Throughout the entire action the Emperor Francis Joseph remained calm and
composed. Towards the evening the Austrian centre having yielded the left
wing, not daring to face the position of the Allies, a general retreat
was decided upon and the head of the House of Hapsburg, who throughout
the day had watched the bullets raining around him, withdrew with a part
of his staff in the direction of Volta. The Austrian officers had fought
like lions, many in their despair gave themselves up to death by the
enemy’s hands, but not without selling dearly their lives. Most of those
who returned to their regiments were covered with the blood of their own
wounds or those of their enemies.
The roads were filled with army wagons, carts and reserve artillery.
The first convoys of Austrian wounded, consisting of the less serious
cases, commenced to come into Villa-Franca, the more seriously wounded
followed. The Austrian medical staff dressed the wounds hastily and in a
perfunctory manner gave a little nourishment to the sufferers, and then
sent them on by rail to Verona, where the crowding was most fearful.
Although in the retreat the Austrian Army sought to carry away all the
wounded possible, and this at the price of much extra suffering to the
poor men, thousands were left behind lying on the ground, still drenched
with their blood.
[Illustration: VICTOR EMANUEL, KING OF SARDINIA, LATER KING OF ITALY.]
Towards the close of the day, when the twilight shadows were creeping
over this vast field of carnage, more than one French officer, more than
one French soldier wandered here and there, seeking some missing friend
or compatriot, beside whom, when found, he knelt endeavoring to restore
him to consciousness, to staunch the flow of blood, to dress the terrible
wounds, to bind his handkerchief around a fractured limb or to vainly
seek for water to quench the agonizing thirst. What silent tears must
have been shed on that unhappy night!
During the battle flying ambulances were stationed on farms, in
churches, convents, in the open air, or under the shade of the trees,
which received firstly wounded officers and non-commissioned officers,
attending to them in great haste, and afterwards came the rank and file
if the medical staff had time to spare for them. Such as could walk
betook themselves to the ambulances; others were carried on stretchers
and hand-barrows.
During the fight a pennant planted on a slight elevation marked the
position of the dressing stations for wounded and the field hospitals of
the regiments in action. But, unfortunately, the troops seldom knew their
own hospital pennants nor those of the enemy, with the result that shells
rained down, sparing neither doctors, attendants, wounded nor the wagons
conveying supplies of food and lint.
The heights extending from Castiglione to Volta were dotted with the
twinkling lights of thousands of fires fed with the debris of the
Austrian gun carriages, supplemented with the branches of trees broken
off by the cannon balls or during the storm. Round these fires the
soldiers made an effort to dry their soaking garments, then tired out
they stretched themselves on the stony ground to sleep.
There were whole battalions without a particle of food. Water, too, was
lacking and their thirst was so intense that soldiers and even officers
were content to drink from the muddy rain-pools, oft-times stained with
blood. Everywhere wounded men were crying piteously for “Water!” In
the silence of the night could be heard the groans, the stifled cries
of anguish, the despairing appeals for help. What pen can describe the
agonies of that horrible night!
The sun of June 25th, 1859, rose on one of the most frightful spectacles
that the most vivid imagination can conceive. The battlefield was strewn
with the bodies of men and horses, and with the battered forms of men
in whom the spark of life still remained, they filled up the roads,
they choked the trenches and the ravines, they lay piled in heaps in
the bushes and the fields, everywhere for miles around the village of
Solferino.
The crops were utterly destroyed, the corn was trodden under foot, hedges
were piled up, orchards ravaged. Here and there were pools of blood,
formerly prosperous villages, now deserted, bore the marks of shot and
shell; apparently deserted houses, whose walls were riddled with bullets,
stood shattered, gashed and ruined. Their inhabitants, who for the most
part had passed the twenty-four hours during which the conflict raged in
their cellars without food or light, now began to issue forth from their
hiding places, the vacant expression and blank countenances of these poor
peasants witnessing eloquently to the reality of the fright they had
endured.
The ground was covered with wreckage of all kinds, broken weapons,
accoutrements, camp furniture, and blood-stained articles of clothing.
The unfortunate wounded who lay around were pale, livid, and utterly
exhausted with their sufferings. Some, very badly wounded, had an
imbecile expression, seemed not to understand when spoken to, staring
with haggard eyes at those who brought them succor, and others in a
state of nervous excitement shivered with a convulsive ague. Yet others,
with deep, gaping wounds, in which inflammation had already set in, were
delirious from their pain, and implored that they might be put out of
their misery, and with drawn faces twisted themselves into indescribable
positions in their supreme agony. Besides these there were unfortunate
men, who had been struck by cannon balls and grape shot, or whose arms
and legs had been shattered by pieces of artillery.
In many cases the bodies of the dead and wounded were robbed by
marauders, and thousands of poor fellows, who still lived, were thus
despoiled of all their savings, to say nothing of the little trinkets,
the gifts of mothers, wives and sweethearts.
Besides these tragic scenes were many dramatic incidents witnessed by
Monsieur Dunant himself of which he tells; there an old officer on the
retired list, General Breton, wandering over the battlefield in search
of his wounded son-in-law; here Colonel Maleville, wounded at Casa-Nova
quietly breathing his last, Colonel Genlis with a terrible wound that
has produced a high fever, Lieutenant de Selve, just out of St. Cyr,
whose arm has been shot away; a poor sergeant-major, whose two arms have
been shattered, and of whom he writes: “I saw him again at a hospital at
Brescia, but he died in passing Mont Cenis.” Officer after officer gave
up his life because of wounds in which gangrene set in through lack of
attention.
The scarcity of water was acutely felt, for the burning summer sun had
dried up almost all the moisture. Wherever the smallest spring was found
sentries were placed, who, with fixed bayonets, guarded it for the need
of the most urgent cases.
Wounded horses, that had lost their riders, wandered pitiably about
through the night. Whenever opportunity afforded they were mercifully
shot.
Among the dead were some whose features bore a calm and serene
expression, these were those who had been killed outright. But those who
had not immediately succumbed had their faces drawn and distorted by the
agony they had endured, their hands clutched the ground, their haggard
eyes were wide open and their teeth clenched.
Three days and three nights were occupied in burying the dead on the
field of slaughter. Some few bodies, hidden in the thickets, were left
unburied, not having been discovered until a fearful stench polluted the
air. Terrible as it may seem it is highly probable that in this haste
some of the living were interred in the same common grave with the dead.
Monsieur Dunant takes us over this dreadful scene. Here is a youth, the
idol of his parents, carefully brought up and well educated, whose mother
all his life had watched his slightest illness; there lies a gallant
officer, beloved of his family, who has left a wife and little children
at home; over yonder is a young soldier, who so short a time ago said
farewell to all his dear ones. Behold them, stretched out stark and stiff
in the mud and dirt, and drenched with blood. Knocked on the head, the
face of one is absolutely unrecognizable; he has expired after cruel
sufferings and his body, black, swollen, hideous, is cast into a hastily
dug trench, and barely covered with a little earth. Hands and feet
protrude and on these the birds of prey presently descend. The bodies of
the Austrians in their capots besmeared with mud and their white tunics
dyed with crimson stains, were strewn by thousands on the hills and
valleys, and hovering above them were clouds of crows ready to feast upon
these victims of man’s insensate enmity. Poor mothers in Austria, Hungary
and Bohemia, how terrible your grief when first you learned of the death
of your dear sons in the enemy’s country without care or aid, without a
caressing hand or any words of consolation.