The broken vehicles and baggage wagons that were mingled together in an inextricable mass also added to the obstruction; Malmaison, Vionville, and Rezonville were filled with war victims; and all the surgeons, French as well as German, that could be summoned to help, were as busy as they could possibly be.

Carriages and stretchers covered the open places in front of every house, the Red Cross of Geneva being rudely depicted on the doors, with the neutral flag of the society floating above; while pools of blood marked the dressing places of the wounded, the pale white faces of whom looked down in mute misery from the carts in which they were being borne away to the rear to make room for others to be attended to.

To complete the picture, those who had died under operation were laid by the roadside until they could be collected bye- and-bye for burial, the living having to be seen to first! Released at length, after toiling through the night and early morning at his voluntary labour, Fritz was able at last to return to the bivouac of the Hanoverians; but, while on his way to camp, he passed one of the most affecting pictures he had yet seen.

Hearing the howl of a dog, he turned aside towards a little clump of trees from which the sound seemed to come, and here he came up to a splendid large black retriever, which, with one paw on a dead officer's breast and with his noble head raised to the sky, was baying in that melancholy fashion in which dogs tell their woe on being overcome by grief.

Near this little group was an unfortunate horse sitting on its haunches, its hind-quarters having been torn off by the discharge of a shell, or the passage of some conical projectile.