Their rout was utter and
hopeless. When the sun went down over this field of blood, after
twelve hours of the most frightful carnage, a scene was presented
horrid enough to appall the heart of a demon. More than twenty thousand
human bodies were strewn upon the ground, the dying and the dead,
weltering in gore, and in every conceivable form of disfiguration.
Horses, with limbs torn their bodies, were struggling in convulsive
agonies. Fragments of guns and swords, and of military wagons
of every kind were strewed around in wild ruin. Frequent piercing
cries, which agony extorted from the lacerated victims of war,
rose above the general moanings of anguish, which, like wailings
of the storm, fell heavily upon the ear. The shades of night were
now descending upon this awful scene of misery. The multitude of
the wounded was so great, that notwithstanding the utmost exertions
of the surgeons, hour after hour of the long night lingered away,
while thousands of the wounded and the dying bit the dust in their
agony.
If war has its chivalry and its pageantry, it has also revolting
hideousness and demoniac woe. The young, the noble, the sanguine
were writhing there in agony.
Pages:
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58