The Geneva Convention

The Hidden Origins of the Red Cross

Angela Bennett

• Publisher: The History Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780752495828
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Sozialgeschichte

Presents the story of the Geneva Convention and the events which brought it into being. Who would have thought that the world's first treaty on human rights could have been founded by two young men, who cordially loathed each other? This work describes how they drew up a code of practice for the treatment of war-wounded in battle.

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 clo...