It is partially to answer these and many similar inquiries that this book has been prepared. It is in part a compilation and revision of various statements necessarily incomplete and unsatisfactory, made from time to time to meet emergencies. In part it has been wholly rewritten. A great portion of the story of the Red Cross has been told in other languages than English, because it was of work done by other than English people. Much of this literature has never been translated or placed within the reach of the English-speaking public. Although the gradual growth of the idea of something like humanity in war, stimulated by the ignorant and insane horrors of India and the Crimea, and soothed and instructed by the sensible and practical work of Florence Nightingale, had slowly but surely led up to the conditions which made such a movement possible, it was not until the remarkable campaign of Napoleon III. in Northern Italy again woke the slumbering sympathies of the world that any definite steps revealed themselves. In compiling this book I have been compelled to make use of much of the material contained in a previous history written by myself in 1883, which in turn was based upon the records and the literature of the International Committee, and the official correspondence connected with the treaty. [Illustration: Clara Barton.] [Illustration: Copyright, 1893, by Clara Barton. THE FIRST RED CROSS WAREHOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.] [Illustration: NATIONAL RED CROSS HEADQUARTERS IN WASHINGTON, FROM 1892 TO 1897. _Formerly headquarters of General Grant from which he entered the White House as President._] THE RED CROSS. CHAPTER I On June 24, 1859, occurred the memorable battle of Solferino, in which the French and Sardinians were arrayed against the Austrians. The battle raged over a wide reach of country and continued for sixteen hours; at the end of which sixteen thousand French and Sardinian soldiers and twenty thousand Austrians lay dead or were wounded and disabled on that field. The old and ever-recurring fact reappeared: the medical staff was wholly inadequate to the immense task suddenly cast upon them. For days after the battle the dead in part remained unburied, and the wounded where they fell, or crawled away as they could for shelter and help.