Rensselaer Republican, Volume 15, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1883 — When Armies Fought Hand to Hand. [ARTICLE]

When Armies Fought Hand to Hand.

In the days of hand to hand fighting, when missile weapons were employed by a comparatively small portion of the combatants. the vanquished were generally almost annihilated and the victors suffered enormously. At Cannae 40,000 Romans out of 80,000 were killed. At Hastings the Nortons, though the victors, lost 10,000 out of 60,000. and at Creoy 30,000 Frenchmen out of 100,000 were, it is asserted, killed, without reckoning the wounded. When the flint-look reigned the average of the proportion of the killed and wounded in ten battles, beginning with Zorndorf in 1758 and ending with Waterloo, was from one-fourth to one-fifth of the troops present on both sides. The heaviest loss was at Zorndorf, where 32,916 men out of 82,000 were killed or wounded. It was also very heavy at Eylau, being 55,000 casualties out of 160,000 men. In the campaign in Italy in 1859 riles were used bn both sides, and we find that the proportion of casualties to combatants was at Magenta and Solferino one-eleventh. In the FranooPrusnia war of 1870 71, when both sides were armed with breech-loading rifles, the proportion of killed and wounded at Worth, Spiohdren, Mars-le-Tour, Gravelotte and Seadan was one-ninth, the heaviest loes being at Mars-le Tour, where it was one-sixth, and the smallest at Sedan, where it was one-twelfth. A Greeneburg cow recently gave birth to a calf with two heads, four eye, six legs and two tails. * In Birmingham, Alsu, chickens are almost as much of a luxury as they were during the late war.