The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1859-08-04
THE LONDON TIMES ON AUSTRIAN
OLD FOGYISM.
From the London Times, July 1

/
| 1t is not always" says Madame de Sevigne,
the same man who warns the oven and who
eats the bread" Francis Joseph, of Austria,
may ponder this mot when he reads with what
relish Napoleon ILL., hungry and victorious, de-
voured the dinner which had been prepared for
Francis Joseph at Solferino. This little Incl
dent, however, is only type of greater things.
Francis Joseph has been throughout this ltal-
ian policy only oven-warmer to his French I'M
perial brother. IF he had been a man of his
age and time, he would never have allowed
Louis Napoleon to play before the world the
audacious part of a liberator of oppressed ma
tionaities. But he has been fixed in fossil
system, and he has petri6ed into part Of the
mass. AS he prepared the way in Piedmont
and Lombardy, and at Ancona, and even in
Rome, for others, whose only excuse for com
ing after him was that he and his had been
there before, so it appears likely to happen that
Peschlera and Verona, Mantua and Legnano,
have been fortified, strengthened, stored, and
armed, only to be garrisoned by Frenchmen,
and ultimately, we must in courtesy to re-
corded promises believe, to be occupied by Ital.
ians. Already the whole French army has
passed the Mincio;" already " the Sardinians
have invested Peschiera already Napoleon,
aided by his reinforcement of 81, 1000, has APP
preached Verona and watches Mantua already
reasons which, pushed to their logical con-
sequences, may some day, perhaps, require the
| abandonment of Vienna, or even Prague-re-
tired from the banks of the Mincio. Already
the French have carefully and cautiously fol-
lowed them, unmolested /; and the Austrian,
still obstinate in resistance, although no longer
confident of victory, is probably, untaught and
unteachable, again fixing some definite hour of
some definite day whereon he will make all his
arrangements for another pitched battle.
This battle of Solferino illustrates upon
great scale, the character of the two antagonists.
It's phases and its facts are all recorded. Its in
delible picture is craven upon all our minds.
Aided by the experience of correspondents in
either camp-those heralds of sacred and peace
full mission-we have followed the Austrian En-
peror to and from the fight and the French
Emperor throughout his advance. We have
twice seen the field from the g Spy of Italy,"
and have surveyed it alternately through French
and Austrian glasses. To-day the battle of
Solferino takes its place in history in the shape
in which it will be known forevermore. 1t was
a great and sanguinary battle, fercely contested
by nearly 400, 900 men from sunrise to sunset
of a summer day; and it was battle in which
the Austrians were defeated, but not broken,
by an enemy inferior in numbers, but superior
in intelligence and arms.
While the mind of Europe is yet excited by
the details of this mighty carnage, and is grow
ing familiar with the events of the battle, it is
time for us to point the moral of the catastro-
phe. Why did the Austrians lose this great
battle? Why have they lost every battle that
has been fought in this war? II is not that they
are less brave than the French In this very
engagement, according to the official accounts
Of each army the Austrians killed and wounded
$4,000 Frenchmen, with loss to themselves of
about 5000 killed and wounded. There could
have been no flight when the numbers stand
thus at the end of the day. Nor are the Aus
TRANS inferior as marksmen. Their rihemetl
hit 720 French officers, whereof l20 were shot
dead, while the French succeeded in killing
and wounding only 23O of the Austrian off
GERS.
They certainly are not inferior to the French
in discipline. Their 0is ineTti9 is magnificent,
and they retreat invariably with bold, steady
front to the foe. Why is il, then, that they who
can lose so valiantly can never win? Because,
unfortunately for them, present knowledge is
present power, and their knowledge is not of
the present. but of the past. They are stag
mating responsibility. They are governed and
directed by old rules, old men, and old routine.
They have an enemy who does not care GEN.
time for antiquity, and is not above taking the
most irregular methods to win victory The
Emperor of ustria makes up his mind to do
remarkable hne piece of Louis Quatorze strate-
gy. He executes elaborate piece of old
fashioned deception, crossing the Mincio with
his whole force, and then recrossing it with his
two hundred thousand men, and fixing the con-
tempated surprise of the enemy at nine o'clock
in the morning. The Emperor of the French.
representing the juvenile irregular school, in
the most ungentlemanlike manner refuses to be
surprised. Having recourse to a new-fangled
expedient which no trustworthy veteran who
can count his seventy years would condescend
to use, he sends man up in balloon and, at
the expense of few yards of silk, and few
square feet of gas, is told the exact position of
all those masses which are drawn up so scien-
tifcally out of his sight, with the intention of
surprising him at the comfortable, leisurely
hour of nine A. NJ. The man of his time-the
clever, active shrewd, nothing-contemning adj
yenturer OF the nineteenth century, by dint of
this small contrivance, becomes master of the
position. He knows what is going to happen,
and where his enemy is, and how many he is
and while the heavy, selfcomplacent Austrian
is chuckling at the formal surprise that is to
come off at nine A. NJ, he attacks at daybreak,
chooses his own time and point of attack, and
remains master of the field So again the |
Austrian, coming by every respectable means, |
in no respect sullied by any inventveness or
breach of precedent, into possession of fine |
body Of sharpshooterS, dealt tremendous disas-
ter against the French. The French opposed |
artificial to the Austrian natural advantage, |
but not so as to equalize the two armies in the |
rifle. There was another point however, in |
which the two nations were equal. The Aus
trian mountaineers do not use cannon in their
Sunday games Here France went ahead, and |
Austria marched al pas. The consequences |
have been obvious enough. The battle af Sol |
ferino has been won by the superiority of the
French artillery. The shells from the French
rifed cannon fell at distances whence the old |
guns could not reply. Every reader can work
out the result. The enemy's artillery was
sienced before it could come within effective
distance. Mans thews and flesh are to-day as |
they were a thousand years ago, but machinery
is not thus immutabe. Mere pluck and |
courage, and standing still in squares, and
coming forward in lines, is of no use, if there is
an engine two miles off which will NOW down
your lines and reap death harvest in your
squares before you can reach your living enc
my. All that is left in such case to gentle.
man Of the old school is to die with dignity and |
constancy, scorning, if he should so please,
with his last breath, the foe that seeks victory
by such plebeian and irregular means.
KENTUCKY ELoQUEYcE-The Frankfort Conn
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