The Nashville daily union. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1862-1866, 1863-07-10
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1t is difficult TO conceive what fearful
havoc the custom of war has made of
human life. Some of its incidental
ravagei seem 10 defy belief. IL has at
times entirely depopulated immense
districts. In modern, as wei! as ancient
times, large tracts have been left so
utterly desolate that one might psss
from village to village, even from city TO
city, without finding a solitary inhab-
liant. The war of 1856, waged in the
heart of Europe, lett, in one instance.
no less than twenty contiguous villages
without a single man or beast. The
thirty years war, in the seventeenth
century, reduced the population of Ger
many from 100000 to 100000
three fOurths and that of Wirtemburg
from 100000 to 48,00O-more than nine
tenths! Thirty thousand villages were
destroyed; In many others the popula-
tion entirely died out; and in districts
once studded with towns and cities,
there sprang up immense forests.
Look at the havoc of sieges; in that
of Londonderry 1900 soldiers, besides a
vast number Of inhabitants in that of
Paris, in the sixteenth century, 10000
victims of mere hunger; in that of NAL
praquet, $4,000 soldiers alone; in that of
Ismail, 10000; of Viena, 10000; of o.
tend, 10000; Of Mexico, 10000; of
Arc, 100000; Of Carthage, 100000; of
Jerusalem, 1000. 600!
Mark the slaughter of single battles F:
at Lepanto, rs, 700 men; at Austerlitz.
10000; at Eylau, 10000; at Waterloo
and Quatre Bras, one engagement in fact,
100000; at BOrodinO, at FOntenoy, 100
900; at Arbels, 100000; at Ghalons.
100000 Of Attila's army alone; 400. 600
Usipetes slain by julius Caesar in one
battle, and 100000 Germans in another.
Take only two cases. The army of
Xerxes, says DR.. Dick, must have
amounted to 5,283, 800; and if the at
PENDANTS we're only one-third as great as
common at the present time in eastern
countries, the sum total must have
reached nearly 100000. Yet, in one
year, this vast multitude was reduced,
though not entirely by death, to 300,-
600 fighting men; and of these only 5000
escaped destruction. Jenghis Khan, the
terrible raVager of Asia in the thirteenth
century, shot 10000 on the plains of
Mesa, and massacred 100000 at the
storming of Charaism, In the Herat
district, he butchered 1.600, 900; and in
two cities, with the dependencies, 1,70O,s
600. During the last twenty-seven
years of his long reign, he is said to
have massaored more than half amillion
every year; and in the first fourteen
years, he is supposed, by Chinese his
t%orians, to have destroyed not less than
49, 900; a sun total Of 32,000,00 in
forty-one years!
In any view, what a fell destroyer is
war; Napoleon's wars sacrificed some
5000, 600; and all the wars consequent
on the French revolution, some nine OF
ten millions. The Spaniards are said ia
have destroyed, in forty-two years, more
than 100000 of American Indians
Greeian wars sacrificed $4,000. 600;
Jewish wars, 100000; the wars of the
twelve Caesars, 100000; in all the
wars of the Romans, before Julius Caesar,
60,000,O00; the wars of the Roman EN-.
pire, of the Saracens and the Turks, co.
100000 each those of the Tartars, So
100000; thossof Africa, 100,000000l
"If we take into consideration" says
the learned DIR. Dick, "the number no,
only of those who have fallen in battle,
but of those who have persisted through
the natural consequences of war, we
will not, perhaps, be overra,iDg the de-
struetion Of human life, ii we were to
affirm that one tenth of the human race
has been destroyed by the rayages Of
war; and, according TO this estimate,
more than ii, 900, 000,0 Of human be-
ings 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 35, 0O0,000,000.