The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-23 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—It is impossible to watch without deep
practical interest the character given to the arma-
ments in the American War. At a time when the
nations of Europe are remodelling their ordnance
and reconstructing their navies by the light of
theories and experiments, America is adapting her
actual practice to the necessities of present strife,
and shaping her course by the lessons of real expe-
rience. This contrast of situations would be instruc-
tive in any case, but it has been rendered peculiarly
remarkable by one prominent fact. What we accept
the Americans reject. All our conclusions and de-
ductions they have either neglected or diecarded,
and have followed exactly the path on which we,
after careful survey, have hitherto declined to ven-
ture. The result is such an extraordinary diver-
gence of practice as may well arrest our attention.
At this moment the Americans are attacking Char-
leston with a siege train every gun of which throws
a 200-pound shot, whereas if we are engaged in a
similar operation our most powerful cannon would
probably be 68-pounders. If we are wrong in these
matters, it would follow that our artillery is no
longer equal to the exigencies of modern warfare.
The question is not an easy one to examine. Oa the
side of the Americans it can certainly be urged
that they are intent upon actual work with a tre-
mendous war upon their hands, and that the con-
clusions adopted under such circumstances must
necessarily carry extraordinary weight. They are
too much in earnest to regard anything but the
object actually in view, and too sharply taught to re-
main long under mistake. This is certainly true, but
we must remark that the Federals, of whose tactics
we know most, seem never to have troubled them-
selves with any inquiries at all. They appear to have
assumed,characteristically, that the biggest gun must
be the best gun, and that if they wanted a better
gun than the last they had only got to make a bigger
one. General Gilmore's batteries at Charleston are
now armed with 200-pounders, but he has already
received a couple of 300-pounders, and the manu-
facturer of these cannon is at present constructing a
500-pounder, and meditating, we are told, a 2,000-
pounder. At first sight, too, there appears some
justification for these views. The heavier the pro
jectile, other things being equal, the greater must
be its destructiveness, and just as we advanced from
12-pounders to 68-pounders in our sea service, and
from 6-pounders to 18-pounders in our field artil-
lery, so, it would seem, we should advance, if we can,
from these calibres to others still more formidable.
The Americans have presumption as well as practice
in their favour, and yet we cannot say that the
superiority of their system is absolutely established.
It must be remembered that, though the Federals
have made no trial of our principles, we have to some
extent tried theirs. We have had targets built to
represent the sides of their Monitors, and have made
experiments with guns as heavy as their siege guns
at Charleston. It was after these trials, and with-
out, as we hope, any prejudice against the new
designs, that we placed the old 68. pounders so high
on the list. The larger guns, with one or two excep-
tions, failed to satisfy certain indispensable condi-
tions. Nor are we sure that the Americans have
been really more successful. It was reported,
though we cannot say on what authority, that many
of the guns in Gen. Gilmore's batteries had burst,
and it is certain that his 300-pounder had nearly
two feet blown off her muzzle at the 25th round.
Again, though there is reason to suppose that the
Confederates are employing guns far heavier than
our own, they can make little or no impression on the
Monitors, whereas, unless our experiments are delu-
sive, the old 68-pounder at close quarters would
send her shot clean through their plates. When we
read of the 440-pound ball with which the Wee-
kawken stove in the sides of the Atlanta we lay but
little stress on the story, for a 40-pound Armstrong
bolt would certainly have done as much ; in fact, a
target like the Atlanta would be considered at Shoe-
buryness as no target at all. As regards iron-cased
ships, therefore, the American practice gives us no
conclusive information. The Confederates cannot
destroy the Monitors, and the Federfes have never
met with any Monitors to destroy. No effect of a
shot against an armour-plated vessel is reported
which the old 68-pounder could not match. What-
ever Dahlgrens and Parrotts have actually done in
this way our chief service gun could undoubtedly do.
But there is another branch of the subject re
spiting our attention. The siege guns used against
shore fortifications by the Federals at Charleston
have certainly done what nobody would expect of
any guns in our service. They have battered down
a fort at two miles' range ; they have shelled a town
at five miles, and we are assured they would be per-
fectly effective for the same work at seven miles.
Here there can be no doubt about the practice, and
it leaves the powers of our artillery far behind.
Possibly some of the guns may have been disabled,
and there may be other drawbacks from their
general efficiency of which we are not informed, but
the great fact remains that Charleston was shelled
from five miles' distance, and Fort Sumter knocked
to pieces at about half that range. Could our
68-pounders perform any such service as this ? It
must be observed, too, that these enormous guns
were brought from a considerable distance to the
scene of action, and that all the necessary material
had to be similarly transported. Such exploits open
a new epoch in siege operations. We do not sup-
pose that Fort Sumter was any fair specimen of a
fortification, but that is of no importance to the
moral. The moral is that guns of about three times
the calibre used in our service have been successfully
employed for breeching and bombarding purposes
at a range hitherto unknown. Although, there-
fore, we cannot discover in the American war any
incident which should immediately disturb the re-
sults of our own experiments, we must observe that
these experiments have been directed to naval pro-
blems only. In those problems we have had to
consider not only what a gun would do, but how
the gun was to he carried. To apply the American
experience we should require first to see the 15-inch
gun tried against the Shoeburyness targets, and
then to see the vessel on the decks of which she
could be mounted. Whatever may be the powers
of these guns, we are by no means convinced that
they are good guns for ships. The Monitors have
as yet only crept along the Atlantic coast, and not
very confidently. The original model all but
foundered on her first voyage, and actually foun-
dered afterwards. The others have arrived safety
at the rendezvous, but we observe that their ar-
rivals are usually expected with some anxiety,
and reported with considerable congratulation.
Nobody supposes that they would form a sea-
worthy squadron, but this is what our ships
must do, and if they cannot carry large guns on
such conditions they must carry smaller ones_
As to the armour of the vessels, it is remarkable
that though there is not a ship in the fleet the plates
of which could not, according to our presumptions,
be pierced by a 68-pounder, there is only a single
instance of the destruction of an ironclad by the
heavy guns of the Confederates. Dismissing, how-
ever, this branch of the question—not, indeed, as
settled in our favour, but as still obscure and uncer-
tain—we are compelled to conclude that the Ameri-
cans are giving us a lesson in the capabilities of
siege artillery. We cannot say what practice may
be made with the Armstrong 110-pounder, but we
do not imagine that we have any battering guns in
our service which could send their balls through
26 feet of earth, or through nine inches of wrought
iron backed by 24 inches of oak. Yet the Federals,
if we are to accept their own statements, have
actually made a gun equal to such work, and have
placed it in position before Charleston. It may be
said, perhaps, that other European nations are left
in the rear, like ourselves, by these new discoveries ;
but that may not be the case long. The Russians,
we are told, have ordered as many as 4,000 guns of
our manufacturers, none of which are to be lighter
than the 68apounder, and many probably very much
heavier. This is proof enough that the new sys-
tem is thought practicable. We do not yet know
that such ordnance can be successfully carried or
worked at sea, but we do know that it is manage-
able on shore, and Oat its range and power are
extraordinary,—a lesson far too important to be
received with indifference.
POST.—The Hapsburgs. as we all know, held the
throne of Spain and the Indies for nearly two cen-
turies. It would have required singular boldness
to have predicted to them a revival of any part of
that inheritance since its definitive settlement on
the House of Bourbon, by the treaty of Utrecht, a
century and a half ago. Indeed, the unmistakable
decline and threatening extinction of all the
branches of this Bourbon dynasty would have made
it less improbable, ten years since, that the Aus-
trian pretensions might have revived at the Escurial
than that the accidents of conquest and marriage
should have now offered to the Hapsburg line the
prospect of two imperial thrones on the other side
of the Atlantic. We now learn that a marriage
has been arranged between the youngest brother of
the Emperor of Austria and the eldest daughter and
heiress of the Emperor of the Brazils. The Archduke
Louis Joseph Antoine Victor is now just twenty-
one years of age, and the Donna Isabelle Christine is
seventeen. In this union the hope of the Brazilian
succession will rest, and an Austro-Brazilian prince
will some day in all probability ascend the impe-
rial throne of Rio Janeiro. That contingency, no
doubt, is distant enough, for the Emperor Pedro 11.
is not yet forty. The Austrian Archduke, however,
when his princess ascends the throne, will probably
take the title of Emperor, as the consorts of Maria
di Gloria in Portugal, and of Isabella in Spain, took
that of King. The Hapsburg succession in Brazil
w'll probably become as established a fact es the
Hapsburg succession in Mexico. Three imperial
crowns in possession or in remainder fall to a single
branch of one family that seemed, only thirteen years
ago, to be otruggling for existence even in their

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hereditary dominions in Europe. These events,
which affects so greatly the prospects of the
. House
of Hapsburg, deserve to be considered from more
than one point of view. No doubt they serve mate-
rially to weaken the Hapsburg succession in Austria.
itself, and more particularly the successionin the
family of the Archduke Francis and Archduchess
Sophia, in which it at presents rests. The presen.t
Emperor of Austria has three brothers—Maxi-
milian, aged thirty-one ; Charles, aged thirty ; and
the youngest, Louis. Two, therefore, out of the
three are likely to be taken across the Atlantic. The
marriage of Louis does not of course so necessarily
involve his continual residence in Brazil as the eleo-
tion of Maximilian to the Throne of Montezuma
will require his continual presence at Mexico. But
probably the heiress-apparent and her husband arll
not find it easy to be absent from the Branillan
territory ; and in that event, the Archduke Cluarles
would remain the only brother of the Emperor of
Austria on whom the regency could devolve in the
event of his death, the Archduke Rudolph, the heir-.
apparent to the Austrian Throne, being now only
five years of age, and thirteen years distant from hie
majority. It is probable that this difficulty, howev.er,
will be made light of in the face of a temptation rhich
offers the Austrian dynasty two imperial throne i
s n
the New World. It is impossible not to perceive also
that in this marriage consists an auxiliary guaranur
for the stability of the throne of the Archduke Magi'
miiian in Mexico. A prince placed upon an imperial
throne, newly formed, and though in consonance
with the real wants, yet in opposition to the recent
traditions of the nation, will be glad to repose upon
the moral support and alliance of his neighbours.
In a vast continent of republics, with the Anglo-
Saxon race upon the North, and mongrel, half
Latin and half Indian races to the South, it is of
mutual advantage to Mexico and Brazil that the
two imperial dynasties should be in such intimate
alliance with each other. The Federal Government
may not be hostile to the new Mexican empire /
the Confederates may recognise it from motives of
self-interest; the South American Republics may
have no more the will than they have the power to
thwart a development of the French Emperor's
policy; yet a dynastic alliance between the two.
Imperial Houses is one of the most permanent
leagues which each can have for its support by the
other ; and it is one to which the misfortunes of .the
at present imperfectly developed Mexican empire
cannot be indifferent. There seems nothing more
vain than a speculation of the future of any one
of the great reigning dynasties of Europe, even for
a single generation ahead of us. Thirteen years
ago the Bourbon family were to all appearance
firmly seated on three European thrones. NOW
they are banished from two of them, with no sort
of probability of their ever returning to either.,
Some thirty years ago what reigning House seemed
more insignificant than the family of Saxe-Coburg ?
Yet we now see them, in the male line, supplying
the dynasties of England and Portugal, and another
prince of their House, one of the astutest Sovereigns
in Europe, on the Throne of Belgium. The little
branch headed by Prince Christian of _Denmark,
which only eleven years ago came into pr eminence
as the family then next entitled by a treaty of
1851 to the throne of Denmark, have since, given,
or are about to give, brides to the heirs-apparent of
England and Russia and'a King to Greece. The
ancient House of Savoy, after living for seven
hundred years in hereditary insignificance, bats in
the last four years acquired a dominion more vopn-
ions, and not less powerful and important, than the
kingdom of the Great Frederick. The Bonapa.rtes
have revived ; and almost in their former splendo
These and other such striking dynastic changes o ur
own generation has witnessed; and the promisod
extension of the dynasty of Rudolph of Hapsburg'
over two Imperial Thrones in the Western World
presents a coincidence of fortune which should ap-
pease the shade of the Emperor Leopold I. for the
transfer of Louis XIV. of the dominions of his
kinsman, Charles 11. of Spain to Philip V. in the
rear of the Spanish succession. To a great extent
the elder branch of the Hapsburgs are likely to
regain the rule of the Indies, which fell to' their
younger branch on the abdication of Charles V-
What is hardly less remarkable than the extension
of the Hapsburg dynasty is the character for mode-
ration and practical statesmanship that marks the
present generation of that Imperial House.

COUNTRY MARKETS.

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LEEDS--TIIESDAY.
There is a better demand for wheat to-day, which may- be
quoted at the currencies of last Friday. Barley is in good
show, and at is to 2s decline.
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LIVERPOOL—TUESDAY.
At our market to-day there was a better attendance of
the trade, and rather more dispositicn to buy was evinced..
Wheat, with a moderate consumptive demand, may be)
quoted 3d to 4d per cental lower than upoi.k this day week.
Flour dull, and offered at a decline of 6d pet' barrel. Oats
a slow sale, and id to Id per bushel lower. Barley and
peas unaltered in value. Indian corn very dull—mixed
may be quoted worth 26s 9d per 4801 b.