The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-09-12
MIGHTY BATTLES

That of Liao- Yang is q Record Maker. Never in the history of modern war
 fare has there been a battle between arr mics of a greater magnitude than those that have been struggling for suprema- cy upon the Manchurian plain about Liao- Yang, if the numbers aseribed to the combatants are correct. To find a parallel to the numbers of Japanese and Russians one has to turn back to the days of Alaric the Goth, Atilla the Hun, Xerxes the Persian or Genghis
 Khan the Mongol. These, however, led untrained and undisciplined nations rather than armies. While the army with which Napoleon started for Mos COW, numbering over four hundred thousand men. exceeded in total that of either combating force at Liao-Yang. no battle of the Napoleonic era rlvalled the present struggle. The Franco
 Prussian war offers no rival, while
 Gettysburg, Chickamauga, and even the desperate battles in the Wilderness, from the Rapidan to PetersbIrg, in the civil war, seem inconsiderable in conn parisor. ....
 Two conflicts in the nineteenth cen tury, however, both in the magnitude of the contest and in their actual phys ical surroundings, suggest the struggle in Manchuria. One was the battle of Leipsic, where Napoleon endured his first great defeat and the grande arrnee it's first rout. It was waged for a week about the old city of Leipsic, in Saxo- ny. Russians, Swedes, Prussians, Aus trians and numberless contingents of smaller states overwhelmed the French lin the battle, which is still known as 'the Combat of the Nations" In the several battles of Leipsic one hundred and fifty thousand French and over two hundred and eighty thousand allies were engaged. The battles were fought for several days on several fields, from October 16 to IS, 1913. In the end the French were driven through the city, thousands were captured, more were drowned in the untimely destruction of a bridge across the EIbe, and the total French loss in killed, wounded and cap tured exceeded seventy-eight thousand, while the allies lost more than fifty three thousand. The results of the bat tie, while not immediately conclusive, since Napoleon managed to extricate the wreck of his army and retreat to France, practically marked the end of his empire.
 The other example of warfare about a city situated like Lfao-Y Yang was the struggle about Metz in 1871, when the French, under Bazaine were forced back into the city by 8 flanking move- ment similar to that practised by the Japanese. Marshal Bazaine was driv- zen back from the road to Paris and finally captured. In Gravelotte, the de- ciding battle of this campaign, the Prussiana overwhelmed the French by force of numbers, the forces engaged in this fight comparing favorably with those engaged in Manchuria. The French numbered nearly one hundred and fifty thousand, while the Prussians exceeded two hundred thousand. The French loss amounted to fourteen thousand, the Prussians to more than twenty-one thousand.
 As direct consequence of this fight, Bazaine was penned up in Metz, as many experts have expected Kuropat- kin would be in Liao-Yang, and two months later surrendered over one hundred and seventy-three thousand men, the entire regular army of France, together with vast number of cannon and huge supplies The battle of Se- dan, which ended similarly, was not dissimilar in geographical conditions; and the French army, under Marshal MacMahon, with Napoleon III by his side, was surrounded and captured af- ter bloody battle lasting single day. Here Won Moltke and the Prussian army succeeded in driving the French into the valley of the Mouse, surround ed on three sides by heights occupied by Germans and on the the fourth by the Belgian frontier. The numbers en- gagged here were smaller than at Metz.
 The civil war presents few instances of huge numbers meeting in battle. At Gettysburg less than one hundred and seventy-five thousand were engaged on