Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1860-06-06
THE LOSS OF LIFE BY WAR.

ileTc - It's CnleI aim ana terrlOie mas oeeI
| Its success in this respect. Even its inciden
| tai havoc of life, has sometimes been almost
| Incredible. 1t has entirely depopulated i'm.
menSe districts. In modern, as well as in an
clent times, large tracts of land have been left
so utterly desolate that traveller might pass
from village to village, even from city to city,
without finding solitary inhabitant, The
war of 1856, waged in the heart of Europe,
left in one instance no less than twenty con-
tiguous villages without single man or beast
The thirty years. war, in the 18th century, re-
duced the population of Germany from II ,000,-
900 to 1000 900, three -fourths and that of
Wirtemberg from 500, 900 to 4S 900, more than
nine-tentbs Thirty thousand villages were
destroyed; in many others the population en-
tirely died out; and over districts, once
studded with towns and cities, there sprang up
immense forests.
LOOK at the havoc of seges-in that of Lon
donderry, 10000 soldiers, besides vast num-
Der of inhabitants; in that of Paris, in the
10th century, 10000 victims of mere hunger ;
in that of Malplaquet, "a 900 soldiers alone in
that OF Ismail, 10000; of Vienna, 10000; of
Ostend, 10000; of Mexico, 10000; of A
ere, 300 900; of Carthage, 100000; of Jerusa-
lem, 100000. Mark the slaughter of single
battles-at Leponto. % 600; at Austerlitz, 30,-
600 at Eylau, 10000; at Waterloo and Qua
tire Bras, one engagement in fact, 40, 900; at
Borodino, $4,000; at Fontenoy, 100000; at
Arbela, 800 600 at Chalon, 800, 900 of Attil-
las army alone; 900 Usipetes were slam
by julius Cesar in one battle, and 430 900
Germans in another.
Take only two cases more. The army O.
Xerxes, says DR.. Dick, ssmust have amounted
to 5 5,2S3 800; and, if the attendants were only
one-third as great as common at the present
day in Eastern countries, the sum total must
have reached nearly six million. Yet, in one
year, this vast multitude was reduced, though
H. L.
and of these only 200 escaped destruction.
Jenghz-khan, the terrible ravager of Asia in
the 18Th century, shot 900 on the plains of
Nessa, and massacred 200,0 900 at the storming
of kharasm. In the district of Herat, he
butchercd 100000 and in two cities with
their dependencies, 1,760,000. During the
last twenty seven years of his long reign, he is
every year; and in the first IA years, he is sup
posed, by Chinese history. TO have destroyed
not less than eighteen millions; a sum total of
~, 600 ,O0O in forty-one years
What a fell destroyer is warl Napoleon's
wars sacrificed full six millions, and all the
wars consequent on the French Revolution,
some nine or ten millions. The Spaniards are
said to have destroyed in forty y-two years more
than twelve millions of American Indians.
Grecian wars sacrificed fifteen millions; Jewish
wars, twenty-five millions; the wars of the
twelve Caesars, thirty millions in all; the wars
of the Romans before Julius Cesar, sixty mil
lions; the wars of the Roman Empire, of the
Saracens and the Turks, sixty millions each;
those of the Tartars, eighty millions those of
Africa, one hundred millions. ssIf we take in-
to consideration says the learned DR.. Dick,
sthe Dumber not only of those who have fallen
in battle, but of those who have perished
through the natural consequences of war, it
will not perhaps be overrating the destruction
of human life. if we affirm that one tenth of
the human race has been destroyed by the raw
ages of war; and, according to this estimate,
more than fourteen thousand millions OF human
beings have been slaughtered in war since the
beginning of the world.'' Edmund Burke
went still further, and reckoned the sum total
of its ravages, from the first, at no less than
thirty fire thousand millions