Henri Dunant, 30 yrs old, was a very wealthy Swiss banker and financier. His life would have probably have continued as much as it had except for that fateful day, 24th June 1859, that changed everything for the rest of his life. Henri had been sent by the Swiss government to speak with Napoleon III. He was to discuss a business deal between the Swiss and French that would benefit both countries.
But Napoleon was not in Paris; he was on the plains of Solferino (present Italy) about to battle with Austrians. Henri Dunant tried to read the scene before the battle started, but he was too late. His carriage reached the hill top that overlooked the battlefield. Suddenly trumpets blared, muskets cracked, cannons boomed. The two cavalries charged ahead and the battle was on. Henri Dunant, as if in a front seat of a movie theatre, sat transfixed. He could see the dust rising, hear the screams of the injured, the dying. Dunant sat as if in a trance at the horror below him. But the real horror was later - when he entered the small town after the battle was over. Every house, every building was filled with the mangled, the injured, the dead. Driven by pity at the suffering he saw all around him, Dunant stayed in the town for three days doing everything he could to help the people who survived. His life was never the same again.
The War was barbarous. He felt the world should abolish it. This was not the way to settle differences between nations. And most of all, there had to be a International organization to help people in times of suffering and chaos.
Henri Dunant returned to Switzerland, but in the next few years he became a fanatic on the subject of peace and mercy. He began to travel all over Europe preaching his message. Eventually his business suffered in the effort and he was soon broke. But he persisted. At the first Geneva conference, he carried on a one-man assault against war. As a result, the Conference passed the first international law against war - a movement that was to give birth to both the League of Nations and the U.N.
In 1901, Dunant was awarded the first Nobel Peace Prize. And though he was penniless and living in a poorhouse, he gave the entire prize to the worldwide movement he had founded. Henri Dunant died in 1910 almost totally forgotten by the world. But Henri no monument to mark hid grave. As a symbol of the organization he had fathered, he had taken the Swiss flag, a white cross on a red background and reversed it: a red cross on a white background. The organization that became his everlasting monument was the "Red Cross".
