THE MASSACRE AT ABLIS.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3119, 9 February 1871, Page 3

THE MASSACRE AT ABLIS.

A private letter to a German local paper from a cavalry soldier, gives a full account of the details of the affair at Ablis on the Bth of October, and of the vengeance exacted, which was of the severest order. It seems lhat the squadron of Sehleswig-Holstein Hussars, 96 strong, which had occupied the little town, turned in to rest without any special measures for security, their being an outpost of Bavarian troops just beyond tht! place in the direction of the supposed enemy. About 3 a.m. this post was driven off by a night attack, and the Francs- tireurs poured into the town on three sides at once, and commenced their attack on the hussars. The signal was given to boot and saddle, but many were shot down in the attempt to get to their horses, and the half of the squadron who escaped did so chiefly by fleeing individually, and gaining the covert of some adjacent woods. Some of the fugitives made their way after daybreak to Rambouillet, 19 miles off, where lay their brigade with a party of Bavarian rifles, and the whole moved forward to avenge a disgrace which they conceived could only have befallen them with the full assistance of the inhabitants of the place. On arriving at Ablis, and reoccupying it without resistance, it was found that the bodies of the slain had been all removed. From this it was at once taken for granted that they had been carried off to claim a reward which the German soldiers fully believe to have been offered by the French Government for every one of iheir comrades slain by Francs-tireurs. Much more probably, as we conclude, they were removed by the frightened inhabitants in order to get rid of the traces of an affair so dangerous to them. Be this as it may, the scene of vengeance which followed was as terrible as anything in modern war. " Women, children, and greybeards were spared," says the eyewitness, one of the avengers Limself ; " but the uien of ih.9 place," (which cont'aiaed 740 inhabitants before the war) " were all shot or cut down without mercy." Then the word was given "to plunder and destroy," and after the soldiers had taken all they could, houses, barns, stacks, and all that would take fire, were set into one grand conflagration, which lasted till night. "My pen can hardly describe this transaction," concludes the simple narrator ; who fully believed he had been merely assisting in an act of obvious justics.