Excerpt from What I Saw of the War at the Battles of Speichern, Gorze,& Gravelotte Young - man and a civilian, unless corresponding for a journal, could derive from scenes of blood shed and it was not until I told him plainly (knowing, as I did full well, that in this world there is no greater lover of honesty and straight forward speech than a Prussian oflicer) thatthough having by nature a great fancy for soldiering, as an only son I had been dissuaded from giving fortune another chance against me in the game of life and death; and my object was not to witness the slaughtering of vast hosts of Prussians, as he grimly sug gested, but to seize the present opportunity of making myself practically acquainted with sol disring. He smiled somewhat sadly. Perhaps he had an only son about to engage in the deadly struggle, and was thinking how glad he would have been had the English custom pre vailed m Germany. Anyhow, he kindly bade me go to his ctdt Major, who made me out a pass. I had not been in possession of this precious document more than an hour, when a proclamation was posted to the effect that from that time no one would be allowed to follow the army except by the King's own permission. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.