What terrible episodes! What touching scenes! What disillusionments!
There are battalions without food, companies lacking almost every necessity, because of the loss of the knapsacks. Water also is lacking, but their thirst is so intense that officers and soldiers resort to slimy and even bloody pools. Everywhere the wounded are begging for water.
Through the silence of the night are heard groans, stifled cries of anguish and pain, and heartrending voices calling for help.
Who will ever be able to paint the agonies of this horrible night!
The sun on the twenty-fifth of June, 1859, shines above one of the most frightful sights imaginable. The battle-field is everywhere covered with corpses of men and horses. They appear as if sown along the roads, in the hollows, the thickets and the fields, above all, near the village of Solferino.
The fields ready for the harvest are ruined, the grain trodden down, the fences overturned, the orchards destroyed.
Here and there one finds pools of blood.
The villages are deserted. They bear traces of bullets, of bombs and shells and grenades.
The houses whose walls have been pierced with bullets and are gaping widely, are shaken and ruined.