Charles Ryan was an Irish surgeon from Tipperary who served with a horse-drawn Anglo-American ambulance unit in the latter stages of the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War. This vivid account of his experiences is a fascinating glimpse of the war and the siege of Paris which concluded it from a civilian whose work involved him at the sharp end. The book opens by describing the disastrous French debacle at Sedan where an army, commanded by the Emperor Napoleon III in person, was trapped and crushed by the artillery of surrounding Prussian forces, despite heroic charges by the French cavalry. Later in...