The Sun.
London, England, 1856-05-29 00:00:00

ich could be proved to have been of that cha-
teriould be in effect to recognise such marriages
and such criminality. That part of the argument,
though forcibly put, was not to his mind conclu-
sive. The question which they were really trying
was the question of the status of the defender,
Alex. Livingstone, who had not violated the laws
of Scotland. It did not follow because the fruits
of such a connexion, if in Scotland, would not
have been legitimate that they were to deny the
status of legitimacy which the defender possessed
in his own country. The recognition of that status
did not necessarily, or in any degree, import an
approval of the connexion of which he was
the offspring. To pronounce a declarator of
bastardy in regard to him who in England,
his own country, was not a bastard, but,
on the contraq, was in the full possession
of the entire status of lawful children, would
be to introduce a new doctrine not forced upon
them by any principle of the law of Scotland that
he knew of. He gave this opinion irrespective of
the Act of 1835. It was not necessary to call it
into action in this case, for the marriage was dis-
solved before that date. At the same time the act
had its application, and gave power and strength to
the defendant in this action, because it declared
such marriages not to be questionable by a proceed-
ing by which they were formerly questionable.
Such being his views on this case, he thought the
Court should adhere to the interlocutor of the
Lord Ordinary.

The other Judges (Lords Ivory, Curriehill, and
Deas) concurred, and the Court decerned accord-
ingly.

MORTALITY IN WAR.

The following statisticsof the losses of the Bri-
'sh army during the Crimean and Peninsular wars
will be perused with considerable interest. The
improvements in firearms do not appear to have
occasioned the destruction that was anticipated, the
casualties being nearly balanced. There is, how.
ever, a marked increase in the average number of
officers killed in the Crimean war, though not in
that of the men. Inquiry should be instituted as
to the causes, and remedies applied if possible. The
numbers of non-commissioned and commissioned
officers to each 1,000 rank and file in the British
army may be estimated at 72 and 40 respectively.
The‘ proportion_ of the -wounded. officers who -die -
from the injuries they have received is considerably
less than. that which obtains among the private
men ; for out of 1,973 officers (more than two fifths
of the total number wounded from 1793 to 1815)
only 164 died, being very nearly 1 in 12. The
difference in favour of the officers is no doubt due
to the greater amount of comfort and attention
which they are generally able to secure. At the
siege of Gibraltar only 1 officer died out of 35
wounded, and out of 117 wounded at the battle of
Toulouse only 3 died. In both these bases the
wounded were able to find better accommodation
than can be the case after a battle fought in an
ordinary campaign. At Gibraltar the proportion
of deaths among the private men was reduced from
one in eight to one in 10, 101 having died out of
1,083 wounded. It may be estimated that from.
1793 to 1815 the number of recruits raised for Bri-
tish regiments was 519,040, for foreign and colo-
nial regiments 198, 630, making a total of 717,670,
besides 30,000 foreign troops temporarily employed
-to these being added the effective force on the let
of January, 1793, 46,440 men, the total number
employed during these-wars will be 793,110. Of
these 219,420 died, 229,141 were discharged, 20,000
taken prisoners, and 113,273 deserted--leaving an
effective force of 211,276 on the 31st of Dec., 1815.
From a comparigen of the mortality of the Army
and Navy during war it appears that the man
who entered the army from 1793 to 1815, ran be-
tween two and three times, if a private, between
three and four tines, if an officer, the risk of injury
in battle that was encountered by one who entered
the navy, and that the general chance of death in
action to the one was double that of the other.
When the soldier was ordered on service abroad,
the risk became as great to the private, and nearly
four times as great to the officer-while, to those
engaged in actual hostilities, it was respectively 17
and 22 times that of the sailor, the whole navy
being considered on active service in time of war.
These ratios, however, would be greatly lessened
if we were to include in our estimate the danger
from shipwreck, which made the seaman's risk of
death from the casualties of the service three times
that of death in battle. A fleet of 30 sail of the
line may he onnsid-red as equivalent to an army of
12,00') men ; and a single battle on land has been
more destructive to life than 20 years of combat at
a During the Peninsular war, from 1808 to
1813, th . average number of sick in each 1,000 was
209 in the British army ; in the French army of
Spain, 130 ; and in the French army of Portugal,
149. It appears that on the 22d of October there
were 6,777 sick and wounded out of 34,642, which
is at the rate of 195 in 1,000. Of these 328 were
with the army,and deducting these and the 1,539 who
were-wounded at the Alma, we have, 4.910 sick at
Varna ; and as the total strength at embarkation
was about 35,000, we have 140 out of 1,000 in hos-
pital before active hostilities took place. During
the time from the landing in Turkey to the Gth of
September, 1854, ti,e mortality, which arose from
disease alone. was at the annual rate of 87 per
1,000 ; during the five months from the Gth of
Sept., 1854, to the 15th of Feb., 1855, it was equi-
valent to an annual mortality of 108 per 1,000 from
°await es in action, and 391 per 1,000 from disease
-making a total mortality of 499 per 1,000 per
annum. Of 1,000 deaths in the hospital at Scutari,
575 were caused by diarrhoea and dysentery, 173
by fever, and 55 by wounds ; in the Peninsula
the respective proportions were 291, 398, and 201.
Of 19 great battles of which details have been
procured, only 4 were fought by British armies
unassisted by allies of other nations, so that it is
necessary to state separately losses sustained by
the British only and by the British and Allies to-
gether. It appears that in these 19 battles an ag-
grogate British force of 438,205 officers and men.
were engaged ; that of these 49,281 were either
killed or wounded, and that of these again 14,517
(nearly 30 per cent.) died from the injuries they
received-so that the casualties averaged 114 and
the mortality 33 for every 1,000 men engaged.
The lowest ratio of casualties in these 19 battles is
that of the battle of Busaco, 22 per 1,000 ; the
highest loss for the whole force is at New Orleans,
where the loss in killed and wounded on the side
of the British was 317 in 1,000. At Albuera,
though the casualties of the British and their al-
lies wero only 176 per 1,000, those of the British
alone amounted to 395 per 1,000. A subject to
which hardly sufficient attention appears to have
been paid is the relative efficiency of different wea-
pons. It appears from a return furnished by the
surgeon of the Scots Fusilier Guards, that of
120 men of that regiment wounded at the battle
of Inkermae, 7 were wounded by the bayonet
and 79 by gunshot. Now it has been ,confidently
and repeatedly asserted that this battle was won
by the bayonet ; and in the Russian official ac-
count of the battle it is called an embittered bay-
onet contest, and it is stated that their troops had
challenged and routed the well-fed and powerful
British troops with what the latter considered
their own particular weapon. Yet the Brigade of
Guards was more constantly and closely engaged
in this action than any other portion of the army ;
for, out of 2,382 casualties suffered by 26 batta-
lions, 594 were borne by the three battalions of
the Guards, so that it is not probable that the pro-
portion of bayonet wounds was greater in any
other regiment than that mentioned above-viz.,
7in 120, or about 51 in 1,000. Again at the bat-
tle of Balaklava the heavy brigade were
opposed by cavalry, and, therefore, most of
the wounds which they received were
made by lances and sabres. Of 106 casualties
among them 9 were fatal; whereas of the 281 among
the light brigade, who suffered from artillery as
well as from hand-to-hand fighting, 169 were fatal,
or more than half, the ordinary proportion being
1 death in 5 casualties. The total amount of killed
and wounded of the British forces in the Crimea,
from the 19th Sept., 1854, to the Bth Sept., 1855,
was 13,880, of which 4,565 arose from siege duties,
4,396 from assaults, and 4,919 from battles. The
ratios of deaths among the wounded officers appears
to have been nearly the same in 1793-1815 and in
the Crimean campaign ; but the proportions re-
turned as killed vary considerably, being 164 offi-
cers killed to 836 wounded in the former period,
and 233 to 767 in the latter. The proportion of
killed among the private men was nearly the same
in both wars, being 193 to 1,000 in the former and
190. to 1,000 in the latter. The loss sustained by
the Russians during the siege is not known to us ;
but it appears that on the 17th and 18th June,
and from the 17th Aug. to the Bth Sept., 1855,
inclusively, their loss was 27,852. As the total
loss of the English, in killed and wounded, ,in the
siege and assaults was 8,961, we shall have, taking
the loss of the allies at double that of the English,
a total loss of about 27,000 ; so that the besieged
lost as many in the 25 most sanguinary days of the
siege as the besiegers did during all the 338 days
during which it lasted. The French garrison of
Badajoz in 1812, consisting of 4,870 men, inflicted
4,824 casualties on their assailantsin 21 days, with
a loss of 1,600 only of their own men, including
deaths from sickness. In the same year the garri-
son of Burgos, 2,000-strong, repulsed their oppo- -
nents with a loss of 2,064, killed and wounded, in
32 days-their own loss being 639.-United Service
Gazette.

The Sardinian Government has come to the determi-
nation to:send a representative 'to the*Germanio Diet, in
the event of the -relations of Sardinia with Austria
lain A fayounhble-kii: