The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-24 00:00:00

INSIDE PARIS.

The special correspondent of the Telegraph sends the
following from Paris, dated January 21 :—The terrible
reverse experienced on Thursday by the French troops at
Buzanval— the discouraging influence exerted on the long-
suffering women of Paris by a rationnement of bread which
assigns to each individual as his or her daily portion a
black and gritty lump of the so-called staff of life
thin, in site and weight, is about equal to a London
penny roll—the atktiowledged incapacity of our
military and political chiefs—the: &pressing hopelessness
of the d.:.,patches respecting Bourbaki and dlianty which
were made public this and yesterday morning—all plainly
presage the end very near at hand. Last night, at eleven
o'clock, the generale, or summons to arms, was sounded
in the turbulent quarters of Belleville and La Charonne;
but so depressed and miserable was the popula-
tion, that 500 individuals, more or less, were all
who responded to the call. It was useless, with so
flimsy a gathering, to make a descent upon the Hotel de
Ville; so the WOrild be enteatiefe gave up the job in des-
pair, and betook themselves to their cold and Cheerless
beds. To-day the Prefect de Polide, M. Crisseni has
stationed two or three strong regiments of National
Guards around the Hotel de Ville, and has caused
the adjoining streets to bristle with mitrailleuses. The
unhappy inhabitants of Paris are to much wasted
by misery to be capable of initiating la guerre
des rues; aud, although it is by no means impossible that
within the next seven or eight days we m 4 have riots in
the streets, the National Guards, although of little avail
against the Prussians, will, I expect be found strong
enough to keep Paris quiet until the end. Meantime, the
town has to-day been full of rumours that Trochu has re-
signed, that he is to be immediately replaced by some
other General, or Admiral, and that M. Jules Favre has
actually opened communications with Count Bismarck
of such a nature as to lead at once to a capitulation.
These rumours are undoubtedly premature, but before
this letter has reached England, they may be actual veri-
ties. Pessimists who for many weeks past have been
compelled to menages leurs varoles, and to speak ad-
visedly and discreetly in public, might to day have
been seen and heard openly avowing that within
four, six, or ten days all will be over, and calling men
to witness, by such questions as, " Did I not always
tell you so?" that such has been their anticipation from
the beginning. In many quarters the wildest and most
impossible projects have to-day been mooted. The
names of revolutionary chiefs, such as Ledru Rollin,
Motto, Delescluae, and Gustave Flourens, have been
bandied about from mouth to mouth, with a view to the
constitution of a new Government to be built up out of
these discredited materials. I doubt whether, in these
desperate times, even the vanity of Frenchmen
.would induce ten or twelve untried men to assume the
helm of the vessel of the State when she is already amidst
the breakers, and evidently on the eve of breaking up.
K Louis Blanc, and a few others who think with him,
demand that M. Jules Favre and General Trochu
should remain nominally in power, but that the
military direction of affairs, and the administra-
tion of the few quintals of flour which still remain
to us, shall be handed over to a new Committee of
Public Safety. The Temps of this afternoon states that a
War Committee, consisting of two or three Admirals and
of Generals Vinoy, Ducrot, and Clement Thomas, is
immediately to be organised ; and that M. Dorian is to
replace General Le Flo as Minister of War. Everyone
feels that all these arrangements or re-shufflings
of the cards are now unavailing. General
Trochu is understood to have placed himself to-day in the
hands of the Provisional Government, and, with tears in
his eyes, to have said, "Do with me what you will !" It
is impossible not to pity a man like Trochu, who, himself
a brave and honest soldier, has been tossed to the surface
of a responsibility which might have crushed even a
Napoleon or a Frederick the Great.