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Outside the railings, on the left, was a guard of honour, with the colours of a Prussian infantry regiment, and, as the Prince entered the court, the royal standard was flung out of the front of the Prefecture, and waved over the portal. All the while the music played a wild martial flourish -drums and trumpets beating and clanging in most heart-moving exultation. Soldiers ran from all sides to see the Prince, who rode along the ranks of the regiment, and then turned into the court of the Prefecture, after which the guard of honour trooped its colours inside, and the Staff rode off to find their quarters." The same writer very vividly depicts the appearance of the Château of Versailles, with the Prince and his Prussians walking about the rooms and galleries:--

shot through the side the day before yesterday, who sat on a bench sunning himself; and the Duke of Augustenburg. The Prince remained for some time with folded arms, as if in meditation, at the top of the terrace; then turned and walked slowly back to the château, which he entered by the door under the gallery of Louis XIII., and thence proceeded through the galleries and wards, visiting the wounded, making inquiries of the men, and so on to the upper floor, where is the theatre, and walked by the endless acreage of battle-pieces which so many unfortunate people are compelled to survey in the Paris season."

The

The French did the best they could under existing circumstances to protect their capital. troops that were at Mézières during the battle of Sedan, and which somehow failed to join MacMahon when they were so sorely wanted, were for"Passing from the Hôtel du Reservoir, I went on tunately able to retire upon Paris, together with the to the château with an English acquaintance, whom untouched corps of General Vinoy, an old officer I met yesterday as we came into Versailles, and who of great courage and ability, of whom Lord Clyde had fled with his family out of Paris to avoid the siege had a high opinion. Although the Germans met last Saturday. The Duke of Augustenburg was strolling in the same direction. The doors were open at with but little opposition on their road to the the usual entrance near the chapel on the left, and the metropolis, until they were actually within sight of tickets for sunshades and umbrellas dangled uselessly the fortifications, their passage was not entirely from their nails on the rack. The guardian was not undisputed. On the 11th of September a body of there-no porter, no seller of guide-books to the gal- French cavalry drove back a Prussian reconnaisleries. So we passed out towards the gardens skirting sance before Château-Thierry. On the following the Salle des Maréchaux. All the windows were open, day an engagement took place between Uhlans and under each Marshal's picture lay a little iron camp- and Francs-tireurs at Montereau, and a similar fight bedstead with a wounded or a sick man, asleep, or thinking of some distant home-nearly all soldiers of occurred on the morning of the 14th between Poland, I was told (18th and 19th Prussian Regiments) Melun and Brie-comte-Robert, which resulted in --or tossing about in pain or dreamland. The Sisters several Francs-tireurs being made prisoners. A of Charity were moving about among them so quietly detachment of Prussians under General Keller that their great fan-shaped cap wings never moved in repulsed two hundred of these irregulars near the breeze. It was a sight to make one reflect. A Colmar on the 15th; and on the 16th fighting was burly Bavarian sitting up in bed, and looking at his going on at Athis, south of Paris, where the inhideous face with the only eye left to him in a piece of a vaders burnt the railway station, and crossed the broken mirror, while Marshal Saxe glowered on him from the opposite side! The youthful Lannes was Seine with fifty cannon. These, however, were guarding a sick Prussian, and Ney, close at hand, trifling affairs, and nothing of consequence occurred seemed as if he were recoiling from a case of typhus; until the Germans were close to Paris. Engagefor that epidemic is said to be among the sick here, ments of an indecisive character occurred on the and some of the salles are given over to wounded, and 17th and 18th, and on the 19th a battle on a serious others to sick. It was a very hot morning-a blazing scale was fought by General Ducrot, who occupied sun; all the windows were open, and, as the rooms are the heights of Villejuif, south of Paris, with four lofty and well-ventilated, a better hospital than the Château of Versailles cannot be easily found, and there divisions, and who, in extending his lines to Meudon, were breeze and shade enough at this hour to make on the south-south-west, encountered masses of the the galleries agreeable. In the gardens there was enemy spread through the woods and villages, and scarcely a creature visible; but presently three officers strongly supported by artillery. After some severe in Prussian uniform came out across the court by the fighting, the French were obliged to retreat, and, jetless and sprayless fountains, and halted at the top by the admission of M. Gambetta himself, this of the steps which lead from the terrace to the alleys, movement was effected, as far as the right wing where they stood looking out over the canal and the was concerned, with "deplorable precipitation." scene, which is lost in the far distance in the flat, uninteresting plain beyond the St. Cyr road. It was the The remainder of the troops, however, concenCrown Prince, attended by Count Eulenberg and Major trated in good order round the earthen redoubt Misckow. The only others near were a wounded man, erected on the plateau of Châtillon. Towards

four o'clock the fire of the Prussian artillery was so hot that General Ducrot was obliged to withdraw his men under cover of the forts, after spiking eight guns at the Châtillon redoubt. The Garde Mobile are stated to have evinced great steadiness and calmness; and an order of the day issued by General Trochu on the 20th said that the French artillery inflicted enormous losses on the enemy. The 1st Regiment of Zouaves, however, were severely reproved for retreating in disorder, owing to "an incomprehensible panic ;" and in non-official accounts they were described as running into Paris amidst execrations and hootings. They were arrested in great numbers, and some were shot as an example. It was said that Trochu originally intended to defend Paris without the help of an external army; but when General Ducrot arrived from Sedan, from which he escaped in the disguise of a peasant (having broken his parole, according to the Prussians), he was placed in command of 50,000 men, and sent against the advancing Germans. The Daily News affirms that, "although a pretence of reconnoitring was made, the French troops were led against an enemy whose strength and position were alike unknown, and the consequences were what might have been expected. When the French troops had been sent into the wood, they found themselves exposed, almost at point-blank range, to a murderous fire. Those corps which had not entered the wood were massed on a plateau under guns which the Germans had planted on the heights above, and mown down with shot and shell until they could bear it no longer, when they fled in utter confusion." According to a correspondent of the Opinion Nationale, the French, at seven o'clock on the morning of the 19th (the action had begun the evening before), planted their artillery-composed, it is said, of seventy-two guns-in position, and opened a vigorous fire in the direction of the woods; but for half an hour there was no reply on the part of the Germans. Several French detachments then entered the glades, and the cuirassiers, venturing too far, came upon a strong body of the enemy, and suffered heavy losses. Each tree was a fortification, and the firing was incessant. After a time, a battalion of Mobiles of the Seine came up, and began firing into the wood, where their comrades of the 16th Regiment were stationed, threw them into disorder, and caused their precipiThe sight of these men rushing out of the wood communicated a panic to the infantry regiments on the plateau, which were composed in great part of reserves and young recruits; and they also fled. The Prussians then advanced, still

tate retreat.

keeping under cover, and the French, not knowing where to fire, were completely discouraged and thrown into confusion. Another account says that the action was a sortie made by the French upon the line of march of the fifth Prussian army corps, and that, at the commencement, the attack was so far successful that the Germans were impeded in their progress. Ultimately, the second Bavarian corps, also belonging to the Crown Prince's army, arrived on the field, and decided the day in favour of the invaders. Nine guns were taken, and the outwork on the hill behind Châtillon was occupied by the Bavarians. The country south of the capital was thus left completely open to the enemy, and the hostile occupation extended in an unbroken chain all round the ill-fated city.

The Parisians now saw their fate staring them in the face; but they did not lose heart. Great preparations were made to meet the invader. The environs of the city were laid in ruins. From the gate of Neuilly to the gate of Ternes, all the houses were destroyed; but the chapel raised to the memory of the Duke of Orleans was respected. The forests in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital were burnt some days before the arrival of the Prussians; and a correspondent of the Daily News, describing the spectacle as seen from Paris, says :

"From the roof of the house in which I live I have seen the forests of Maisons, Montmorency, St. Prix, and the woods of St. Gratian, all in flames. Human ingenuity must have had a hard struggle with the rain in trying to set the trees ablaze. But, as science in our time is pretty nearly sold to the devil, the tears which Heaven wept are of no avail in saving the wind blows from the west, we, who are miles to the east sylvan beauties of the environs of Paris. Though the of the blazing forests, can smell the burnt wood. As the smoke is driven in the direction opposite to us, by the the aid of field-glasses we can witness the frightful end of many a pretty châlet or elegant villa to which the flames are being communicated. The château of the Princess Mathilde also seems destined to be thrown into the crucible. The woods and copses of St. Prix, St. Gratian, and Montmorency have been fired by been dangerous to leave in a city that in a few days means of petroleum and gas-tar, which it would have may be exposed to a bombardment. Dealers in those combustibles received notice a few days back that they must surrender to the Committee of National Defence what they could not take to a seaport out of the reach of the enemy. The firing of that part of Bondy visible from Montmartre at eleven o'clock last night was a nessed from the leads overhead. still more awful spectacle than what I have just wit The trees were perfectly dry, so that the oil and petroleum which were spilt about in the brushwood had no obstacle to contend with. Isolated columns of flame and clouds of

smoke suddenly rose, and, before half an hour, were lost in one general blaze, which stood out like a fiery wall against the sky."

The baleful light thus produced revealed to the watcher a number of deep, yawning graves on the Martyrs' Hill-vast trenches, dug to contain three or four hundred persons each, in anticipation of the slaughter consequent on encounters with the Prussians. The writer proceeds :

"These common ditches intrude themselves into the reserved burying-places purchased in perpetuity. From the mounds of clay surrounding these hideous trenches, skulls grin out, remains of smashed coffins obtrude

themselves, or rags of black cloth, once the undertaker's pride, declare the vanity of all human respectability. As the smoke and flame ascend, a chiffonier, with an eye to business, hooks up the ossuary remains of past generations. Do not think that my palette is purposely charged with garish tints, to catch the eye of the ignorant. I tell in sober earnest, and from no desire to pile up the agony,' of how women sickened when they looked at the burning forest, and screamed with terror when they saw at their feet the wide-open maw of death, ravening for human flesh, and set round, in lieu of teeth, with the broken-up skeletons of respectably buried bourgeois. . . . . 'Tis the way of Frenchmen to meet the cruel irony of destiny with jibes; jests were freely uttered by blouses and paletôts. The mocking devil was aroused, and they allowed him the fullest swing in the face of that blazing forest, and that yawning grave into which many of those who fainted, screamed, wept, jibed, or made speeches on its brink last night, may be thrown before the week is It was by order of the Hygienic Council, the Vice-President of which is M. Jules Ferry, that the gigantic trenches on the Martyrs' Hill are opened, so that putrefied corpses during the siege may not poison the air of Paris. Some of the men who stood round those charnel-houses were loud in their professions of mock admiration of the foresight, the zeal for the preservation of public health, of which such wholesale receptacles of mortality were an evidence. But would it not be better, urged a shabbily-dressed citizen, if M. Jules Ferry could persuade his colleagues that there is no glory in war, and that a good peace, however fools might think it dishonourable, would answer hygienic purposes better? A man in a threadbare

over.

society are far more favourable to the growth of vices both physical and moral, than of virtues."

Great diversity of opinion as to the advisability. of proceeding with the war existed among the Parisians. Many agreed with the shabbily-dressed speaker alluded to above, that a good peace would be worth any amount of glory, and it is said that several battalions of the Mobile and National Guards gave notice of their determination not to fire a shot unless some assurance were given them that they were not fighting for the Orleanists and the trading classes—a fate which they had some reason to apprehend. But the war party was certainly in the ascendant; and on the night of September 5th, an immense mass of people passed along the Boulevards, singing the Marseillaise, and expressing their determination to drive the Germans out of France. The leaders of the extreme Republicans did their utmost to encourage this disposition to pugnacity, and Victor Hugo sent forth a flaming appeal to the patriotism and martial fury of his countrymen. With his well-known passionate accumulation of images, he exclaimed :—-

"Let the streets of the town devour the enemy, let

the windows burst open with fury, let the rooms send forth their furniture, let the roof cast down its tiles. Let the tombs cry out; let it be felt that behind each wall there is the people and God; let flame spring everywhere from the earth; let every tuft of grass be as a burning bush. Harass them, overwhelm them, intercept their convoys, cut their traces, break the bridges, destroy the roads, blow up the soil, that France may prove a fatal abyss for Prussia. Make war night and day-the war of the mountains, of the plains, of the woods. Rise up, rise up! No truce, no repose, no sleep. Despotism has attacked Liberty. Before the sombre Germany is assailing France. warmth of our soil let this colossal army melt away like snow. Let no portion of the territory withhold its duty. Let us organise the terrible battle of the And you, O Francs-tireurs, do ye wind country. through thickets, pass over torrents, avail yourselves of darkness and gloom, glide through ravines, creep, crawl, take aim, fire, and exterminate the invasion. Defend France with heroism, with despair, with tenhuman beauty. As a preliminary to holding forth, he derness. Be terrible, O ye patriots! Stop only when lightly kicks a skull aside, and picks up an abnormally you pass a lowly hut to kiss the forehead of a sleeping carved shin-bone, on which he proceeds to expatiate infant. That infant is the future. For the future is in a Darwinian strain. The out-at-elbows pedagogue the Republic. As for Europe, what do we care about or philosopher assures us that, were it not for war, our Europe? Let her look on, if she has eyes. She can come to us if she likes. We do not ask for help. If eyes would not be perpetually offended with human ugliness and deformity. War is the reverse of the Europe is afraid, let her remain so. We shall do a Let her stop at Spartan and Athenian system of eliminating the ill-service to Europe, that is, to all. conditioned, which it only suffers to continue the race. home if she wishes it." Like father like child. The descendants of the individual whose shin-bone the speaker holds are probably bandy-legged creatures, for the conditions of modern

paletôt makes a little discourse on the results of war on

And in another place :-"Lyons, take thy gun; Bordeaux, take thy carbine; Rouen, draw thy sword;

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Sisters, our fathers, husbands, brothers, sons, all, are now engaged in preserving us from the scourge of war! We tender our thanks to those gallant men who offer to shed their blood in defence of their homes and their flag. But shall we remain wanting in such devotion? No, a thousand times no. In peace time, princesses, marchionesses, or baronesses, have held the first rank in the social scale. Let them now seek shelter elsewhere-those titled women who are wanting in courage because wanting in love. In a period of

in ordinary times do not often share your pleasures, we seek, we demand, our place in the conflict-in the path of danger. We are thirsting to steep our souls in great emotions. All of us, women and children, must take part in the great struggle of a people defending, foot by foot, the sanctity of their city. When the enemy shall behold us all ranged around the same banner, defending our cherished liberty, then they will comprehend our union and our strength. Women of Paris, do not desert your homes, do not fly from this

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