The church of Gommatch was a small ivy-clad building with a square Norman tower, standing¹ in the centre of the hamlet of that name. Its great oaken doors, studded with iron, and high narrow windows, fitted it well for the use to which it was now turned. Two companies of Dumbarton’s Foot had been quartered in the village, with a portly Major at their head, to whom I was handed over by Sergeant² Gredder, with some account of my capture, and of the reasons which had prevented my summary execution.

Night was now drawing in, but a few dim lamps, hung here and there upon the walls, cast an uncertain, flickering³ light over the scene. A hundred or more prisoners were scattered⁴ about upon the stone floor, many of them wounded, and some evidently dying. The hale had gathered in silent, subdued⁵ groups round their stricken friends, and were doing what they could to lessen⁶ their sufferings. Some had even removed the greater part of their clothing in order to furnish head-rests and pallets for the wounded. Here and there in the shadows dark kneeling figures might be seen, and the measured sound of their prayers rang through the aisles⁷, with a groan⁸ now and again, or a choking gasp⁹ as some poor sufferer battled for breath. The dim, yellow light streaming over the earnest pain-drawn¹⁰ faces, and the tattered¹² mud-coloured figures, would have made it a fitting study for any of those Low Country painters whose pictures I saw long afterwards at The Hague.

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