On a Battle
deplorably slow, and neither possessing the information nor the initiative to strike at his opponent during a three-weeks' march, at no point of which was either army so much as fifty miles from the other. These farcical three weeks ended in a sort of skirmish difficult to describe, and apparently confined to the extreme left of the Patagonian forces. The Utopians here effected some sort of confused advance, which was soon checked. At the other end of the line they retired before a partial movement of the enemy, effected without any apparent object, and certainly achieving no definite result. The total losses in killed and wounded were less than seven per cent of those engaged. The next day negotiations were entered into between the two generals; their weary discussion occupied a whole week, during which hostilities were suspended. The upshot of the whole thing was the retirement of the Patagonian Army under guarantees, and in consideration of the acceptation of the old frontier by the Utopian Government. Politically the campaign is beneath notice, as both territories were absorbed six months after in the recasting of the map after the Treaty of Lima, and the policing of them handed over to the now all-conquering Northern Power. Even as military history the operations deserve little more than passing notice, save, perhaps, as an example of the gross yet ever recurrent folly of placing numerically large commands in the hands of aged men. Mitza, upon the occasion of this fiasco, was over seventy-five
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