The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-26 00:00:00

gons conveying fugitives from doomed Sonderborg
and their goods and chattels encumbered the quaye

--- 4-
LFrom the limes Special, Correspondent with the Danish
Irrny.)
DANISH HEADQUARTERS, SONDERBORG,
March 18.
The Prussian cannonade goes on daily, and with
such humdrum regularity that we should miss it
were it abruptly to cease. There is method and
routine in the German's way of going to work. His
programme of one day is observed punctually in the
proceedings of the morrow, and it is more or less as
follows :—ln the morning,at very earliest dawn, the
good Prussian fires off two or three of his heaviest
guns. This is by way of a reveille, and simply urn
die canonen ausblasen eta lassen, to get red of the
evening's last charge, which may have got damp in
the night. The artilleryman then peaceably lights
his pipe, and boils his kettle for his morning coffee.
A couple of hours more is employed in inquiring,
musically, and on Professor Arndt's strain, "What
is the German's Fatherland ?" to find out whether
Holstein, Schleswig, and perhaps even Jutland, are
not included within its shadowy boundaries. By
and by, es the clock strikes 10, the corporal sum-
mons his men back from the land of dreams, and
the work begins in earnest. Then comes the time
to awaken the hundred echoes of this sea-indented
shore, and to make every pane of glass rattle in our
windows. It is boom, boom, boom, just at the rate
of about three discharges every five minutes. The
air is, and has been since the game began, pure and
lovely beyond all powers of description. It freezes
hard in the night yet, but the days are long, and
the sun is warm and vivid. Ineffable calmness has
succeeded the three or four days' stormy gales that
shook us so rudely last week. Such faint breeze as
there is is westerly, and every breath from the scene
of action brings us the music of that heavy artillery
lingering in the elastic air with a sweetness that no
concert or chamber music can equal. Outside, in the
fields, along the sea, in the woods, all is life, end
quiet, and love. The lark soars up buoyant and
gleeful, and is long audible after it has become ins
visible. There is a chirp in every bush, a carol on
every hedge, though not a trace of green, hardly an
opening bud or swelling kitkat, is anywhere seen.
The spring teems everywhere in the lap of nature,
afraid yet, though almost ready, to burst forth with
all the concentrated strength of a Northern climate,
compelled as it is to make up by rapid development
for the shortness of its existence. In the midst of this
still, yet strong, heaving of life all round us the
sudden puff of smoke bursting now from this end
now from that cliff on the Broagerland coast, and
the deep thunder following at more than a mintre's
interval upen every flash, nay, the very hissing,
fizzing noise of the shells in the air seem scarcely
to disharmonize with the loveliness of the happy
scene, and strikes us almost as a mere play or spec-
tacle got up to enhance its glorious beauty. We
look on and listen in a perfect rapture of delight.
Presently the sun has reached the meridian, and
the Prussian strikes work to attend to the great
business of the day. There is peace and silence at
meal times, at his noontide dinner, and his Vier-
uhr-Brod. After eating ho becomes torpid. The
work of digestion puts him in good humour with
the whole world. His pipe is relighted, and even
if the cannon is reloaded, the fire is slack and lazy,
the cannonier visibly yawning and even napping
between one discharge and another.
Since Thursday last, in short, next to nothing has
been done. The damage to the Danish bastions
has been trifling, the casualties by no means heavy,
though a shell killed yesterday a captain of infantry
and his lieutenant. The Danes make to attempt
to answer the fire from Broagerland, as the enemy
lies almost beyond reach of their old-fashioned
pieces, and rather turn all their efforts against the
Avnbjerg and Dybbol village, to disturb, if possible,
the work of the enemy lodged there since the unlucky
affair of Thursday last. For, it would be vain to
dissemble it, our present calmness and security may
in the end prove to have been deceitful, and since
the unlucky affair of Thursday last our position
seems to many less safe than it appeared before the
terrible power of the Prussian artillery was fully
tested. No one hero doubts that the ground that
was so lately lost at Avnbjerg and at the village of
Dybbol will soon become the basis of operations for
the enemy, and the batteries are at this present
moment being hastily reared both upon those
points and on the wooded crests of the Ragebol
hills. Should the work be completed, as it doubt-
less will be, unless the Danes can venture on a
desperate attempt to dislodge the enemy, the fire
from those new approaches will have a far different
effect from the mere semblauce of a cannonade from
Broagsrle.nd, which the Prussians keep up almost
for the mere purpose of lulling their adversaries to
sleep. The cannon from the cliffs at Broagerland
has only to throw its projectiles about two and a
half English miles, to sweep over the whole line of
Danish bastions from No. Ito No. 10. It has only
to aim at the windmills, the church, and the castle
of Sondefloorg, to shower its shells upon us within
a mile and a half range. Still even these distances
are a protection ; but what will it be when the
thunder shall roar against the Danish line from the
Avnbjerg, placed as it is at only two-thirds of the
mile from the Dylebolshill batteries, or from Ragebol,
which is nearly as cicso to them Truly, it may
be that so great a proximity may prove instrumental
towards making the Danish smooth-mores a match
for the Prussian rifled cannon ; but the superiority
of aim and strength will still tell in favour of the
latter, and when the cannonade begins the Danes
will have to hold their own by the utmost stretch
of their heroic valour and endurance.
Most of the officers here, however, even while
admitting the possibility of the Dybbol position
being taken, contend that it would always be pos-
sible, and even easy, to defend the island for any
length of time. For my own part, I wish with all
my heart that the thing may be as they describe it,
but it seems impossible to believe that, once in pos-
session of the Dybbol heights, of Dybbol windmill,
and all that line, the enemy would be long detained
by the batteries and the palisades of the tete-de-pont.
:From the heights of Dybbol mill the Prussians
would exchange shots with the church battery, the
castle battery, and other works round about Sender-
borg, at about half an English mile's distance, and
it is by no means impossible that they may so sweep
everything before them that no other obstacle
should rise against their crossing over to the island
than the 120 or 150 yards of the Sound spanned
now by the two pontoon bridges. Those bridges, of
course, would not be left for an enemy's accommo-
dation; but the Germans might, perhaps, be at no
great loss to replace them. What defence the Danes
could offer on the island itself remains to be seen ;
but, in the event of their being overpowered, their
retreat by sea would he easily assured. All the
shipping was removed from the little harbour of
Sonderborg, as 1 told you in my last letter, from the
very first danger apprehended in consequence of the
bombardment of Tuesday last. The port no less
than the town is so utterly at the mercy of the
Prussian artillery that even the mail steamer can
no longer attempt to come in sight of land ; but at
the rear of Sonderborg, far away from the range of
Prussian cannon, the Danes have a most magnifis
cent harbour, called Horuphav, formed by a long
fiord or inlet of the sea, somewhat more than eight
:English miles in length, and little less than
one
mile broad at its narrowest point, with a depth of
more than 400 feet of water, vast enough and safe
enough to harbour the whole of the Danish fleet.
This fiord is formed by the southern shore of the isle
of Alsee, and by the little Peninsula of bait aces, or
cgetiess, as the Germans call it—a peninsula en
the cistern side to the main port of the island by
the narrowest, lowest elip of sandy land imaginable
at Kairw3 Fyr. The mouth of the hay, or haven,
opens to the west, and is very nearly opposite to the
mouth cf the v,rnmingbund and the coast of the
Broagerland, but it lies at no less than tour English
miles distant from the latter, consequently beyond
reach even of the formidable Pru sign artillery.
I rode out yesterday fur the first time to see this
wonderfully beautifut sheet of water, which seems
fitter by neture to b. come one of the best naval
estabiis rnetits in the world. I saw a very brisk stir
of men and things at the spot more properly called
Horuphav, the place where two or three excel-
lent piers, some of them lately constructed, enable
the steamers to load and unload with the greatest
esee and rapidity. A throng of carriages and wag-

,urn tail ?

and all the roads, lanes, and openings ~ding to
chem. They were all making off, some friendly
houses in Fallen or Zealand, others any whither,

with no proper object or destination, only anxious
to be away. If the supreme hour is to come and the
ground at Dybbol and Sonderborg to be fought for
inch by inch, it is just as well that the army should
be rid of all the encumbrance of non-combatants.
The worst of it is, however, that only the craven,
the selfish, the persons in good health, and with
plenty of means at command, join in this harum-
scarnm exodus. A great many are left behind,
some in the sheer impossibility, some from stubborn
unwillingnes3 to quit the spot. I have taken up
my quarters in a private house (the Reymuth's
Hotel being basely broken up and deserted), and I
am living alone with an old woman and her Baugh•
ter, who seem to think as little of shells and

grenades as a wire-masked pierrot or harlequin at
Milan or Naples of the sugar plums with which he
is pelted at the Corso. Where women show so

heroic a contempt of danger should I be the one to

It is astonishing, also, to see how, in the midst of
all this din of war, which certainly threatens Son-
derborg and its environs with utter destruction,
and is possibly fraught with grave calamities and
final ruin to the State of Denmark, the routine of

life goes on, undisturbed and placid, not from mere
dogged stubbornness and the resolution of despair,
but from mere habit and dull sloth and apathy, con-
centrating its attention upon the tack immediately
on hand, driving off' all thought of impending
danger, and putting off the evil day with the in-
stinctive aversion to change which is characteristic
of the human mind in the common run, We have all
seen a dog lyinglazily in the sun upon a thronged
thoroughfare, apparently so soundly asleep as tohe
deaf to the thundering voice and cracking whip of
the driver, who would rather not crush the poor
brute. But only wait till the very horse's hoof almost
brushes the:shaggy coat of the rash sleeper, and np
he will be and out of harm's way in the twinkling of
an eye, soon to lie down again in as dangerous a
spot, with the like improvidence, and to escape as
imminent a danger with the same nimbleness and
presence of mind. Not otherwise these poor curs of
the lower classes of Sonderborg. Shells fell among
them on Thursday last, and great was their uproar
and flurry. But the cannon turned its mouth else-
where, and they slunk back to Voeir kennels, and
there they stick, tinkering, cobbling, peddling,
cooking, washing, and doing wnat they had to do,
heedless of the day (which may be to morrow or
this very afternoon) when shells snail shower dow❑
again among them as thick as hail, when their mean
hovels shall crumble about their ears, and when they
shall scamper away head over heels, and heels over
heads, howling and yelping, unable to take care of
themselves at the twelfth hour as they were to exer-
cise their judgment and foresight at the eleventh.
A fine and large battalion of the King's Foot
Guards, with their bearskins and in their long and
rough overcoats, have just this moment come in
from Copenhagen. The supreme conflict that seems
imminent will probably give them enough to do. I
have walked along their whole line as they stood
mustered up on the main Street of the town, with
their band of musicians at their head. They may be
about 1,000 men, and better soldiers as to bulk,
mien, bearing, and real physical strength I do not
believe can be seen even among the crack regiments
of the Queen's Household Brigade. Indeed, I think
they " beat the whole world" as to mere show, and
I have no doubt the substance will, on a trial, be
found to correspond with the appearance.
EVENING.
The Prussians have opened fire from the summit
of the Avnbjerg. It was only to try the range of
their guns, and they have as yet only field. pieces on
their position. The fire to-day ceased altogether at
2 o'clock. The casualties for the whole day, on the
Danish side, were only 11 men and one officer
wounded.
The complaints of the Danes about the conduct
of the Austrian soldiery in Jutland are both loud
and very general. I know not to what extent I
may believe all I am told, but I believe it to be my
duty to report what I hear. In Veile the soldiery
plundered shops and houses like very brigands, In
Jellinge, near that place, they drove out the parson
and schoolmaster of the village, and pressed not
only the peasants but even the young pupils cf a
theological college to work in the trenches against
Fredericia, exposing them to the Danish fire in the
most advanced position.