The true Democrat., 1855-08-14
Loss of Life In great sSatua.

The waste of human life in the unSo occessful attack on the Malakolf and Redan appears to have been nearly as great (though not quitcN as in the average of the most destructive .lnodern battles More than five thousand of the ,issail- ants were killed and wounded a vast propor- ton when we consider now small comparati ive- ly the stormin9 column was. The French alone admit d loss of thirty q. lit hundred men out of an attacking force of twenty five thou 1 sand; that 5 l. >al, every seventh man was rendered incapable eitheT by death or wound
 There is, indeed, one modem siege winch was more bloody than tlIa-nol actually. how eycr but ~hcn the hunters engaged arc com pared with those Who full W alIule to the second siege ot Eaiajuz, in the Pennsuldr War. That famous Spanish fortress was invested bV W ellington, at the head oi tvyent.-t two tl0n- sand mon, and finally carried by storm after one ol the most lnguuafy assaults on record In tie lttac, on thr great breach alone, not less than thirty elghl huAirel men fell. Yet Bad aloZ Mas q .;nlll place, the fort not being larger perhaps than the MalE"tf and its out works " hoover WoulI realize half the horrors of war shnnII real Napcc- account of the fall of Bi- dajoA
 1Iu.a9o, An5terAr-, Wlgram, Laip.ic, Dre.- daa, E1todIuo and Waterloo were among the ! &alUieou. it Maten2o the \ ,strans lost tan thousand more than third of the.r whole force, while the French lost en thou5and or abontln the same proport.of \ considerable portion of tir.se were prisontis, however, x hlll at tAr l;"lAu and MaIahoh but few ri 5oner. were taken. At Austcrt. the French lost t"el,e thousand, nearly l sixth of their entire fierce; but the allies lost thirty thousand, or more than . third At W agram the loss on either side was twenty five thousand or about one-seventh of those engaged. At Leip- sic the loss was torty-thrre thousand oil the sde of the allies, out ot nearly three hundred thousand i'll the field and sixty thousand on the bart ot the French out of one hundred and seventy five thousand. At Dresden, the allies lost twenty-five thousand CT one-siX Xth ofthcir entire numbers, while the French lost but twelve thousand, or one-tcnth. At Borodino, the hIoodiest battle of all, fifty thousand fell on each sle or a third of those in the battle At Waterloo the French lost forty thousand, or more than half; but a'1arge proportion of these fell in the rout yet the English lost neary V twenty thousand, a almost a third of their en- tire troops.
 IL is often said, in discussing military affairs, that our American battles have been too tr fling to take into consideration. But we con slider, lot the numbers actually killed and wounded. but the proportion which those num- bcrs bear in the whole force engaged, we shall find that these actions, thus scorued, were as hotly contested as even the first Napoleon's battles. At Euta~ Springs, for example, in the revolutionary war; one third of both armies were left upon the field At Chippewa, in the war of 1872 nearly onc-iifth of the British were disabled At l4undy's Lane, the loss of the Americans was about one third, and that of the British equally great At New Orleans, where the British attempted, on q smaller scale, the same rash experiment which they have just been defeated in before the Redan and Mala~ kol the assailants lost two thousand men out of their army of twelve thousand.
 From these statistics it appears that blttl, $ m the open field are generally more bloody, though not always, than assaults of eutrenchcd positions The reason is, that in the formcl case the entire army s usually engaged, but in the latter only the storming column. The loss \ by those actually occupied on the attack is al ways heavier, however than the average loss of an army in the open field It would seem, also, that the allies in their later repul3a suffer ed as severely is the English at New Orleans
 "a defeat Whicl, has always been considered one ot the most sangunary on record