SEDAN AFTER THE CAPITULATION.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 144, 10 November 1870, Page 7

SEDAN AFTER THE CAPITULATION.

After the capitulation the soldiers evacuated Sedan by small detachments, and were despatched towards the provinces of Northern Germany, the greater part of them having beforehand taken good heed to break their arms or to throw them into the Meuse, to prevent their falling into the hands of the enemy. In the same way the guns were spiked, and the mitrailleuses broken, and as many flags were burned as possible. A great many officers, who had the option to remain prisoners of war in Prussia, or to return home after pledging themselves not to serve against Prussia during the campaign, have chosen a residence in Prussia, in order to share the fate of their soldiers.

After the Emperor had gone his way and the town evacuated, a correspondent went over the field of battle, which he thus describes :—: — It was a shocking thing to see so many dead men, and wounded men, and dead and wounded horses, crowded together in some places. It was a sight to cause reflections, as the old Frenchman said who lived in the village where the fighting had been hottest. ' All ! inon Dieu, Monsieur, cest la la guerre? He took a sombre view of la guerre, for the scene was horrible. With two friends who were anxious to study the positions of the armies contending on September Ist, I went round through Doncherry and past the great bend of the Meuse, came towards the French lines as the Eleventh Prussian Corps had come, and pushing southward between the outposts of the hostile armies, traversed the railway bridge at Bazeilles, to return to head-quarters. The first sign of active and immediate war was the block of prisoners at Donchery. There they were, of all arms of the service, the dark-faced Turco and the young boyish conscript, collected in a mass, ready to be marched away. Tne plain beyond Donchery was covered with slightly wounded men wandering to the rear. French and G-ermans, friend and foe, it mattered not ; they went amicably along, the common suffering making them friends. No one seemed to dream of further violence and further fighting. The battle was over, and they were glad to creep together to the rear, with little civilities exchanged in the way of pipelights and sips of brandy, and with no more hostile feeling than two patients already in a hospital. We passed hundreds of them as we went round the bend of the stream and came upon the first signs of the conflict of the day before. There was a dead horse, a cuirass, a heap of broken weapons. In this cottage were several wounded Frenchmen, taking some soup with a wounded Prussian, who seemed almost too much hurt to eat. Behind the garden wall was a dead cuirassier, his hanJs clutching the grass in the agony of den/th, his face firm and determined. No one noticed him any more than if ho had been a dead horse. It is a curious tiling to think tliat whole districts in quiet England will turn out to see a murdered family, and that hore on a battlefield the same murdered family would be trampled into the mud without

being noticed. This meadow on the hillside is full of mangled horses nnd dead euriassiers. It was here that fiey made a frantic attempt to break through, and were mowed down by the Prussian fusilade. You must have been on several battle-fields to understand the signs of what has taken place by the look of the spot next morning. This group of dead horses, with a helmet or two and a dozen cuirasses, with a broken trumpet and three dead cuirassiers, means serious work. The dark stains on the ground are where the wounded have lain and been removed. The little heap of swords under that hedge is where some dismounted troopers were forced to surrender. Then we come to Prussian helmets crushed and trampled. Some are marked with shell and bullet and have blood upon them. They tell of loss to the regiment to which they belonged. Others have no particular trace of violence, and may either be signs of wounded men, or of men who have simply thrown their helmets away in the heat of action, and put on their forage caps to march more lightly. These dark stains, surrounded by knapsacks and rifles, greatcoat and cooking tin, are where men have laiu who have been badly wounded, or even killed, but whose friends have made them as comfortable as could be under the difficulties of the time. One has a little shelter of twigs and branches put to keep oft' the sun ; another has had a blanket propped on two rifles, and his knapsack for a pillow. But he has died in the night, and is left with his cloak over his face until the burying party shall come round. See yonder drums and knapsacks, stains of blood, and dead men lying on their faces. It is where a heavy blow has been struck at some infantry regiment. The men have fallen under a musketry fire, and the line of dead shows where the ground was held. Come a few steps further to the rear. You perceive a few more dead men, shot whilst in fight, and a number of bright, wellcleaned rifles scattered on the turf. This is where the regiment broke and fled, where some perished with their backs to the foe, and others threw down their arms. We might gather the minutest details of the loss on either side if only human strength and energy sufficed to traverse this immense track in a single morning When another day has passed, and the dead are buried and the arms collected, it is difficult to judge of the fight by seeing the ground ; whilst on the third or fourth day the dead horses become so much decayed that until they are removed it is well nigh impossible to move about where they have fallen.

We found the hillside north-west of Sedan covered with dead men and horses. The village in the hollow between the hostile lines was not much knocked about, and there, were few shell-marks on the load leading up to the summit. But once arrived at the point where the Prussian fire had begun to tell, we found traces of its terrible effect. Here lay a dead horse in the middle of the road, with saddle and bridle, just as it had fallen. Here \v,as a Frenchman shot through the head, behind a small clump of earth, where he had taken shelter in skirmishing. Then there were several more horses and men lying upon the road ; and at length a slight breastwork to either side, carried along the ridge of the hill, and full of French soldiers who had died in its defence. The ground began to be ploughed up with the shell-fire from the opposite losing ground, where the Prussian artillery so long remained. Near the two trees and the cottage prominent on the summit, were traces of the sharp fighting which I had observed the previous day. A mitrailleuse battery, of four pieces, was surrounded with d^ad bodies, horses and men were lying on all sides — I cannot quite say in heaps, but very thickly scattered. At one place there were horses as thick as they could lie. But this was a little down the slope to the southward, where I had seen that gallant cavalry charge. The Chasseurs a Cheval and the Chasseurs d'Afrique had dashed along the hill-side, half hidden in the dust which, they raised, and had been destroyed by a steady fusilade. Here lay the famous ligh+ horsemen, with their bright uniforms dabbled in blood, and their fiery little steeds crushed and mangled by Prussian shells. Most of the men and horses now on the ground were dead, but some few wounded men yet lingered in agony, with white rings tied to sticks that were planted beside them as a means of calling the surgeon's attention when he should have time to revisit them. The badlywounded horses, more fortunate for once in being brutes, had been killed to put them out of pain, and only a stray horse slightly wounded stood dismally here and there, Avondering, perhaps, what it could all mean. Behind the scene of the light cavalry charge is a ravine that separates this shoulder of the rising ground from that immediately above Sedan. In the ravine there had been great slaughter at the end of the fight, when the French were crowded together from different points. Up behind the woods on the furthest sixinmit of the rising ground was all the debris of a rout. It had been clear, even from a distance, that the beaten army struggled hard. Yet, nevertheless, they had been beaten, and here were arms thrown down, waggons abandoned, caps and coats, swords and rifles of every branch of the service,

lying scattex-ed on the ground. bonJ ® considerable body of troops, cut ott from SSaclan by the advance of the Prussians, hud tried to break through to the town, and had been dispersed or captured. The whole of the northward and north-eastward slopes — of what we may call from this side the country — at the back of the town, showed traces of this crowding together and of the heavy cross-fire of German artillery, which had began so soon as the circle of the attack became narrowed to a sufficient degree. Nearly one hundred thousand men, as it now appears, were hampered and shut in by less than two hundred thousand of their enemies. No amount of devotion could extricate the French army when once it had become the centre of a converging tire. The ghastly wounds inflicted on most of the French de*d, whom I saw upon the hill, showed that they had fallen under an artillery fire, and the ground was in many places so ploughed up that a blanket could scarcely have been laid on it without covering some spot where a shell had exploded. The thick wood at the back of the town was full of wreck and rubbish — abandoned waggons, with the dead horses at the side, to show why they had been so left ; stores of biscuit, harness, and soldiers' knapsacks were still very plentiful as one approached the village of Bazeilles, southward of Sedan, where the Bavarians had fought. The village was on fire, and the streets presented shocking sights to scare away the inhabitants again for a couple of days more should they now return. The half-burnt bodies of Frenchmen and Bavarians were being brought out from among the ruins and laid by the roadside. Men yet living, but terribly wounded and scorched, were moved on litters beyond the stifling smoke of the conflagration. There was reason to fear that many poor lads had been literally roasted when the fire came upon them, and their wounds forbade all hope of escape. This village was, perhaps, the gloomiest part of all the acres of pain and death spread around Sedan. The interior of the town itself is said to be very much injured, but I that I have not yet had time to visit.