Sunbury American. [volume] (Sunbury, Pa.) 1848-1879, 1866-10-27
OLD SERIES, VOL. 81, NO. 3

sand men were there opposed, and possibly
half million, as bulletins say. We all
know how armies are magniGed on both
| sides till after defeat, and in this war the
military braggart has been as eminently
elastic as in our own. The least truthful of
all contemporary historians is the soldier
himself. Had he to write our descriptions
he might make his own reputation. but
would certainly ruin ours. At Austcrlitz.
Bonaparte opposed seventy thousand men
to the allies ninety thousand. Sadowa
was Tough. in the month of July, Auster-
litz past the meridian of November. The
former was the most terrible butchery, the
most artful embattling.
One finds in the Sadowa battle only the
Prussian Crown Princes swift and perscve-
ring march to applaud; but Austeritz was
a piece of daring adroitness, fought eight
hundred miles from Paris, with q great and
incensed capital to guard behind, and not,
as at Sadowa, the Italian army of Austria
compelled to face the Po, but marching
vigorously, eighty thousand strong, upon
the Frenchman's rear, while Prussia secretly
inimical to him, was edging up through
Bohemia to join the allies at the first note
of their success. The great inveigler, plead
ing false desires for peace, first flushed the
them to advance VIGOROUSLY, till by their
very success they had become outflanked,
then drove them pell-mell upon his bayonets
on the one hand and on the frozen lake on
the other, where they were drowned by
acres when the ice crashed under the French
artillery. Both battles were equally signal
defeats to Austria. Sadowa was more pi-
quaint misery, because inflicted on her in
sight of Germany, and by lesser state.
My ride over the field of Sadowa was
scarcely pleasurable, because the cholera
had left there only the collapsed and aged,
and the peasants hcreabouts have the repu-
tation of veritable ghous and gaours, whose
atrocities to the dead pass human belief.
They have behaved worse than any class of
isavages would do in America, cutting purses
and jewelry from the wounded, stripping
the dead of garments, in word, revcnging
themselves upon history, which has done
nothing for them these three centuries. Sad
owa itself is an European Culpepper; for ex-
ample, little stony.faced town, with a
bulbously- shaped church stceple in it, two
beer-shops, and the usual per centage Of
Austrian civil officers.
An old woman in black stockings stood
alone in The open place of the hamlet, look
ing at the hospital wagons that passed across
the horizon. She did not know anything,
except that two of the Hasmer Somebody's
boys, near by, had gone off with the soldiers
o week ago to get back their horses, i'm
pressed after action. Had We seen them
} No ? That was strauge That was all she
knew about the fight. Everything in the
place is more or less shot to pieces The
, battle field itself is series of hills, hall
corn. patch half scrub timber, inclined to
be mountainous. and to some extent resem-
bling the lands at the foot of the Blue
Ridge-Cedar Mountain, for example. AT
places on it there are vistas of far white
plains, prairc-like, but of the deadly spots
themselves nothing remains save the uneven
trenches, where the dead, dumped in as
, they lay remain to testify against the mon.
strous enigma of ambition, submission, and
. ignorance in which they persisted at that
Y far dim time when God shall make ii plain
2 why our kind are thus causelessly and per
: petually slaughtered. AT this spot the two
; Prussian armies capped the double lines o
y victory: Sachnow, PoGoll, Munchengratz
u Gitschin or the one hand, Nachod. Skalitz
J, Trautenau, on the other. 1t would be absur,
V for me to waste time in describing a scrie
d of bare slope-stretches and curving hill
4 about which none of your readers had
o particle of curiosity. Suffice it to say tina
}. all the view Of Sadowa is repattion of tn
c Virginia miseries of our own rebellion; no
Il any better country, though it has the spruce
l. ness and tidness of age over it all bette
d cleaned up, better contented, but INHABITED
" by hewers of wood and drawers of water
+. who forget that Christ ever came, in th
It better recollection that they may some da.
e go hence to Him.
The graves of the dead are marked wit
d wooden crosses, with now and then heI
!, met or hat set upon top of them. Her
% and there is splinteyed caisson or cannon
d wheel that some old witch is splitting u
n for tirewood. They call this field of glory
in at Berlin, but as l lay awake last night o
n Brunn, in triple-bedded room, talkin
is with some Austrian officers about it all,
to could not make out otherwise than that, b
le all this numbering, Germany stands as sh
or Gid-shitted about trifie, but no fTeer, n
r. securer no easier in conscience or at pocke
III She is the same poor pipe drunken, dream
ing, thrifty, fatteued, hopeful, heterogeneor
TX Germany that she has ever been in yor
to time and mne Yesterday the Kaiser ha
ne her by silkeE cord; to-day the Prussia
IL King has her by the throttle. Such a vel
Id deserving poor prostitute OF genius n
IN dog star shines upon! She lost two {
,u three great chances for redress, and freedo
H. punishes nations and races for losing cha
ur ces.
Il, W nat SlOIIOus DuIst " hopO SpuiN
no these countries see in the return Of son
ur enormous convulsion ike that of France, {
revolution before Bonaparte mastered
,r- which, whatever sycophaut moralists al
it. historians may have to say, was the worl'
Ii great opportunity. Then, this pipe drum
lse en- Germany" as Carlyle would call it, low
Tor territory better than freedom, spent ienon
so nious years of deserved defeat to beat bO
$50 French ideas, for which French ideas
IN. prevail to-day, its people would give
ars land, the Sclave provinces, and the statI
er- of all the big booted prince generals
or -----------@-sos~ -
ng CLOVER SEEDING believe, says the 4
ng raj Nep Yorker, that crop OF clover sc
ast taken from the land exhausts the SOIL M
of than the crop which is cut for hay. A
seed crop, it is well-known, is more exha