The constitutional union., 1861-02-22
THE TERRIBLE HAVOC OF VAR.

It is difficult to conceive what fearful havoc the custom of war has made of human life. Some of its incidental ravages seem to defy belief It has at times entirely depopulated immense districts. In modern as we'll as ar- cient times, large tracts have been left so utterly desolate that one might pass from viii lage to village, even from city to city, without finding solitary inhabitant. The war of 1756, waged in the heart of Europe, left in one instance no less than twenty contiguous villages, without single man or beast. The thirty years war, in the seventeenth century reduced the population of Germany from 12 1000, ,000 to 5000, ,000--three-fou and that of Wirtemburg from 800 900 to AS, 900 more than nine-tenths. Thirty thousand viii lages ware destroyed; in many others the population entirely died out; and in districts 1 once studded with towns and cities there sprung up immense forests.
 Look at the havoc of the sieges-in that of Londonderry 12 ,000 soldiers, besides vast number of inhabitants; in that of Paris, in the sixteenth century, 3O,000 victims of mere hunger; in that of Malplaquet 34 900 soldiers alone; in that of Ismail 10000, of Vienna | 70, 900, of Ostend 12O, ,000, of Mexico 150, ,OO0 of Acre 300,000, of Carthage 700 O,OO0, of Jerusalem l,OOO,OOO. Mark the slaughter of single battles: at Lepanto 25, ,0OO, at Aus terltz 30,O0O, at Eylau 6O,O00, at Waterloo and Quatre Bras, one engagement in fact 100000, at Arbela 3OO,OOO, at Chalons 300, ,O00 of Attila's army alone, 400, 900 usi petes slain by Julius Caesar in one battle, and 43O, 900 Germans in another.
 Take only two cases. The army of Xerxes says Dr. Dick must have amounted to ,, lo3, 320 and if the attendants were only one-third as great as common at the present time IT eastern countries, the sum total must have been 6,000000. Yet in one year this vast multitude was reduced, though not entirel J by death, to 300, ,00O fighting men; and ol these only 5000 escaped destruction. Jen ghis Kahan, the terrible ravager of Asia 1T the thirteenth century, shot 9O,O0O on the plains of Nessa, and massacred 200 ,O0O at tho storming of Charaism. In the Herat district he butchered 1,600, 1000, and in two cities with the dependencies, 100000. During the last twenty-seven years of his long reign he is said to have massacred more than half ; million every year; and in the first fourteen years he IS supposed by Chinese hlsto rians to have destroyed not less thar 1S,000, ,000; sum total of 32 100000 1T in torty-one years.
 In any view, what fell destroyer is war Napoleon's wars sacrificed some 6,OOO,0O0 and all the wars consequent on the Frencf revolution, some nine or ten millions. ThC Spaniards are said to have destroyed in forty two years more than l2 ,000,0 of American Indians. Grecian wars sacrificed l5,000,000 Jewish wars, 25,000,000; the wars of th' twelve Caesars, 30,000,000; in all the wars O the Romans before Julius Caesar, 50 ,000,0 the wars of the Roman empire, of the Sara cens and Tu,ks, 60 100000 each; those O the Tartars, 80,000,0O0; those of Africa l00000,000
 If we take into consideration" says thu learned Dr. Dick, the number not only o those who have fallen in battle but those wh, have perished through the natural conse quences of war, it will not perhaps be over rating the destruction of human life, if w were to affirm that one-tenth of the human race has been destroyed by the ravages of war and, according to this estimate, more thar IA ,000, ,O00 900 of human beings have beer slaughtered in war since the beginning of th world" Edmund Burke went still further and reckoned the sum total of its raVagcs from the first at no less than 35,0O0, 000,000.