The Sun.
London, England, 1864-04-12 00:00:00

Sonderborg after the Bombardment,

(Front the Times Special Correspondent at the Danish
Head• quarters.)
ULKEBOL, April 5.

Although it is my settled opinion that a corre-
spondent should be a thing and not a person, and
should obtrude as little as possible upon the scenes
he is describing, avoiding the fault of that notable
egotist D ante, who saw nothing in limbo, purgatory,
and the other regions except his little rancours, his
political crotchets, and theological quibbles—still,
there may be occasions when the spectator's own
adventures, and the shifts he has been put to, may
help to lay before his readers those minor particu•
lars of the situation which would otherwise hardly
find place in a more dignified narrative. It is under
the influence of these views that I shall now pro-

need to describe by what chances I came to make
my way back to the ruins of what was Sonderborg.
er tramping
Af about all day, and in vain ap-
plying for shelter from house to house, I succeeded
at last on Sunday evening, the memorable " Low
Sunday," in getting my supper, a sofa, and a writing
table Augtistenburg. To find a couch, however,
was easier than to be at rest upon it, for the good
Samaritan who took us in was bent ou extending to
all corners the same hospitality he had shown us,
and as he exacted from others the same scot ho had
demanded of us—viz., a circumstantial account of
the " horrors of the bombardment"—the banging of
doors, the stamping on floors, and the jabber of
voices was too incessant for eyes, no matter how
heavy, to have a wink of sleep.
Towards 11 o'clock p.m, we issued forth to post
our letters, and wishing to have a last glimpse of
doomed Sonderborg, we trudged along in the dark,
drenched and blinded by the rain, down to the
causeway crossing the Angustenburg Fiord, and
there, standing before that broad sheet of water,
we could enjoy, at about four miles distance as the
crow flies, the!ead but imposing sight of a vast con-
flagration. The air was so thick and the rain so
heavy that the flames strove in vain to light up
the canopy of Heaven, and all we could descry was
a low rod streak, with dark shadows flitting up and
down on its glaring surface, like so many demons
dancing and revelling in their darling element,
stirring it and chafing it, as if fretting at its slug-
gishness, and rousing it to more ruthless mischief.
In the morning we were up early.; soon after 8
we set out in quest of our wandering headquarters.
They had found no accommodation, we were told,
in all the rooms of the spacious Ulkebol Priests'
court, and had moved further west, to a neat farm
rejoicing in the sweet name of Morgenstjern. The
Feld-post and the Stadt-post, the telegraph-office,
and all other institutions with which we had more
immediate concern had also gone all, night a
begging for some nook or corner where totey their
heads, and none of them had as yet been able to
settle down anywhere. The rain had ceased for
several hours, and the day was fine and calm, The
whole of the little world of Alsen was out with us,
and at every step we met friends and acquaintances
congratulating each other, as half-drowned mariners
after escape from shipwreck. The boom of the cannon
reached us now and then, but the fire was slacken-
ing as we advanced, and it had ceased altogether
when, at the Ulkebol turning, we came in sight of
the windmills of Sonderborg. Ulkebol lies some-
what low and flat, at about one mile's distance from
Sonderborg, and at the turning just before the
church the road widens into a tolerably spacious
avenue, going straight to its goal, and contrasting
with all the other thoroughfares of the island,
which are as narrow and winding as the heart of
the most ardent lover of the picturesque might
wish thcm. The Prussians, evidently, had gone to
sleep on their work, and we determined to profit by
that lull in the storm to go and ace what was left of
the little capital of Alsen after nearly 48 hours'
bombardment. The silence of the guns had de-
luded the fugitive into a notion that an armistice
had been agreed upon, and the tide of people setting
in with us was as strong as that of the people who
were still coming out against us. As many of
the persons as were saved from the havoc of the
eve were anxious for the rescue of the things they
had left behind. There were empty
waggons going
in for furniture, and there Were laden waggons
coming out with furniture. The whole road was
alive and swarming like an ant-hill. The scene was
gay in spite of the misery the poor people had left
behind, or had before them, for the morning was
fresh and the sun shone bright,
and all that hustling
jostling and greeting Was
bracing and inopirit-
jug ; and the first sensation of all living beings en
their escape from danger is one of relief which no
prospect of future evil has
power to subdue. Cart-
loads upon cartloads rolled slowly past us; cart-
loads of women and children, cartloads of chests,
chairs, and tables, of beds sad bedding especially,
for home in this country seems more immediately
than anywhere else identified with pillows and
bolsters, and no matter under what roof, no matter
even if in a ditch and under the vault of Heaven, the
good Alsener seems to think all is not lost so long
as he can have his own smothering feather bags over
and underneath him.
Mere rubbish a good deal of
that houseegear looked in the garish daylight, for
which it was never intended; squalid and woe-
begone were some of the crouehing figures, laden
pell-mell in one heat) with their chattels; but many,
especially of the better sex, had not, even in those
straits, been unmindful of their outward look ;
their hair was smooth and their faces glowing and
ruddy, their eyes smiled
brisk pleasantry elicited and sparkled, and
smart repartee. I saw a
fair, • bare.headed, long-ringletted young girl of
18 seated by the side of the driver on the
front seat of one of the best kinds of chars-a-
bane. She had a large mirror on her lap, holding
it before her at arm's length, like the Goddess of
Truth ; and to those into whose eyes the polished
glass glanced back the sun's rays, and who told her
"she had better hold it the other way, and see her
sweet face in 't," she answered with ready pertness
that "she had studied it long enough, and knew it
all by heart." The looking-glass was to the bright
damsel the dearest of all her lares et penates ; and,
in like manner, every human being had in the hurry
of that flight clutched at anything upon which his
heart was set, and stuck to it in life as he would
have clung in death. As we toiled our way towards
town we could see the Sonderborg mills, all stand-
ing safe where we had left them, and across the
Dybbol mill was also tall and erect, all unhurt, in
its place—that Dybbol windmill which the Danes

nearly opposite—the red shield, with the Royal
Arms, hanging on the door was nearly all that still

stood; so were the houses, each and all, right and
left, throughout the centre of the town, down to
the Radhaus or Council-hall ; the houses on the
main street, the houses on the side streets branching
up to the hill, or sloping down to the sea—they were
all wrecks. Here a chimney-shaft alone was stand-
ing, there a front wall, there part of the roof still
hung, shattered and tattered on the main beam. Day-
light had been struck through the narrow thorough-

fares of Sonderborg, The burgomaster and the
military engineers had been for weeks busy opening

a wide cross street from the Town-hall to the sea

but the Prussians had expedited ten times as mach
work in hardly as many hours. There was something
almost exhilirating in that broad open space; people
rambled about iu the ruins wondering with grim
delight how the neighbouring Ucalegon had fared.
There is always some secret savage pleasure in the
contemplation of devastation on a large scale. As
for myself, after two nights' unrest, I felt my head
in a glow, and any fancy wandered freely, conjuring
up old recollections of battered Gaeta, and jumbling
up those blackened shafts and crumbling gables
with the stripped columns and riven arches of the
Roman forum. No less than 90 or 100 dwellings in
one cluster were made utterly uninhabitable; about
a score were burnt to the ground, some of them were
still crackling and reeking; the furniture of many
of them, rescued from the ruins, were piled up, a
miserable heap, in the middle of the street. People
moved about, gazing their full, forgetting their own

errands in speechless contemplation of other people's
troubles. Business did not seem to have ceased in
the town; life was not to all appearance extinct.

Most shops were open, never having been closed,
owners laid no claims to their property, nor did
anybody covet what seemed to belong to nobody,

The two streets sloping down on either side of the
Town-hall were comparatively uninjured, but they
were the dullest and most deserted of the town dis-
tricts. All interest centred on these poor fragments

in the centre. At that window used to sit, and sa'

till last evening, a pretty milliner, the most arrant
flirt of the town. There, past that gateway, that
good old doctor stopped you, on hospitable thoughts
intent, and offered you a bed, screened, as he fan-
cied, by the position of his house from the enemy's
fire. Where are the bed and the house now? What
has income of the doctor ? What of the milliner ?

Sife, somewhere or other, very likely, but their
homes are no more. In that house Gen, Gerlach dined
only yesterday; further, the officers of the staff wel-

corned you with a friendly emile not 24 hours since.
This was the town post-office—that the army post-
office ; yonder lies the Huliteiaische Hans, long
wonted to refresh us with its rancid snOrbrod and
bitter thin beer. Why, our familiar haunts of the

last two months are all blotted out at one swoop;
our dearest associations with beleagured Sonderborg
have vanished like a dream. And these poor inha-
bitants P Why, to them the haunts of youth and
age, the associations of a lifetime, are gone for ever.
Tae Prussians made their home a target for their
untried artillery, and the substance of their life
recollections was blown down to a mere blank.
Twenty-two dead and wounded were picked out
of the ruins on Saturday evening, and fifty-seven

mere were added to the list of casualties in the

night ankon Sunday morning. Women and chil-
dren were among the dead. A young shopkeeper
and his pretty wife had closed their premises, and
were standing at their door ready to leave, when a
shell burst almost at their feet, and their bodies
were so shattered that the limbs of the one could
not be told from those of the other. Terrible imple-
ments are these shells, and it behoves those who
handle them to consider well whither they are hurl-
ing them. No intimation of the intended bombard-
ment had been given; the Prussians allowed not one
minute for the removal of nen-combatants. The
complete razing of Sonderborg, as they must be
aware, would not dismount one single cannon
on the Dybbol bastions, and all the havoc of the
last two days did not weaken the Danish position
by a tittle. Anything more wanton, more object-
less, or- void of all result than all this noisy can-
nonade the annals of war have not on record. The
stillness, of which we took advantage to visit the
smoking ruins, was not, as we all believed, the
effect of an armistice. No suspension of hostilities
was solicited by the Danes ; no exchange of porle-
mentaires took place. The Prussians open fire
when they list; they leave off when it seems good
to them. Yesterday (Monday) there was complete
silence till half-past 1 or 2, then the fire blazed
away until evening. To-day their batteries have
been again perfectly idle till this moment (half-
past 1 p.m.), when the thunder is heard again,
rumbling loudly above the roar of the stormy wind.
Truly, the art of war is very difficult to compass, or
the Germans of our time are the merest bunglers
at it. Here they have been for two months
hammering away at Dybbol, and the result is the
protitlesa destruction of one-third of innocent Son-
derborg.
It is hard to imagine what fuss and what turmoil
can be occasioned by the simple unhousing of 2,000
inhabitants. As I walked past so many helpless
groups, as I passed so many doors gently but inex-
orably, because unavoidably, closed against so many
poor applicants for admission, as I saw so many
well-dressed women, so many tender children stand-
ing in the road beside their loaded waggons uncertain
where to go, at a loss where to lay their heads, with
every prospect of a wet, unsheltered night, I wondered
how so great a calamity could have condensed itself
on so small a spot of the globe. Why, the firing and
evacuation of Sonderborg are a mere storm in a tea-
pot in comparison with the burning and emptying
of Moscow; yet hundreds of harmless and helpless
beings must even here go through a vast deal of im-
mediate suffering. To hundreds of unoffending
families this mere sport of the Prussians will work
lasting ruin. The stock of the petty merchant, the
employment of the humble mechanic, are gone. The
charity of the country people will not, as far as it
lies in their power, allow their wandering towns-
folk to perish ; but military occupation leaves but
little house-room in the largest farms, The Danish
army had rather quadrupled than doubled the ori-
ginal population of Alsen. The 4,000 wanderers
must emigrate to Funen, to Zealand. Heaven grant
that the further they are compelled to go the better
trey may fare !
There was some expectation of an attack on the
part of the Prussians last evening, but the night has
gone off in perfect peace• Even the firing that be-
gan an hour ago has died off altogether. It is true
that the war of the elements is, and has, been all
day, at its highest. It was frosty last night; there
has been a cruel wind, with snow storms, the best
part of the morning. This may possibly aeconnt
for the enemy's inactivity. The Prussians, in the
opinion of the Danes, are "fair weather soldiers."
ULKEBOL, April 5, 4 p.m.
After an interval of more than 24 hours the bar-
barous bombardment of Sonderborg recommences.
Many of the inhabitants, reassured by the long
silence, and uncertain as to the Prussians' inten-
tions, thinking that they had repented of their
useless cruelty, have either been lingering on the
spot or going back to it to look after such of their
home as are still standing and their poor contents.
They are thus caught in a trap, and we shall have
many more casualties to deplore.

APRIL 6.
I have not written this morning, nor is there any

great reason why I should take up my pen this
afternoon. There is no progress to be reported in
the war in Denmark. The distance between the

Pru9sians at Dybbol village and the Danes on the

Dybbol bastions is one-third of a mile at the
utmost, but it may take weeks before either party
gets over that narrow but well-contested strip of
ground. What sheer strength may not accomplish
the Prussians seem inclined to achieve by surprise.

The nights are rather dark, and the line of the
Dybbol cessions is long; and the soldier who has not
pluck enough to run in at a dash may be induced to
try and creep in by stealth. Some such attempt was
made last night. At about 11 o'clock a small de-
tachment of Germans, two companies, the Danes
think, made their appearance between Bastions 4
and 5, and driving in the Danish pickets, established
themselves in the rifle pits of these latter. There
they lay still for the whole night, for the Danes,
who have been for a long time in constant expecta-
tion of a night attack, did not deem it prudent to
issue forth in the dark, and give battle to those few