With the I'oar of exploding fortresses in their ears, with shells and shot pouring through the roof and sides of the rooms in which thej'^ lay, with the crackling and hissing of fire around them, these poor fellows who had served their loving friend and master the Czar but too well, were consigned to their terrible fate. Many might have been saved by ordinary care. Many lay, yet alive, with maggots crawling about in theii' wounds. Many, nearly mad by the scene around them, or seeking escape from it in their extremest agony, had roUed away under the beds, and glared out on the heart-stricken spectator — oh! with such looks! Many with legs and arms broken and twisted, the jagged splinters sticking through the raw flesh, implored aid, water, food, or pity, or, deprived of speech by the approach of death, or by dreadful injuries in the head or trunk, pointed to the lethal spot.
Many seemed bent alone on making their peace with Heaven. The attitudes of some were so hideously fantastic as to appal and root one to the ground by a sort of dreadful fascination. Could that bloody mass of clothing and white bones ever have been a human being, or that burnt black mass of flesh have ever had a human soiil? It was fearful to think what the answer must be. The bodies of numbers of men were swollen and bloated to an incredible degree, and the features distended to a gigantic size, with eyes protruding from the sockets, and the blackened tongue lolling out of the mouth, compressed tightly by the teeth, which had set upon it in the death-rattle, made one shudder and reel round.
In the midst of one of these " chambers of horrors " — for there were many of them — were found some dead and some living English soldiers, and among them poor Captain Vaughan, of the 90th, who has since died of his wounds. I confess it was impossible for me to stand the sight, which horrified our most experienced sm-geons; the deadly, clammy stench, the smell of gangrened wounds, of corrupted blood, of rotting flesh, were intolerable and odious beyond endurance. But what must have the wounded felt, who were obliged to endure all this, and Avho passed away without a hand to give them a cup of water, or a voice to say one kindly word to them? Most of these men were wounded on Saturday — many, perhaps, on the Friday before— indeed, it is impossible to say how long they jnigbt h^YO been there.
In the hurry of their retreat, the Muscovites seem to have carried in dead men to get them out of the way, and to have put them upon pallets in horrid mockery. So that their retreat was secured, the enemy cared hut little for their wounded. On IMonday only did they receive those whom we sent out to them during a brief armistice for the piirpose, which was, I believe, sought by ourselves, as our over-crowded hospitals could not contain, and our over-worked surgeons could not attend to any more. The Great Redan was next visited. Such a scene of wreck and ruin! — all the houses behind it a mass of broken stones — a clock turret, with a shot right through the clock; a pagoda in ruins; another clock-tower with all the clock destroyed save the dial, with the words, " Barwise, London," thereon; cookhouses, where human blood was running among the utensils; in one place a shell had lodged in the boiler, and blown it and its contents, and probably its attendants, to pieces.
Everywhere wreck and destruction. This evidently was a heau quartier once. The oldest inhabitant could not recognise it now. Climbing up to the Redan, which was fearfully cumbered with the dead, v>re witnessed the scene of the desperate attack and defence, which cost botli sides so much blood. The ditch outside made one sick — it was piled up with English dead, some of them scorched and blackened by the explosion, and others lacerated beyond recognition. The quantity of broken gabions and gun-carriages here was extraordinary; the ground was covered with them. The bomb-proofs were the same as in the MalakhofF, and in one of them a music-book was found, with a woman's name in it, and a canary bird and vase of flowers were outside the entrance.