How Men Die in Wars.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 220, 17 September 1887, Page 7

How Men Die in Wars.

A Washington correspondent of the Cincinnati "Commercial Gazette" ha* been compaiing the .statistics of the lo«* by death | of Union soldiers during the Rebellion, with the mortality of other waip. Repoits show that the Northern and Southern armies met in over 2,000 skiimWics and battle-^. In 148 of the^e conflicts the loss on the Federal side was o\er 500 men, and in at least ten battles over 10,000 men weie reported 10--fc on each side. The appended table shows that the combined losses of the Federal and Confederate forces, in killed, wounded, and missing, in the following engagements, were:Shilob, 24,000; Antietain, 38,000; Stone River, 37,000; Chancellors-Hie, 28,000 ; Gettysburg, 54,000; Chickamauga, 33,000 : McClellan's Peninsula campaign, 180,000, and Sherman's campaign, 125,000. Waterloo was one of the most desperate and bloody fields chronicled in European history, and yet Wellington's casualties were le=s than 12 per cent., his losses being 1,432 killed and 958 wounded out of over 100,000 men, while at Shiloh one side lo&t in killed and wounded, 9,740 out of 34,000, while their opponents report their killed and wounded at 9,616, making the casualties about thirty per cent. At the great battle of Wagram Napoleon lost but about 5 per cent. At Wurzburg, the French lost but Zh per cent., and yet the army gave up the field and retreated to the Rhine. At Racour, Marshal Saxe lost but 51 per cent. At Zurich, Massena 10.-t but 8 per cent. At Lagriz, Frederick lost but 6h per cent. At Malplaquet, Marl borough lost but 10 per cent., and at Ramillies the same intrepid commander lost bat six per cent. At Contras, Henry of Navarre was reported as cut to pieces, yet his loss was less than 10 per cent. At Lodi, Napoleon lost 1£ per cent. V A' Valmy, Frederick William lost bub 3 per cent., and at the great battles of Marengo and Austerlitz, sanguinary as they y.'ere, Napoleon lost an average 1 of less than 14^ per cent. At Magenta andSolferino in 1859, the average loss of both armies was less than 9 per cent. At Konigrath, in 1866, it was 6 per cent. At Werth, Specheran, Mars Le Tour, Gravelotte, and Sedan, in 1870, the average loss was 12 per cent., while at Linden General Moreau lost but 4 per cent., and the Archduke John lost but 7 per cent., in killed and wounded. Americans would scarcely coll this a lively skirmish. At Perryville, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Gettysburg, Mission Ridge, the Wilderness and Spottsylvania, the loss frequently reached, and sometimes exceeded, 40 per cent. Official statistics show that of the 3,000,000- men enlisted, there were killed in battle, 44,238 ; died of wounds, 49,205 ; died of disease, 186,216 ; died of unknown causes, 24,184 : total, 843,303. This includes only those whose death while in the army had been actually proved.