During the whole of the 6th and 7th, and the intervening night, we were hard at work in the Hospital, the greater part of our time being taken up at the operation table. I may here mention a fact, which is highly interesting to me, _viz._, that now, by permission of our chief, I performed my first capital operation, in a case of compound comminuted fracture of the bone of the arm, which I had to amputate below the shoulder. Nor were the circumstances of the place in which I went through my task, of a common sort. It was Sunday morning; and the operation table stood in a side chapel, at the foot of the Lady Altar, not many yards from the Shrine of Ste. Euverte. But although one's first impressions might be that such work, on such a spot, was a profanation, yet on second thoughts it will not appear so. The deed, though sanguinary, was not cruel; and where should the wounded find refuge if not under the sacred roof? On the evening of the 7th, we received intelligence that the Germans had come up with the French army; that fighting had begun; and that a general engagement was expected. Accordingly, Dr. Tilghman, with May and Mackellar, started with a supply of surgical appliances and waggons for bringing the wounded off the field. I was set down for work at the Hospital, and did not go with them. But Dr. Tilghman subsequently gave me a full account of the whole affair, and described the carnage as very great. The town of Beaugency and the neighbouring villages were literally crammed with wounded; and they had hardly any one to look after them, and but very little to eat. In fact, so scarce were provisions that many sank from privation alone, aggravated, indeed, by the bitter cold, which just at this time was intense. He mentioned, among other ghastly details, that owing to the hard frost, the bodies of the slain were glued to the ground, while their clothes were so hard and stiff that it was impossible to move the dead from where they lay. Dr. Tilghman returned on the 10th with his _confrères_, bringing some waggon-loads of wounded. That the fighting about Beaugency had been severe I could discern from the appearance of all that was left of the Bavarian army, which returned to Orleans about the 14th. Jaded and fatigued, spattered with mud, with their uniforms in some instances torn, and their plumes lost, they trudged sulkily and silently into the town. About 8000 of all ranks had survived of the 30,000 men that left Germany. They, too, like the French, were a contrast to their North German brethren in arms. But, as usual, they had been set in the forefront of the hottest battle; they had everywhere borne the brunt against vastly superior forces; and had in the end conquered, though at the expense of half their numbers. From the beginning of the war this had been the inevitable fate of the Bavarians; they were butchered to make the new German Empire.