This is not a history in any sense, and it can hardly be called a story of the war, which was the greatest war of the age. There have been many wars of longer duration, and there have been slaughterings of weaker races by stronger ones: but this was, from the first, a death grapple between two civilizations represented by branches of the same dominant race, and for four long years the echoes of the picket's rifle never ceased. The desperate and heroic character of the contest is attested by the high proportion of casualties in both armies, which were far in excess of those of any modern European war.