This is the world's best replica of a 19th-century blood bath that reinforced Switzerland's role as a neutral (nonaligned) power, and that provided the first testing ground for the then-fledgling Red Cross. It commemorates an incident in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) when the defeated French forces of General Charles Bourbaki (1816-97) fled out of France into Switzerland to avoid annihilation by the Germans. In Switzerland, the starving, diseased, and disorganized French forces were disarmed by the Swiss army, then welcomed into homes throughout Switzerland for rest and recuperation from the brutal winter. Today, the event is hailed as one of the finest acts of humanitarian courage in Swiss history, and celebrated in the form of this circular painting, completed in 1881, of the bloody battlefield. Originally conceived as a Barnum & Bailey-style tourist attraction in the 19th century, the site was converted into an auto repair shop in 1925, and the painting was "shortened" in two separate incidents that ultimately removed about 3.6m (12 ft.) of gray sky from the top of the wraparound panorama. Between 1996 and 2003, the site was rebuilt, the painting cleaned, and the museum opened, with recorded narration, as a celebration of a genuinely bizarre but evocative interlude in European history. Be prepared for the recorded sounds of gunshots and cannons, dying men and horses, and a mournful but stirring account of wartime follies and heroism.