Along the two streets which were parallel with the brook and in the brook itself, the dead were lying in long rows.
Many of them were seated with their backs against the walls. They had been dangerously wounded in the battle but had had sufficient strength to retire from the strife, and had sunk down against the wall and died from loss of blood.
Some were still standing upright in the brook, their hands clutching the bank as if to climb out, rigid in death. And in obscure corners of the ruined houses, when they were lighted up with the sun's rays, we could see the miserable wretches crushed under the rubbish, with stones and beams lying across their bodies.
The struggle at St. Amand became still more terrible, the discharges of cannon seemed to rise one above the other, and if we had not all been looking death in the face, nothing could have prevented us from admiring this grand music.
At every discharge hundreds of men perished, but there was no interruption, the solid earth trembled under our feet. We could breathe again now, and very soon we began to feel a most intolerable thirst. During the fight nobody had thought of it, but now everybody wanted to drink.
Our house formed the corner at the left of the bridge, but the little water that was running over the muddy bottom of the brook was red with blood. Between our house and the next there was a little garden, where there was a well from which to water it. We all looked at this well with its curb and its wooden posts; the bucket was still hanging to the chain in spite of the showers of shot, but three men were already lying face downward in the path leading to it. The Prussians had shot them as they were trying to reach it.
As we stood there with our loaded muskets, one said, "I would give half my blood for one glass of that water;" another, "Yes, but the Prussians are on the watch."
This was true, there they were, a hundred paces from us, perhaps they were as thirsty as we, and were guessing our thoughts.
The shots that were still fired came from these houses, and no one could go along the street, they would shoot him at once, so we were all suffering horribly.
This lasted for another half hour, when the cannonade extended from St. Amand to Ligny, and we could see that our batteries had opened with grape and canister on the Prussians by the great gaps made in their columns at every discharge.