THE FRANCS-TIREURS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1005, 4 March 1871, Page 6

THE FRANCS-TIREURS.

One thing is certain (writes an occasional correspondent of the Times from Tours), that the Francs-tireurs have become a most important element in this war. jtSTot- so much from the number of the enemy they may kill off with pot shots, but from the serious interruption they cause to that system of tentacular feeling of the far distant surrounding country, so to speak, which has been one of the essential features of this marvellous German invasion of France. He adds — " The TJblan scouting system was essential to the Prussian method of invasion. Well, if they have not done much else, the omnipresent Frano-tireurs have clipped many at least of those important tentacles. We hear little more of the * four Uhlans.' The German corps and divisions and mi&or massed bodies have to make their way about the country as they beßt can — sometimes in the dark, sometimes in twilight, but no longer in the blaze of noonday (to them) as they did at first. Singly each scouting avant courier of Uhlans may be of no vital importance. Out off all the tentacles of the pieuvre, and his fate, sooner or later, is sealed. This is just the work the Francs-tireurs are doing, and have largely done. No wonder that a sagacious instinct prompted the great Prussian strategists to declare a war of extermination against them from the outset, to declare them an organised brigandage, to say that they were not regular, respectable, commissioned soldiers, entitled to the immunities of war when captured. The Francs-tireurs have now grown into a great, serious, and regular institution. They are all uniformed, in a thousand fashions, but distinctively and unequivocally. They are regularly commissioned »nd brigaded, and now reiponpiblf &t>

tached to the armies of the regions in whioh they operate and swarm. When captured they cannot conceal or disavow their character. Why have they not a right to serve and defend the country, thus invaded, in this way as well as in any other?"