WAR ITEMS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3115, 4 February 1871, Page 3

WAR ITEMS.

9~ THE GERMANS BEFORE PARIS. The " Times" correspondent at Versailles, writing on the 14th November, says : — We have had cold as well as wet weather this week, but the invading * troops do not complain. The outposts are changed every day, and every eight days all the battalions change quarters.' Matters are so managed tliat no battalion has more than a week of hard times. Blanc Memel is anything but a desirable yiAice even for a week's residence. Le -Swurget is rather worse; but I know of worse still — a temporary wooden barrack, consisting of a series of sheds, in a field where the occupants are up to their ankles in wet clay. In those quarters the several battalions of the Queen Augusta Regiment are obliged to take turns week about, but her Majesty of Prussia is very kind to these troops. She sends them various luxuries from Berlin, and they are very hnppy, even under the adverse circumstances of their quarters being in a place of damp and desolation. No sjr.h thing as "short commons" has been experienced by any | of the troops. They have plenty to eat and to drink. There is no private without his wine and his tobacco. The Saxon soldiers iD these head-quarters havfl a tobacco allowance of five cigars a day — the same number as that served out to the officers. Oxen and sheep are slaughtered daily at all the quarters, and the soldiers' soup, prepared from preserved meat, is excellent. Brandy is not among the articles of regulation allowance, but it is given to the men actually on post duty, and the others can and do procure it at the markeltender, or canteen. Up to this date November here has not been as severe as we usually have it in London, and the Germans say it is an improvement on what they are accustomed to at home. There does not appear, therefore, any probability of their being obliged to retire from cold or hunger. A letter from a Prussian Guardsman before Paris, describes an interview be tween French and German officers at the outposts : — " We first saw them 400 or 500 paces off, when they stood on the road, took off their caps, showed us their brandy flasks, and drank to us. We responded to their greeting, and motioned with handkerchiefs that they might come to us. After a quarter of an hour 1 , two officers, with a small whito flag, and fourteen men came nearer, extending their hands and showing that they had no weapons, tho officers only having their swords. About 200 paces off the fourteen men halted, and the officers advanced further. Our officers and we went ten paces towards them, and saluted them. They said they could not see why we should not mutually correspond and impart news. They were tired of the war. We promised not to fire on each other. The fourteen men, on seeing us talking ■with their officers, came up also, and shook hands with us. Several more would have come, but their officers motioned them to remain where they were., We shared our cigars, cognac, &c, with which they were much pleased. We also allowed them a taste of our sausages, just cooked, which they thought capital. They told us that their outposts were not suffering .want, as they had *pork or ass's flesh thrice a week, but in the city things were bad, and they wished there might soon be peace, for Paris could not hold out long. On i our asking why they at first fired so j often without hurting us, they replied that they wanted to frighten us. After remaing about an hour they turned back, ; shaking their hands and thanking us repeatedly." i A PEACEFUL SORTIE. The " Times" correspondent at Versailles gives the following account of an edd kind of sortie : — At head-quarters information had been received that there would be a sortie from Paris on the morning of the 12th, and that the movements would be directed against Le Bourget. By seven o'clock such of us as wished to see the sight were on the heights between Blanc Mesnil and Le Bourget. At half-past seven we could see that a force was coming out from the direction of St. Denis. As it approached the Prussian outposts we could perceive that there were two battalions of regular troops, followed by irregulars and by a line of waggons. The whole of the Prussian line, from Aulnay-les-Bois round to Gonesse, was put in a state of preparation for repelling an attack. We con'eluded that the two battalions would be followed by an additional force, as it was known that on the previous afternoon large bodies of troops had been conveyed by rail to St. Denis from various quarters of Paris. As the first column of French advanced near to the Parisian outposts, the latter fired a volley or two. There was no response from the advancing battalions. They retreated a little, and when out of rifle range halted. Men, women, and children then descended from the wagons and commenced digging in the potato fields ; it was evident they were in search of provisions, and a& they kept within their own lines, no attempt was made to molest them. Having dug for a short time, but in considerable numbers, under the protection of the French troops, they set out on their return to Paris by St. Denis, still covered by the soldiers. So ended the sortie. The forts expended some ammunition in the afternoon, but without any result. Macmahon victorious was almost made a god of by the French people, who^could speak no words too gcod of hiniV Macmahon in adversity is reviled on all sides, save by the army he led, and accused of treachery and cowardice. That] the Marshal was no coward, his previous acts are sufficient to show, and his one act at "Woerth would stamp him as a hero, were there no Soi Torino, Magenta, or Algeria, to point to. This is what an American correspondent — a man who has regarded the French with no kindly eye — writes :

"At Woerth, in front of those battallions which had escaped massacre and the shame of surrender en masse, rose Macmahon, holding his sword by the blade, brandishing it Jike a club, and riding a large black charger, covered with foam — the. third he had mounted. His uniform was torn to raga, his scarf had been carried away, as also a portion of his shirt, exposing his breast. The man was superb. He forced his great black charger into the circle of fire he had just broken. The Chasseurs came back and loosened rein. They passed and re-passed several times through the enemy's lines, which they continually broke.- The officers took the big black charger by the bridle, the soldiers saying ' Vive Macmahon !' And the Marshal standing up in his stirrups, took in at a glance the field of batile, lit a cigar, and organised his famous retreat. At seven o'clock we were in a capital position, and Macmahon returned to the front along a field where the Prussian army, quite exhausted, was unable to pursue its march. This man, who from dawn had been in the saddle, and had been fighting for thirteen hours, and who had seen all his staff fall, lit another cigar, dismounted, and passed three hours in helping the hospital men to tend the wounded.'] PHYSICAL FEATURES OF PABIS. As the siege of Paris appears to have at length commenced in earnest, the following particulars, which we take from an English paper, regarding the physical features of the country on the side from which the bombardment is being carried, will be of interest : — The heights above, the level of the Seine of the various redoubts and batteries on the left bank of that river are as follow • Mont Valerin, 445 ft ; Montretout. 273 ft; St. Cloud, 244 ft; Severes, 303 ft; the redoubt of Bellevue, 244 ft ; Meudon, 409 ft ; Clam art (captured redoubt at Moulid-laTour), 448 ft (3ft higher than Fort Valerin, and nearly a mile nearer the centre of the city) ; Chatillon 443 ft, and about a mile and a quarter farther east the high ground above the village of Bagneux, 257 ft. From this point the ground fails rapidly to the B : evre brook, about a mile and a quarter east of Bagneux, which brook, running from south to north through a tortuous, steepsided ravine about 250 ft in depth, divides the five forts south of Paris into a western and eastern group, the former consisting of Forts Issy, Vanves, and Montrouge, and the latter of the Forts of Bicetre and Ivry. The heights of Meudon, Clamart, Chatillon, and Bagneux are projections or spurs from the plateux (averaging about 431 ft above the Seine) that extends from the neighborhood of Versailles to that of Sceaux, and these forts, which all stand at a level of 191 ft above the Seine, are mostly erected on the same spurs at a lower level, or at a distance of from 1800 to 2000 yards from the summits which command them. The two forts of Bicetre and Ivry, situated east of the Bievre brook and in the peninsula lying between the stream and the Seine, are not immediately threatened, being defended by an exterior group of redoubts in the neighborhood of Villtjuif. This peninsula is likely to play an important part in the siege. SIEGE OF STRASBOURG. A Mr Wade, of Invercargill, now travelling on the Continent, writes to the " News" an account of his visit to Strasbourg shortly after its surrender. He says : — " I was shown over the citadel by a German soldier. It was a mass of rubbish, not a stone standing, but the ramparts (earthenworks extending, in some cases, three miles from the city) good as the first day, except the inner circle of all, which was faced with stone, and which stone was badly damaged. I fancy the loss of life would have been fearful if it had to be stormed and the French were resolute. It could not have been taken except by starvation. The German artillery and knowledge of of the city must have been wonderful. Not a Government building in the city but was destroyed, and in many cases that building alone in a long street. Sometimes, of course, the houses on each side of itshared the same fate, but in many cases the Government building was the only house in a street injuried. I saw acres of new cannon in the arsenal, mounted and unmounted, and great heaps of conical and round shot, &c, so the French could not have been short of ammunition. I was in some of the casements — which consisted of buckets and bags of sand and earth piled vp — where the shells had exploded and torn up the place. I picked up a number of fragments of German shells, and have kept them as momentos"