The Geneva Convention E-Book

Angela Bennett

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 388

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2006

Beschreibung

This is the story of how two unknown young men who loathed each other founded the Red Cross, an organisation that has done more for mankind than any other. Why did the crowned heads of sixteen states meet in Geneva in 1864, on the invitation of these virtual nobodies, to sign a world-changing convention? Drawing on confidential papers and private documents, and including a 'day in the life' piece on the Head of Operations, Near East, for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Angela Bennett gives us the full story of the Convention. She reveals the frustrations and complications that nearly destroyed it in the early years, the bitter antagonism between the brilliant administrator Moynier and the flamboyant Dunant, and probes the bank scandal for which Dunant was convicted.

Leseprobe

THE

GENEVA

CONVENTION

To Ronnie

THE

GENEVA

CONVENTION

THE HIDDEN ORIGINSOF THE RED CROSS

ANGELA BENNETT

First published in 2005

Paperback edition first published in 2006

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Angela Bennett, 2005, 2013

The right of Angela Bennett to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 07524 9582 8

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1.

Henry Dunant is Shocked

2.

Enter Gustave Moynier and Friends

3.

Dunant Goes on Tour

4.

A Question of Mules

5.

Europe Initials a Contract

6.

What a Waste of Lives

7.

The Felfela Affair

8.

Dunant Dusts Himself Off

9.

Moynier is All at Sea

10.

Vive la Neutralité!

11.

They Seek Him Here, They Seek Him There!

12.

Moynier Heaves a Sigh of Relief

13.

Dunant Provokes the Russian Bear

14.

A Musical Interlude

15.

Exit Moynier, Centre Stage

16.

Dunant Wins a Prize

Epilogue:

The Situation Today

Appendix I

A Day in the Life of a Delegate of the ICRC

Appendix II

The Man in White through the eyes of Charles Dickens

Appendix III

Chronology of the Conventions and Codifications of the Laws of War

Appendix IV

Summary of the Four Geneva Conventions

Appendix V

Henry Dunant’s Will

Appendix VI

US Disregard of the Third Geneva Convention at Guantanamo Bay

Bibliography

. . . we have only one wish to express, namely that the literature of the Red Cross . . . be enriched by books intended for the public. Although the meaning of the Red Cross (Geneva Convention) may be universally known, its past and its organization do not enjoy the same privilege . . . except in critical times, its work makes too little noise to attract much attention.

. . . we know from experience that a narrative . . . not too long to frighten busy people – in other words, the majority – but written in such a manner as not to weary the reader, would meet a very general wish and would consequently supply a great need.

Gustave Moynier, La Croix-Rouge, Son Passé et Son Avenir

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the following for their invaluable help and support: THE INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE RED CROSS for kindly allowing me to reproduce the photographs featured in the plate section of this book; and particularly JOËLLE ALBRECHT-GLAISEN of the Picture Library; ANNE JUNOD of the University Library, Geneva, for locating the articles by Charles Dickens; M. MAURICE AUBERT, former Vice-President of the International Committee of the Red Cross; M. LAURENT MARTI, former Director of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum in Geneva; SUSANNA SWANN, a Head of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross, for so kindly affording me so much of her time for a fascinating interview; M. JEAN-FRANÇOIS QUÉGUINER, Legal Adviser at the International Committee of the Red Cross; all the invariably helpful staff in the ICRC library; and finally Bertie, my long-suffering rabbit, for his patient presence and observation during the gestation of this book.

The first page of the Geneva Convention of 22 August 1864. (The original is preserved in the Federal Archives, Berne.) (© Photothèque CICR)

Introduction

Armed conflicts, civil and international wars, are the cruellest realities of modern life. The total numbers of dead, wounded and suffering are terrifying. Despite all efforts to replace war by peaceful settlements, there have been over one hundred and seventy armed combats in the past fifty years and in the past twenty years, most horrifying of all, 90 per cent of the victims have been civilians.

Obviously, prevention of armed conflict should be the first aim, particularly since modern weapons inflict increasingly violent and lethal injuries. International humanitarian law has as its objective the protection of civilians and those no longer able to protect themselves, in the name of the principles of humanity and the dignity of the human being.

In the beginning, there was no law for war and only one rule – survival of the strongest. ‘Vae victis’, alas for the conquered. True, more than two thousand years ago, Philip II of Macedonia decreed that any prisoner taken in war who could recite Homer should be released, and the Crusades produced the Knights Hospitallers and clemency towards prisoners, exercised by the mighty Saladin. In the seventeenth century, on the other hand, Hugo Grotius, a Dutch theologian, inspired as he was by the Christian faith, didn’t hesitate to write in his De jure belli ac pacis (Of the law of war and peace) that the massacre of women and children was included in the law of war! In all fairness to him, it should be added that he also said ‘War should always be waged with a view to peace’.

It was not until the Age of Enlightenment that glimmerings of humanitarian law began to see the light of day, stating that war should be limited to the military and that civilians should be spared. Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Le Contrat Social of 1762 stated the basic principle on which the Geneva Conventions are founded: soldiers who lay down their arms cease to be enemies. They again become mere men, and one is no longer entitled to take their lives.

International humanitarian law can truly be said to have been born on the battlefield of Solferino during the Italian campaign of the Franco-Austrian War in 1859 when Henry Dunant was shocked to his core by the suffering of 40,000 wounded men, left to die without food, water, shelter or medical aid of any kind. His book Un Souvenir de Solferino appealed for the setting up of voluntary relief societies in each country in peacetime and the ratification of an international and sacrosanct treaty ensuring legal protection for medical personnel.

On 22 August 1864, the first Geneva Convention was signed in Geneva by representatives of twelve states. It was the first instrument of international humanitarian law and eventually led to the creation of the Red Cross as we know it today.

Some people may be surprised to learn that although the original Convention was signed in 1864, today’s Geneva Convention actually consists of four conventions drafted on 12 August 1949 and their additional protocols of 8 June 1977. Some three hundred pages in all. At the end of this book, you will find a chronology and summary of the Conventions in what, I hope, is a reasonably digestible form.

Here’s how the International Committee of the Red Cross sums it all up:

In time of war, certain humanitarian rules must be observed, even with regard to the enemy . . . The Geneva Conventions are founded on the idea of respect for the individual and his dignity. Persons not directly taking part in hostilities and those put out of action through sickness, injury, captivity or any other cause must be respected and protected against the effects of war; those who suffer must be aided and cared for without discrimination. . . .

And here’s how it works in practice in today’s increasingly dangerous world:

In November 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was nominated new Attorney General, replacing John Ashcroft. A religious Texan, Gonzales urged Bush to ignore the Geneva Conventions when setting up the concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, where the US administration says that they don’t apply. In a memo, Gonzales allegedly denigrated certain legal protections enshrined in the Geneva Convention for people captured during military hostilities. ‘The Geneva Convention? It’s quaint,’ he has said on various occasions. ‘Quaint’, an adjective that conjures up pictures of cuddly grannies in knitted shawls. Nothing very cuddly about Mr Gonzales. He also said that the Geneva Convention was not applicable post Twin Towers.

The American administration of George Bush is obviously an easy target when it comes to discussing non-observance of the Geneva Convention. But it’s by no means alone. Israel. Iraq. Sudan. North Korea. The list is, dismally, almost endless. Why is all this heedless violence escalating at such a crazy, sickening pace? The answer to that would fill endless tomes, if there is time for them to be written before the entire world is reduced to rubble.

Who would have thought that the world’s first treaty on human rights, which pioneered international law, could have been founded by two young men, diametric opposites who cordially loathed each other, yet were outstandingly complementary?

Henry Dunant, a young businessman, was so horrified by the appalling conditions of the wounded on a battlefield he visited quite by mistake that he wrote a book about it. Reading this, Gustave Moynier, a self-effacing lawyer in Geneva, was so impressed that he decided to help him do something about it.

These two young men drew up a code of practice for the treatment of war wounded in battle. But it was necessary to enlist the support of the influential rulers all over the ‘civilised’ world to make this a practical reality. Dunant’s epic crusade across Europe resulted in impressive attendance at the first international conference where, despite sometimes tumultuous debate, the Convention was approved. In 1864. Just over a hundred and forty years ago.

But hardly was the ink dry on the Convention than Dunant was accused and convicted of defrauding a bank and forced to flee the country. Evidence shows that he was in fact framed by his ‘respectable’ colleagues to protect their reputations. Even today, the powers that be in Geneva are reluctant to discuss the subject. Hounded by his creditors, he was condemned to live out the rest of his life in poverty-stricken exile until at last, rehabilitated in old age, he was awarded the first Nobel Prize!

Few people know what the Geneva Convention really stands for, and fewer still that it gave birth to the Red Cross, of which it is an integral part. This book brings to light the genius of Moynier, almost completely forgotten today, and gives a clear insight into the philosophy and workings of the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross, that extraordinary movement which for more than a century has successfully ignored all accepted rules of organisational structure.

But now welcome to the nineteenth century. The elegant salons, the suffering and horror of the battlefield, the frustrations and tortuous complications which nearly destroyed the Geneva Convention and the Red Cross in their early years. This is no boring history lesson. This is the story of something acutely, devastatingly topical, the story of the Geneva Convention.

ONE

Henry Dunant is Shocked

In a tranquil and thyme-scented setting a few miles south of lovely Lake Garda, on a hot June morning in 1859, the golden Italian dawn came up on a scene of idyllic innocence. Butterflies and bees hovered thoughtfully over clouds of gently undulating harebells before plunging into honeyed depths. Skylarks sung as they soared in the still air and a cuckoo called from the woods nearby. A rabbit washing its ears beside a bramble bush hesitated, paws poised in surprise, ears erect.

It was so faint it could have been pure imagination. But wait – there it was again. So distant as to be almost imperceptible to human senses. But the rabbit thumped, thumped again, turned tail and ran swiftly for cover.

Now the sound confirmed its presence. Far away, too far for anything to be visible to the naked eye, there was a faint but unmistakable beat, more like a vibration transmitting itself through the ground. Now it grew stronger and, straining the eyes, a long, dark moving mass could just be seen outlined against the horizon. Nearer and nearer it came. Gradually the mass resolved itself into hundreds of thousands of men. As they drew closer, they became recognisable as French dragoons, mounted musketeers on sleek chestnut chargers, followed at a brisk trot by lancers and hussars. Beside them, the Guards and cuirassiers in their gleaming armour flowed forward like a broad, glistening river across the Lombardy plain. Slightly further back and to their left, the Sardinians advanced under the command of King Victor Emmanuel.

They had been seen by their enemy too. In the Austrian camp, the alarm rang out. The long line of low hills suddenly came alive with regiments of what, from a distance, looked like toy soldiers taking up position, moving gun carriages into place, loading cannon, busying for battle. Now, on all sides bugles sounded the charge and drums rolled ominously.

Coming up from the east to meet the Franco-Sardinian army, as if for a joyous midsummer’s day parade, highlighted by the rising sun, the Austrian infantry advanced, their black and yellow battle flags emblazoned with the imperial eagle fluttering above the massed ranks of white-coats. They had been torn from their sleep after only two hours and breakfasted on nothing more substantial than double rations of schnapps.

By six in the morning, these two great armies had clashed and the battle was fully joined. Along a front extending 15 miles between the Mincio and Chiese rivers, 400,000 men started killing each other in an orgy of almost unimaginable savagery.

The freedom of Italy was at stake in this war being waged against Emperor Franz Josef of Austria. To this end, the Prime Minister of Sardinia-Piedmont enlisted the aid of Napoleon III and, throughout May and June 1859, the French and Sardinian armies won a series of brilliant victories, marched triumphantly into Milan and pursued the Austrians ever further east. The next crucial stage in the campaign was to capture the key site of Solferino.

Neither side had accurate information of their enemies’ positions. Unknown to the French, the Austrians had doubled back and recrossed the River Mincio and were therefore much nearer, and more numerous, than their adversaries imagined, having reinforced their armies with troops from their garrisons in Verona and Mantua. The Austrians themselves believed that only a small part of the Franco-Sardinian armies were in the immediate vicinity and were rudely awakened by their large-scale attack at dawn.

Although lacking the military genius of his illustrious uncle, Napoleon III had nevertheless wisely realised that the next day would be one of stifling heat and so decided to attack early. Putting on his socks at five on the morning of 24 June, he was surprised to hear cannon fire and to be told that the Austrians had already occupied Solferino. Hastily, the Emperor rejoined the imperial Guard, accompanied by his faithful but totally incompetent chief-of-staff, the seventy-year-old Marshal Vaillant.

Heavy artillery fire from the Austrians, entrenched among the cypress trees on the commanding heights of Solferino and Cavriana, mowed down wave after wave of the hot-blooded French infantry, who flung themselves up the rocky slopes under a steady stream of shells and grapeshot that thundered into the ground, raising dense clouds of soil and dust that mingled with the fumes of belching guns.

The raging battle grew ever more furious in the blistering heat of the noonday sun. French regiments fell upon the Austrians who advanced without a pause in mass formation, as menacing and impregnable as iron walls. Whole divisions threw aside their knapsacks and leapt at the enemy with fixed bayonets. Each foot of ground, each mound, each rocky promontory was the scene of frenzied fighting. The bodies of men and horses lay heaped at the foot of the hills and in the valleys.

Swearing by Allah to avenge their fallen colonel, the Algerians dipped their hands in the blood of the dead and smeared their faces before rushing into the enemy ranks with bestial roars and hideous shrieks, killing all in their path without quarter or mercy. The horrified Austrian captain, scarcely able to believe what he was witnessing, yelled ‘The law of nations! This is no way to fight.’ But he yelled in vain.

In hand-to-hand fighting, Austrians and French trampled on each other, slaughtering their adversaries over piles of bleeding corpses, smashing in skulls, disembowelling with sabre and bayonet. When muskets were broken and ammunition exhausted, the men fought with fists or stones, or seized their enemies by the throat and tore at them with their teeth.

The carnage was made all the more hideous by squadrons of cavalry galloping past, crushing the dead and dying beneath their hooves. Following the cavalry came the artillery at full speed, its guns crashing over the corpses, breaking and mutilating limbs beyond all recognition. Blood spurted out under the wheels, the earth was soaked with gore and the field littered with human remains.

Eventually, the French reached the hills and their artillery fire, its range far superior to that of the Austrians, spattered the ground with dead and wounded over whom went the cavalry of the final assault. Horses, maddened by the excitement of battle, sprang at the enemy horses, gnashing and biting, while their riders hacked each other down with sabres. In the fury of the onslaught, the Croats, ignoring their officers’ attempts to restrain such savagery, massacred every man in sight, killing off the wounded with the butts of their rifles.

The Austrians gave ground but rallied again and again, only to be scattered once more, gradually being forced to abandon, one by one, the positions they had so staunchly defended. The French infantry swarmed up the slopes of Solferino where the Austrians were entrenched in the chateau and a cemetery surrounded by thick walls. Another French division advancing on the heights seized the cemetery and dashed into the village, the infantrymen and riflemen of the Imperial Guard carrying the chateau by storm. On the summit of the hill, the French colonel hoisted his handkerchief on the point of his sword to signal victory.

At about four in the afternoon, after thirteen hours’ fighting, the Austrian commander gave the order to retreat, although in some places the battle went on until late into the night. Some of the Austrian officers killed themselves rather than survive this fatal defeat while their broken-hearted Emperor, Franz Josef, wept in despair as he flung himself into the path of his fleeing men, only finally consenting to retreat to Valeggio on the east bank of the Mincio.

At about five, a violent storm broke out. The sky grew black, a tempest-force wind sprung up, raising whirlwinds of blinding dust, breaking branches off the trees and hurling them about the battlefield. Thunder rumbled round the nearby mountains and icy rain and hailstones drenched and bombarded the fleeing Austrians. The battlefield was shrouded in darkness, effectively bringing all fighting to a halt.

In the meantime, Marshal Vaillant seemed totally oblivious to the battle or the cries of the wounded writhing in agony all around him, having been busily engaged in alternately consulting his watch and observing the gathering storm clouds. At the first clap of thunder, he calmly proceeded to compose a meteorological report which he later sent to the Académie des Sciences in Paris where it was acclaimed and awarded a prize for its outstanding accuracy and interest.

As the rain ceased and the sun reappeared at around six that evening, it revealed a scene of utter desolation. In the order of 6,000 dead and 42,000 wounded lay all around, in some places heaped pell-mell together. Their piteous cries for help arose on every side. There was scarcely any water for them, or the horses. As for food, whole battalions had been without rations all day and the knapsacks they had laid aside in the heat of the fighting had been plundered by the ‘hyenas of the battlefield’. Exhausted soldiers and officers were reduced to drinking at muddy pools of water red with blood. Then, as the daylight faded, overcome with hunger and fatigue, they flung themselves down among the carnage and tried to sleep. As darkness fell, furtive figures stole among the dead and wounded, many of whom were found lying absolutely naked the following day.

After one of the bloodiest battles of the nineteenth century, over 40,000 wounded men lay dying in agony under a blazing sun in stifling heat with no water, food, medical attention, shelter, help or comfort of any kind. But out of this terrible tragedy, this appalling suffering and seemingly pointless carnage, emerged two events of immense importance. First, Lombardy was won back from long years of Austrian oppression, the initial step towards achieving a free, united Italy. And, second, a certain Swiss gentleman by the name of Henry Dunant was horrified. The first changed the path of a nation. The second changed the conduct of war throughout the world and led to the creation of a movement that is known and actively supported as no other movement, political belief or religion has ever been supported before or since. The Red Cross.

For that same evening, unknown to the generals and statesmen of the day, or indeed to anyone who fought in that terrible battle, a coach rattled into the little town of Castiglione driven at breakneck speed. The passenger who alighted was dressed elegantly, if somewhat incongruously for the surroundings, in impeccably tailored tropical white. Outside his native Geneva, his name was then virtually unknown. Although his work has since saved the lives of millions and mitigated the suffering of countless billions of others, it is still known by surprisingly few to this day.

High of forehead and determined of chin, with limpid brown eyes and drooping moustaches married to luxuriant dark reddish sideburns, Henry Dunant was at this time thirty-one years old. Born on 8 May 1828 in a wide and handsome house in the best part of Geneva, he was the eldest of five children in a family that was both pious and patrician. His father, a descendant of Archbishop Jean XI de Nant and a member of the State Council, was a successful and highly respected businessman who also engaged in voluntary work for the welfare of minors and prisoners. His mother, a Colladon – one of Geneva’s proud families – was the daughter of the director of Geneva Hospital, a highly intelligent and charitable lady, much taken up with ‘her poor’.

Like his mother, the young Henry was sensitive, imaginative and warm-hearted, almost excessively so. He burst into floods of tears when she told him the fable of the wolf eating the lamb while, on a family expedition to Marseilles, the sight of a gang of convicts shackled together gave him nightmares for months.

Growing up in a world of pious wealth, a Geneva that was undergoing a ‘revival’ of its Calvinist beliefs following the preaching of the Scot Robert Haldane, Dunant early developed religious convictions and high moral principles. From the age of eighteen, all his spare time was devoted to visiting the sick and needy and lending his ardour to various charitable causes. He was the leading figure in the development of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Geneva and it was largely due to his extraordinary drive and energy that the movement rapidly extended and the World Alliance of YMCAs was formed as early as 1855.

Such devotion to good works at that age was exceptional even in those days, even in pious Geneva. One of Dunant’s co-workers, Max Perrot, later recalled taking part in spirited discussions of theological matters and being amazed at his companion’s zeal and apostolic fire. Not everyone was so favourably impressed, however. Louise Dubois, for instance, that provocative, dark-haired friend of his sister’s who laughingly taunted him for being such a goody-goody.

Louise Dubois . . . the very mention of her name brought Dunant out in a cold sweat at the memory of that awful afternoon. He and his parents had been lunching at the Dubois residence one Sunday and he was just leaving for his weekly Bible-reading visit to the prison when Louise unexpectedly intercepted him in the hall and drew him into a small salon on the pretext of asking him some urgent advice.

With the door safely closed behind them, Louise wasted little time or subtlety in revealing her intentions to the naively innocent but handsome young man who seemed so tantalisingly immune to her charms. Pushing him playfully down on to a low settee, she purposefully set about seducing him. Dunant had never even been alone in the same room with a girl before in his life, and this sudden and blatantly explicit introduction to sexuality terrified him out of his wits. Violently pushing the astonished girl away from him and stumbling to his feet, he rushed scarlet-faced from the room and somehow found his way out of the house. For hours he wandered through the streets in a daze of shocked disbelief, her parting words flung after him going round and round in his horrified mind, ‘You and your lofty ideals . . . they’re just a cover-up . . . You’re not a real man at all.’

His mother, in whom he later confided the nightmare events of the afternoon, did her best to comfort and reassure her shaken son, but the trauma lingered on, fed by real or imagined whisperings and the venomed insinuations of the furious Louise who had never before suffered such a humiliating rebuff and determined to take her revenge. It was probably an enormous relief to Dunant when the bank to which he was apprenticed temporarily appointed him general manager of its Algerian subsidiary and he could escape from the city that had been the scene of his shame.

The warmth and glamour of Algeria dazzled Dunant and he promptly succumbed to colonial fever. An unfortunate encounter with an unscrupulous local who vaunted the fabulous profits to be made there led to his acquiring a concession of 19 acres at Mons-Djemila, and forming a company to exploit it. Obviously he would not get very far with 19 acres so he applied to the colonial authorities for a further 1,100 acres, in the meantime raising enough capital to build a first corn mill and obtaining authorisation to use a waterfall to turn it. But the profits were slow in coming, as were the desired concessions. His ‘partner’ suggested buying livestock to make up the shortfall. When that scheme failed, money was borrowed to invest in copperbearing mines, then forests . . . One fiasco followed another and soon Dunant was up to his ears in debt while his distinguished shareholders back in Geneva calmly and confidently awaited their promised 10 per cent return on their investment.

Dunant was an eternal optimist. If only he had the concessions he needed, he was convinced the situation could be reversed to brilliant success. But repeated applications to ministers in Paris and the Governor-General in Algeria mysteriously but systematically came up against a brick wall. He now introduced a new piece on to the board.

From his earliest years, when he attended Sunday school and listened spellbound to Pastor Gaussen’s colourful explanations of Daniel’s interpretations of the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, Dunant had developed an obsession with Napoleon Bonaparte. For it was Gaussen’s unshakable belief that Napoleon III was predestined to become head of a restored Holy Roman Empire. All through his youth, Dunant followed Napoleon’s exciting exploits with passionate interest. Now, it seemed, the Emperor might hold the key to his present predicament. Some time ago, he had written an unashamedly flattering treatise entitled ‘The Reconstitution of the Holy Roman Empire by His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon III’, substantiating his theory with obscure historical arguments and his own analysis of the prophet’s interpretation, he now set about having this lavishly printed and adorned with the imperial arms. Napoleon III was known to be susceptible to such blandishments and, who knows, such an offering might spark his generosity.

Undeterred by the fact that Napoleon was currently engaged in a major war, Dunant packed his bags and left for Italy, little imagining the delays, discomforts and traumas that lay ahead. After crossing the Alps, he had great difficulty finding out where the Allied armies actually were. Arriving in Pontremoli, he was directed to Brescia. Seized with impatience, he spent the whole night in his diligence, bumping over the countryside devastated by the retreating Austrian army, crossing rivers with water sloshing in through the carriage windows. Eventually he reached Brescia, only to be told the Emperor had already left. The town was full of troops and normal activities were at a standstill. But luck was on his side. Finding a cabriolet and a driver who thankfully knew his way, he arrived at last in Castiglione.

On 25 June, Dunant awoke to a nightmare landscape. On the plain below Castiglione, corpses of men and horses were thickly strewn as far as the eye could see – over the battlefield, the road, the ditches, the fields. Crops were flattened and devastated, vines and orchards ruined, villages deserted, walls broken down, houses shattered and riddled with holes. The few inhabitants who had crouched terrified in the darkness of their cellars without food for nearly twenty hours were beginning to creep out and survey the horror of the scene. The approaches to Solferino were choked with the dead and wounded and all around the village the ground was littered with broken helmets, weapons, spent cartridges and blood-stained remnants of clothing.

Dunant was gripped with horrified fascination. Picking his way through the piles of bloody debris, he could hear faint cries from those still living and saw abject misery and unspeakable suffering at every step. Some of the wounded being picked up were in the last stages of exhaustion with haggard, vacant and uncomprehending eyes. Others had fits of shaking while still others whose gaping wounds had already turned septic, with chips of bone or earth or scraps of clothing aggravating their frightful injuries, writhed in agony and pleaded for release. In some cases, the dead and even the wounded had been plundered by marauders. Desperate for boots, the Lombardy peasants had wrenched them from the swollen feet of corpses. Dunant noticed that some of the dead wore peaceful expressions: those that had been killed outright. But most of the faces he saw were contorted in agony with staring eyes, paralytic grins baring clenched teeth, hands clawing the earth.

It took three days and nights to bury the dead in shallow, mass graves. As for the wounded, there were large hospitals in Brescia, Bergamo and Milan that could easily have accommodated them, but there was scarcely any transport to take them there. So they were crowded into the nearest town or village where every house, church, square and street had been turned into a temporary hospital. Because it was the nearest, the greatest number were taken to Castiglione where Dunant saw them arrive, some in army wagons, others on mules going at a trot, causing the wounded they carried to cry out in excruciating pain. Altogether, over nine thousand wounded men – mainly French and some Austrians – were brought in to Castiglione between 25 and 30 June, some of them having waited six days without any water, food, shade or help of any kind before they were picked up where they had fallen. For a town of 5,000 inhabitants such an influx caused indescribable congestion. The wounded lay everywhere, in the streets, squares and courtyards, sheltered from the sun by improvised awnings of sail cloth. Thick clouds of black flies settled on the town and the stench of putrefaction was allpervasive. Some of the men were suffering from tetanus, others undergoing torture from over-tight bandages that had not been changed since the field dressing. Wounds were covered with flies and the wretched sufferers haunted by the fear of being devoured by worms. Dunant moved between the packed lines, moistening parched lips, loosening bandages, bathing wounds, washing faces, giving whatever help and comfort he could.

The French army medical services were quite inadequate to respond to this enormous flood of suffering. There were pathetically few doctors: ten to start with, four of whom were called away to duty in Cavriana the next day, and the small number of nurses constantly dwindled as they stayed behind to look after their wounded while the army moved on. Doctors and nurses achieved miracles, working throughout the night, but supplies and equipment were also in lamentably short supply. The Emperor, on hearing of the shortage of dressings, immediately ordered all his personal linen, sheets and tablecloths to be cut up for use as bandages.

In one of the churches in Castiglione, the Chiesa Maggiore, Dunant found almost five hundred soldiers lying on the floor, while another hundred lay outside on straw with strips of canvas for shade, all of them apparently forgotten. He decided this should be his special responsibility, his centre of operations. Busily he set to work, gathering together a number of women to help in looking after the wounded.

Many of his helpers were beautiful young girls, whose tender ministrations enormously improved the patients’ morale. They went down the lines of men, giving them fresh water to drink and washing their wounds while the local boys ran to and fro between the church and nearby fountains filling buckets and canteens. Soup and beef tea were provided by the quartermaster’s services but all other provisions and necessities were almost totally lacking. Dunant sent his driver into Brescia on a shopping expedition and he came back laden with camomile, oranges and lemons, shirts, sponges, bandages, cigars and tobacco. An ex-naval officer and several English tourists were recruited to help as well as an Italian priest, a journalist from Paris and a few officers who had been ordered to stand by in Castiglione. Some of these helpers soon left, however, overwhelmed by the sheer horror and the stench. A Neuchâtel businessman (who later turned out to be Philippe Suchard, the chocolate manufacturer) spent two days dressing wounds and writing letters to their families for dying men while a Belgian became so over-excited while he worked that he had to be restrained for fear that he might develop a high fever.

Some of the wounded would cry out ‘Don’t let me die!’ and seize Dunant’s hand with extraordinary vigour in a last access of strength before dying. An old sergeant remarked bitterly, ‘If I had received attention sooner I would have survived, but now I shall be dead by nightfall.’ And that very evening he died. Dunant came upon an African infantryman lying motionless near the altar. He had had nothing to eat for three days and a bullet was still lodged in his body. After they had washed his wounds and given him a little soup, he took Dunant’s hand and carried it to his lips in mute and inexpressible gratitude. Another poor wretch had had nose, lips and chin sliced off by a sabre. Unable to speak, he lay uttering guttural sounds and making heart-rending signs with his hands. Another, with his skull gaping open, was dying, his brains seeping out onto the floor. His companions kicked him out of their way but Dunant managed to shelter him for his last few moments. Overcome by horror and compassion at what he saw, he went tirelessly from one to the other, his craving to help creating a feverish energy.

The Austrians, he found, were deeply suspicious of their conquerors, some refusing medical attention and tearing off their bandages. A Croat serving with the Austrian forces even snatched the bullet which had just been removed from his wound and flung it in the surgeon’s face. The Austrians might well have been apprehensive of the Milanese who loathed them, but Dunant made no distinction between ally and enemy wounded. ‘Tutti fratelli’ (we are all brothers) he would say and, with great difficulty at first, made his faithful helpers at Castiglione follow his example. One Austrian prisoner, only nineteen years old and shaking with fever, was noticed by all. His hair had turned white on the battlefield, a fact confirmed by his comrades.

Dunant was touched by the uncomplaining resignation and calm acceptance of the men as they lay quietly under their blankets after their wounds had been washed and they had been given soup. Wherever he went, they followed him with their eyes, all heads turning to the right if he went right, all swivelling left when he went left. And all of them wanted to claim him as coming from their own region. ‘Ah,’ said some, ‘he’s obviously Parisian.’ ‘No,’ said others, ‘he looks to me more like a Southerner.’ ‘Surely you’re from Bordeaux, aren’t you, Sir?’ enquired a third.

Worn out but unable to sleep, Dunant felt the need to get away from the horror and gloomy scenes surrounding him at Castiglione. On the evening of the 27th, he called for his carriage and, with the same driver who had brought him there, set off to find Marshal MacMahon whom he had met in Algeria, with a view to seeking an audience with the Emperor. On the way, he was told that MacMahon was stationed at Borghetto, quite close to the Austrian army, but this news threw his wretched driver – who had fled Mantua to avoid serving with the Austrians – into such a panic that he could scarcely hold the reins and almost tumbled off his seat at the sight of a large, open umbrella riddled with gunshots stuck at the side of the road.

At Borghetto, Dunant was warmly received by MacMahon and took the opportunity of requesting that the Austrian doctors captured by the French should be allowed to practise, at least to look after their own wounded. It seemed both intolerable and absurd to keep such men inactive, together with other prisoners of war, when there was such a desperate shortage of medical staff. MacMahon promised to see this was done and also gave Dunant a pass for the Emperor’s headquarters in Cavriana. Proceeding there, Dunant failed to get an audience with Napoleon but at least delivered his volume on the Roman Empire to his personal secretary.

Back on duty in Castiglione the next day, Dunant was touched to see how the wounded in the Chiesa Maggiore who had not yet been moved were clearly overjoyed at the return of their ‘man in white’. Once again, he found himself in the midst of the nightmare world of screams and suffering, pools of blood on makeshift operating tables where terrible amputations were performed without anaesthetics by harassed surgeons, sometimes on the enemy wounded who were unable to understand or communicate in a language not their own. At least he could help here by acting as an interpreter and persuading the voluntary helpers to make no distinction between friend and foe. ‘Tutti fratelli’, he would repeat time and time again and gradually others echoed it.

Perhaps it was the renewed impact of the terrible suffering he witnessed and his despairing awareness of the scarcity of human and material resources to alleviate it that prompted Dunant to send an impassioned appeal to the comtesse de Gasparin in Geneva who had organised the despatch of tobacco to the fighting men in the Crimea. ‘Every fifteen minutes for the last three days,’ he wrote, ‘I have seen a human being die in unimaginable agonies. A glass of water, a cigar, a friendly smile – and they become changed natures and calmly and peacefully await their hour of death.’ The comtesse lost no time in having extracts from this letter published in the Journal de Genève and L’Illustration in France and the people of Geneva instantly responded.

Tired and dispirited, Dunant began to think of making tracks for home. On his way, he spent three days visiting the hospitals in Brescia where he found the doctors, medical students and entire population unstinting in their efforts to help the wounded. But here again, the health services were sadly inadequate to cope with the situation. Busily, he set about organising voluntary aid committees and collections of bedding, clothing and provisions, as well as distributing tobacco, pipes and cigars in the churches and hospitals.

In Milan too, the wounded were being cared for with the greatest devotion by society ladies in their own magnificent houses, who would spend months like guardian angels beside the beds of the sick. As he watched them nursing the wounded so kindly and efficiently, the thought occurred to him that such service should always be kept ready. Then he reflected that these were the lucky ones, the less seriously wounded, and he remembered how, in the overcrowded hospitals with their shortage of nurses, medicines and dressings, the hopeless cases were simply left to die untended, without food or medical assistance, all available resources being reserved for those thought to have some chance of recovery.

Exhausted and sickened by the traumatic experiences of the past few days, Dunant headed for home. Although they had been pushed to the furthest recesses of his mind by the recent horrors, his Algerian business worries could no longer be ignored or postponed. He was cast into even deeper despondency by a note he received from the Emperor’s private secretary, thanking him for his volume on the Roman Empire but declining the dedication and requesting him to suspend publication. As he wearily recrossed the Alps, it seemed to Dunant that his Italian mission had been entirely in vain.

TWO

Enter Gustave Moynier and Friends

Gustave Moynier was not easily excited. In fact he could not remember having ever been roused to any appreciable level of enthusiasm about anyone or anything in his life. His equilibrium was rarely ruffled. But as he sat at his desk that November morning with the mist blanketing the lake outside his window, he had to admit that he was deeply moved by the book he had just laid down. It was an account of the battle of Solferino and its aftermath by a man as yet unknown to him in all but name. And not only was he moved but he was also experiencing something very akin to excitement at the realisation that the appeal it contained seemed to be addressed personally to him. Here was exactly the kind of challenge he had been looking for to satisfy his thirst for bolder projects and wider horizons than his present relatively small-scale and somewhat parochial activities offered.

Anyone meeting Moynier for the first time would have been struck by his singularly stern expression and sober appearance, his hypnotic and unblinking gaze. Thin of lip and nose, his moustache drawn straight across his face like a bolt, everything about him seemed rigid and unbending. Although only in his mid-thirties, he had more the air of an uncompromising High Court judge than the philanthropist and organiser of local charities which in fact he was. Perhaps in some ways he was the product of the Geneva of his day.

Geneva in the middle of the nineteenth century was very different and yet in many ways much the same as it is today. The cruel ‘bise’ regularly blasted its icy way through the Grand Rue and paddle steamers even then glided serenely over the calm surface of the lake. Its stocky, eminently sensible and ever-serious citizens still find it difficult and usually unnecessary to raise their sights above the Alps, away from the calm and comfortable security within their borders. Their buildings have always reflected the importance they attach to strength and durability, the overall effect relieved by sturdy window boxes of resolutely cheerful geraniums. Hospitality and efficiency are endemic to Switzerland and, even a century and a half ago, hotel guests were assured they would find ‘horses available at the arrival of every train’.

Of course, the pace of life was slower then, the architecture less glassy and geometric, the only traffic on the roads horse-drawn and the international organisations, now so inextricably part of the city’s life, quite undreamed of. Even the word ‘international’ was almost unknown and only really came into use with the setting up of the Workers’ International in 1862 and the drafting of its statutes by Karl Marx in 1864. Railways were new and the annual report of the Chemin de Fer Central Suisse in 1859 proudly claimed to have just completed laying 205 kilometres of line. The telegraph, too, had just come into being with the first electric cable laid from Calais to Dover in 1851, the telegraph thereafter being regarded in much the same way as the microchip today, in other words it soon became the normal means of relaying urgent news, although it was still regarded by more conservative or mature sections of the community with a certain suspicion and reserve.

Geneva in those days was very much under the influence of two men, both long since dead. The Genevans were justly proud to have produced Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1712, who spent part of his childhood in a house which is now the site of the popular department store, La Placette, and from whom they inherited their strong beliefs in the rights and dignity of ordinary men. His theories on conduct and government as expressed in Le Contrat Social stimulated the movement leading to the French Revolution. Another revolutionary element in his work at that time was the statement that ‘war is not a relationship between men, but rather a relationship between States, whereby the individuals involved only happen to be enemies, not as men or even as citizens, but as soldiers’, a sentiment which was to have great significance for this story.