, linen and mattresses they could spare. The hospital of Castiglione, the Church, the San Luigi monastery and barracks, the Capuchin Church, the police barracks, the churches of San Maggiore, San Guiseppe, and Santa Rosalia, were all filled with wounded men, piled on one another and with nothing but straw to lie on. Straw had also been spread in the streets, courtyards and squares, and here and there wooden shelters had been thrown up or pieces of cloth stretched, so that the wounded pouring in from all directions might have a little shelter from the sun. Private houses were very soon taken over; the more well-off among their owners welcomed officers and soldiers, and busied themselves in providing what little they could to relieve their pain. Some ran wildly through the streets, looking for a doctor for their guests. Others went to and fro in the town distraught, begging to have the dead taken from their houses, for they did not know how to get rid of them. Doctor Bertherand, who had been doing amputations at Castiglione since Friday morning, gave his skilled services to many distinguished officers who were brought there, among them Generals de Ladmirault, Dieu, and Auger, and Colonels Broutta and Brincourt. Two other surgeons-in-chief, Doctor Leuret and Doctor Haspel, two Italian doctors, and assistant surgeons Riolacci and Lobstein, put on splints and made dressings for two days. They did not rest from their painful task even during the night. General Auger, of the Artillery, was first taken to Casa Miorino where hospital headquarters were established for Marshal Mac-Mahon's corps to which he belonged, but he was brought later to Castiglione. This distinguished officer had his left shoulder fractured by a ball that became imbedded deep in the muscles of the arm-pit and stayed there for twenty-four hours. He died on the twenty-ninth, as a result of an operation that involved removal of the limb, which was attempted in order to extract the bullet, the wound having become gangrenous.

On the Saturday the number of convoys of wounded increased to such proportions that the local authorities, the townspeople, and the troops left in Castiglione, were absolutely incapable of dealing with all the suffering. Scenes as tragic as those of the day before, though of a very different sort, began to take place. There was water and food, but even so, men died of hunger and thirst; there was plenty of lint, but there were not enough hands to dress wounds; most of the army doctors had to go on to Cavriana, there was a shortage of medical orderlies, and at this critical time no help was to be had. Somehow or other a volunteer service had to he organized; but this was very difficult amid such disorder; what was worse, a kind of panic seized the people of Castiglione, adding disastrously to the confusion and aggravating the miserable condition of the wounded by throwing them into a state of excitement.

This panic had been caused by an incident trivial enough in reality. As each corps of the French Army re-formed and re-organized, on the day after the battle, convoys of prisoners were formed and marched to Brescia through Castiglione and Montechiero. One of these detachments of prisoners, escorted by Hussars, was marching from Cavriana towards Castiglione in the afternoon. The townspeople, seeing it approaching from a distance, stupidly took it for the Austrian Army coming back in a body. The news, was spread by peasants, by extra drivers in the baggage train of the army, and by the small pedlars who generally follow the troops in a campaign; and in spite of the absurdity and improbability of such a report, the townsfolk gave it credence when they saw these creatures plunge into their midst gasping with terror. Immediately houses were shut, their inmates barricaded themselves in, burned the "Tri-color " flags that had decorated their windows, and hid in their cellars or attics. Some fled to the fields with their wives and children, carrying their valuables with them. Others, a little less nervous, stayed in their homes, but hastily took in the first Austrian wounded they found lying in the streets, and suddenly began lavishing thoughtfulness and care upon them. In the streets and on the roads, which were crowded with ambulances making for Brescia, and with food supplies coming from there for the army, baggage-wagons were hauled away at full speed, horses made off in all directions amid cries of fear and shouts of anger, limbers carrying baggage were overturned, and loads of biscuit were thrown into the ditches beside the highway. Finally, the extra drivers, terror-stricken, unharnassed their horses and rode off at the gallop along the road to Montechiero and Brescia, sowing panic as they went, and causing unspeakable turmoil, running into the carts laden with food and bread which were regularly sent by the civil administration of Brescia to the camp of the Allied Army, involving all they met in their flight, and trampling underfoot the wounded who cried to them to pick them up. Many wounded men, deaf to all remonstrances, tore off their bandages and staggered out of the churches into the streets, with no clear idea where they could go.

Oh, the agony and suffering during those days, the twenty-fifth, twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh of June! Wounds were infected by the heat and dust, by shortage of water and lack of proper care, and grew more and more painful. Foul exhalations contaminated the air, in spite of the praiseworthy attempts of the authorities to keep hospital areas in a sanitary condition. The convoys brought a fresh contingent of wounded men into Castiglione every quarter of an hour, and the shortage of assistants, orderlies and helpers was cruelly felt. In spite of the activity of one army doctor and two or three other persons in organizing transportation to Brescia by ox-cart, and in spite of the spontaneous help given by carriage-owners in Brescia, who came to fetch officer patients with their carriages, cases could not be evacuated nearly as quickly as new ones came in, and the congestion grew worse and worse.

Men of all nations lay side by side on the flagstone floors of the churches of Castiglione---Frenchmen and Arabs, Germans and Slavs. Ranged for the time being close together inside the chapels, they no longer had the strength to move, or if they had there was no room for them to do so. Oaths, curses and cries such as no words can describe resounded from the vaulting of the sacred buildings.

"Oh, Sir, I'm in such pain! " several of these poor fellows said to me, "they desert us, leave us to die miserably, and yet we fought so hard!" They could get no rest, although they were tired out and had not slept for nights. They called out in their distress for a doctor, and writhed in desperate convulsions that ended in tetanus and death. Some of the soldiers got the idea that cold water poured on already festering wounds caused worms to appear, and for this absurd reason they refused to allow their bandages to be moistened. Others, who were fortunate enough to have had their wounds dressed at once in field hospitals, received no fresh dressings at Castiglione during their enforced stay there; the tight bandages that had been put on to help them to stand the jolts of the road having been neither replaced nor loosened, these men were undergoing perfect tortures.

With faces black with the flies that swarmed about their wounds, men gazed around them, wild-eyed and helpless. Others were no more than a worm-ridden, inextricable compound of coat and shirt and flesh and blood. Many were shuddering at the thought of being devoured by the worms, which they thought they could see coming out of their bodies (whereas they really came from the myriads of flies which infested the air). There was one poor man, completely disfigured, with a broken jaw and his swollen tongue hanging out of his mouth. He was tossing and trying to get up. I moistened his dry lips and hardened tongue, took a handful of lint and dipped it in the bucket they were carrying behind me, and squeezed the water from this improvised sponge into the deformed opening that had been his mouth. Another wretched man had had a part of his face-nose, lips and chin-taken off by a sabre cut. He could not speak, and lay, half-blind, making heart-rending signs with his bands and uttering guttural sounds to attract attention. I gave him a drink and poured a little fresh water on his bleeding face. A third, with his skull gaping wide open, was dying, spitting out his brains on the stone floor. His companions in suffering kicked him out of their way, as he blocked the passage. I was able to shelter him for the last moments of his life, and I laid a handkerchief over his poor head, which still just moved.

Although every house had become an infirmary, and each household had plenty to do in taking care of the wounded officers within its doors, I succeeded, by the Sunday morning, in getting together a certain number of women who helped as best they could with the efforts made to aid the wounded. It was not a matter of amputations or operations of any kind. But food, and above all drink, had to be taken around to men dying of hunger and thirst; then their wounds could be dressed and their bleeding, muddy, vermin-covered bodies washed; all this in a scorching, filthy atmosphere in the midst of vile, nauseating odours, with lamentations and cries of anguish all around!

Before long a group of volunteer helpers was formed. The Lombard women went first to those who cried the loudest---not always the worst cases. I sought to organize as best I could relief in the quarters where it seemed to be most lacking, and I adopted in particular one of the Castiglione churches, on a height on the left coming from Brescia, and called, I think, the Chiesa Maggiore. Nearly five hundred soldiers were there, piled in the church, and a hundred more lay outside on straw in front of the church, with strips of canvas to protect them from the sun. The women entered the churches, and went from one man to another with jars and canteens full of pure water to quench their thirst and moisten their wounds. Some of these improvised nurses were beautiful and charming girls. Their gentleness and kindness, their tearful and compassionate looks, and their attentive care helped revive a little courage among the patients. The boys of the neighbourhood ran back and forth between the churches and the nearest fountains with buckets, canteens and watering pots.

The distribution of water was followed by issues of soup and beef-tea, which the quartermaster's services were obliged to make in enormous quantities. Immense bales of lint were placed at different points for anybody to use quite freely, but bandages, under-clothing and shirts were not to be had. Resources were so limited in this little town, through which the Austrian army had passed, that even objects of prime necessity could not be obtained. I succeeded, nevertheless,. in buying some new shirts through the good women who had already brought in all their old linen and given it to me, and on the Monday morning I sent my coachman into Brescia for provisions. He came back a few hours later with the carriage loaded with camomile, mallows, elder-flower, oranges, lemons, sugar, shirts, sponges, linen bandages, pins, cigars and tobacco. This made it possible to give out a refreshing drink of lemonade for which the men had been pining---to wash their wounds with mallow-water, to apply warm compresses, and change their dressings. Meantime, we had obtained some new recruits, first an ex-naval officer--then a couple of English tourists who came into the church from curiosity, and whom we seized and held practically by force. On the other hand, two more Englishmen showed the utmost helpfulness from the beginning and distributed cigars among the Austrians. We were also given help by an Italian priest-two or three casual travellers and onlookers---a Paris journalist, who afterwards assumed responsibility for the relief work in another church nearby---and a few officers whose detachment had been ordered to stand by in Castiglione.

Before long, one of these latter found that the scene made him ill, and our other volunteer helpers withdrew one by one, for they could no longer bear to look upon suffering which they could do so little to relieve. The priest followed the rest, but came back again, thoughtfully bringing aromatic herbs and flasks of salts to place under our noses.

One young French tourist, overcome by the sight of the living wrecks before him, burst into sudden sobs. A Neuchatel merchant devoted himself for two whole days to dressing wounds, and writing farewell letters to their families for dying men. It became necessary, for his own sake, to restrain his zeal, and we had also to calm the sympathetic excitement of a Belgian, which had become such that we feared he might have an access of high fever, as had happened to a Second Lieutenant who joined us on arrival from Milan on his way to his regiment.

Some of the soldiers of the detachment left to garrison the town tried to help their comrades, but they also could not bear a spectacle which told upon their morale, making too deep an impression on their imagination.

An Engineer Corporal, who had been wounded at Magenta and had practically got over his wounds (he was now returning to his battalion, and his orders left him a few days' grace) went with us, and helped us bravely, though he fainted twice in quick succession. The French Quartermaster, who had just taken up his quarters in Castiglione, finally authorized the use of unwounded prisoners for hospital work; and three Austrian doctors came to help a young Corsican military surgeon who came and asked me several times for a certificate placing on record the zeal with which I had seen him work. A German surgeon, who had deliberately remained on the battlefield to bandage the wounds of his compatriots, devoted himself to the wounded of both armies. In recognition of this the Quartermaster's department sent him back to rejoin the Austrians at Mantua three days later.

"Don't let me die!" some of these poor fellows would exclaim---and then, suddenly seizing my hand with extraordinary vigour, they felt their access of strength leave them, and died. A young Corporal named Claudius Mazuet, some twenty years old, with gentle expressive features, had a bullet in the left side. There was no hope for him, and of this he was fully aware. When I had helped him to drink, he thanked me, and added with tears in his eyes: "Oh, Sir, if you could write to my father to comfort my mother!" I noted his parents' address, and a moment later he had ceased to live.(8) An old sergeant, with several service stripes on his sleeve, said to me with the utmost suddenness, with conviction, and with cold bitterness: "If I had been looked after sooner I might have lived, and now by evening I shall be dead!" And by evening he was dead.

"I don't want to die, I don't want to die!" shouted a Grenadier of the Guard fiercely. This man who, three days earlier, had been a picture of health and strength, was now wounded to death. He fully realized that his hours were inexorably counted, and strove and struggled against that grim certainty. I spoke to him, and he listened. He allowed himself to be soothed, comforted and consoled, to die at last with the straightforward simplicity of a child.

Up at the end of the church, in the altar recess on the left, a trooper of the African Light Infantry lay on straw, uttering no complaint and hardly moving any longer. Three bullets had struck him, one in the right side, one in the left shoulder, and the third in the right leg where it had remained. It was Sunday night, and he said he had had nothing to eat since Friday morning: He was a revolting spectacle, covered with dry mud and clotted blood, his clothing torn and his shirt in shreds. We washed his wounds and gave him a little soup, and I covered him with a blanket. He carried my hand to his lips with an expression of inexpressible gratitude. At the entrance to the church was a Hungarian who never ceased to call out, begging for a doctor in heartbreaking Italian. A burst of grapeshot had ploughed into his back which looked as if it had been furrowed with steel claws, laying bare a great area of red quivering flesh. The rest of his swollen body was all black and green, and he could find no comfortable position to sit or lie in. I moistened great masses of lint in cold water and tried to place this under him, but it was not long before gangrene carried him off.

Close by was a Zouave, who wept and wept and had to be comforted like a little child. The fatigue following their exertions and the lack of food and rest joined with morbid excitement and the fear of dying unaided, developed at this stage, even in soldiers who knew no fear, a nervous and sensitive condition which led them to burst into moans and sobs. One of their uppermost thoughts, when their pain was not too dreadful, was the recollection of their mothers, and the fear of the grief their mothers would feel when they heard what had become of them. On one young man's body was found, hanging round his neck, a miniature of an old woman who was no doubt his mother. His left hand seemed still to be pressing the miniature against his heart.

Over against the wall, about one hundred French soldiers and noncommissioned officers, wrapped in their blankets, were stretched in two lines, almost touching, between which it was just possible to pass. All these men had been bandaged. Soup had been issued. They were calm and peaceful, but all their eyes followed me, every head turning to the right if I went to the right, to the left if I went to the left. "Ah," said some, "you can see he is from Paris."(9) "No," said others, "he looks to me as if he came from the South." "You are from Bordeaux, Sir, aren't you?" asked a third. Each man would have it that I came from his province or from his town. The resignation generally shown by these simple troopers is worthy of remark and interest. Considered individually, what did any one of them represent in this great upheaval? Very little. They suffered without complaint. They died humbly and quietly.

It was seldom that the wounded Austrian prisoners sought to defy their conquerors. A few, however, would not accept help, of which they were suspicious, and tore off their bandages, bringing on fresh bleeding. One Croat seized the bullet which had just been extracted from his wound, and flung it in the surgeon's face. Others remained sullen, silent, and impassive. For the most part they lacked the expansiveness, the cheerful willingness, the expressive and friendly vivacity which are characteristic of the Latin race. Nevertheless, most of them were by no means ungrateful or refractory to kindness, and sincere gratitude might be seen on their surprised faces. One boy of nineteen, who had been laid away with some forty of his nation in the furthest corner of the church, had been without food for three days. He had lost an eye, he was shaking with fever, could no longer speak, and had hardly the strength to drink a little soup; but our care brought him back to life, and twenty-four hours later, when it was possible to send him on to Brescia, he was sad, almost heartbroken, to leave us. In the one magnificent blue eye which remained to him was an expression of real and profound thankfulness, and he pressed the hands of the charitable women of Castiglione to his lips. Another prisoner in high fever drew all eyes to him. He was not yet twenty, but he was quite white-haired. His hair had gone white in the battle, from what he and his comrades said.(10)

How many young men of eighteen and twenty had come reluctantly here, from the depths of Germany or from the Eastern Provinces of the immense Austrian Empire---and some of them, perhaps, under rude compulsion---were forced to suffer not only physical pain, but also the griefs of captivity. And now they must endure the ill-will of the Milanese, who have a profound hatred for their race, for their leaders, and for their Sovereign. These men could count on little sympathy until they should reach French soil. Ah, poor mothers in Germany, in Austria, in Hungary and Bohemia, how can one help thinking of their agony, when they hear that their sons are wounded and prisoners in this hostile land!

But the women of Castiglione, seeing that I made no distinction between nationalities, followed my example, showing the same kindness to all these men whose origins were so different, and all of whom were foreigners to them. "Tutti fratelli,"(11) they repeated feelingly. All honour to these compassionate women, to these girls of Castiglione! Imperturbable, unwearying, unfaltering, their quiet self-sacrifice made little of fatigue and horrors, and of their own devotion.

The feeling one has of one's own utter inadequacy in such extraordinary and solemn circumstances is unspeakable. It is, indeed, excessively distressing to realize that you can never do more than help those who are just before you---that you must keep waiting men who are calling out and begging you to come. When you start to go somewhere, it is hours before you get there, for you are stopped by one begging for help, then by another, held up at every step by the crowd of poor wretches who press before and about you. Then you find yourself asking: "Why go to the right, when there are all these men on the left who will die without a word of kindness or comfort, without so much as a glass of water to quench their burning thirst?"

The moral sense of the importance of human life; the humane desire to lighten a little the torments of all these poor wretches, or restore their shattered courage; the furious and relentless activity which a man summons up at such moments: all these combine to create a kind of energy which gives one a positive craving to relieve as many as one can. There is no more grieving at the multiple scenes of this fearful and solemn tragedy. There is indifference as one passes even before the most frightfully disfigured corpses. There is something akin to cold calculation, in the face of horrors yet more ghastly than those here described, and which the pen absolutely declines to set down.(12) But then you feel sometimes that your heart is suddenly breaking---it is as if you were stricken all at once with a sense of bitter and irresistible sadness, because of some simple incident, some isolated happening, some small unexpected detail which strikes closer to the soul, seizing on our sympathies and shaking all the most sensitive fibres of our being.

When a soldier returns to the daily routine of an army in the field, after the fearful fatigues and frightful emotions which he must sustain on the day of a battle like Solferino, and on the day after, the recollections of his family and of his home become more impressive than ever. This is clearly depicted in the following lines, written from Volta, by a gallant French officer, to his brother at home in France: "You cannot imagine how the men are stirred when they see the Post Corporal appear to hand out letters. You see, what he brings us is news of France, news of home, news of our families and friends. The men are all eyes and ears as they stretch out their hands greedily towards him. The lucky ones---those for whom there is a letter---open it in, hot haste and devour the contents. The disappointed move away with heavy hearts, and go off by themselves to think of those they have left behind. Now and then a name is called and there is no reply. Men look at each other, question each other, and wait. Then a low voice says 'Dead,' and the Post Corporal puts aside this letter, which will return with the seals unbroken to the senders. How happy they were when they said: 'He will be pleased to get this,' and when the letter comes back to them their poor hearts will be broken. "

The streets of Castiglione were quieter now. Deaths and departures had made room, and though fresh cart-loads of wounded continued to arrive, order was gradually established, and services began to function regularly. The crowding was not to be imputed to bad organization or lack of foresight on the part of the administrative services, but was the consequence of the unheard-of and unexpected number of the wounded, and the relatively very small effectives of doctors, helpers and orderlies. The convoys from Castiglione to Brescia now went more regularly. They were made up either of ambulance carts, or of heavy wagons drawn by oxen, which moved slowly, infinitely slowly, under the burning sun, amid a cloud of dust so thick that men walking on the road sank into soft, dry dirt over the ankle. Even when these unhandy vehicles were covered over with branches, they gave but little shelter from the burning heat of the July sky. The wounded, too, were packed almost on top of one another; it is easy to imagine the torments of that long journey! A friendly nod from a passer-by seemed to do these poor wretches good, and they were quick to return it with a grateful look.

In all the villages along the road leading to Brescia, the women were to be seen sitting before their doors, quietly making lint. When a convoy came in, they jumped up on the carts, changed the men's compresses, washed their wounds, put on fresh lint soaked in cold water, and poured spoonfuls of soup, wine, or lemonade into the mouths of those who had no longer the strength to lift their heads or raise their hands. The transport wagons, which kept bringing provisions, forage, ammunitions and stores of all kinds to the French camp from France or from Piedmont, instead of returning empty, were filled up with invalids whom they carried to Brescia. In every small township through which the convoys passed, the parish authorities had drink, wine and meat prepared. At Montechiero, the three small local hospitals were managed by peasant women who cared intelligently as well as kindly for the wounded men placed there. At Guidizzolo, about one thousand wounded men were established decently, though quite temporarily, in an immense chateau; at Volta, an old convent, which had been transformed into barracks, gave shelter to hundreds of Austrians; at Cavriana, quarters were found, in the main church of this poor little town, for a number of crippled Austrians, who had lain for forty-eight hours protected only by the balconies of a tumble-down guard-house. In the field hospital at General Headquarters operations were performed with chloroform, under which the Austrians became insensible almost at once, while the French reacted with nervous contractions accompanied by intense excitement.

The inhabitants of Cavriana had almost no food or provisions left, and the men of the Guard fed them, sharing with them their rations and their mess tins. The whole countryside had been ravaged, and practically every kind of edible article had been sold to the Austrian troops or requisitioned by them. The French army, while it had plenty of field rations, thanks to the foresight of the Quartermaster's department, had the greatest difficulty in obtaining butter, fat, and vegetables, by which the soldiers' rations are generally supplemented. The Austrians had requisitioned almost all the cattle in the locality, and maize flour was the only thing which the Allies could find easily in the districts where they were now encamped. However, anything which the Lombard peasants could still sell, to help feed the troops, was bought from them at very high prices, the estimates being always made so as to satisfy the seller; and requisitions by the French army for forage, potatoes, or other provisions were generously paid for, the local inhabitants being, moreover, largely indemnified for the inevitable damage caused by the battle.

The wounded men of the Sardinian army, who had been carried to Desenzano, Rivoltella, Lonato and Pozzolengo, were not so badly off as those at Castiglione. The two first-named towns, not being occupied by two different armies within a few days, were better supplied with foodstuffs; the field hospitals were in good condition, and the inhabitants, less perturbed and less frightened, gave active help in looking after the patients. Those who were sent on from there to Brescia were loaded on to decent wagons and laid on a thick layer of straw. They were protected from the sun by interlaced hoops, made of leafy branches, firmly attached to the wagons and covered over with a strong canvas cover.

Worn out with fatigue, and unable to sleep a wink, I called for my carriage on the afternoon of the twenty-seventh, and set off, at about 6 o'clock, to breathe the fresh evening air in the open, and get a little rest by staying away for a time from the gloomy scenes which surrounded one on every side at Castiglione. I was fortunate in the day I selected, for (as I learned later) no troop movements had been ordered for the Monday. Quiet had therefore succeeded the fearful perturbations of the preceding days on the battlefield, which was now a melancholy sight. There was no longer any sign whatever of passion or enthusiasm. But here and there, dried puddles of blood showed red on the ground, and freshly turned earth covered with white lime, showed the last resting places of the victims of the twenty-fourth. At Solferino, where for centuries past a square tower had stood proud and impassive watch over the ground on which, for the third time, two of the greatest Powers of modern times had come to blows, they were still picking up quantities of wretched salvage, which lay everywhere, covering even the blood-stained crosses and tombstones of the cemetery.

1 reached Cavriana about 9 o'clock. The panoply of war which surrounded the General Headquarters of the Emperor of the French was a unique and splendid sight. I was looking for Marshal the Duke of Magenta, with whom I had the honour of being personally acquainted. Not knowing exactly where his Army Corps were camped at this time, I stopped my carriage in a little square, opposite the house where the Emperor Napoleon had been staying since the Friday night. I thus happened unexpectedly upon a group of Generals, sitting on plain wicker chairs or on wooden stools, smoking their cigars in the fresh air before the improvised palace of their Sovereign. While I was inquiring where Marshal de Mac-Mahon had been sent, these Generals in their turn questioned the Corporal who was with me, and whom they took for my orderly, as he was seated on the box beside the coachman.(13) They were curious to know who I might be, and to find out the purpose of the mission on which they supposed I was bound---for they could hardly be expected to suppose that a mere tourist would have ventured alone amid the camps, and then, having got as far as Cavriana, should be intending to go still further at so late an hour. The Corporal, who knew no more than they did, naturally remained impervious to their questioning, though he answered very respectfully; and the Generals' curiosity seemed to increase when they saw me set off again for Borghetto, where I expected to find the Duke of Magenta.

The Second Corps, which he commanded, had been ordered to proceed on the twenty-sixth from Cavriana to Castellaro, five kilometres away, and his Divisions were established to right and left of the road leading from Castellaro to Monzambano. The Marshal himself, with his staff, was at Borghetto. But it was already late at night, and as the information given me had been somewhat vague, after an hour's driving we mistook our way, and took a road leading to Volta. The result was that we came across the Army Corps of General (since three days Marshal), Niel, which was camped round the small town of Volta. The indeterminate noises which could be beard under the beautiful starlit sky---the bivouac fires in which whole trees were blazing---the lighted tents of the officers, and the sleepy murmurs of a camp between waking and sleeping---were a pleasant rest to my strained and over-excited imagination. Evening shadows and deadly silence had succeeded the various noises and emotions of the day, and the sweet, pure air of an Italian night was a joy to breathe.

My Italian coachman was taken with such panic, in the half-darkness, at the idea of being so near the enemy, that more than once I was obliged to take the reins from him, giving them to the Corporal, or driving myself. The poor man had fled from Mantua a week or ten days earlier, so as to avoid serving in the Austrian army, and had gone to Brescia as a refugee, where, in order to earn his living, he had taken service with a carriage dealer who employed him as a coachman. His panic had been greatly increased by a distant musket shot, which an Austrian discharged when he heard us coming---and then ran away and disappeared into the brushwood. When the Austrian Army retreated, a few soldiers had hidden themselves in the cellars of small villages, which had been abandoned by their inhabitants and partially looted. These poor fugitives, alone and frightened, had at first been able to find more or less adequate food and drink in their underground retreats. Afterwards they had made off furtively into the fields, and wandered aimlessly there all night.

My Mantuan was quite unable to recover his nerve, and could no longer drive his horse straight at all. He kept turning his head from left to right, and from right to left, staring into all the bushes along the road with haggard eyes, and dreading at every moment to see some ambushed Austrian preparing to take aim at him. His frightened gaze searched every hedgerow, every hovel, and at every little turn of the road his fears redoubled. His fright became indescribable terror when the silence of the night was suddenly broken by another shot, from a vedette whom we had failed to see in the darkness, and he almost swooned at the sight of a big open umbrella, with holes in it from three cannon balls and several bullets, which came into view on the edge of a field near the track leading to Volta. I suppose the umbrella was part of the baggage of some French army canteen woman, who had lost it in the tempest on the twenty-fourth.

We retraced our steps in order to get on the right road for Borghetto. It was after eleven o'clock, and we set our horse galloping as fast as he could go. Our modest little carriage went careering through space, running noiselessly on the Strada Cavallara, when we were surprised by a fresh alarm: "Who goes there? Answer or I fire!" called out a mounted sentinel, all in a breath, at point-blank range. "France!" the Corporal called back at once and gave his identity: "Corporal of the First Engineers, number seven Company. . . . " "Pass," came the answer.

Finally, at a quarter to twelve we came, without further incident, to the first houses of Borghetto.(14) The whole town was plunged in silence and darkness, except that in the main street a little light was shining on the ground-floor, in a low-ceilinged room where officers of the Quartermaster's service were working. These officers, though interrupted in their work, and much surprised by my unexpected appearance at such an hour, showed me every courtesy. One of the paymasters, Mr. A. Outrey, offered me most cordial hospitality, without waiting to see that I was provided with recommendations from various General Officers. His orderly brought in a mattress, on which I threw myself down, in my clothes, to get a few hours' rest, after taking an excellent soup, which I enjoyed the more since I had eaten nothing to speak of for days. I slept quietly, without being suffocated by foul smells and harassed by flies (which, having had their fill of dead bodies, must needs come and torment the living) as I had been at Castiglione. The Corporal and the coachman installed themselves in the carriage, which remained in the street---but the unfortunate Mantuan was in a nervous trance, and could not close an eye. I found him in the morning really more dead than alive.

On the twenty-eighth, at 6 o'clock in the morning, I was kindly and amiably received by the gallant and knightly Marshal Mac-Mahon, who was so justly known as the idol of his men.(15) At 10 o'clock I was in the henceforth historical house at Cavriana, which sheltered two great hostile Sovereigns on the one day of June 24. At 3 o'clock the same afternoon, I was on my way back to the wounded at Castiglione, who expressed their delight at seeing me again; and on June 30 I was at Brescia.

This graceful and picturesque town had been transformed, not like Castiglione into a great field ambulance, but into an immense hospital. The two cathedrals, the churches, palaces, convents, colleges and barracks---indeed, all the buildings in the town---were full of the casualties from Solferino. Fifteen thousand beds had been improvised, in one way or another, from one day to the next. The generous townspeople did more than had ever been done anywhere in such circumstances. In the centre of the town, the old Basilica, known as "il Duomo vecchio" or the "Rotonde," with its two chapels, contained about 1000 wounded men. Numbers of people went to see them, and women of all classes brought them quantities of oranges, jellies, biscuits, sweets and other dainties. The humblest widow, the poorest old crone, felt it her duty to go herself, with her tribute of sympathy and her modest offering. It was the same in the new Cathedral, a splendid white church with an immense cupola, in which hundreds of wounded were crowded together; and it was the same in the forty other buildings, churches or hospitals, which contained then some 20,000 wounded and sick.

The Town Council of Brescia rose at once to the occasion, and worthily discharged the extraordinary responsibilities which these solemn circumstances had placed upon it. The Council sat permanently, and secured the help and advice of the most notable citizens, who gave it much effective help. To direct the hospital work, the Council appointed, at the suggestion of the eminent Dr. Bartolomeo Gualla, a Central Committee, of which he took the chair, comprising Doctors Corbolani, Orefici, Ballini, Bonicelli, Cassa, C. Maggi and Abeni, who, with admirable zeal, worked tirelessly day and night. The committee appointed at the head of each hospital a special administrator, and a chief surgeon, who was assisted by several doctors and by a certain number of orderlies. By getting convents, schools or churches opened, the committee brought into existence, in the space of a few hours, as if by enchantment, hospitals provided with hundreds of beds, with spacious kitchen and laundry accommodation, with linen and everything else which might be useful or necessary. These measures were taken so readily, and so sympathetically, that after only a few days one was amazed by the orderliness and regularity with which these numerous improvised hospitals functioned. Such astonishment was only natural when one thinks that the population of Brescia, which is a town of 40,000 inhabitants, was all at once practically doubled, by the arrival of over 30,000 sick or wounded.(16)

I cannot refrain from recording here that the doctors---140 of them in all---showed, throughout the time when they were carrying out these difficult and fatiguing duties, sublime energy and devotion, unblemished by any kind of meanness or jealousy to spoil the excellent harmony in which they worked for the common good. They were helped by medical students and a few volunteers. Auxiliary committees were also organized, and a special committee was appointed to receive contributions in kind (bedding, linen, and provisions of all sorts). Another committee was responsible for the central depot or store-house.(17)

In the vast hospital wards the officers were generally kept apart from the men, and the Austrian patients were not mixed up with the Allies. The lines of beds seemed all the same, but on a shelf above each man his uniform and service cap showed to which army he belonged. Steps had to be taken to prevent visitors from crowding in, since they disturbed and interrupted the work. Side by side with soldiers whose countenances were martial and resigned, could be seen others who muttered and complained. All those first days every wound seemed to be serious. In the French soldiers could be noted the lively Gallic character, decisive, adaptable and good-natured, firm and energetic, yet impatient and quick-tempered. Worrying little, and showing hardly any emotion, their light-heartedness made them better operation patients than the Austrians who, taking things less lightly, were much afraid of amputations and inclined to fret in their solitude. The Italian doctors, in their long black robes, looked after the French with every possible care; but the methods of some of them distressed their patients when they prescribed diet, blood-letting and tamarind water.

In the wards I found several of my wounded men from Castiglione, who recognized me. They were getting better care now, but their troubles were not over. Among them was one of those heroic Light Infantrymen of the Guard who had fought so bravely, whose wound I had dressed for the first time in Castiglione. He had a gunshot wound in the leg and lay on his palliasse with an expression of deep suffering on his face, burning, hollow eyes, and a livid yellow colour indicating that purulent fever had supervened and made his condition worse. His lips were dry, his voice trembled, and his soldierly valour had given place to a vague feeling of frightened and reluctant apprehension. He was afraid to let anyone come near his poor leg, which was already gangrenous. The French surgeon who performed amputations passed before his bed, and the patient took his hand and clutched it between his own hands, which burned like hot iron. "Don't hurt me---I am in frightful pain!" he exclaimed.

But the operation had to be done, and done quickly. There were a score of other wounded men to be operated that same morning, and 150 waiting to have their wounds dressed. There was no time to pause in pity over a single case, or wait for the man to make up his mind. The surgeon, a kind fellow, but cold and decisive, simply replied: "Leave it all to us." Then he quickly raised the blanket. The fractured leg had swollen to twice its normal size, evil-smelling pus was running freely in three separate places, and purple marks showed that a main artery had been cut, so that the limb could no longer receive its proper supply of blood. So there was nothing to be done, and the only remedy, if it could be called a remedy, was amputation, two-thirds of the way up the thigh. Amputation! Word of horror for this poor boy, who could see before him only two alternatives: imminent death, or else the wretched existence of a cripple. He had no time to screw up his courage for what was coming. "Oh God, oh God, what are you going to do?" he asked, shuddering. The surgeon made no reply. "Take him away, orderly," he said: "Hurry up!" But a heart-rending cry burst from the quivering throat. The clumsy orderly had taken hold of the motionless but terribly tender limb much too near the wound. The fractured bones had run into the flesh, and caused the patient terrible agony. His leg could be seen bending, all out of shape with the shaking it had got, as the man was carried to the operating theatre.

Ah, that fearful procession! It was like a lamb being led to the sacrifice.

The patient was at last at rest on the operating table, which was covered by a thin mattress. On another table beside him lay the instruments under a napkin. The surgeon, his mind on his task, had no eyes or ears for anything now but the operation. A young medical assistant held the patient's arms. The orderly took hold of the uninjured leg, and put out his full strength to pull the patient over to the edge of the table. The patient cried out in terror: "Don't drop me!" and threw his arms convulsively round the young doctor, who was standing ready to support him and was himself pale with emotion and almost as upset as the patient himself.

The operating surgeon had removed his coat, turned up his sleeves almost to the shoulder, and donned a white apron which covered him up to the neck. With one knee on the ground and the terrible knife in his hand, he threw his arm round the soldier's thigh, and with a single movement cut the skin round the limb. A piercing cry rang through the hospital. The young doctor, looking into the suffering man's face, could see in his drawn features every detail of the frightful agony he was undergoing. "Be brave!" he said to the soldier under his breath, as he felt the man's hands stiffen against his back, "Two more minutes, and you will be all right. "

The surgeon rose, and began to separate the skin from the muscles under it, which he thus stripped. Then he cut away the flesh from the skin, and raised the skin about an inch, like a sort of cuff. After that he returned to the main task, and with a vigorous movement cut right through the muscles with his knife, as far as the bone. A torrent of blood burst from the opened arteries, covering the surgeon and dripping on to the floor. The able practitioner, quiet and impassive, said nothing until all at once, through the silence, he said angrily to the clumsy orderly: "You fool, can't you compress an artery?" The orderly had had little experience, and did not know how to stop the haemorrhage by applying his thumb to the blood vessels in the right way. The patient, in an ecstasy of pain, muttered weakly: "Oh, that will do, let me die!" and cold sweat ran down his face. But there was still another minute to go through, a minute which seemed like eternity. The assistant, kind as ever, counted the seconds, and looking from the operator to the patient's face and back again, he tried to sustain his courage, and, seeing him shaking with terror, "Only one minute more," he said.

It was indeed now time for the saw, and I could hear the grating of the steel as it entered the living bone, and separated the half -rotten limb from the body.

But the pain was too much for that weak and exhausted frame. There was no more groaning, for the patient had fainted. The surgeon, having no more cries and moans to guide him, feared that his patient's silence might be the silence of death, and looked anxiously to make sure that there was still life in him. The cordials, which had been held in reserve, just succeeded in bringing a flicker of life back into the dull eyes, which were half-closed and staring. It seemed after all as if the dying man was going to live. He was broken and exhausted---but at least the worst of his suffering was over.

In the next hospital chloroform was sometimes used. In that case the patient, especially when a Frenchman, went through two quite distinct phases, passing from a stage of excitement which often attained to wild delirium, to complete depression and prostration; and he remained plunged, throughout the second stage, in a sort of deep lethargy. Some soldiers, who were addicted to the use of strong waters, are very hard to chloroform, and resist the strong anaesthetic for a long time. Accidents, and even death from chloroform, are not so rare as one might suppose, and it is sometimes in vain that you try to call back to life a man who was speaking to you only a few minutes earlier.

Imagine now what an operation of this kind was, when undertaken on the person of an Austrian knowing neither Italian nor French, who was led like a sheep to the slaughter, unable to exchange a single word with his kindly tormentors. The French met with kindness from everyone. They were cheered, comforted and encouraged, and when the conversation was led to the battle of Solferino, although it was there they had received their cruel wounds, they grew excited and fell readily into argument. What were for them glorious recollections fired their enthusiasm, and seemed to alleviate their lot by taking their thoughts away from themselves. But the Austrians had no such good fortune. In the different hospitals where they had been deposited, I consequently insisted on seeing them, and in some cases almost broke into the wards. And how grateful the good fellows were for the few kind words and the pinch of tobacco I had to give them! On their resigned, quiet, gentle countenances were depicted feelings which they could not express in words. Their looks said more than any spoken thanks. The officers showed particular appreciation of the attention given them. Officers and soldiers alike were treated humanely by the people of Brescia, but with no pretence at friendliness. In the hospital where the Prince of Isenburg lodged, he and another German Prince had between them a small room that was fairly comfortable.

For several days running I handed out tobacco, pipes and cigars, in the churches and hospitals, where the smell of the tobacco, smoked by hundreds of men, was of great value against the pungent stench which arose as the result of crowding so many patients together in stifling hot buildings. The stocks of tobacco in Brescia were very soon exhausted, and more had to be brought from Milan. Only tobacco could lessen the fears which the wounded men felt before an amputation. Many underwent their operations with a pipe in their mouths, and a number died still smoking.

An honourable inhabitant of Brescia, Mr. Carlo Borghetti, was so very kind as to drive me himself in his carriage to the different hospitals in the town, and he helped me to distribute our gifts of tobacco. The tobacco was packed by the merchant in thousands of little twists of paper, which soldiers volunteered to carry in enormous baskets. Wherever I went I had an enthusiastic welcome. Only one Lombard doctor, Count Calini, declined to allow cigars to be issued, in the San Luca military hospital for which he had been given responsibility. This was a sad blow to the poor patients, who cast greedy glances at the baskets of tobacco at the door. Everywhere else the doctors proved as grateful as the patients for gifts of this kind. I did not allow myself to be put off by this small disappointment; and I must say that it was the first obstacle I encountered and the first difficulty, if it can be called one, which arose in my path. Up to that moment I had had no annoyance of this kind, and what was even more surprising, I was not called upon even once to show my passport or the warm letters of recommendation from Generals(18) to other Generals of which my pocket-book was full. I did not, therefore, accept defeat at the hands of Doctor Calini; and on the same afternoon, after a fresh attempt at San Luca, I succeeded in effecting a generous distribution of cigars among the good crippled fellows, who had been forced to endure the tortures of Tantalus through my innocent fault. When they saw me return, they could not help giving voice to exclamations and sighs of satisfaction and delight.