But this bad weather, exposure, and overcrowding--all things beyond our control--brought disaster into our camp. Pyæmia and secondary hemorrhage showed themselves everywhere. All our secondary operations died, and I regret to say that their places were immediately filled up by the Germans, who turned all the French wounded that they could out of the principal buildings of the town, and sent them up to us, in order to make room for their own. Though the position of the tents was changed, and disinfectants used as far as possible, numbers of these new invalids had been hardly with us a couple of days when they were seized by the same infection. The Hospital had become a centre of the plague, and threatened to be a death-trap to all who should be sent thither. CHAPTER VIII. TWO THOUSAND PATIENTS.--NIGGER CHARLIE.--LOUIS ST. AUBIN, CHASSEUR D'AFRIQUE.--THE BOY PEYEN.--GUNS CAPTURED IN THE TOWN. THE number of wounded in the care of our Ambulance was at this time, roughly speaking, about 500. There were 218 in the Caserne; each of the thirty-three tents held 4 patients, and Dr. Frank had in his Hospital 150 Bavarians. This will make the total given above a fairly accurate estimate. During and after the battles of the 31st August, and the 1st September, the number of men whose wounds we dressed and attended to, without receiving them into the Hospital, was calculated by us at about 2000. Nor can this be thought excessive, when, within rifle range around us, there were of French wounded alone, over 12,500. A further insight into the magnitude of our labours may be gained from the fact that in our Hospital at Sedan we had a total of 436 primary operations,--152 for injuries of the upper, and 284 for injuries of the lower extremities. Another interesting fact worth recording is, that during the battles about Sedan, not a single case of wound by a mitrailleuse bullet was met with by any member of our staff. Dr. Marion Sims assured us that the hardships we endured, and the amount of work we actually got through, went beyond the limits of his varied experience. To enter at length into details would, besides involving obscure technicalities, be tedious to the general reader. I will confine myself to a brief account of our Staff and General Management, and select from my observations a few interesting cases. I have named the original members of our Ambulance, and those who had recently joined us. Nor must I forget Père Bayonne, the Dominican Friar, who was a general favourite, and untiring in his efforts to deal with the religious wants of the dying soldiers--no easy task among Frenchmen. Neither ought I to omit M. Monod, our Protestant chaplain, a quiet, gentlemanly man, who moved noiselessly about, and slipped little pamphlets with stories of the usual type, and sheets of paper with Bible-texts printed on them, into the patients' beds as he went along.