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

'HE SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN WAR.

(From the Times Special Correspondent with the Danish
Army.)
DANIBII HEADQUARTERS, SONDERBORG,
FEB. 24.

To a man sent forthtO—bea narrator of events
there surely can be no task more irksome than to
have 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
Anstro-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 undesigned 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
Mill waiting for his heavy artillery, and that he will
not 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 gs conveyed in the
-fire are by no means sure
journals above alluded to,
that the Austro-Prussr..na will ever screw up their
courage to the sticting point, and attempt a storm-
ing or a bom'Ardment of the Dybbol position.
Their objec44 hitherto has obviously been to wear
out the Danes by incessant alarms and petty skir-
inishi-dg, making the best of their superiority of
netinbers, 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-
bibitod the strong, sterling stuff they are made of,
and have done all that could be expected of mere
men. 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 Lumbers are already so 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, proverbal 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,
sow 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
UM suitable for a good look-out ; the fields have
been bared of all their hedges ; barricades, abattis,
palisades, and trenches, all that can stem violence
or foil stratagem, has bee❑ 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, I
however, weary work, and the poor soldiers, who
aro 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
he lase 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,
mostly in silence, as men who do not shirk duty, but
rare 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
mot, thriving upon their victuals. Such puffy cheeks,
such rosy complexions one could 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
oat 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
Eonderborg ?—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, selling all sorts of wares, and china
pipes besides, with a hard pavement of sharp flint
atones, now 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-
mon soldiers, what shall we say of the officers, or
of us few civilians privileged to consort with them ?
I said that the Danish private is not unlike a raw
Englishman of Saxon extraction. The officer, chiefly
sprung from the upper ranks 'reminds one of the
haughty Norman whose
ancestors << high-rnettled
the blood in the veins of the Thane and Franklin of
the Heptarchy. Fine auburn hair hazel hair, not
unfrequently even raven black hair,
complexion, and aquilline features lear bronzed
are leas unfre-
c
quent among, them than I could have ex t d to
find, Of course, the Danes are a
mixedaspraeccee, like
all other Europeans, and you have
here
variety as you might perhaps see
were yougthee'stt step
over the lines to the other side. The Gerrnea'n
element is perceptible among these German hiiters who have been in past times German worshippers:
But there is among them a type whiff I am inclined
to look upon as the real Scandinavian prototype
and which is distinguished by length of face,
tine:
chiselled features,tho hearing 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
Acadians of North America, or even among some of
the oldest baronial houses of Naples. Whether fair
or dark, stoat or slim, however, these Dan' di gen-
tlemen are all remarkably wellbred and courteous,
and intercourse with them is certainly most agree-
able. There is hardly one of them who cannot con-
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 wechoose to make ourselves; wel-
come to share such fare and accommodation as they

have to put up with; roughing it, and, if the word 'u
must be said, "pigging" it with them agreeably' to
the exigencies of war and of a semi-state of siege.
We share their crowded rooms with them at the
hotels, where we have to put tip with German beds'
and French washstands, shin-breaking bedsteads,
smothering feather beds, stifling at the centre,
freezing at the extremities; washstands with mere
cups for basins, scanty allowance of water, cchweb
towels; unattended apartments, nests oC dirt, abodes
of confusion. We sit down with our military
friends at their mess, where we have soups and
meat, the meat not every day roasted, to the great
vexation of the Danes, with whom boiled beef is
spoilt beet, and among whom suchadishls
asun-
popular as it ever was at the Knightsbridge-bar.
racks; the soup
tfats,ouwph,"icha
compound of stewedoilce a
prunes,w ee k ' rait a , "sweet
whoever has once tasted it is sure to be sick of for
his lifetime. Finally we are admitted to their
amusements in the coffeerooms, where they kill the
time with very, very long whist, beer, and pipes,
making the atmosphere of the close, bet apartment
so dense and heavy as to outdo the deep outside fog
which frequently visits us as one of the many
phases of east wind, enow storm, heavy rain, and
other amenities of this wintry climate.
Life out of doors ought to be a relief, and the
country in summer must be as pleasant as the
almost incessant alternation of land and water can
make it; the water coming home almost to every
hamlet and farmhouse in the shape of Fiord,
Sund, Nor, or Vig, running water, stagnant water,
high tide and low tide, with fine old timber grow-
ing up close to its margin, and white country man-
sion or castle mirroring itself on its surface. The
land well tilled and fruitful, swelling up in smooth
round undulations, nowhere bold or abrupt, but no.
where tame and unpicturesque; a land sufficient,
as it would seem, for the owner and the labourer,
presenting everywhere the signs of peace and plenty,
of comfort and contentment, a land a dweller wherein
accepted the hard lot of a long dreary winter, and
seemed thereby to have redeemed himself from all
other evils flesh is heir to. But the country at this
time of the year has but little to repay persons fond
of exercise, and skating itself is spoilt either by snow
or thaw every second or third day. Work enough
for our military friends to go out morning and after-
noon to shoot and be shot at ; work enough for us
to go and see them at it. For the rest half-an-hour's
ride on a hard, frosty ground is rather hazardous, a
walk in deep snow or mud a vary toilsome amuse-
ment. Do what we may, our choice lies between a
sore trail of our fortitude out of doors, or a heroic
exercise of our patience in doors. Of course, philo-
sophy consists in trying everything by turns, and
taking the world as it is, and I must say that grum-
ling and ill-humour are by no means rife among us.
Still, it is rather a dog's life, on the whole, and it is
no wonder, on the one side, if the Danes long for an
attack—an earnest, decisive attack—which may re-
lieve the dulness of their quarters ; and no wonder,
on the other side, if the Germans prefer to put their
enemies to a long ordeal of ennui, which may wear
out their spirits, and tire them of what is most
likely to prove in the end an unprofitable, as it now
most assuredly looks like a hopeless game.