Immediately behind Gorze we had already met traces of the battle,--pits dug in the earth by shells, branches torn off by shot and some dead horses. As we went on we came upon the latter more frequently, occasionally two or three together, and at one place a group of eight carcases. Most of them were fearfully swollen, with their legs in the air, while their heads lay slack on the ground. There was an encampment of Saxon troops in Mars la Tour. The village seemed to have suffered little from the engagement of the 16th. Only one house was burned down. I asked a lieutenant of Uhlans where Rezonville was. He did not know. Where was the King? “At a place about two hours from here,” he said, “in that direction,”--pointing towards the east. A peasant woman having directed us the same way, we took that road, which brought us after a time to the village of Vionville. Shortly before reaching this place I saw for the first time one of the soldiers who had fallen in the late battle, a Prussian musketeer. His features were as dark as those of a Turco, and were fearfully bloated. All the houses in the village were full of men who were severely wounded. German and French assistant-surgeons and hospital attendants, all wearing the Geneva cross, were busy moving from place to place. I decided to wait there for the Minister and the Councillors, as I believed they must certainly pass that way soon. As I went towards the battle-field through a side street I saw a human leg lying in a ditch, half covered with a bundle of blood-stained rags. Some four hundred paces from the village were two parallel pits about three hundred feet in length, and neither wide nor deep, at which the grave diggers were still working. Near by had been collected a great mass of German and French dead. Some of the bodies were half naked, but most of them were still in uniform. All were of a dark grey colour and were fearfully swollen from the heat. There might have been one hundred and fifty corpses in all, and others were being constantly unloaded from the carts. Doubtless, many had already been buried. Further on in the direction of Metz the ground rose slightly, and there in particular great numbers appeared to have fallen. The ground was everywhere covered with French caps, Prussian helmets, knapsacks, arms, uniforms, underclothing, shoes, and paper. Here and there in the furrows of a potato field lay single bodies, one with a whole leg torn away, another with half the head blown off, while some had the right hand stretched out stiffly pointing towards the sky. There were also a few single graves, marked with a chassepot stuck in the ground or with a cross made from the wood of a cigar box roughly tied together. The effluvium was very noticeable, and at times, when the wind came from the direction of a heap of dead horses, it became unendurable.