RESULTS OF MODERN WARFARE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 185, 13 October 1876, Page 9

RESULTS OF MODERN WARFARE.

The common belief, one apparently founded in reason, is that notable improvement in warlike weapons involves a corresponding increase in the slaughter and horrors of war, and so — or, at least, this is the theory of a certain school of philosophers — tends to the ultimate abolition of war itself. The contrary is maintained with much ingenuity by a recent essayist in England, himself a military man, who contends that while the chief feature in the military history of the past 20 years — say since the Crimean War — has been the vast improvement both in small arms and artillery, in firearms the proportion of killed and wounded to combatants has been lessened as compared with the results obtained from the oldfashioned weapon. That the firelock or old Brown Bess should have been more deadly than the Snider-Enfield, Martini-Henry, Springfield, Ohassepot, or needle-gun, and the clumsy old smoothbore cannon than the rifled Krupp or Armstrong field-gun, seems an absurdity ; nevertheless the facts are these. Taking the great battles of modern European history anterior to the Franco-Austrian campaign of 1859, we find that at Talavera, 1809, one-eighth of the combatants engaged were killed and wounded ; at Austerlitz, 1805, one-seventh; at Malplaquet, 1709, Prague, 1759, and Jena, 1806, one-sixth,- at Friedland, 1807, and Waterloo, 1815, one-fifth; at Marengo, 1800, one-fourth ; at Borodino, 1812, nearly one-third, 80,000 of 250,000 combatants falling; at Salamanca, 1812, and Leipsic, 1813, one-third, the estimate of the latter battle including only the French ; at Elvan, 1807, of a total effective of 160,000, there fell or were wounded 55,000, or more than a third, while at Zorndorf, 1758, the most murderous of modern battles, 32,800 of the 82,000 Russians and Prussians engaged were stretched on the field at the close of the day, or two-fifths. At Solferino, the first great battle in which rifled fire-arms were employed, the loss fell to one-eleventh, that is to say, was one quarter less than that at Talavera, the least bloody of the earlier battles recorded above, while as compared with Zorndorf, less than one-fourth of the per centage of killed and wounded was maintained. At Koniggratz, where the breach-loader came into play, the loss was barely one-fifteenth of the force engaged. During the war of 1870 the loss at Worth was one-eleventh, and at Sedan one-tenth, while at Gravelotte, which was popularly believed to be one of the most tenaciously fought and bloody battles of modern times, it was but one-tenth. It must be remarked that in this campaign the I mitrailleuse came into play, and that the part borne by the German I field artillery was such as almost to amount to a revolution in field tactics. The same proportion of decreased casualties from improved weapons is preserved in earlier history. Zorndorf was but a skirmish to Cressy red, where the French lost in killed alone 30,000 men, 1,300 knights, and 11 princes. On the fatal field of Cannae 50,000 of 80,000 Bonians was slain, and in the same campaign, at the battle of the Metaurus, a Carthaginian army hastening to the reinforcement of Hannibal, was literally destroyed. The reasons for this apparent paradox are, after all, simple. In the early days of Roman or Grecian warfare, where the weapons were the pilm or spear, heavy hand-to-hand fighting was the absolute rule, followed by a massacre when one side or the other gave way and fled. In the middle ages fighting was well-nigh as close and the pursuit quite as bloody, while the undefended archers or spearmen fell easily before the knights or men-at-arms. When firearms were introduced, and fighting was carried on from a distance, 1 and the end of the battle was usually the capture and loss of a commanding position, the proportion of loss was immensely 1 diminished. Then, too. each successive improvement made in ' weapons has been met by corresponding alterations in tactics to \ obviate its results. The day of massive columns or deep forma- * tions to be mown down by fire reserved, as at Bunker Hill, New Orleans or Fontenoy, till the men "can see the white of the enemy's eyes/ has gone by, and troops now engage at longer distances, in much looser order, and, above all, make more use of cover.