The weekly North-Carolina standard. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 186?-1869, 1866-08-01
from the London Times July 1871
The Great Battle Of .Sadowa---One Hundred
Thousand Men illed and Wounded'--Nine
Miles of Slanghtef---Siekening Scenes.

Everything that reaches us confirms the
belief that in the Sadowa the Austrian army
has been nearly ruined as a military force for
the present campaign. The bravery Of the
men shows forth cleary in every narrative
They held their positions with obstinacy !;
they advanced against the deadly fire OF the
needle-gun with all the devotion Of the SOL
der. As long as they preserved a hope Of
victory, they fought with spirit worthy Of
better leaders and better cause.
Our correspondent, writing three days af-
ter the battle, when the confusion was be-
ginning to subside, when the men were find
ing their way back to their regiments, or
what was left of them, were again being uni
ted into brigades and divisions, gives the
loss of the beaten army as probably more
than two-fifths of its whole number. ut
may be true" he says that so, 600 men were
killed, wounded, taken prisoners, or drowned,
and that $50 guns were taken, abandoned,
or thrown into the river on the retreat" Adj
ding to these losses the number of men who
must have thrown away their arms in the
retreat, we must doubt whether 100,0 900
effective men were to be found in the Army
of the North three days after the battle.
The retreat was, indeed, melancholy and
disastrous AS at Leipsic, we hear of pom
toons laden with hundreds swept down the
river and overturned with their living car
goes-of artillery and horsemen crushing
down upon and through the struggling in
fantry, jamming them into the narrow roads
and hustling them over the bridges into the
waters. In about all that is most horrible
in warfare was concentrated into this contest
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, the long suf-
ferings of the disorganized march that sue
ceeded, form combination, at which the
Imagination 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 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 state of human character
which could never be revived. Nine miles
of slaughter, ending with the drowning of a
mass of terror-stricken fugitives, is an event
which a 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 remain the most dead
ly, of the Austrian battles The Prussians
are flushed with victory, and they know that
the Army of Bohemia, unaided, is in no con-
dition to oppose them. That army must
have lost nearly half its guns. and by far the
greater part of its military stores. If they
have no other foe before them. they NAV
drive it from point to point until they'force
it to try its fortune in the very suburbs of
the capital-perhaps' on the fields which
the campaign Of 1909 made SO deplorably
famous
The Prussians have lost no time in follow
ing up their victory They would probably
have displayed even greater ardor in the
pursuit had it not been for their own heavy
losses and the want of provisions from which
all armies suffer. 1t is said that the Prussians
fought the battle of Sadowa without having
tasted food since II o'clock in the forenoon
of the day before, and. the Generals were
loud in their remonstrances against the COM
missariat. These difficulties, we may.assume,
still continue The victualing of SO enor-
nous an army is task almost beyond con-
ception, and insufficiency of supplies means
slowness of advance. Bohemia has been
already, to great extent, eaten up by the
Austrian army, and the progress of the Prus-
sian legions must be measured by their means
Of subsistence. t