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

THE SCHLES

'EIN WAR.

(From the Times Special Correspondent with the Danish
Army.)
DANISH HEADQUARTERS, SONDERBORG,
FEB. 24.
To a man sent forth to be a narrator of events
there surely can be no task more irksome than to
lave to sit idly awaiting events. It is hard for a
newsman to come before his reader with a chilling
"No news." He feels it peculiarly mortifying and
aggravating, as if it were his business to make news
and as if his empty budget could be laid to the
charge of remissness on his own part and derelic-
tion of duty.
On what spot on this side of the Atlantic are the
eyes of Europe more anxiously riveted than on this
little capital of the Isle of Alsen ? Behold ! the
Austro-Prussian army operating against Sonder-
borg, and its outward position at Dvbbol, numbers,
as we have here every reason to believe, no less than
42,000 combatants. The contending parties have
been in presence for nearly a score of days, and no-
thing has occurred to diversify day from day, ex-
cept a few insignificant and almost undesigued out-
post affairs, which count as little in the history of a
-war as the mere relieving of sentries and calling
the muster roll.

The German papers inform us that the enemy is
?till waiting for his heavy artillery, and that he will
mot be ready for a deliberate attack upon the Dyb-
bol bastions before the 26th. Something really epic
may come to pass any day after to-morrow, and in
the anticipation of it it would not be unreasonable
if we endeavoured to inflict a part of our ennui upon
the reader by telling him what this existence of ours
is like.

Notwithstanding the glad tidings conveyed in the
journals above alluded to, we are by no means sure
that the Austro-Prussians will ever screw up their
courage to the sticking point, and attempt a storm-
ing or a bombardment of the Dybbol position.
Their object hitherto has obviously been to wear
out the Danes by incessant alarms and petty skir-
mishing, making the best of their superiority of
anmbers, which enables them to come up with
ever fresh troops against the scanty and over-
worked detachments of their weaker antagonists.
in all the not unfrequent encounters to which I had
occasion to allude the Danes have invariably ex-
bibited the strong, sterling stuff they are made of,
and have done all that could be expected of mere
:nen. They have already either strongly held or
promptly regained their ground, and cannot, there-
fore, be said to have been worsted on any occasion.
still, they have suffered severe losses, possibly more
severe than those of their foe in actual numbers ;
certainly incomparably more fatal and irreparable
to an army whose numbers are already eo unequal
to the task that has been set to it. 200 dead and
-wounded, 300 prisoners, are a formidable item to be
subtracted from the army whom we may have
about us.

The Danes are brave men, and, as such, apt to be
rather deficient in vigilance, foresight, and cunning.
They have to deal with a subtle enemy, especially
'with the Austrian, preverbal for the craft with
which impetuosity of attack is always enhanced by
suddenness of surprise. The Danes found out now,
rather late, that their outposts had been pushed too
far forward, that they had been too heedlessly laid,
mow on the skirts of a wood, now at the meeting of
two roads, now in other spots favouring the stealthy
onset of the foe. More provident measures have
been adopted of late, that their outposts had been
partially drawn in, the ground has been carefully
studied, so as to take advantage of the localities
not suitable for a good 100k-out; the fields have
been bared of all their hedges ; barricades, abattis,
palisades, and trenches, all that can stem violence
or foil stratagem, has been duly considered. Hence-
forth the Danes will not be caught napping ; and
there will either be no more fighting or it will be
more deliberate and probably more decisive.
Preparing and waiting for such contingencies is,
however, weary work, and the poor soldiers, who
are all spirits and glee whenever an alarm is
sounded, or the signal is given for a sally, droop
and mope sadly when there is nothing of the kind
going on. The toil, the outpost and picket duty, and
exposure to the inclement weather are still the same,
whether there be fighting or no fighting ; but the
leaven, the fun of the thing is in the fighting itself,
in the chances of falling in with the hated enemy,
winging a " saucy Prussian who comes here where
be has no business," or knocking over a " stolid
Austrian who meddles with things which concern
him even less." The Danish soldiers are not bois-
terously merry, neither have they a gloomy, dissa-
tisfied look. They do their work patiently, steadily,
maostly in silence, as men who do not shirk duty, bat
are not over fond of it. Many of them, it should be
borne in mind, are middle-aged " reserve" men,
lately recalled to the standards, hardly weaned from
their peaceful avocations and the sweets and com-
forts of home. But even among the younger set
you do not generally see the upright bearing, the
lively glance, the resolute mien of the thoroughbred
soldier. You would say they are all peasants lately
taken from the plough. Robust frames they cer-
tainly have, more than average stature, strong-knit
limbs, thick round shoulders ; they are a well-fed
set, thriving upon their victuals. Such puffy cheeks,
such rosy complexions onecould hardly expect to see
in grown-up men; men, too, exposed to all the hard-
ships of a toilsome campaign in most unpropitious
weather. The blood and race are the same as the
English. Imagine so many thousand recruits taken
out of the agricultural districts and subjected only
to a three or four months' drill, and you have the
Danish army such as it is. Whenever not hard at
-work as skirmishers or as diggers in the trenches,
they have hard work of it to kill time, whether
they be quartered at the farmhouses scattered all
over the island or allowed to idle about in the
streets of the town.
Was there ever such a town in the world as
Sonderborg ?—a country town of about 2,000
inhabitants, a shapeless mass of mean brick tene-
ments, squeezed in between the hill and the Sound,
crowned with half a score of flipping windmills on
the summit, and choked up with ships and ship.
building at the bottom ; a long, narrow thorough,.
fare, and still narrower cross streets sloping down
to the water; old-fashioned houses with a curious
variety of quaint gables and slanting roofs ; a few
paltry shops, p selling all sorts of wares, and china
Pipes besides, with a hard pavement of sharp flint
atones, aoer Slippy with ice, now sloppy with mud,
and
.more generally deep buried under a snow
offering
the advantage of being both slippy and
sloppy at the same time.
If the place affords but few resources to the COM.
7non soldiers, what shah
esoee
of us few civilians privileged to consort
of the officers, or
with them ?
private
ino
I said that the Danish
unlike a raw
Englishman of Saxon extraction.
ht
sprung from the upper ranks, eemino.
T 6 fficer, chiefly
haughty Norman whose ancestors „a hi hone of the
the blood in the veins of the Thane and hone
"
atr, not
the Ileptarchy. Fine auburn hair, hazelrahjak• lin
of
unfrequently even raven black hair, Clear
complexion, and aquilline features are less bronzed
utifr
Tient among them than I could have expected tb-o
find, Of course, the Danes are a mixed race, like
all other Europeans, and you have here as great a
as you might pethaps see were you to step
variety
over the lines to the other side. The German
element is perceptible among these German haters,
who have been in past times German worshippers.
But there is among them a type which I am inclined
to look upon as the real Scandinavian prototype,
and which is distinguished by length of face, fine.
chiselled features,the bearing of command, the sharp,
ringing voice, the slender but elegant and well
proportioned figures which may be traced among
the descendants of Norman nobles, whether you
seek them in these three Northern kingdoms, or in
the British isles, or in Normandy, or among the
Aoadians of North America, or even among some of
the oldest baronial houses of Naples, Whether fair
or dark, stoat or slim, however, these Danish gen-
tlemen are all remarkably wellbrod and courteous,
and intercourse with them is certainly most agree-
able. There is hardly one of them who cannot eon-
verse either in French or English, to say nothing of
German, a last resource for the stranger unfamiliar
with their own idiom. well, we few civilians hav-
ing business in Sonderborg are as much at home
with the officers as we choose to make ourselves; wel-
come to share each fare and accommodation as they