The Sun.
London, England, 1864-03-22 00:00:00

THE WAR IN DENMARK,

(F, om the Times Special Correspondent with the Allied

Army.)
BROACKER, March 16.

Ch antis of place and other circumstances have
preveetted my writing to you since my letter of the
12th from Kolding. On the 14th I reached Graven-
stein, where Prince Frederick Charles, commanding
the army corps which for some time past has been
in observation, has his head-quarters. On that day,
but before I got to Gravenstein, there had been a
little fighting in front, the Prussians being the as-
sailants, and having for object permanently to ad-
vance their outposts to within a shorter distance of
the Danish entrenchments than they previously
had been. After the reconnaissance of the 22d of
February, announced by the Danes as a defeat of
the Prussians, but which in reality was nothing of
the kind, the latter never having intended more
than a reconnaissance, and having taken a number
of Danish prisoners with very trifling loss to
themselves, the Danes were said to have aban •
doned the wood known as the Boffel-Koppel,
but if they did so they afterwards reoccu-
pied it: It was thought desirable to drive them into
a narrow space round the Duppel entrenchments,
and this was accordingly done after a slight skir-
mish,
in which the Prussians return their loss at two
officers and 16 men killed and wounded. I yesterday
rode over the ground, and on to the advanced posts
of the Prussians, now established just beyond the
spot where the cross road to Schmoel and Broacker
enters the highway from Gravenstein to Sonderburg.
A few yards in front of this a small lane runsnorth-
wards, and in this lane, leaning against the bank,
and peering through the leafless hedge at the Danish
sentries, who were visible 200 or 300 yards off, stood
the most advanced Prussians. The Danes had fired
a few shots that morning, bat then they were quiet
enough, and from what I hear it is not often that
the outposts molest each other by the useless prac-
tics of trying to pick off each other's sentries.
On the road were the usual signs of the previous
day's fighting; in the houses of the hamlets a few
marks of cannon and rifle shots ; by the wayside
the remains of barriers made of branches, which had
been raised to impede the assailants; a deep cutting
across the way, then filled up ; in one place a
couple of Prussian cannon shots had laid a small
but as fiat as if it had been built of cards. Return-
ing, I took a lane which led me to a picket shed,
built against a bank of sticks and straw. It was
raining heavily, and the picket were indoors, but
came out at the sound of horses' feet, looking damp
and muddy enough, but not unpicturesque, emerging
from their straw nest just on the edge of the Boffel-
Koppel, which is a small wood on undulating
ground. Here, as in other places close upon the
line of outpost, passes were demanded, for ramblers
in civilian costume are rare in this region, and the
Prussians have a great horror of spies, and, especi-
ally in the country occupied by this army corps,
take the utmost precautions against them. Passing
through the Boffel-Koppel into deep ploughed fields
we came in sight of the double spire of Broacker
church, situated on a height, and a conspicuous
object for a long distance around. One of those
furious gales so oommon in this storm-plagued land
was blowing at the time, and even when we got
into the village and looked down from its church-
yard wall upon the little arm of the sea known as
the Venning-band, we could not hear the sound of
guns fired at the Dappel forts from batteries situated
at the north-westernmost point of the north shore
of that inlet. The Prussians have got some rifled
24-pounders there, concerning which I shall have
more to say in a future letter, and they make capi-
tal practice at the Danish works. Yesterday was
the first day, and I arrived rather late from Gra-
venstein, and the fire was nearly over; but to-day
I came up sooner, and was witness, from a hill be-
tween this place and the shore, of the destructive
effects of the Prussian rifled artillery of various
calibres. There were three successive conflagrations
all in the neighbourhood of Fort No. 4, which ap-
peared the most heavily visited by the day's prac-
tice. One of them was very considerable, judging
from the great sheet of flame which for some time
was visible even in the broad sunlight; for, al-
though it snowed heavily from 6 until 9 this morn-
ing, it soon after wards cleared up, and the after-
noon was beautiful and almost cloudless, the sky of
a far deeper blue than I expected to see in this
country at this season, and the water of the Bund, no
longer troubled and torn up into short curling waves
and clouds of spray by the force of the gale, was
of a deep blue-green, crisply rippled, but foamless.
The focus of another of the fires was concealed by a
rise in the ground, but from it there issued, for
some time, huge dense banks of the blackest smoke.
By persons who profess to be well acquainted with
the neck of land on which the Duppel works are
situated, I am informed that there were burnt to-
day two farms used as quarters for the men em-
ployed in the fortifications, two barracks, and a
storehouse, besides strawestacks and other smaller
matters. The Danes answered the Prussian batte-
ries for some time this afternoon, but their fire was
completely harmless, for reasons which one would
think they ought very soon to discover, either by
their own observations or by their spies, but which,
in ease they should not yet have done so, may as
well not be mentioned here.

The fortified position of rappel will require more
minute examination than I have as vet been able
to bestow upon it, before I can attempt anything
like a detailed account of it, but it may be described
in general terms as a range of hills or of high downs
of tolerably steep ascent, on which redoubts'have
been erected. The number of those redoubts is 10,
and they are known by numbers 1 to 10, commenc-
ing from the south. The earthworks are very
heavy and solid, and the Prussians admit that their
fire makes little impression upon them. On the other
hand, there seems to be no doubt entertained by any
who were in the batteries at the time that the 24-
pounders sent two shells iato the barracks at Son-
derburg, a distance estimated at fully 2i miles Eng-
lish (5,600 German paces) ; and it was reported this
evening among the military that to-morrow's can-
nonade would certainly be directed against Son-
derburg, with the intention of reducing the town
to ashes. Judging from the effect of to-day's fire,
it does not seem improbable that this anticipation
will be fulfilled, but hardly in time for the event to
ba announced for the present letter, which I fear
must be posted before 9 a.m. We are still rather
irregular, in this corner of the world, as regards
postal communications, and the public telegraph
does not extend to this little village, but should
anything extraordinary occur I shall endeavour to
make you acquainted with it by the last named
means.

A number of Danish vessels, as many, it is said,
RS 26 or 27, including two large steamers, were seen
late this afternoon near the Atse.n coast, at a very
safe distance from the Prussian batteries. The Rolf
Krake, if she it be who has been seen this last day
or two isthe same direction, keeps.a respectful
distance from the 21-pounders, which well she may
do, conside • nog how roughly she lately was handled
by much lighter guns. A remarkable feature of the
new Prussian artillery, and one to which the officers
of that arm attribute no mean share of its excel-
lence, is the mode of igniting the contents of the
shell. This is done by means of a needle, one end
of which projects from the apex of the conical ball,
while the other, when the shell strikes, is forced
into the powder and ignites the shell. Before the
explosion takes place, however, there is time for the
shell to enter the object it has struck, and so to
cause terrible havoc. The Prussian rifle is dis-
charged much in the same way. It is, as you are
a ware, a breech-loader, and on all sides, since I have
been with this army, do I hear the utmost satisfac-
tion expressed at its great efficiency. It can fire six
or seven shots a minute, which gives the troops
that use it an enormous advantage over
a, muzzle-
loadin rifles. The results of its present trial in the
field, so far as that has gone, are said most com-
pletely to justify the confidence which has long
been expressed in it in Prussia.
Gravenstein is certainly one of the most wretched
places in Schleswig, so far at least as my experience
goes of Schleswig towns and villages. It lies low,
on the margin of a small lake,
or large pond, with
marshy ground about it. Immediately before you
enter it by the road from Apenrade you pass the
Schloss, or chateau, a large ugly white building,