The weekly mountain Democrat. [volume] (Placerville, El Dorado County, Calif.) 1861-1862, 1862-08-02
The Terrible Havoc Of war.

The Terrible Havoc OF war.
II is difficult to conceive what fearful
havoc the custom Of war has made of hu.
man life. Some of its incidental ravages
seem to defy belief 1t has at times en-
tirely depopulated immense districts. In
modern, as well ns ancient times, large
tracts have been left so utterly desOate
that one might pass from village to viii
lage, even from city to city, without find
ing solitary inhabitant. The war of
1856, waged in the heart of Europe, left,
in one instance, no less than twenty con-
tiguous villages without a single man or
beast. The thirty years war, in the sew
| enteenth century, reduced the population
OF Germany from Il. 600, 900 to 100000
three fourthS and that Of Wirtemburg
! from 900, 900 to 49. 600 more than nine
| tenthS Thirty thousand villages were
destroyed; in many others the population
| entirely died out; and in districts once
studded with towns and cities, immense
forests sprung up.
Look at the havoc Of sieges: in that Of
Londonderry, $4,000 soldiers, besides n
vast number of inhabitants; in that of
Paris, in the sixteenth century, &c, 900
victims of mere hunger; in that of NAL
phaquet, $4,000 soldiers alone; in that Of
lSmail, 10000; of Vienna, 100000; of
| OStend, 128,000; of Mexico, 10000; Of
Acre, 100000; of Carthage, 100000; of
Jerusalem, 100000.
Mark the slaughter Of single battles: at
Lcpanto, $4,000; at AuSterli,z, 10000;
at Eylau, $4,000; at Waterloo and Quatrc
Bras, one engagement, in fact, 100, 900
az iiorodino aud FonNtnty, 100000; at
Arbela, 800, 900; at ChalcnS, 30o,000 Of
: .L.AilS3a E5iBlr ar6steS A4Q0,0O0 t>ipeteS
slain by Julius Caesar in one battle, and
1870, 900 Germans in another.
Take ouly two cases: The army OF
NrrxcS, says DR.. Dick, must have num-
bercd 5 1888, 800; and if the attendants
were only one.third as great as common
at the present time in Eastern counties,
the sum total must have reached nearly
six millions. Yet, in one year, this vast
multitude was reduced, though not en-
tirely bv death, to three hundred thous
and fighting men; and of these only eight
thousand escaped destruction. JENNIE
Kahn, the terrible ravager Of Asia in the
thirteenth century, shot ninety thousand
on the plains of NeSSa. and maSsacred
two hundred thousand at the Storming Of
CharaSin. In the llerat district he
butchered one Milli00 six bundrcdhhouS-
and and in two cities, with their Deepen.
nencieS, ore million seven hundred thuu-
sand. During the last twenty seven
years of his long reign, he is said to have
ma>sacred more than half million eve
ry year and, in the first fourteen years.
he is supposed, by Chinese historians, to
have destroyed not less than eighteen
millions "a sum total of thirty.two mill
ioES in forty-one years!
In any view, wha; fell destroyer is
war; Napoleon's wars sacrificed some
six millions and all the wars consequent
on the French Revolution, some nine or
ten millions. The Spaniards are said to
have destroyed, in furty-two years, more
than twelve millions Of American Indians.
Grecian wars sacrificed fifteen millions
JEWS wars, twenty-five millions; the
wars of the twelve Caesars, thirty millions;
in all the wars Of the Romans, before JG
Illus Caesar, sixty millions; the wars of
the Roman Empire, of the Saracens and
the Turks, sixty millions each those Of
the Tartars, eighty millions; those of AZ
RIGA, one hundred millions. "If we take
into consideration" says the learned DR..
Dick, 1.-THE number not only of those who
have fallen in battle, bus Of those who
have persisted through the natural conse-
quenceS of war, it will not, perhaps, be
oycrratiug the destruction of human life,
if we wore to affirm that one-tcnth of the
human race has been destroyed by the
ravageS of war; and according to the cs
innate more than $4,000, 5000 of hu
man beings have been slaughtered in war
since the beginning of the world Ed
mund Burke went still further, and reck
oned the sum total of its ravagrS, from
the first, at no less than $4,000, 0Uo, 900.