THE PHENOMENA OF DEATH IN BATTLE. 201 



iar to the battlefield which is as instantaneous as the death with 

 which it is synchronous. He states that he frequently passed 

 without examination corpses holding muskets in grasp, pointing 

 forward as if in a charge ; bodies prone, face to earth ; trunks 

 bent, limbs apparently rigid. From other sources come reports 

 of similar phenomena in more or less details. In a compilation 

 of surgical reports by J. G. Chenu (Rapport au Conseil de Saute* 

 des Armees, 1865), Surgeon Perir, from the field of Alma, Boudin 

 from Inkerman, and Armand from Magenta, named many general 

 and special appearances of the phenomena. At Magenta many 

 bodies held to their weapons, even those lying face downward. 

 The conclusion of M. Armand, appended to his report, was that 

 death came so suddenly that the hands had not time to let go. 

 These were head shots. The fighting at Magenta was again ter- 

 rific, and it was warm June weather. The struggle on the part of 

 the French side was for possession of the town, the key to the 

 position, and it was carried house by house. On the scene of one 

 hand-to-hand combat a corpse was found with the arms raised in 

 front, one bent, one extended, with fists clutched ; also a dead 

 hussar on a fallen horse, almost intact in saddle, but leaning on 

 the right side, holding his saber at a thrust. The Magenta cases 

 were seen by the surgeons when forty-eight hours old. 



At Inkerman, fought in November, during a dull, foggy rain, 

 M. Boudin saw numberless cases where the bodies rested on the 

 knees, with guns in firm clasp, cartridges in the mouth, and in 

 some instances arms upraised, as though parrying blows. " Long 

 files of the dead seemed to need but the impulse of vital breath to 

 recommence the action of battle." An eye-witness's off-hand de- 

 scription of scenes on that field is found in W. H. Russell's corre- 

 spondence to the London Times. He said : " The battle of Inker- 

 man admits of no description. It was a series of dreadful deeds 

 of daring, of sanguinary hand-to-hand fights, of despairing rallies, 

 of desperate assaults, in glens and valleys, in brushwood glades 

 and remote dells. . . . 



" The British and French, many of whom had been murdered 

 by the Russians as they lay wounded, wore terrible frowns on 

 their faces, with which the agonies of death had clad them. 

 Some in their last throes had torn up the earth in their hands, 

 and held the grass between their fingers up toward heaven." 



At Alma, M. Perir saw a great number of cases. One in par- 

 ticular he reported where the body lay upon the side, legs bent, 

 hands lifted at joints, and head thrown back as if in prayer. 

 Alma was fought in September (in the Crimea). Russell termed 

 it one of the most bloody and determined struggles in the annals 

 of war. The allies charged through the waters of the Alma up 

 the steeps to the Russian batteries on the crest. 



