The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-22 00:00:00

THE WAR IN DENMARK.

(Rom the Times Special Correspondent with the Allied
Army.)
BROACKER, March 16.
Change of place and other circumstances have
puevented my writing to you since my letter of the
12th from Koldicg. On the 14th I reached Graven-
stein, where Prince Fredericl Charles, commanding
the army corps which for some time past has been
in observation, has his head-quarters. On that day,
but before I got to Gravenstein, there had been a
little fighting in front, the Prussians being the as-
sailants, and having for object permanently to ad-
vance their outposts to within a shorter distance of

the Danish entrenchments than they previously
had been. After the reconnaissance of the 22d of
February, announced by the Danes as a defeat of
the Prussians, but which in reality was nothing of
the kind, the latter never having intended more
than a reconnaissance, and having taken a number
of Danish prisoners with very trifling loss to
themselves, the Danes were said to have aban•
darted the wood known as the Beffel-Koppel,

bnt if they did so they afterwards reoccu-
pied it: It was thought desirable to drive them into
a narrow space round the Duppel entrenchments,
and this was accordingly done after a slight skir-

mish, in which the Prussians return their loss at two
officers and 16 men killed and wounded. I yesterday
rode over the ground, and on to the advanced posts
of the Prussians, now established just beyond the

spot where the cross road to Schmoel and Broacker
enters the highway from Gravenstein to Sonderburg.
A few yards in front of this a small lane runs north-
wards, and in this lane, leaning against the bank,
and peering through the leafless hedge at the Danish

sentries, who were visible 200 or 300 yards off, stood
the most advanced Prussians. The Danes had fired
a few shots that morning, but then they were quiet
enough, and from what I hear it is not often that

the outposts molest each other by the useless prac-

tice of trying to pick off each other's sentries.
On the road were the usual signs of the previous

day's fighting; in the houses of the hamlets a few
marks of cannon and rifle shots ; by the wayside
the remains of barriers made of branches, which had
been raised to impede the assailants; a deep cutting
across the way, then filled up ; in one place a
couple of Prussian cannon shots had laid a small

but as flit as if it had been built of cards. Return

ing, I took a lane which led me to a picket shed,
built against a bank of sticks and straw. It was
raining heavily, and the picket were indoors, but

came out at the sound of horses' feet, looking damp
and muddy enough, but not unpicturesque, emerging
from their straw nest just on the edge of the Boffel-
Koppel, which is a small wood on undulating
ground. Here, as in other places close upon the
line of outpost, passes were demanded, for ramblers
in civilian costume are rare in this region, and the
Prussians have a great horror of spies, and, especi-
ally in the country occupied by this army corps,
take the utmost precautions against them. Passing
through the Boffel-Koppel into deep ploughed fields
we came in sight of the doable spire of Broacker
church, situated on a height, and a conspicuous
object for a long distance around. One of those
furious gales so common in this storm-plagued land
was blowing at the time, and even when we got

into the village and looked down from its church

yard wall upon the little arm of the sea known as
the Yenning-bond, we could not hear the sound of
guns fired at the Dappel forts from bgteries situated
at the north-westernmost point of the north shore
of that inlet. The Prussians have got some rifled
21-pounders there, concerning which I shall have
more to say in a future letter, and they make capi-
tal practice at the Danish works. Yesterday was
the first day, and I arrived rather late from Gra-
venstein, and the fire was nearly over; but to-day
I came up sooner, and was witness, from a hill be-
tween this place and the shore, of the destructive
effects of the Prussian rifled artillery of various
calibres. There were three successive conflagrations
all in the neighbourhood of Fort No. 4, which ap-
peared the most heavily visited by the day's prac-
tice. One of them was very considerable, judging
from the great sheet of flame which for some time
was visible even in the broad sunlight; for, al-
though it snowed heavily from 6 until 9 this morn-
ing, it soon after wards cleared up, and the after-
noon was beautiful and almost cloudless, the sky of
a far deeper blue than I expected to see in this
country at this season, and the water of the Bund, no
longer troubled and torn up into short curling waves
and clouds of spray by the force of the gale, was
of a deep blue•green, crisply rippled, but foamless.
The focus of another of the fires was concealed by a
rise in the ground, but from it there issued, for
some time, huge dense banks of the blackest smoke.
By persons who profess to be well acquainted with
the neck of land on which the Dappel works are
situated, I am informed that there were burnt to-
day two farms used as quarters for the men em-
ployed in the fortifications, two barracks, and a
storehouse, besides straw-stacks and other smaller
matters. The Danes answered the Prussian batte-
ries for some time this afternoon, but their fire was
completely harmless, for reasons which one would
think they ought very soon to discover, either by
their own observations or by their spies, but which,
in case they should not yet have done so, may as
well not be mentioned here.
The fortified position of Dappel will require more
minute examination than I have as yet been able
to bestow upon it, before I can attempt anything
like a detailed account of it, but it may be described
in general terms as a range of hills or of high downs
of tolerably steep ascent, on which redoubts have
been erected. The number of those redoubts is 10,
and they are known by numbers 1 to 10, commenc-
ing from the south. The earthworks are very
heavy and solid, and the Prussians admit that their
fire makes little impression upon them. On the other
band, there seems to be no doubt entertained by any
who were in the batteries at the time that the 24.
pounders sant two shells into the barracks at Son-
derburg, a distance estimated at fully 21 miles Eng-
lish (5,600 German paces) ; and it was reported this
evening among the military that to-morrow's can-
nonade would certainly be directed against Son-
derburg, with the intention of reducing the town
to ashes. Judging from the effect of to-day's fire,
it does not seem improbable that this anticipation
will be fulfilled, but hardly in time for the event to
be announced for the present letter, which I fear
must be posted before 9 a.m. We are still rather
irregular, in this corner of the world, as regards
postal communications, and the public telegraph
does not extend to this little village, but should
anything extraordinary occur I shall endeavour to
make you acquainted with it by the last named
moans.

A number of Danish vessels, as many, it is said,
as 26 or 27, including two large steamers, were seen
late this afternoon near the Alsen coast, at a very
safe distance from the Prussian batteries. The Rolf
lirake, if she it be who has been seen this last day
or two in the same direction, keeps a respectful
distance from the 24-pounders, which well she may
do, considering how roughly she lately was handled
by much lighter guns. A remarkable feature of the
new Prussian artillery, and one to which the officers
of that arm attribute no mean share of its excel-
lence, is the mode of igniting the contents of the
shell. This is done by means of a needle, one end
of which projects from the apex of the conical ball,
while the other, when the shell strikes, is forced
into the powder and ignites the shell. Before the
explosion takes place, however, there is time for the
shell to enter the object it has struck, and so to
cans° terrible havoc. The Prussian rifle is dis-
much in the same way. It is, as you are
charged
eeh-loader, and on all sides, since I have
aware, a bre
been with this army,
do I hear the utmost satisfac-
tion expressed at its great efficiency. It can fire six
or seven shots a minute, which gives the troops
that use it an enormous advantage over muzzle-
loading rifles. The results of its present trial in the
field, so far as that has gone, are said most com-
pletely to justify the confidence which has long
been expressed in it in Prussia.
Gravenstein is certainly one of the most wretched
places in Schleswig, so far at least as my experience
goes of Schleswig townq and viilagcs• It lies low,
on the margin of a small lake, or large pond, with
marshy ground about it. Immediately before you
enter it by the road from Apenrade you pass
.the
Schloss, or chateau, a large ugly white building,

which forms three sides of a square, and where Prince
Frederick Charles now has his quarters. The village
itself is mean and miserable, and at the pre ei, t time
is in a frightful state of filth, crowded with soldiers
in every house, the streets streaming wi;il mud, the
courts and gardens horribly defiled, the inns the
worst I have seen in Schleswig (which is not saying
a little), and the Schloss to be reached, at least on
on foot, only by treading a plink laid across a quag-
mire. To find even the humblest accommodation
in the shape of a bed is at the present moment com-
pletely out of the question, and after passing two
nights on straw in a cupboard I resolved to come
up here, the more so as Gravenstein, in the present
state of affairs, now that operations against Duppel
seem to be seriously commencing, is too far from the
front. It is fully six miles thence to the outposts
which I yesterday visited, and about four and a-half
to Broacker by the shortest road, an extremely bad
one, across the bridge of boats at Alnoer (over the
Eskernsund). My references to the geography of
this part of Schleswig will be unintelligible-to those
of your readers who do not feel sufficient interest
in the subject to take a map to assist them in fol-
lowing it. Of those that I have some are very in-
correct; among the batter ones may be cited Peter-
man's Special Map of North Schleswig, lately pub-
lished at Gotha ; a plan of the Dappel position, just
brought out by Schropp, in Berlin (on a large scale,
but meagre and too circumscribed) ; and a special
map of Alsen and Sundewitt, published in 1849 by
Hoffman and Campe at Hamburg—since which date,
however, the Duppel fortifications have been ex-
tended. Broacker, as will be seen from any one of
these maps, is the most desirable point for observa-
tion of the operations now in progress, especially
now that the Prussian batteries are established at
half an hour's ride from it, while about the same
time takes one round to the outposts on the high-
, road from Gravenstein to Sonderburg. Prince
Frederick Charles is probably also of that opi-
nion, if it be true, as was reported this evening,
that he is about to move his quarters from the
swampy hole where they are now established to this
breezy little place—rather too breezy to be pleasant
when the wind blows high, but clean and bearing
some slight resemblance to an English village of the
some class. Marshal Wrangel's headquarters are
also expected to come down south from Kolding,
but perhaps they will be fixed at Flensburg—cer-
tainly a more desirable place than Gravenstein.
According to the account given by staff officers at
the latter place, the Danes are at this time very
numerous in Duppel and its vicinity—more so, it is
said, than the Prussians outside. If this be the case,
I apprehend that nearly the whole Danish army
must be in Duppel and Alsen, which may be the
case, although it is unlikely that Fredericia would
be left without a strong garrison at the present
time, and it is also reported that a great deal of the
Danish cavalry is still in Jutland—far north, we
must suppose, if there at all—retreating before the
advancing Austrian columns.
The Prussians troops of this division look, as one
meets them moving about the country, active and
service-like, On a parade, or massed in large bodies,
I have not yet had opportunity of observing them.
They have a fair amount of work to do at the pre-
sent time in the way of establishing batteries, mak-
ing fascines, &c., in which latter occupation they
may daily be seen busily engaged in a field by the
road from Gravenstein hither—in working jackets,
their arms piled and their helmets hung upon the
points of their bayonets. I should think that the
inappropriateness of these Prussian helmets for
campaigning—however well they may be consi-
dered to look in quarters—must by this time have
been discovered ; also the inconvenience of allow-
ing the men no bayonet-sheaths, in consequence of
which they are obliged to carry their bayonets
constantly fixed, certainly an undesirable necessity,
increasing the soldier's labour in getting rid of rust
from his arms, and in other respects objectionable.
You pass carts in these narrow roads, containing
sick or wearied men or soldiers, escorting provi-
sions, with the muskets laid in the carts, or sloped
on the shoulder, and bayonets sticking out in all
directions, like a chevaux-de frise, and in riding
along the roads where many troops with convoys
are moving about it requires constant attention to
avoid accident. As regards the sanitary state of
the army, I have no positive statistics, but I learn,
on good medical authority, that the percentage of
sick is considerably higher than it was said to be a
short time ago. This was to be expected. Expo•
sure, bad and crowded quarters, lack of opportuni•
tics of attending to personal cleanliness, might be
borne without much ill effect for a short time, but
must tell in the long run.