GREAT BATTLES.

Southern Cross, Volume 3, Issue 3, 20 April 1895, Page 3

GREAT BATTLES.

Without doubt of all the battles recorded in modern history the. Ibngr est and sternest, as well as one in whichjmosCmen were engaged, was the i ihemorable battle of Leipsic, October 16, 18, and 19, 1833, called by the .Germans thq battle of the nations. The number of troops engaged is variously stated by different writers at from 136,000 to 190,000 o'n the side of Napoleon .1., ! and from 230.000 to 290,000 oh that of the allies, under Prince Schwatzenberg, Blucher, and - Bernadotte; In this awful battle the slain on both sides amounted to 80,000 and thousands of the wounded fay'for. days UroUnd th 6 ,city. In the battle of Keoniggratz, or Sadowa, July 3, 1866, fought during the ‘ seven weeks’ war,’ the allied Austrian and Saxon troops engaged amounted to about 200,000 o O # -I I • men, while the'Prussians; under their King, mustered in round numbers 230.000 combatants. The total loss of the Austrians, &c., amounted to ■about 40,000 men, while that of the, Prussians was to the melees ’of ancient days, we find it stated that at one fought at Tours,; in 732 j between the Francs and the Saracens, from 350,000 to 375,000 men were killed on the field. This would, of course, mean that many more men were engaged than at Leipsic. In a battle mentioned in JI. Chronicles, between Asa, king of Judah, and Zera, king of Ethiopia, we are told that the former had an army of a thousand thousand, or 1,000,000. Canon Rawlinson observes that this statement does not exceed the numbers of other Oriental armies. Darius Codomanus brought into the field a force of 1,040,000 men near Arbela, where he was finally defeated by Alexander the Great, 331 B. c. Xerxes, too, as Professor Rawlinson says, crossed in to Gx-eecewith certainly above 1,000,000 combatants, and Artaxerxes Memnon collected 1,200,000 to meet the attack of the younger Cyrus. | A startling condition of the American cheese trade is revealed by an article on the subject in the ‘ American Agriculturist ’ of Januaiy 26. The official returns not only indicate an enormous decline in cheese exports, but a decline in the domestic consumption of cheese per capita. This is in a large measure due to the adulteration of cheese daring the last few years.