Page 84 - ACTL_Win23

The title is not precisely correct, because there are four conventions. In 1949 the three original conventions were all consolidated into one expanded con- vention, which was then followed by three Protocols. In addition, in the decade before the First World War most nations ratified two international accords, known as the Hague Conventions. The history of the Geneva Con- ventions is closely bound to the history of the founding of the Red Cross.
In June 1859, bent on seeking an interview with Napoleon III about a business venture he had set afoot in Algeria (then governed by France), Henri Jean Dunant journeyed to Italy, where he knew the Emperor was conducting a campaign against the Austrians. Dunant happened upon and found himself an unwilling spectator at the battle of Solferino in Lombardy, a major engagement during the second War of Italian Independence; the defeat of the Austrians resulted in the annexation of most of Lombardy by Sardinia-Piedmont. The battle was remarkable on two counts: first, it was the last battle in which all the armies were commanded by their sovereigns, the French by Napoleon III, the Piedmontes by Victor Emmanuel II and the Austrians by Emperor Franz Joseph I; second, it was notorious for the scale of the casualties. Some 400,000 troops were engaged. The Austrians lost 14,000 men killed or wounded and more than 8,000 missing or tak- en prisoner. The Franco-Piedmontese suffered 15,000 killed or wounded and 2,000 missing or taken prisoner. During the next two months another 40,000 soldiers died as a result of the wounds they had received during the fighting. The casualties came close to twenty percent of the fighting force.
Most of these deaths could have been avoided had the wounded been able to receive medical aid on the battlefield, before medical complications ren- dered their situations irreversible.
Dunant wrote a book, Un Souvenir de Solferino, describing the horrors and suffering and proposing the creation of a neutral agency which would tend the wounded in the field, regardless of their nationality, as well as caring for civilians caught up in the conflict.
He describes the beginning of the battle:
“The Austrians advanced in perfect formation along the beaten tracks. In the centre of the solid masses of ’white coats’ floated the colours, yellow and black blazoned with the Imperial Eagle... Against them moved the French forces, a dazzling spectacle in the brilliant Italian sun. There, the Guards could be seen, the gleaming ranks of Dragoons, Guides, Lancers and Cuirassiers”
He goes on to describe in graphic detail the sight of thousands of men in hand-to- hand combat, slaughtering one another over bleeding corpses, felling adversaries with ri- fle butts, smashing in skulls, disemboweling them with sabre and bayonet. There was no question of quarter. He was appalled at the fate of the wounded:
Wounded men lay about the field, unable to move, many slowly bleeding to death. It was a hot Italian summer’s day. The wound- ed lay for up to three days, without food or water and bereft of medical care. Dunant concluded that had there been an organized body, equipped to transport and care for the wounded immediately, many lives would have been saved.
Dunant devoted several days helping to col- lect up as many of the wounded he could, tending them in hospitals improvised out of churches, barns and monasteries. There was a desperate shortage of doctors. In the Chiesa Maggiore, Dunant found five hun- dred wounded who had been carried there and then forgotten. He rounded up the women of the village to come and tend them.
Dunant spent three years writing his book. He distributed sixteen hundred copies to people of prominence whom he hoped he could influence: to crowned heads and princes, ministers of war and of foreign affairs and to those in positions of impor- tance and influence.
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“Further on came the artillery in the wake of the cavalry. It ploughed its way through the dead and wounded which lay together indis- tinguishable on the ground. Brains spurted out as the wheels went over, limbs were bro- ken and mangled so that men’s bodies were a shapeless, featureless conglomeration, un- recognizable as human creatures. The earth was soaked and running with blood and the field littered with human remnants...”