The Express.
London, England, 1866-12-13 00:00:00

EXPRESS FRO* PARIS.

ME REORGANISATION OF THE ARMY.
UPWARDS OF 1,200,000 MEN.
(nom ous own coaassrosnium
PARIS, WZDNDIDAT EVISING.
The project which by an accepted misnomer
caged the " reorganisation of the army," but
ehich, in reality, is a frightful augmentation of
the military force of France, threatening to all the
sorld, and fraught with ruin and revolution at home,
is revealed in its main outlines by the Moniteur
to.ebay. Many details upon which the high
military commission is known to be at loggerheads
are yet unsettled, but the government thinks it
due to the " legitimate impatience" of the
public to declare at once the "bases" of
the new UNA du sung. When the " reorganisation
of the army" was first talked of as a necessary eon-
sequence of the military successes of Prussia, the
public was led to believe that it would consist in
the introduction of the Chassepot rifle and some
improvement in the method of recruit-
ing, which would not materially aggra.
rate the burden of the army to the
country. The semi-official prints have gra-
dually prepared the public mind to put a different
interpretation on the word "reorganisation," and
Dow the terrible truth is out. I really think the
Emperor must be mad, or as the Pope says,
troubled in his mind," to make such a
monstrous proposition to this country as the
guniteur this day contains. He declares it to be
necessary to " maintain " the position of France in
the world, and to protect her against invasion to
have a standing army of 1,232,215 men—not for an
emergency, but for a permanency. Not as an " acci-
dental measure," depending on the "caprice of pub-
lic opinion," but as a fixed institution. Starting from
the calculation that the entire French nation pro-
duces annually 326,000 young men of 20, the Em-
peror proposes every year to draw 160,000 "of
the best of them" (les honsmes les plus entities)
for military service. All these men, whether
classed in the regular army, or the reserve will be
prevented from marrying and will be unable to
addict themselves permanently to any civil career.
It is pretty well demonstrated by statistics that
160,000 is the utmost number of healthy
well-constructed men that France can show
mutually. Every " valid " man therefore,
will be taken, and the infirm, the diseased,
the half-grown, the squalid, will alone be left to
labour, pay taxes, and propagate a degenerate
progeny. The whole nation is to be " disciplined,"
and that to prevent invasion ; whereas in
former times an army of 250,000 men, instead of
one of a million and a quarter, was found abun-
dantly sufficient for the purpose. The pretext of
a defensive purpose is so hollow that it is
impossible to forego the conclusion that the
Emperor revolves in his mind a tremend-
ous European war of aggression when he
gets his troops home from Mexico to join those
now coming from Rome, and when the Exhibition
of 1867 shall be over. The great consolation is
that the world has a year's respite. lam thoroughly
certain that France cannot afford the immense
army contemplated, and that the nation will not
tolerate the infliction for a permanency. Nothing
but the excitement of war will make the French
nation now-a-days submit to have the whole
flower of its youth drawn from the field and loom
to support the damaged prestige of an emperor.
The Bourse was again firm. Rente rose The. for
cash and 21fr. for account, closing at 60fr. 70c. in
each case. Italian rose 50c., and Credit Foncier
12fr. 50c. Mobilier was without change.
The Mimorinf d'.4 miens says :—" On Monday
morning this city was painfully affected on learn-
ing that one of the principal banking-houses of
the place, that of Charoy-Degove, had suspended
payment."

CHARGE OF POISONING TWO WIVES AND A
SON.

The Court of Assizes of the Deux-Sbvres (Niort)
las just tried a wealthy farmer named Martin Reim on a
triple charge of murder by poison. The persons whose
death he caused were his first wife, Marie Jeanne,
his second, Julie, and a son of the latter, Abel
Riau. He is also suspected of having murdered
his brother Pierre by similar means, but, as this
latter died in 1853, and as by the law of France
no one can be tried for murder after the lapse of ten years
from the time the crime was committed, this last case was
not gone into. Towards the end of 1856 the first wife
was taken ill with a violent inflammation of the throat
and chest, and expired in great agony in December of that
year. She was much afraid of her husband and very un-
happy, and frequently told her neighbours sthat he admin-
istered medicine to her to avoid having any family. In
April, 1858, the prisoner married as his second wife a young
girl named Julie Bontemps, described by all the witnesses
u a charming person, hut not long after her marriage she
lost her spirits and her health, and began to decline, her
husband forcing her to take certain mixtures which he
prepared under the same pretence as in his first wife's
case. However, in the year 186 4 , she became pregnant, and
Wan openly expressed his annoyance, and subjected her
to most violent ill-usage, with the hardly concealed pur-
Pose of producing premature labour. These measures,
however, failed, and the boy Abel was born, who waa im-
mediately sent by the prisoner out to nurse to an elderly
women who was living in great distress and poverty, where
the infant was utterly neglected by its father. In April,
the second wife became very ill, and was attended
by a doctor of the neighbourhood. But the husband nearly
always administered the remedies prescribed. She con-
tinued suffering until July of the same year, when she died,
the symptoms of her illness being precisely similar to those
witnessed in the case of the former victim. In the com-
mencement of January. 18liti, the prisoner began to mani-
fest an interest in the child Abel, who bad been removed to
the house of the grandfather, and, who immediately upon
the prisoner's visiting him, exhibited the same distressing
symptoms as his mother, and died on the 27th of the month.
The suspicions or uneasiness which had been excited
amongst the neighbours by the previous deaths attained
such a degree at this last instance that they applied to the
authorities, who arrested Riau and had the four bodies
exhumed. The chemical analysis of the remains disclosed,
in each case, the presence in large quantities of a deadly
poison, the perchloride of mercury or corrosive sublimate,
which had even saturated the earth surrounding the cof-
fins. In each of the four deaths, Rkau had a pecuniary
interest, as he inherited from his brotLer ; his flirt wife
had inside a will in his favour, and his second had done so
likewise to the extent of half her property, the remainder
Ruing to her son Abel, but in case of his death reverting t)
the prisoner. By all these inheritances Beau bad amassed
property of some 150,000 fr. The evidence left no doubt
of the prisoner's guilt, and the jury having returned a ver-
dict of guilty with extenuating circumstances, ho was sen-
tenced to hard labour for life.