Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 10.djvu/276

 264

��The Northern Volunteers.

��13, 1862, Hancock's division ad- vanced over open ground in the face of the most destructive storm of can- non shots and bullets, and left its dead within twenty-five vards of the enemy's line. It lost 2,169 out of its 5,000 men — over forty-three per cent. The greatest loss of any German bat- talion of 1,000 men at Gravelotte was fifty per cent. Eight of Han- cock's regiments, numbering 2,548 men, lost 1,324 — nearly fifty-two per cent. — at Fredericksburg. On the 3d of May, 1863, Sedgwick's division carried this same position at F'reder- icksburg by an assault impetuous enough to satisfy the most exacting military critic.

The assault is necessary where a fortified position is to be taken in battle, but with the disappearance of the musket of slow fire and short range such tactics become foolhardy where an attack is to be made on troops of good morale in open ground. To rush toward such a line while it fires on the assaulting line is to court destruction. The attacking party must send bullet for bullet Pickett's charge at Gettysburg showed this.

To pursue the comparison of our troops with the Germans, we read that at Saarbrticken-Forbach the French, in their advance against the Prussians, began firing with their small arms at 1,500 paces, and kept it up to within 1,000 paces ; and the admiring historians say, — " But each of these attacks was defeated by the incomparable steadiness and bravery of the Prussian infantry and artillery, and the wonderfully precise fire of the flanking batteries." If we did not know that the Prussian troops could stand more than this, we should

��get a pretty low opinion of them from such praise. In Virginia an officer who opened fire with small arms at 500 yards would hare been thought light-headed, and our army officers to-day would look upon fire at more than that distance as wasted.

It is true that the Cbassepot of 1870 carried farther than the Spring- field rifle of 1861, but the point blank range of the former was only 300 yards, while that of the latter was 200 yards. Point blank range is that at which the rifle barrel points at the mark. At any longer range the rifle must point upward. To reach 1,500 yards, as the French tried to do, would require the rifle barrels to point toward the stars. Difference in arms, country, and adversaries renders abso- lute comparisons of the conduct of soldiers of different nations very diffi- cult. But the ratio of killed and wounded in a series of battles affords a comparison which is a good test of character, because in the long run it is the killing and wounding that most tries the manhood and soldiership of an army. The following is a com- parison of these ratios in our army and the German army in the Franco- German war of 1870, the greatest of modern times, excepting ours :

Kumber Killed and Per

Battles. Eiifraged. Wounded. Cent.

Viouvllle 80,000 16,500 20

Gravelotte 146,000 20,000 14

AVorth 90,000 8,000 9

Sedan 120,000 10.000 8

1861-5.

Gettv.«buig 82.('00 16,534 20

Stone's Kiver 43,400 8,798 20

Chiekanianca 55,000 11,000 20

Fredeiicksburg 80,000 12.358 15

Sluloli 61,000 9,000 15

Wilderness 100,000 15.000 15

Antietam 87,000 12.000 14

Chanccllorsville 120.000 17,000 14

Cold Harbor lOn.OOO 13.000 13

Fair Oaks 60,000 5,000 8

If asked to name the most promi- nent traits of the Northern volunteers

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