Entire divisions throw their knapsacks to the earth in order to rush at the enemy with fixed bayonets.
If a battalion is driven away another replaces it; each hill, each height, each rocky eminence becomes a theatre for an obstinate struggle.
On the heights, as well as in the ravines, the dead lie piled up. The Austrians and the allied armies march one against the other, killing each other above the blood-covered corpses, butchering with gunshots, crushing each other's skulls or disemboweling with the sword or bayonet. No cessation in the conflict, no quarter given. The wounded are defending themselves to the last. It is butchery by madmen drunk with blood.
Sometimes the fighting becomes more terrible on account of the arrival of rushing, galloping cavalry. The horses, more compassionate than their riders, seek in vain to step over the victims of this butchery, but their iron hoofs crush the dead and dying. With the neighing of the horses are mingled blasphemies, cries of rage, shrieks of pain and despair.
The artillery, at full speed, follows the cavalry which has cut a way through the corpses and the wounded lying in confusion on the ground. A jaw-bone of one of these last is torn away; the head of another is battered in; the breast of a third is crushed. Limbs are broken and bruised; the field is covered with human remains; the earth is soaked with blood.
The French troops, with fiery ardor, scale the steep hills and rocky declivities in spite of shot and shell.
Hardly does some harassed and profusely perspiring company capture a hill and reach its summit, when it falls like an avalanche on the Austrians, overthrows, repulses and pursues them to the depths of the hollows.
But the Austrians regain the advantage. Ambuscaded behind the houses, the churches and the walls of Medole, Solferino and Cavriana, they heroically fight on and very nearly win the victory.
The unending combat rages incessantly and in every place with fury. Nothing stops, nothing interrupts the butchery. They are killing one another by the hundreds. Every foot of ground is carried at the bayonet's point, every post disputed foot by foot. From the hands of the enemy are taken villages, house after house, farm after farm, each is the theatre of a siege. Doors, windows and courts are abattoirs.