The daily phoenix. [volume] (Columbia, S.C.) 1865-1878, 1866-08-02

ssss.sAssass ss
The ossat hattie OF ,saae,va.---s,r.
Hundred Thousand Hfcn KillcS
Everything that reaches us CON.
firms the belief that in the battle oi
Sadowa the Austrian army has been
nearly ruined, as military force, for
the present campaign. The bravery
OF the men shows forth clearly in
every narrative. They held their
positions with obstinacy; they ad-
vanced against the deadly fire of the
needae-gun with all the devotion of
the soldier. As long as they pre-
served hope of victory, they fought
with spirit worthy of better leaders
and better cause.
Our correspondent, writing three
days after the battle, when the con-
fusion was beginning to subside,
when the men were finding their way
back to their regiments, and regi-
ments, or what was left of them,
were again being united into brigades
and divisions, gives the loss Of the
beaten army as probably more than
two-fifths of its whole number. "It
may be true" he says, ssthat 80, 600
men were killed, wounded, taken
prisoners, or drowned, and that $50
guns were taken, abandoned or
thrown into the river on the retreat. {"
Adding to these losses the number of
men who must have thrown away
their arms in the retreat, we must
doubt whether 10000 effective men
were to be found in the Army of the
North three days after the battle.
The retreat was, indeed, melan-
choly and disastrous. AS at Leipsic,
we hear of pontoons laden with hun
dreds swept down the river and
overturned with their living cargoes-
of artillery and horsemen crashing
down upon and through the strug-
Cling infantry, jamming them into
the narrow roads and hustling them
over the bridges into the waters In
about all that is most horrible in war
fare was concentrated into this con-
test. A long struggle, lasting the
entire day, the moving down of
whole regiments by the firing of the
enemy, the burning of villages, the
horrible incidents of flight through
an inundated country, and, finally,
theslong suferings of the disorgan-
lied march that succeeded, form a
combination at which the imagina-
ton is shocked and saddened.
1t is difficult to bring ones self to
believe that such horrors have been
enacted in our own time and in q
region SO near and so familiar. We
had heard and read of such fields of
slaughter, but they seemed to belong
to an age and a state of human cha
racter which could never be revived
Nine miles of slaughter, ending with
the drowning Of mass Of terror
stricken fugitives, are an event which,
n few years since, the wisest would
have pronounced impossible in the
Europe of to-day.
Unless the course OF hostilities be
stayed, there is reason to fear that
Sadowa will not be the last, though
it may remain the most deadly of the
Austrian battles The Prussians arc
flushed with victory, and they know
that the army of Bohemia, unaided,
is in no condition to oppose them.
That army must have lost half its
guns, and by far the greater part OF
its military stores. If they have nc
other foe before them, they may
drive it from point to point until
thoy forcA it to try its fortune in the
very suburbs of the caplJal-p, rhar.
on the fields which the campaign OF
1869 made SO deplorably famous.
The Prussians have lost no time il
following up their victory They
would probably have displayed even
greater ardor in the pursuit, had i
not been for their own heavy losses
and the want of provisions from
which all armies suffer. 1t is sale
that the Prussians fought the battl
of Sadowa without having tastet
food since IL o'clock in the forenoon
of the day before, and the General
were loud in their remonstrancc
against the commissariat. Thes
difficulties, we may assume, still con
tinue The victualing Of SO enor
nous an army is task almost beyon
conception, and insufficiency of SUP
plies means slowness of advance
Bohemia has been already, to grea
extent, eaten up by the Austria
army, and the progress of the Prus
sian legions must be measured b
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