The Sun.
London, England, 1864-02-16 00:00:00

THE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN WAR.

(From the Times Special Correspondent with the Danish
Army.)
DANISH HEAD-QUARTERS, SCHLESWIG, Feb. 5.
What we witnessed here yesterday may be set
down among the mere amenities of war. So far as
we might judge from the sound, there was from
early morning firing all along the line. We could
hear the cannon from the Dannewerk, where, as we
were told, attempts were made upon the outposts of
Fort or Battery No. 12, a fort placed at a spot
where the lines of the Great and Little Dannewerk
intersect each other. Some firing went on on the
side of Missunde also,.but it was a slack, random
fire, resultless and apparently objectless. The most
earnest efforts was made upon the immediate posi-
tion of the town of Schleswig itself, and we had to
put ourselves to no great inconvenience to behold
the engagement from beginning to end. From the
upper windows of our hotel, Stadt Hamburg, and
from the Chausseo leading from it to Castle Got-
tarp and the suburb of Fredericksberg, but espe-
cially from the summit of the castle itself, we were
enabled to survey every movement, both on the
Danish and the Austro-Prussian side.

Castle Gottorp is a huge square pile of buildings,
constructed in a modern barrack-like style, and sur-
rounded by lower wings or pavilions, which, like
the main portion of the central structure, are, in
fact, used for the accommodateon of troops. Inside
the court are a few round terrets, the remnants,
probably, of the original edifi3e in olden times, and
in front, in the centre, over the main entrance, there
rises a square tower, which may have been the keep,
surmounted now by a turret of great height, from
which we saw the whole country stretched oat like
a map before us, as far as eye could reach.
In front of us, facing the east, we had the broad
level of the water of the Schleswig Fiord, or Schlei,
with the town branching out on both its banks; on
our left the Altstadt as far as Holm; on our right
the suburb of Friedericksberg, as far as the pon-
toon-bridge of Hadeby, with the inner lake of
Hadeby Nor reaching far to the south, answering
OP one side the purpose of a vast moat to the forts
of Friedericksberg, of Bustrup, and the cluster of
the Great Dannewerk. Beyond Hadeby, in a per-
fectly straight line, carving its way, as it were,
through the vast undulations of the ground,
stretched the main road to Eckernforde. To the
left of this road the shore rose in long woody bluffs,
with the villages of Gertorp and Steekswig lining
the heights. At the foot of these Fartrop and
Steekswig heights the broad sheet of water of the
Schlei was hemmed in by large sandbanks en either
side, forming a narrow sound, called Stecksswig-
Snmvering, to expand soon afterwards into a still
broader surface, widening into a great round bay to
the south, almost up to the Eekernforde road above-
mentioned, and on the north-east gradually con-
tracting itself to wind through the narrow pass of
Miesunde. Nearer to us, in the centre of what I must
be allowed to call a lake, between the Altstadt and
the Fredericksberg suburb, and not much more than
half an English mile distant from the Altstadt
shore, lay the low, narrow islet of Meversberg, a
mere slip of land, brietlieg with batteries at the
water-edge.
The whole country to the south of the Schlei,
from a little, beyond Hadeby to Missunde, is already
occupied by the Austro-Prussians, and from ether,
we stood we could distinctly see the Prussians, three
lines deep, posted on the Fartorp and Steckswig
height. From those heights their artillery, at about
10 in the morning, opened fire on the island fort of
Meversberg, which immediately answered with
becoming spirit. A couple of hundred shots were
expended on each side in two or three hours, with
no loss of life or limb on the Danish side, but with
damage to the Prussians, as we are told, of one or
:wo cannon dismounted. It is likely, I should say,
that the enemies have hitherto only field-pieces on
their position. One of their shells, however, fired
from Fartorp, flew over the Mever,burg and fell on
the ice, a few yards from the bank at Altstadt, to the
great amusement of some of the Schleswig boys, who
ran to pick up the fragments. The distance from
Fartorp to the nearest point of the Altstadt can be
no less than a mile and a half English.
So far as can he made out of the Prussian move-
ments, it would seem that they are bent on attempt-
ing to cress the Schiei ; availing themselves of
that narrow channel, which, as I have said, separates
the low sandbanks on either side opposite to their
positions at Fartorp and Steckswig, and which I
have already designated under the name of Stecks-
wig-Snmvering. The surface of the Schlei is still
covered with thick ice in all its expanse ; bat from
the foot of Castle Gottorp, where we stood, we could
see the breach which has been kept up by the Danes
by sheer might of axe and steam, a blue serpentine
line, which follows the windings of the deeper channel
of the fiord, coasting like a meat the little island fort
of Meveraberg, and running off in the direction of
Missunde, to follow the meanderings of the Schlei
all the way to its mouth on the Baltic. Whether
the Austro-Prussians will hale it in their power to
let their pontoons slide down
the ice as far as the
water edge, and there throw a bridge over the chan-
nel from ice crust to ice crust, time will show. To
effect this operation they will have to stand the fire
of the batteries at Vincling and Fusing,
two villages
lying on the northern shore, and sweeping over the
sandbanks opposite Steckswig.
Should the Austro-Prussians prefer making an
experiment of the power of their artillery, it is very
probable that with heavy pieces they could from
Fartorp silence the batteries of Meversberg, and lay
the Altstadt of Schleswig in ruins; little gain to
themselves, this latter feat, but no joke to the in-
habitants, who would thus be ill requited for their
alleged German propensities.
Such, if I have succeeded in conveying ray mind
to the reader, is the position of the contending par-
ties at Schleswig; or what I may call the water-side,
Inland to the south of the Fredericksberg suburb,
and to the west of HedebyNor, the Austro Prussians,
who have their head quarters underMarshalWrae gel
at Krop, face all the line of the Dannewerk, and turn
their main efforts against that cluster of forts which
bears the name of the Great Dannewerk, from 20. 1
at Fredericksberg to No. 12, which was the ob-
ject of their onset yesterday. Opposite to Bus-
trup and Bustrup Vorwerk they are posted at
Ktiagshoj, or King's Height, and in other localities
offering the advantage of elevated ground, and
placed at no greater distance than a mile from B as-
trup, not quite two English miles from the very
centre of Schleswig and Castle Gottorp. It was at
this point, at the Bustrup advanced posts, that the
action was so warm on Wednesday afternoon. The
Austrians pushed so boldly forward on that occasion
that, had they been aware of their advantage, or had
they had daylight enough, there might have been
some ground for the kind of panic which spread
about in Schleswig that the enemy might possibly
carry the town by a coup de ?nail; that very night.
The hasty barricading of the Castle Go'torp
Avenue, and of the Chaussee between the old and
new town, prove that some apprehensions were en-
tertained even in high quarters, and a still stronger
proof of the danger which the town ran is the de-
parture of the King, who left us in the night or
early morning, it was said, for Flensburg. The
officers here, among whom his Majesty is not too
popular, comment rather severely upon this conduct
of the King, and ask to what purpose Christian
IX. inconvenienced himself by travelling hither all
the way from Copenhagen if he was to go back so
soon, on the first appearance of danger, without as
much us showing his countenance to the men toil-
ing at the outposts, aril without, indeed, achieving
any greater feat than the promenade in the mud
deecribed by me in a former letter. It is not thus,
they sey, that their good Danish Ring Frederick
VII. would have behaved in such emergency ! The
danger to the King, no less than to the whole army,
is, however, by no means trifling. Were the Aus-
tro-Prussians to find their way across the Schlei, at
some unguarded point, they
might, be on the flank
and rear of the Danish army before this latter had
time to effect its retreat to their last stronghold of
Duppel and the isle of Alsen. A timely back•
ward
movement, and the abandonment of the Dannewerk,
is not, perhape, a very remote contingency.
The bravest Danish effieers cannot shut thei▪ r eyes