People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 August 1893 — FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR LOSSES. [ARTICLE]

FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR LOSSES.

The French Dead Numbered 136,000 and the German Dead 49,000. In discussing the German army bill Militaerische Wochenblatt contains a statement which is said to have never been published so fully before relative to losses in the Franco-Prussian war: According to this paper there fell on the battlefield or died of their wounds on the German side 1,881 officers and 26,397 men; the number of wounded was 4,239 officers and 84,304 men; of the missing, 127 officers and 12,257 men, aggregatinga total loss of 6,247 officers and 123,453 men.

Among the missing those still missing or as to whose fate no certain information has been obtained up to the year 1892 must be counted among the dead. These, numbering about 4,000, and the 17,105 who perished from disease, bring the total up to 49,000 Germans who died for their country during this memorable war. On the other side it is estimated that the French lost 2,900 officers and 186,000 men by death, of whom 17,638 died in German hospitals. There fell of infantry, at its average strength, 4.47 per cent.; of cavalry, 1.40 per cent.; of artillery, 1.28 per cent., and of the pioneers, 87 per cent. As to the separate contingents the Hessians paid dearest with their blood for the restoration of the unity of the German empire, losing 6.97 per cent.; the Bavarians 5.58 percent:; the Saxonians 5.40 per cent.; the Prussians 4.85 per cent.; the Badeners 8.76, and the Wurtembergers 3.51. A very large number of German soldiers had to be placed upon the invalid list after the war, numbering 69,896 subalterns and men who were in active service in 1870-71. This is 6.28 per cent of all the German soldiers who went into the field. The pension appropriation of the German empire amounts to about 500,000,000 marks, or $119,000,000, out of which the wounded and dependent survivors of the late war receive their pensions.