Bradford reporter. [volume] (Towanda, Pa.) 1844-1884, 1859-05-26
Modern Warfare as Compared with the
Means of Destruction in the Past.


has seen since the downfall of Napoleon the
Great The wars of imperial France were
bloody wars, as all the world knows No
slaughtered hetacombs were ever piled so high
as the great emperor piled them The dead
never lay so thick on any battle field, of which
! history makes meEton, as they lay on Eylau
and Borodino and Waterloo What amount
of destruction and misery science, in the hands
OF genius, could. in given time, deal out on q
| given number of men was there amply demon
Strated.
But it is not saying too much to say that if
the European powers let their armed hordcs
| loose upon one another this summer, ruthless
destroyer as Napoleon was, he will be shown
before three years ere over to have been mere
| tyro in the art of destruction Since his day
all the arts have advanced with rapid strides,
but none with strides so rapid as this one The
weapons with which his soldiers were armed,
with which the bridge of Lodi was carried and
Austerlitz and MerangO were won, bear much
the same relation to the rife of the present day
as the matchbox bore to the iireock
Death did not in his time fash from serred
ranks until the foemen stood two or three hun
dred yards apart. 1t now flies in the air nearly
three quarters of u mile, as far as the sharpest
! eye can mark human figure. His siege artil-
lery would be to-day by no means heavy field
pieces. Wellington'S heaviest preaching guns
at BadOjoS and Salamanca were twenty-four
pounders The Russians at Inkerman, and the
British at Tchernaya, brought thirtytwo pound
ers into the field with ease and effect. But
the advantage which heavy guns have always
had over light ones, hitherto, for the purposes
of field artillery, has been rather in the length
of range than in the size of the bail A twelve
FOUNDER rushing through column of infantry
is full of destruction and almost as demOralizing
as Que treble its weight but formerly it could
not be projected nearly SO far. Science has,
in our day, destroyed the difference between
them. Recent inventions, some Of them those
of our own cOuntrymen, some of them English
men, and some Of the present Emperor of
France have furnished field pieces, which four
horses can whirl at the gddest gallop from
point to point, with more than the deadly pow
er which, forty years ago, belonged only to
weapons which sixteen horses could only move
with difficulty, and which were always pieces de
position.
Moreover, facilities have been created since
Waterloo was fought, for bringing together
masses of men thus armed and dashlng them
against one another such as the great Napo-
leon in his widest dreams never thought Of
We all know how the rapidity Of his move
mentS dazzled and aStounded our fathers. We
know how he strobe over Europe like mag
ician, taking armies up, as it seemed in those
days, in the hollow of his hand, and flingng
them in the twinkling of an eye on every point
where his giant plans needed them We know
how distance seemed to shrvel up at the blast
of his trumpet We know how the pupils of
Tur:enne and Montecucu recoed in dismay
before legons which struck like thunderbolt
after having advanced like the wind But great
as was the perfection to which he carried the
art of rapid concentration, it becomes the craw-
ling of turtle compared with the power with
which railways have armed the generals of our
day. When Napoleon started on his expedi-
tions, armies were of necessity divided into col
umns which, in order to secure the bare means
of subsistence and of transport were compelled
either to follow each other at tolerably long
intervals, or else march on the same point by
different crcuitOuS routes. And they did march
literally marched, trudged every inch of the
way on foot, and the eagle tapped his wings
over them in appreciation if they achieved fifty
miles in twenty-four hours. The maddest i'm
patience of the maddest conqueror had IN those
times to adapt itself to the capabilities of hu-
man legs and human Stomachs.
| 1t took even in the hands of Napoleon,
! long while to concentrate two hundred thou
sand men at point three hundred miles dis
tant ; aud when they were there it required
stupendous energy and stupendous resources
to feed them. All the grand heroes had to
take pork and -four into their grandest cacula-
tion and pork and -four, alas J have to be
carried about to be of any use
The other day we were told, in contrast with
this, that the present Emperor was able to send
twenty five thousand men in a day from Paris
to Lyons-a distance of three hundred miles
| 1t would have taken his uncle week of forced
marches to accomplish the same object Aus
tria is sending troops into Italy at the same
rate. Moreover, the same power which rem
ders this rapid concentration of troops so easy,
! renders their subsistence, while concentrated,
just as easy the railroad dumps the soldiers
nowadays down on the battlefield, and the
next day dumps down months provisions in
their rear. The telegraph, we need hardly say,
| plays as wonderful part in this change as the
railroad One of Napoeon'S generals would
have required four or FIVE days to ask for a re-
enforcement, which he now asks for in as many
minutes 1t reaches him in as many hours as
it would then have taken days.
The destructivenesS of the changes which
these new instruments are likely to introduce
into warfare, has not SO far, attracted so much
attention as it ought, because within the last
80 years we have had 10 wars in the part of
the world in which science could render the
soldier efficient and what science has done in
that interval to make war more snnguinary,
will only appear when two countries like Italy
and Germany which are blessed. or cursed,
with all the modern improvements" Hav-
ing armed the combatants with the means of
destroying life all around him within a radius
of thousand yards, it hyrls III -o~'",v ~ hlS
| foe at the rate Of tk'--y .lhes an nonr. Ihere
! .oo INISf ~ IAo human misery revealed by even