The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-10-22 00:00:00

INSIDE PARIS.

Fro m Oar Ut Correipornlent"ofTke.y:bnes, by Balloion

Post, nodevr date Paris, Oct. 1 )

" An unusually quiet moruirg ha" followed the noisy can.
nonade of yederday. From various fact, which ooze out, 1
fear the result of the fighting was not such a. to make the
French in any great hurry f, another s..irtie. One rather
discouraging feature in It is that the Prussian' Caere
to have been a. fully brewed as if they had received
notice beforehand of the enact point at which the attack
was to he made, though it was commenced in the middle
Cl the Add anct Ivo quietly, lbla Me renreg the

Faris, but It is probable that the Prlffiliatti were prepared
merely because they have generalship enough to know what
positions the French jest now want to take. At any rate
they were able at once to concentrate so large a force, well
provided with artillery, upon the principal point of attack,
that the French, ster carrying L'tlay and Chevilly (it is
said) at the point of the bayonet, were driven somewhat pre-
cipitately out of Cholay-le-Rol and did not even retain the posi-
tions they had momentarily gained. Th-ir loss is estimated at
300 killed anti 700 wounded. The Prussian losses can only
be guessed at, hut are, of course, On Clarml to In "very c m-
alderable." There seems to be no doubt, however, that the
Garde, Mobiles fought capitally for young troops, and it Is
naturally argued that If they can thus, on the offennive and
in the open, face the Prussian., they will, on the defensive
and behind walls, be more than a match for them. It in still,
therefore, the general and I believe the uhacere conviction of
the Parisians that Paris cannot he taken by storm, and they
think the Prussian. won't be able to stop here long enough
to red tam it by famine.

"I have Just been having a long chat with one of our
citizen soldiers, a wurthy tradesman lu the National Guard,
whom I take to be a tolerable specimen of what Sydney
Smith called a foolometer." Eis view. are probably
those et a fair average of his brethren in arms. Ile
does not at all relish his present warlike the, finds
the ramparts very hard sleeping ground (he has to
spend one night iu five upon them), eveu when he can
get straw, and is very bitter about the vile liquor supplied at
exorbitant rates by the cantineers, liquor in which Ire would
not wash the hoof rof a good terse He also considers it a
• decidedly serious thing' to be under martial law. Two
dais ago a friend of hls—a sergeant in the National Guard—
was condemned to fifteen days' imprisonment, to say nothing
of other punishments, merely for having taken a drop too
much. Fifteen days in a cell, on prisoners' rations, for
what • few ;reeks ago would have been a venial,
perhaps almost amiable Indiscretion, • meritiog no
worse punishment than severe ' chaff.' In short,
his present life, my informant frankly declared, has des-
troyed his peace of mind and his appetite, and I. rapidly
ruining his digestion. His wife attributes this derangement
to fear ; but he positively declares that be knows no such
sensation. Vet, despite all this diecAntort, bodily and
mental, my friend bi evidently brimful of confidence in the
rapid and brilliant emcees, of the French arms.
He knows on the best authority that an army of
700,000 men is nearly ready to attack the other
side of the Prusaian camp, while 500,0t0 men sally out
agalust this side. If they stop another 15 days they will be
taken between two fire., and not a man will escape. Ile was
erjorily confident that the Prussians could not poi Bibly storm
Peri.. There were mitrailleuses enough to keep • shower of
14,001 balls per minute playing upon them, and mines enough
to blow into the air as many as the mitraillentes
spared. As for the supply of gunpowder in Paris
hr amounted tu three hundred million kilogrammes, and
only a third of this quantity was used at the edge
of Sebastopol. All these facts (which my informant
devoutly believed) he had from • clerk in A certain
very important office, and as the head of the office had only
A day ago given a friend of mine very different information,
I infer that the °Wain soldiers are at present a good deal
' crammed ' with comforting (statistics to keep up their
courage. ThLs effect ha certainly attained, if my informant
at all fairly repreeents, as I imagine, the opinions of his
brethern."