The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-27 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, FRIDAY, JAN•UAR-Y 27, 1871.

that on Saturday last, when about forty miles east of
Lowestoft, he saw a large vessel partly submerged in
water and her masts gone. He bore down to her, and
found that she was the brig or barque Active of Liverpool.
There was no one on board, and the vessel was evidently
left derelict.

THE BOMBARDMENT OF pAlus

The Telegraph's correspondents at Versailles forward
the following by special despatch, under date January
23:—Yesterday a small demonstration was made
upim the Saxon front, which was easily repelled. Since
two p.m. the batteries having the range of Paris have
kept up a steady but slow fire of shell' upon the
city. It is known that shells fell the day before yes-
terday near Notre Dame, and several are re-
ported as having reached the very outside of the
d
raidii described on your map. The total of German losses,
dead and wounded, during the last three days is nearly
2,000. Over 1,100 men are in the ambulances here.

Many of them, however, are but slightly wounded, and
will be able to return to duty in a very short time.
On the 19th the German dead and wounded
were generally found in groups, from which it would
appear that if the French practice had beer,
better the German loss would have been much heavier,
for wherever French shells did fall. they were very de-
structive. No batteries except those in the south and
south-west throw projectiles into Paris. Fires are still
being kindled from time to time in the city. The French
fire is, and has been for the last forty-eight hours, very
slack. Six waggons with medical stores have been
ordered to proceed to the neighbourhood of Chatillon to-
day. A fresh demonstration is looked for in that direc-
tion. The latest papers and intelligence from our agents
in Paris exhibit strongly marked features of internal con-
vulsion and of increasing distrust of Trochu, who is the
scapegoat of the hour. His offer to resign the direction of
affairs to the other generals, conditionally on their dis-
playing a plan of defence better than his own, seems to
have set him right with the thinking citizen warriors. Le
Flo's nomination is heartily welcomed here amongst mili-

tary men. Point-du-Jour and the Bridge battery are now
the most lively among the French works ; but both the,
bombardment and defence are alike tame and heartless.
The St. Denis batteries are all ready, and the
hesitation in opening their fire is induced by
reasons which will suggest themselves to your
military readers, but on which I am necessarily precluded
from giving any direct communication. One hundred
and forty of the wounded have been already forwarded to
Germany, to clear the wards in the Chateau. The bombard -

ment of St. Denis was actually commenced yesterday.
The French defensive fire has been nearly quenched.
Several fires are blazing away in St. Denis.
The special correspondent of the Daily News at the
headquarters of the Saxons thus writes from Margency
January 21:--The town of St. Denis is reported to be
burning. All Paris might be in one blaze for aught we
here could tell to-night. But adventurous patrols have
that a
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ones elsewhere. A bad hour fhi the ladies of St.
Denis, who, daintily gloved and booted, admired the
stalwart limbs of the Prussian Guardsmen taken prisoners
at Le Bourget, and likened the soldiers of their own
garrison to dwarfs alongside of the big East Prussian men.
There will be a bitter flitting to-night T ween along
the straight road leading by the pretty suburb of St.
Ouen into the already densely-packed Montmartre.
And the citizens of Paris..will meet the exiled ones of
St. Denis, and asking them " What cheer ?" will get
for answer that the inexorable Prussian cannon are
smashing and burning on the north as on the south. Will
the strong hearts melt; the tension of the stern determi-
nation overstrain itself; and so relax into the conviction
that enough has been done against fate, against
possibility, against the luck that every Frenchman strives
to hope for in the future to prove to the world that
Paris is not a place of frivolous pleasure lovers only, but
that the lovers of pleasure in the old luxurious peaceful
city have known how to dare and to endure beyond all
previous conception ? That God may send this impulse
into their hearts, must be the prayer to-night of
every one who feels for human suffering, and
who can appreciate true fortitude. To-night
the German fire is allowed to drop to one
shot per hour from each gun—sixty per hour,
or one shot per minute—mere snowflake busi-
ness in comparison with the day's cannonade; and that
is said to have been comparatively mild on account of
the fog. It seems to me that the whole war hardly
affords a more strixing example of the military
genius of von Molte than the opportune railway
trip he ordered for the 16th Brigade, forming part
of the beleaguering army. Calculation had furnished
him with evidence that von Goeben would make his mark
at St. Quentin all the deeper if he were strengthened by
4,000 or 5,000 men and a few guns ; calculation and good
information told him the hour at which this help would
be good at need. The brigade quietly went away for the
fight just as a lawyer goes down to Reading or
Gloucester for the circuit ; and the work done, it comes
back to its quarters before Paris just as the lawyer comes
back to his cases in the Court of Queen's Bench. This
device has simply fop the time converted 5,000 men into
10,000 men. Napoleon I. was, perhaps, the greater utiliser
of his soldiery, by means of rapid movements, of all
von Moltke's predecessors ; but then Napoleon had not
the locomotive and the militaire zug. Dense as the popu-
lation of France may be, the terrible and continuous
drain as prisoners of what are nominally at least fighting
men must be sorely felt. Twenty thousand in the Le
Mans district, 7,000 at St. Quentin—for that is the now
swollen return—besides 2,000 wounded derelicts, and 500
before Paris the day before yesterday ! Whenever I
hear of prisoners, I think of the churches of Donchery
and Lagny, with their unutterable squalor and misery.
They say the French conscripts are eager to be made
prisoners rather than face the fighting. If they knew the
unavoidable horrors of the middle passage, to say nothing
of the hard lot after they are interned, I think
rather than undergo them they would chance what-
ever might be involved in fighting so long as they could
stand.