AFTER SEDAN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VII, Issue 11, 14 March 1891, Page 3

AFTER SEDAN.

I HAU not prepared myself for the sight of much which met my eye when, in the month of September, 1870, I walked over the battlefield of Sedan. The dead, of course (except it might be a horse with infiated body and legs sticking up stiffly in the air), were all buried. This is soon done, after a shallow fashion ; those who are hastily covered over with earth in graves twelve inches deep being afterwards dug up and transferred to some hole or pit where they would not interfere with subsequent agricultural operations. Some are put into ditches, the bank being pulled down upon them. Others are hid away in meadows where no plough is likely to come ; and the place is bushed with thorns, or what not, to keep off prowling dogs. But the thing which struck me most in walking over the scene of Sedan was the ‘ paper ’ which lay about. < hie expected to see battered or pierced helmets,discarded knapsacks,empty cartridge-cases, and holes where percussion shells had struck the ground anil burst. There were plenty of them. 1 did not expect to find ‘paper.’ And yet where the struggle had been sharpest, and thus the dead had fallen thickest, the ground was littered with toin-up letters. It looked at first as if the contents of a thousand waste-paper baskets hail been emptied there, or an enormous picnic had been held in which visitors, brought by all the excursion trains in the world, had been lunching on packets of sandwiches and left their messy wrappings behind them. I picked up some of these scraps, and found, however, that they consisted mostly of private correspondence. And presently it was borne in ujion me that hundreds of ghouls swarm after slaughter, and soon empty all pockets and knapsacks in their search for money, post-office orders, and notes. Every letter is eagerly thrown open in hope of a surviving 1 remittance,’ and angrily thrown aside if containing only ‘sentiment.’ I picked up a score or so. They were from mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. So a civilised battlefield (Znlus carry no pocket-books to lie rilled) is soon white with scraps, and I met with a mean (though pathetic) disillusion when wandering about that of Sedan.