But, above, the stars shone down peacefully from the blue vault of heaven on the terrible picture of carnage below; and, as the smoke of the gunpowder cleared away, the different points of the struggle could be clearly picked out by reason of the heaps of corpses and dead horses, piled beneath overturned cannon and broken limbers, shattered needle- guns and chassepots, all of which were scattered around pell-mell in endless profusion.
"Water, water, for the love of God!" was the heartrending cry that proceeded everywhere from yet living men hidden among hecatombs of the slain, as they heard the footsteps of the ambulance corps and their helpers.

Really, the task was an endless one, to try to relieve the misery around; for, hardly had one wounded wretch been saved from being buried alive in the mountain of dead under which he writhed, than an appeal for aid was heard in another direction--and yet again another, until the bearers and relief corps themselves became exhausted.

Each required forty pairs of hands instead of one! It was terrible work to go over the scene of slaughter in cold blood, with no fever of excitement to blot out the hideous details, now displaying themselves in all their naked reality! Conspicuously, in front of La Villette, were to be seen the white trimmings of the uniforms of the Prussian Imperial Guards; the red trousers of the French line; the shining helmets of the cuirassiers, whose breastplates were all torn and dented with shot, as if they had been ploughed over; while the wind, now rising as the night progressed towards morning, rustled the myriad leaves of white paper that had escaped from out of the French staff carriages, blowing them across the valley, like a flock of sea- gulls fluttering on the bosom of the breeze.
As the day broke, the bright beams of the rising sun lit up the field of battle, only to disclose its horrors the more unmistakably.

The rays of light, flashing on the exposed sword blades and bayonet points, reflected little radiant gleams of brightness; but, the hands of those who wielded them so valiantly not many hours agone were now cold and cramped in the agony of death, alas! Sad bruised eyes glared out from disfigured faces under torn-open breasts, appearing to look up to where the stars only so recently twinkled down, vainly asking Providence why it had put the lightning into the hands of man for so fell a purpose! Rows of infantry lay dead in perfect order, as if on parade, where the mitrailleuse had mowed them down; whole squadrons of hussars and lancers were heaped up in mass; and, in some of the French rifle-pits, there were more than a thousand corpses piled, the one on top of another with trim regularity, as if carefully arranged so.

Blue, red, and yellow uniforms, with the occasional green of the Tyrolean Jager, were mixed together in picturesque confusion along the Verdun road; in fact, the dead and dying were everywhere in such prodigious numbers that the hearts of those seeking out the wounded were appalled.
Worse than in the fields were the scenes displayed in the villages and little towns along the white high-road to Metz, the tall poplars that lined it being torn down by the round shot, thus blocking the way.