The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-09 00:00:00

THE WAR IN DENMARK.

(Front the Times Special Correspondent at the Danish
Head-quarters.)
ULKEBOL, April 3.
The final day has come for poor Sonderborg, and
[ have been fairly routed out of it. I closed my
last letter at about 7 o'clock in the morning, and

being anxious, according to zny wont, to post it with
my own hands, I sailed forth from the Hotel Rey-

math. To walk from this place to the lower town
was an enterprise of no trifling danger. What is

called the "Royal," or town, post-office had been

struck with two shells and was a mass of ruins.

The feld, or military post, was picking in breath-
less haste, with no great chance of avoiding the same
fate. The furious cannonade of yesterday afternoon

had wrought far greater mischief than we were
aware of. I stated that the dead and wounded

among the townspeople were last evening at 9 o'clock

about 22. Their number before the night was over
had risen to 57, SinJe daybreak the shower of shells,
had recommenced with the utmost violence, and the

ihells, which had hitherto spent their fury among
,he buileings of the lower town, now took a bolder

flight above the whole extent of its habitation up to
the height of the towering windmil:s. There was no

safety in any part of Sonderborg. The heed quarters
were packing hurriedly, and General Gerlach, with
all his Staff, was making ready for a flitting to
Ulkebol, where the hospitality of my good friend
Parson Meyer awaited them. The terror and
desolation of the town had reached its climax.
A great many of last evening's fugitives, turn-
ing from imminent danger without a thought of
the future, had only quitted their houses in the
maritime quarters of the town to repair to the
friendly dwellings of thu people in the upper
town. But the higher regions had become in the
morning as unsafe as the rest, and the train of the
fugitives was swelling at every minute. Only one
or two tenements were in flames in the course of
yesterday afternoon, and the gallant Copenhagen
fire brigade had been able to stern the violence
of the flames and prevent its spread. This morning
no less than 20 houses were burning, and as the wind
freshened there was every prospect of a general
conflagration. The number of houses all but levelled
with the ground began to be appalling. The
Radhuns or Council house, the Holsteinishe Haus
and the Alssund, two mean hostelries of the lower
town, were mere wrecks, The Burgomaster and the
head officer at the Board of Health had been driven
from roofless dwellings. The apothecary's house, a
large building where the head-quarters had been
established, was clean gone, and the same fate had
befallen the adjoining watchmaker's. As we heard
there particulars of yesterday's havoc, the destruc-
tion of to-day gained ground upon us. The advance
of the shells was overwhelming us like the progress
of an irresistible tide. There was nothing left for
the most obstinate to do, but gn, and the signal for
my own departure was of course given by the re-
moval of the :headquarters.

Sonderborg is gone or going, and it seems as if the
Prussians had determined not to leave one stone of

it upon another. Yesterday's cannonade was mainly
directed against the Dybbol bastions, and the shells
that assailed the town from the batteries of Broager-

Land seemed to be fired almost incidentally by way
of wanton amusement, and were apparently in-

tended rather to frighten than to do much real harm•
But this morning the whole rage of the Prussian
cannon spent itself on the devoted town. Disap-
pointment at their ill success in Sundewed seems to
have made the assailants perfectly savago against
the helpless capital of Alsen. Unable to show their
bravery in a storming attack upon Danish bayonets.
the Prussians did not shrink from the unprofitable
sacrifice of an open town. The Danes are furious at
what they call a " dastardly outrage, a breach of all
the laws of war, and a departure from all the prin-
ciples of modern civilisation. It was to retrieve their
character as a fighting nation," they say, " that the
Prussians, after being worsted in so many encoun-
ters, solicited the post of honour before Dybbol,
and reared against that position such a force
of artillery as ought to have blown it and its defen-
ders to atoms. Yet they were not content with
achieving by a cannonade what they durst not effect
by assault; be.' their very eacnon are not pointed
at the breasts of men standing up in their defence,
but against a miserable crowd of women and chil-
dren almost as much at a loss how to fly as they
are unable to fight."
I have been willing to make myself the interpre.
ter of this universal outcry of the Danes, because,
neutral as I endeavour to make myself on all their
subjects of dispute, I really believe it would be dif-
ficult to find a good excuse for the behaviour of the
Prussians in this bombardment of Sonderborg, even
if they acted on the necessities sometimes imposed
upon a weaker party by the natural laws of self-
preservation, and even if the war were on their part
a defensive, instead of an aggressive one. The gen o-
ral in command against Fredericia did not open the
bombardment of the city without a timely intima-
tion to its inhabitants, allowing them 24 hours to
withdraw from its walls ; yet Fredericia was a for-
tified place, and the people who remained in it
might be thought to have cast their lot in with
that of their garrison, while Sonderborg is hardly
an integral part of the Dybbol line of bastions, all
which might be taken before any necessity arose to
offer Sonderborg the alternative between surrender
and destruction,
You must imagine the whole of the 2,000 inhabi-
tants of Sonderborg, and the thousand of men and
officers billeted upon them as a garrison, suddenly
spread along every road and lane in the island, ap-
plying for quarters at every farmhouse, vil-
lage, hamlet, and hut, already for the last nine
weeks as full of military guests of every de-
gree as bowies, stables, barns,
and straw-lofts can
afford, and then consider What probabilities there
may be of a stranger applying for lodgings with
stranger happen to have six other house-
less success f
fellows,
r from d
whooo
mustr to d
oor especially if this luck-
lessneeds,
be taken in with him
or sleep with him in the open. All I can say, by
way of illustrating the condition of this little island
i
perfectly justifiable under the circumstances, I and
each
companiows, with a view to insert the
enh the
of present
my straits, is, that by a ruse de guerre,
thih edge of the wedge, presented ourselves singly
before as many of the masters of the little fishing
boats moored at the piers of Ilorup Hay, and asked
if they happened to have room for one in their narrow
hold, and the answer was that they had all been
bespoken—some for two, some for three families of
citizens,Sliobnedrteyrbtoorgdisposeof
one inch of ground either on
deck or below.

1...............'

OF DUPPEL.
AGEN , April 4
c)
THE BOMBARDMENT
CEE:N:TERNtus
The following are the latest reports from head.
quarters received at the Ministry of War :
April 2, 7 p.m.—Advices from head-quarters to 5 p.m.
report that the bombardment of the position at Duppel con-
tinued. The fires which had broken out in Sonderborg were
of some extent. Our loss in wounded was less to-day.
April 3, Noon,—Advices from head-quarters to 10 45
a.m. announce that single shots only were occasionally
directed against the town and the position during the night.
Several alarms were given at various times along the line of
outposts. Attacks were made upon patrols, upon the sen-
tries, and upon the parties guarding the trenches, but after
slight skirmishing the enemy withdrew. Two men of the
10th Regiment were killed. The fire in Sonderborg has now
been extinguished.
April 4, 10 45 a.m.—The bombardment of Sonderborg
has ceased since 6 o'clock this morning. A third of the town
has been burnt, in addition to which numbers of houses in
a wide circumference have been damaged by shell. Several
places are still in flames. The Town hall is burnt down.
A few shots have only been directed at Duppel.
April 5, 9 15 a,m.—The artilleiy engagement at Duppel
was continued yesterday with energy, but the bombardment
of Sonderborg has been discontinued. The enemy has
thrown up several batteries upon the northern shore of the
Alsen Sound, from one of which, at Petersdal, he kept up
a violent fire yesterday against the war vessels lying in
Sleavig. A pontoon train has been seen in the vicinity of
Ballesgaard,"
The screw corvette Heimdal, from the Sound, ar-
rived here yesterday evening, with a screw frigate,
built for war service, but without guns, and under
jury-masts. The Heimdal sighted this vessel car•
rying the English flag in the neighbourhood of
Elsinore. As she presented a most suspicious ap-
pearance, she was ordered to lay to, but disregarded'
the order, whereupon the Heimdal fired a shot
across her bows and brought her up. The Captain