The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1870-09-21
s e D A N.
The Great Defeat.
DR.. Russell's Description Of
the Finishing Stroke
to MacNdahon's
Army.

from Donchery on Sept. 81
The greatest event of our time has oc-
cured under the eyes of those who saw the
battle of Sedan. think the British public
must have had enough of battlefield horrors
and hospital scenes There will be plenty of
letters describing Krdnkes-trGgers, burial
parties, wounded men, heaps of dead, the
hideous reverse of the medal on the other
side of which are the bright emblazonments
of glory and victory. ] will not dwell on the
topic, but ask your readers to be content
with the assurance that no human eye ever
rested on such revolving objects as were pre-
sented by the battle-felds around Sedan. Let
them fancy masses of colored rags glued to-
pether with blood and brains, and pinned
into strange shapes by fragments of bones.
Let them conceive mems bodies without heads,
legs without bodies, heaps of human entrails
attached to red and blue cloth, and disem-
bowelled corpses in uniform, bodies lying
about in all attitudes,
WITH SKULLS SHATTERED, FACES BLOWN OFF,
HIPS SMASHED,
bones, flesh, and gay clothing all pounded to-
gether as if brayed in mortar, extending for
miles, not very thick in any one place, but
recurring perpetually for weary hours, and
then they cannot, with the most vivid imagi-
nation, came up to the sickening reality of
that butchery. No nightmare could be so
frightful. Several times 1 came on spots
where there were two horses lying dead to-
gether in harness, killed by the same frag-
ment Several times I saw four, five, and
six men, four, five, and six horses, all killed
by the explosion OF one projectile, and in one
place there lay no less than eight French SOL
diers who must have been struck down by
the bursting of q shell over company, for
they lay all round in a circle with their feet
inwards, each shattered in the head or chest
by piece of shell and no other dead being
within hundred yards of them. A curious
and to me unaccountable phenomenon was
the blackness of most of the faces of the
dead. Decomposition had not set in, for
they were killed only the day before. An
other circumstance which struck me was the
expression of agony on many faces Death
by the bayonet is agonizing, and those who
die by steel, open-eyed and open-mouthed,
have an expression of pain on the features,
with protruding tongue. A musket ball,
which is at once vital, does not seem to cause
much pain, and the features are composed
and quiet, sometimes with a sweet smile on
the lips. But the prevailing expression on
this field of the faces which were not mutt
lated was one of terror and of agony unuttera-
BILE. There must have been hell of torture
raging within that semicircle in which the
earth was torn asunder from all sides with
real tempest of iron kissing, and screeching,
and bursting into the heavy masses at the
hands of an unseen enemy. l cannot ima-
gine anything so trying to the bravest man as
to meet death almost ingloriously in such
scene as that--nothing so omaddening to soldiers
as to be annihilated without chance of ven-
geance-nothing so awful to the fugitive as to
see his comrades blown to fragments all around
him. 1t is we'll that wives and mothers and
fond sisters were spared the sight of their
beloved ones, and it is we'll that in France it
is only mothers and sisters who will have to
deplore the slain. Whether the Prussians
buried their dead early-the night of the bat
tie itself-or not / cannot tell, but their
losses were almost nothing if they were to be
estimated by the number of bodies on the
field. Soldiers we'll know how deceptive is
the appearance of ground viewed from an ele-
waited point; and during the battle which
ragged for fifteen miles before and around as
there were outbursts of firing from valleys
and knolls which seemed purposeless, but
which were at once explained when the posi-
tions were gained. I was surprised, knowing
the French had capitulated, and that the EN-
peror had surrendered, to see great columns
of the German army in motion towards the
heights over the Meuse, and the Sixth Corps
and the Bavarian Corps, in reserve, hastening
up in the same direction. But it seems that
GENERAL wIMPFFEN, WHEN HE HEARD THE
TERMS,
declared that he would die sooner than sign
them. He could not think his situation was
so desperate. He was informed that if he
preferred the destruction of his army it was
his own affair; but to show him that such
destruction was inevitable, maps were pro-
duced and the position and force of the corps
of the German army and of its batteries in
dicated. If at noon the capitulations were
not agreed to, the attack on Sedan would
commence.
General Wimpffen was in deplorable con-
dition, and one which his brave enemies
commiserated. He had arrived only two days
before from Algeria. He found an army al
ready beaten to his hands. Marshal MacMa-
hon was wounded early in the day, struck in
the back and hip by piece of shell or ball,
and Wimpffen had to take command of the
troops without knowing the Marshals plans,
or even the disposition of the corps on the
plateaux over Sedan, except through others.
"And now my name will go down linked
with humiliating capitulation for all time !"
To make assurance doubly sure, and to show
that the grOs batGillOnS were on the side, of
the victors, this display of force was made
all around Sedan, and when l got to the
heights of Dnnchery the plains at our
feet were covered with the masses of
the Prussian army. The Wurtembergers
had come up from the direction of
Mezieres; the Bavarians were on the
right of the second army. The hill-tops
were black with troops, and all along them
clustered the batteries in position. 1t was
not bright day, but the atmosphere was
clear, and the position of the French ad-
mitted of their further study The Meuse
twists in such an extraordinary way that no
one would suspect it's stream runs in many
places right across what seems continuous
champaign and undulating laHd, and thus it
was that the semicircular bluff above the
village Of Floing, on which the cavalry