"His weird is no come yet," I heard old Sergeant Duff mutter as we rode on in extended order, our horses sometimes stumbling over what appeared to be a heap of freshly gathered grain or hemp. These had been uprooted by some kind hand, and spread over a dead comrade to protect or conceal his body from plunderers; and everywhere lay fragments of exploded shells and the half imbedded cannon-shot that had ploughed up the grass or corn in long furrows.
We sought for and interred, separately, in his cloak, the body of poor Keith, our young lieutenant. Elsewhere the dead were rapidly interred; some by lantern-light, and with them, undistinguished among the rank and file, Prince Xavier of Saxony.
One soldier of our 51st got his diamond star, and sold it to a Jew for some hundred pounds, which he spent in six months, keeping the regiment in an uproar while the money lasted; another got his purse, which was filled with louis d'ors; and a third 51st man got his watch, which was studded with brilliants. Some Westphalian boors then stripped the body, which was flung into a pit and interred with about twenty others.
All the churches in Minden and its vicinity were converted into hospitals. The interior of the old Cathedral—whither I rode to inquire after Hob Elliot and some others of ours—presented a very singular scene. It is a dark but stately edifice, said to have been formerly the palace of the Pagan King Wittikind, but was turned by him into a church after his conversion.
Along the high-arched Gothic aisles were rows of wounded soldiers—British, French, and Hanoverian—groaning, praying, cursing, and rustling fretfully among the bloody straw on which they lay. Knapsacks, haversacks, and accoutrements hung on every carved knob, and there was not a saint who did not bear a load of sword-belts, bridles, or canteens slung about his neck or piled within his niche, while, in the Gothic porch, the chapter-house, and the painted chapel of Our Lady of Minden, stood surgeons' blocks for operations; and there were Dr. Probe and all the medical men of the army busy in their shirt-sleeves with knife and saw, and up to their bared elbows in blood.
There was no time, nor was it then the fashion to reduce fractures; so around each military Æsculapius lay piles of legs, arms, hands, and feet, amputated as fast as their owners could be brought from the field; and these revolting fragments were cast into a corner until they could be carted away to the pits that were being dug by our working parties amid the harvest-fields on the plain of Todtenhausen.
But such is war, and such are its grim concomitants.
On the noon of the day after the battle I was returning from the visit to this hospital, or cathedral, and was proceeding to rejoin the Light Troop which was bivouacked in a hemp-field at some distance from the pits where the dead lay, when two French officers and a trumpeter, all mounted, and accompanied by six dragoons, came suddenly upon me at an angle of the road.
As one bore a white banner on a sergeant's pike, I recognised at once a flag of truce, so we simultaneously reined up and courteously saluted each other. One wore the gorgeous uniform of Colonel of the Regiment de Bretagne; the other was a French Hussar officer, in whom I recognised the Chevalier de Boisguiller.
"Peste! monsieur," said he, "you and I have the luck of meeting in strange places, but seldom under pleasant circumstances. We are in haste, for those we have left behind are not likely to wait for us, pressed as they now are by your cavalry; so, can you direct us to the quarters of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick?"