The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-08 00:00:00

THE INVASION OF SCHLESWIG.

(Ziout the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
FLECKERBYE, SCHLESWIG, Feb. 2.
Prince Frederick Charles and his Staff pasted
through Eckernforde early to-day, and moved for-
ward on the road to Missunde. The troops that
had been quartered for the night in and around the
former place were also cn their way to the front at
an early hour. Missunde, as the map will show
you, is at a narrow point of the Schlei. Not having
had an opportunity of visiting it beforehand, and
trustworthy information on such subjects being
d:fileult to obtain, I must limit myself to stating the
feet, of which I believe there can be no doubt, that
the position is a strong one. There are intrench-
meats and a tete de pont. Something more exact
might have been ascertained but for the extremely
unfavourable nature of the weather. Fighting in
a fog is an unsatisfactory business, even to those
engaged, and the mist is particularly annoying to
persons who attend merely as spectators, desirous
of seeing as much as possible of what passes on both
eide.s. As regards the main features of to-day's
affair, I will at:once tell you that the Prussians
came up in high spirits, and showing good stomach
for the fight; that a large body of cavalry was on
tae ground, and had, so far as I saw or heard,
nothing whatever to do ; that six or seven batteries
of artillery were engaged, and that there was a fair
amount of infantry skirmishing, but no heavy fire
of that arm. In fact, it was chiefly an artillery
fight, the object being to batter the Danish defences
and daunt the Danes themselves, with a view to
subsequent more decisive operations. This, at
least, I infer to have been the intention of the
asailants, on the strength of what I gather, at
the commencement of the fight, from officers there
present, and the proceedings of the day confirm
the inference. Throughout the whole affair, which
was of the nature of a reconnaissance, the Prue-
sian fire was inadequately replied to by the Danes,
and the loss of the former, which I do not
imagine to be large, was chiefly incurred in in-
fantry fights, especially towards the end, when the
Prussians approached very near to the intrench-
ments. Th© fog was so dense, increasing as the day
wore on, and at last mingled with a close drizzle,
that even from the immediate rear of the Prussian
batteries I could distinguish the Danish skirmishers
only as shadows moving through a mist. The state
of the atmosphere probably had its effect on the
artillery practice of the enemy, which was directed
at moving bodies, while the aim of this side was
chi:fly at fixed objects, and,'moreover, the nature of
th© ground afforded a good deal of cover to the
Prussian battalions and squadrons in the reserve or
not actually engaged. The whole country from
Eckernforde to the Schlei is undulating and divided
into small fields by banks and hedges. The com-
bat began beyond Kosel (a village about half-way
between Eckernforde and Misaunde), the Danes
skirmishing back to their position on the Schlei.
About three o'clock the Prussians broke off the fight
and retired, unmolested by their opponents. The
whole affair presented no features of particular in-
terest. As the columns began to march back to
their quarters the village included in the Danish
position, which had been for some time on fire,
bte.z2d up through the fog and cast a red glare
along the horizon. Au occasional cannon shot
during the next half hour concluded the day's pro-
ceedings. The Danish practice throughout the day
seems to have been good, considering the fog, and
that they fired a great deal less than the Prussians.
One of their shots disabled three horses belonging
to one gun, and there were several damaged limbers
and carriages. Of the wounded Prussians a good
many of the hurts were but slight. There seemed
some deficiency in the ambulance department, for
several wounded men were carried past me not on
stretchers, bat borne on greatcoats or in their com-

rade.s' arms.

It was stated this morning in Eckernforde that
heavy firing had been heard during the night in
the direction of the Dannewerk, but at the place
from which I write, which is much nearer to the
great Danish bulwark, nothing is known of
any such cannonade. There was noise enough
of another kind at Eckernforde the whole night
thrcug'n, an immense deal of joviality and cheering,
and singing of the eternal tiehleswig-Holstein air,
a harsh and meagre melody at best, and which cer-
tainly dos not improve by repetition. The Eckern-
fo7dians seemed quite enchanted at their release
from the Danes, of whom they spoke in no approv-
ing terms, relating with much glee how the last re-
maining company hurried ont yesterday on hearing
that the Prussians were coming down upon them.
Up to the Sclale.i, as you know, Schles wig is quite
German in its ideas and sympathies, although at
Eckernforde most of the inhabitants seem conver-
sant with the Danish tongue, having been obliged,
they say, to learn it at school.
. .

Fieckerbye, from which Ito •night write to you, is
a pretty hamlet, about half way from Eckernforde to
Schleswig, and at rather a convenient point between
the Prussians on the right, the Austrians in the
centre, and the Danes in front. The Prussian light
cavalry are patrolling the road that runs through it,
and the Danish patrols come dow❑ to within a short
distance west of it. Not being quite certain as to
what visitors the fortune of war may bring them,
the inhabitants have not yet mounted the tricolour,
or followed the example of the various other villages
in Schleswig, where Duke Frederick VIII. has been
proclaimed as soon as the Danes left.

The Prussian troops bear themselves, so far as
I had opportunity of observing, very creditably in
the new capacity, long unknown to this army, of
fighting men. On the march they are joyous and
alert, they go cheerfully into action, and bear
wounds uncomplainingly. On the other hand, one
sees at once that they are young soldiers. A whale
battalion stooped their heads to day, almost as one
man, when a round shot passed at a small distance
over them. The same men went eagerly into action
a short time afterwards, and did their duty with
spirit and goodwill. lam not sure that it is likely
to encourage young soldiers to be addressed upon
the field in the terms which an acquaintance of
mine assured me he heard employed to-day by a
well-meaning chaplain, who, in a short discourse, in-
tended to arouse the religious feelings of a battalion,
informed them that it was highly probable very few
of them might come out of the struggle upon which
th©y were at that moment about to enter.

'there seems no doubt that a regular plan had
been to conceal the fact that the passage of the'
frontier Was fined for the Ist of February. Yester-
day Inc3rnin, at Kiel, it Was positively believed by
Per'o::s who eught to have been the best and first
iatoimc [3, that the Crown Prince was to arrive there
before night. This appears to have been a ruse de
guerre. It has been announced that the Prince and
Marshal Wrangel would
hold a review of troops
near Kiel on the 2d inst. (to day). Instead of that
they have never been near the place, and their head-
quarters to-night are atA Dlenorff, between Rends-
Hamburg
burg and Schleswig. on Sunday even •
inn, there was no idea thata movement across the
Eider was imminent, and the. first knowledge of it
Kiel obtained by the people at le was only When the
troops began to turn out very early en the Monday
morning.

RENDSDURG, Feb. 3.

It rained and blew a gale during the greater part
of the night at Fleckerbye, and the same weather
continued all the morning, the snow rapidly disap-
pearing and the ice gradually melting. The change
in the weather is likely to prove a setiousimpedi-
ment to the operations of the Austro-Prussians. I
started early to come over here, and met a consider-
able body of Austrians on the road—the Martini
infantry regiment, a battalion of Tyrolese Chasseurs,
some battalions composed of Germin-Austrians and
Sclavonians ; also a few guns, pontoons, Sze.—the
whole struggling along roads deep with mud,
with a driving rain mud raw wind from the west.
From the villages we heard many reports about
firing in the direction of the Dannewerk, but there
seems to have been no fighting, except on the right
at Missunde, unless it occurred on the extreme left,
at Friedrichstadt, of which we have no positive
accounts. Here, when the Austrians advanced
quietly withdrew from
oa the Ist, the Danes
the Kronwerk, and at the same time f..om the
six villages which were evacuated without any
exaflict, This afternoon the weather is better, but
still overcast and somewhat menacing, and if the

frost has gone for good, and we have now a steady
thaw (even without rain, which has ceased), opera-
tions must for some days be extremely c fficult.
The ground on which yesterday's fightin occurred
was clayey, and it would be difficult ti take guns
over it when it should have becomes with wet.
I am again on the move, and must cloy , 'his hurried
letter.

KIEL, Feb. 4.
Starting yesterday morning from Fleck,-rbye, I
made a pretty extensive ramble, terminating at the
place whence I now date. The Schleswig roads
are extremely heavy, and the means of locomotion
obtainable are by no means good, besides which
stoppages, or at least delays, owing to the troops,
baggage, and commissariat stores one encoun►ers,
are of continual recurrence. Before striking the
high road from Schleswig to Rendsburg, which I
did not do until very near the latter place, the open
vehicle (drawn by two meagre steeds whose powers
of endurance were fortunately quite out of propor-
tion to their appearance), which I had with difficulty
obtained, was stopped in a nook of a narrow country
road by the passage of at least 5,000 Austrians,
through which it was impossible to make way.
Notwithstanding that the morning was as nasty a
one as could be selected for a march, they seemed in
good feather. They had decorated their caps with
fir sprigs, and were chatting and singing in a variety
of languages and dialects sufficient to puzzle the
most accomplished philologist. It was strange to
see these Tyrolese, Hungarians, and Sclavonians—
for such the greater part of them were—pushing
their way thus far northwards to fight the battle
of German nationality against the Danes. One
might suspect that most of them had very little
knowledge of the business they were bound upon,
except as regarded the fighting part of it, and
that, had they been informed of it, the more intelli-
gent among them might have been struck by the
idea that they need not have come so far from
home to struggle in the cause of nationality.
Most of them were very young men, especially
the Tyrolese sharpshooters, who were generally
small and slight, and did not strike me as of
the vigorous constitution desirable for hard ser-
vice. Their appearance, however, may have been
deceptive. It was not a sort of morning to make
men look their best. Many of the officers were
very fine looking young men. The column was
chiefly composed of infantry, and the Hungarians
seemed the strongest men among them. They ap-
peared to me to be leas heavily laden, in the way
of knapsacks and equipments, than my Prussian
friends, with whom I had passed the previous day.
The only deficiency I noticed about them regarded
their boots, which were decidedly too thin for such
a rough country as that they have come into, and
far better suited for a sunny day in Italy than a
winter march in Schleswig. They left scarcely a
straggler behind them, however, and there were no
signs of sore feet, but the deop, thin, mud seemed
oozing from their boots as they trod. Once past
their long column, and the pontoons, artillery, and
carts that follow it, we meet no further impediment
of the kind before reaching Rendsburg, where the
hotel was full of blue-coated Saxon officers, just sit-

ting down to their early table d'hote. There was
evidently nothing of interest going on in this
quarter, notwithstanding reports that had reached
us on the road. So we shortly were off again to
Eckernforde, passing through Damendorff, where
the head-quarters of Marshal Wrangel had been the
night before, and were again to be last night. We
passed the Crown Prince's quarters, in probably the
humblest tenement his Royal Highness had ever
occupied. Damendorff is a mere hamlet, without,
so far as we could learn, even a place to bait a horse
at. Thanks to the detestably heavy country cross-
roads, it was considerably past dark when we got
there. The Staff had just come in, having been
absent at the scene of a small affair which the Aus-
trians had had with the Danes at the eastern, or
Danish left, extremity of the Dannewerk, in
which a position known by the name of Wen-
delspange, slightly in rear of the line marked on
the maps as the little Dannewerk, and within about
four miles of Schleswig, had been carried by the Aus-
trians, with the loss, as is reported, of about 100 men
killed and wounded. A gun was taken from the
Danes, and also 100 prisoners, many of whom are
said to have given themselves up, or, in other
words, deserted. The guns of the great Dannewerk
command the position now held by the Austrians,
and it was supposed they would not be allowed to
maintain it unmolested during to-day. About 5,000
men were engaged on the part of the Austrians.
We continued our route to Eckernforde in dark-
ness so profound as to put at fault the local expe-
rience of our driver, which we had had occasion to
remark as very considerable, and to reduce him to
climb up the finger-posts in a vain attempt to de-
cipher the indications marked upon them. Late in
the night we drove into Eckernforde, and auda-
ciously hoped to find a night's lodging at the modest
hostelry which had sheltered us on the Ist inst. But
the hope was vain indeed. On the Monday we had
come in with the first arrivals, and the innkeepers
had not been redueed to putting more than three or
four persons into one room ; now a portion of a table
in the smoky taproom, whereon to sleep in one's
cloak after the drinkers had departed, was an indul-
gence demanded in vain. The place was thronged
with officers, soldiers, and all the usual retinue and
attendance of an army. Every private house had
its lodgers innumerable, either billeted or remunera-
tive, and the best disposed smiled at you hopelessly
when asked for accommodation at any price. The
only plan was to fall back upon our headquarters,
temporarily established at Kiel ; but how to get
there was the question. The pair of garrons that
had trailed us all day, and had certainly got us over
fully 40 miles of deep roads, looked piteously exte-
nuated, and even the sanguine young Schleswiger
who had vaunted their powers to us, and given us
proof of their being considerable by getting them
along at a very decent trot, declared that repose was
a necessity. Fresh horses at that hour of night, and
with the demand that has of late existed for them,
seemed oat of the question; but neverneless, the
usual magic key finally unlocked the stable door of
a pair which were to convey us to Kiel in little
more than two hours. Possibly they might have
done so, but for the slight impediment presented
by some twelve or fifteen hundred vehicles of all
descriptions which we met upon the road, filling it
up nearly the whole way from Eckernforde to Get-
torf, about half way to Kiel. Most of them were
drawn up at the side of the road, apparently wait-
ing for daylight, and truly if all had been io motion
a general lock could hardly have been avoided,
except by the maintenance of a degree of order
which the darkness rendered almost impossible.
But, besides the stationary line, over which soldiers
were on guard, there were a certain number of
vehicles in motion, some scores of them being huge,
lumbering waggons, apparently of baggage, sol-
diers' knapsacks, and an infinite variety of matters,
which lumbered along the road, sometimes break-
ing into a trot at the instigation of the impatient
drivers, filling up its centre, and rendering it a
seeming miracle that my small conveyance was not
precipitated into the ditch or whatever else the
darkness concealed upon our off side. Finally
there came along a great square, dark looking van,
lit up at its top corners in front by two lanterns
like round gleaming eyes, the first light, except the
sparks of cigars, which we had come upon all the
way from Eckernforde. What that mysterious
vehicle contained I, perhaps, shall never know—
portable gas was suggested, or a field telegraph,
champagne for the mess of the Staff, fireworks for
the celebration of the first victory, or a new Consti-
tution for Schleswig-Holstein—but I shall ever re-
member it with regard, since it closed the tedious
string of impedimenta and allowed us to reach the
desired haven of Kiel at about four o'clock this
morning. After three days and nights passed up
at the front, amid alternate frost and thaw, rain
and wind, tramping throu3h heavy fields and
across suspicious ice, without encountering any-
thing that in Western Europe would pass muster
as a bed, and without other bags-age than a cigar-
case, a bit of soap,
i and an inkstand, it is not un-
pleasant to reach, f only for a few hours, a tolerable
resting place. The campaign has taken place by
surprise ; and doubtless many have had as little
time as myself to make provision against the dis-
comforts of its commencement.
The loss of the Austrians is yesterday's affair is