Page:The Siege of London - Posteritas - 1885.djvu/78

66 loss was much greater. This tremendous sacrifice of life was due to the stubbornness of the English troops, and the comparatively small space over which the two armies were manœuvred, the consequence being that the artillery fire committed extraordinary havoc. The total number of troops engaged had been about 67,000 French, and 32,000 British, aided by 20,000 Volunteers.

The night set in with drizzling rain and a bitterly cold wind, and the suffering on the battle-field was awful. Moans of dying men and cries of the wounded filled the air, and like ravening vultures, the spoilers of the dead, these offenders being principally French, hovered about plying their fearful trade. And next day corpses were found which bore unmistakable signs of murder from the knives of the infamous wretches who followed the invading army, and preyed upon the unhappy people of the country. In parts of the field where the artillery fire had been hottest, piles of mutilated remains were seen, half covered with torn and blood-stained uniforms, their rigid up-turned faces still wearing the expressions of ferocity or resignation, and their contorted limbs stiffened into the attitudes imparted to them by feelings of triumph or despair. Others, again, seemed to be appealing in mute agony to God for that mercy which man denied them. The whole park was a scene of wreck and ruin. There was a heterogeneous collection of military accoutrements, broken gun-carriages, artillery wheels, broken swords, bent bayonets, all mingled with a bewildering tangle of trees, which had been torn down by shot and shell, or cut down by the troops. Horses mutilated and shattered were mixed up with the human bodies, and, in fact, the whole spot was a hideous shamble of blood and torn bodies. The railings had been thrown down all round the park; the marble arch had crumbled into the dust, and thousands of the surrounding houses were shattered and riddled into shapeless ruins.

And all this appalling harvest of death,—this ghastly misery; the tears and blood; the slaughter of gallant soldiers; the moaning of widows, the starvation of orphans, and the dismemberment of a once mighty empire,—was the result of political fallacies guiding the action of utterly incapable statesmen.