With an Ambulance During the Franco-German War / Personal Experiences and Adventures with Both Armies, 1870-1871

by Charles Edward Ryan

It had been freezing very hard every night, and snow was lying deep on the ground.

If people at home (and there are some who talk much around their comfortable fires about going to war on every paltry provocation) could have seen the waggon-loads of half-frozen wounded which were brought in to us on the night of the 4th, and those again who lay outside the town without assistance, their wounds uncared for, and exposed to the bitterly cold night air, how soon they would change their idle tone! how they would loathe and abominate the very name of war!

I can understand that men find a pleasure in studying the art of fighting, as they do in playing a game of chess; and I have allowed in my own case the fascination which even its horrid reality is capable of exercising over one. But for the man who deems it a pleasure and a glory to use the science of war as a weapon wherewith to annihilate thousands of human beings, for the delusion called "prestige," or in the game of politics, I would have him to know that it is a foul and monstrous thing, full of hideous suffering, cruelty, and injustice, with nothing to redeem it, save the courage whereby such miseries are endured.

However, let me go on with my proper theme. Immediately the darkness set in on the 3rd, the cannonading ceased. This night we snatched but a few hours' sleep; for, at the first dawn of daylight, a repetition of yesterday's performance began with redoubled vigour. From the belfry tower of our church, during the past two days, we had been able to get a fair idea how the battle was going. It commanded a fine view of the country around. But now that the Germans had driven the French back on the outskirts of the town we could see much more of the contest. Early on the 4th we beheld the whole cavalry, numbering about 3000 men, come down the Rue Royale and pass over the bridge on the Quai du Châtelet,—some at a swinging trot, others at a gallop. It was a rare sight, for here were represented men of every regiment in France—Cuirassiers, Lancers, Chasseurs d'Afrique and the rest. This host of armed men and horses, extending as far as the eye could reach (which was certainly half a mile), formed a coup d'œil not easily forgotten; and the clatter they made on the pavement, during their stampede, was loud enough to have been heard far outside the town.

Towards evening I availed myself of a few minutes' leisure to ascend the church tower and watch the battle, which still continued. The roar of the fighting, which was now going on in the vineyards and entrenchments at the end of the Faubourg Bannier, baffles description. The heavy French marine guns were all going simultaneously, while on each side of the town the infantry also were in close conflict. Quite near us, at the end of our own Faubourg St. Vincent, just where the convent stood in which Miss Pearson and Miss McLoughlin were at work, the fighting seemed heaviest. On some portion of the ground that was not so thickly covered with vineyards, the dead were strewn in heaps, many being the victims of their own mitrailleuses which the Germans had captured, and were now using with more precision and deadly effect than their original possessors. But all this time, the French, though retreating, kept up a continuous and well-directed fire upon the advancing Prussians, whose losses, as we afterwards discovered, were quite as great as those of the vanquished.

This they attributed themselves to the great tact and ability which the French marines displayed in the management of their heavy guns. But for these, indeed, as I have heard the French say, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, for them to have covered the retreat of their army.

The sun shone brilliantly that afternoon of the 4th, and the arms and accoutrements of the contending forces were flashing brightly, as they moved about among the vineyards. In the distance we could see in several places the field-artillery galloping along in different directions, wheeling round suddenly, and stopping, when the little puffs of smoke told us their reason for doing so. But these reports were lost in the general tumult of the battle. One or two more repetitions of these little puffs, then a limber-up, and a dash ahead as before in their onward course, only to repeat the same manœuvres further on; such were the tactics which, as from a box at the theatre, we repeatedly noticed, standing in the belfry of Ste. Euverte.

And here I may mention an incident witnessed by Drs. May and Tilghman. There was a hot contest being waged close to the Hospital, among the double rows of trees on the Boulevard St. Vincent, when, in the midst of the confusion, a young lieutenant of the Line was seen stepping out from a house just beside the church. He had gone but a few paces, when a young girl rushed out after him and took a last embrace, after which he moved quickly out of her sight. But evidently he was not yet out of the mind of the young girl; for she stood as if rooted to the spot, gazing after her lover, heedless of the bullets which were whistling past, and of the storm of the battle raging round her. In another moment, May and Tilghman realised her frightful situation. May sprang over the paling which was between them, but arrived only in time to receive her bleeding and senseless into his arms. A spent bullet had struck her between the angle of the eye and the cheek bone, and had stripped back the soft parts of the side of the face as far as the ear, with a portion of the scalp.

The wound, though not so very dangerous,—for the bone of the head was only grazed and not broken,—was, nevertheless, an ugly one. The girl was at once taken into her own house, where May and Tilghman skilfully adjusted the torn portions of the scalp by a neat operation, bestowing on the case every attention in their power. It will doubtless be gratifying to my reader when I tell him that this girl made a splendid recovery. I had the privilege of watching her convalescence in the absence of Dr. May. Nor was she much disfigured; for, in consequence of the prompt treatment, the parts united admirably, leaving an almost imperceptible scar, which was, however, sufficiently well marked to remind her of that romantic, but perilous, moment at Orleans. Love is proverbially blind. In this case, love was blind and deaf too.