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.
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.
The inhabitants, of whom the greater number have passed almost twenty hours in the refuge of their cellars, without light or food, are commencing to come out. The look of stupor of these poor peasants bears testimony to the long terror they have endured.
The ground is covered with all kinds of debris, broken pieces of arms, articles of equipments and blood-stained clothing.
The miserable wounded gathered up during the day are pale, livid and inert.
Some, principally those seriously injured, have a vacant look, they seem not to understand what is said to them. They turn their staring eyes toward those who bring them help.
Others, in a dangerous state of nervous shock, are shaking with convulsive tremblings.
Still others, with uncovered wounds, where inflammation has already appeared, seem frenzied with pain; they beg that someone may end their sufferings, and, with drawn faces, writhe in the last torments of agony.
Elsewhere, poor fellows are prostrated on the ground by bullets and bursting shells. Their arms and legs have been fractured by the cannon wheels that have passed over them.
The shock of the cylindrical ball shatters the bones, so that the wound it causes is always very dangerous. The bursting of shells and the conical balls make extremely painful fractures, the internal injury being terrible. Every kind of pieces of bone, of earth, of lead, of clothing, of equipments, of shoes, aggravate and irritate the wounds of the patients and increase their sufferings.