The Sun.
London, England, 1871-01-05 00:00:00

THE ARMY OF HAVRE.

The slight skirmishes fought by the army which had
been collected in the town were successes for the French,
but they were of very small magnitude. General
Peltingeas says that on Saturday he made a strong recon-
naisance :—"At twelve, my centre, under the command of
Colonel Dornat, of the sth Battalion of Infantry, had an
engagement between LanguetOt and Belleville with 300 or
400 Prussians, 200 of them foot soldiers and 190 cavalry.
We have taken 11 prisoners of the enemy, who had
besides 29 killed and 18 wounded. On our side we have
had but one corporal killed." In a despatch dated
Monday, the same officer reports :—" Our success
has been more complete than had been supposed
in the engagement which took place on December 31
between LanguetOt and Belleville. The losses
of the Prussians are at least 80, the enemy acknowledging
that number in his telegram. The eight carriages brought
by the enemy in order to requisition provisions and forage
left loaded with dead. The same fact occurred in the
second fight under General Roy, in the neighbourhood of
La Bouille, the same day. The Prussians lost at CMteau
Rob ert over 300 killed and wounded, whom they carried
off in requision vehicles. On our side the losses were
twenty-nine or thirty killed and sixty or eighty wounded.'
Of the army which performed these encouraging little
feats, a letter from Havre, of Monday's date, says --
" The year opens with excessive cold, which is very
disadvantageous for military operations; the Seine drifts
ice, and the French gunboats have been compelled to re-
enter the port. The troors now between Bolbec, and
Yvetot can advance but slowly. They number 16,000
men, with four batteries of artillery and six mitrailleuses.
General Peltingeas, who commands them, makes frequent
reconnaisances, for he has to contend not only against the
strategical science of the Prussians, but also against the
unpatriotic spirit of the peasants. The country mayors
themselves give information to the enemy."

THE PRUSSIAN OUTRAGE AT DUCLAIR.
Further accounts which have come to hand, though
modifying slightly the impressions conveyed by the narra-
tives of the sailors, are little calculated to mitigate the
feeling which those narratives have excited in this coun-
try. The masters of the sunken vessels reached Newhaven
from Dieppe on Monday night, and came to London

on Tuesday, Captain Ramsdale, of the brigantine Sylph,
of Sunderland, says the Sylph was moored alongside
the quay at Rouen, when eighteen or twenty Prussian
soldiers came alongside in a tug and boarded her. The
officer in command could not speak English, and had
some difficulty, by pantomimic action and bad French, in
making himself understood. The skipper, however,
happened to know the signification of " couler," a
Frence verb which figured very prominently in
the officer's communication ; and when he ascer-
tained that the object of taking possession of the
craft was to sink her in the river, he protested
vigorously, and pointed to the flag that was flying at the
main peak. Finding that the officer, though perfectly
calm and courteous, meant to have the ship, whether he
was agreeable or not, he in turn managed to make the
officer understand that he wanted a bond before parting
with possession of his ship. This the officer seemed per-
fectly ready and willing to furnish ; and as they
stepped into the cabin to fill up a form with which
the officer was provided, the captain heard the soldiers
cutting away his stern-rope with an axe. The sea-
men procured some of their effects and took them
on to the quay ; but when they desired to go on board
to get the remainder they were prevented. The
ship was then hauled into the stream a little way,
so that the master had to procure a boat to get on shore.
When he had landed, he saw fr)m the quay, a Prussian
soldier haul down the Sylph's flag, and, he thinks,
stamp upon it. Captain Hodge, of the schooner Ann,
states that his ship was seized while floating down in
ballast, and thirty or forty infantry soldiers were put in
charge for the night. These appear to have proceeded at
once to make themselves comfortable with the ship's
stores, seven pieces of beef being at once put into the
copper, and everything else eatable- or drinkable appro-
priated without ceremony.

The black smallpox is raging with great violence in the
Eastern Departments of France.
A•" good judge" of such matters writes from Paris that
most rats are villainous eating, but a peculiar kind, not
easily found, are delicious.

A secret recruiting office for the French army has been
discovered at Nancy. Half a dozen inhabitants of the
upper class have been arrested.
A quantity of sulphuric acid was found on Avron. One
of the Saxon soldiers incautiously stuck a knife into a
bag containing some inflammable material. It exploded,
and wounded some 20 men.

On the arrival of the French prisoners at Ostend the
other day two exciting incidents occurred. A French
fisherman who arrived at the port was mourning the loss
of his two sons, whom he supposed to be dead, as he had
heard nothing of them for two months, when, to his great

delight, he saw them alive and well among the first
prisoners who got out of the train. The other rencontre
was that of a French servant at Ostend, with her brother,
whom she supposed to have perished in the war. He also
was among the batch of prisoners who arrived at the
station.

Two American steamers which arrived in Brest a
few days ago brought about 240,000 finished rifles, several
millions of cartridges, and numerous carbines.
The flight of interned French officers continues to be
daily recorded by the German papers. It seems to be
especially rife at Erfurt, whence no less than 31 deserted
within four days. Two of them were recaptured.
The three elephants in the Paris Jarclin des Plantes
have been sold to a butcher for £BlO. The most valuable
animals in the collection have hitherto been spared, but
their turn has now, it seems, come.
At Metz the Germans are giving every indication of
their intention to retain permanent possession. A strong
police force has been established, and the postal and
judicial arrangements are not at all of a provisional
character.

M. Michel Chevalier, in an article in the Journal du
Havre, says that by helping France to resist, and check
the overgrowth of Prussia, England would act in her own
interest; and Ile adds that once France is crushed, the
English home army must be raised to 350;000 men.
The Journal ciu Havre gives the following as the correct

list of the vessels sunk by the Germans :—The Ann, of
Shields; the Alice, of Sunderland ; the Jane Tindell, of
Sunderland ; the Jessamine, of Rochester. ; the Sally
Gale, of Newcastle ; the Maclaren, of Sunderland ; and
the Sylph, of Whitby.
The " Besieged Resident," in referring to the bom-
bardment of Mont Avron by the Germans, says that
although about. 3,000 shells were fired on the 27th, only
38 French soldiers were killed and wounded. One of the
shells fell into a house where eight people were dining,
and killed six of them.

A Paris paper of the 30th ult. states that for some
little time, and particularly since the cold had set in so
severely, a lively crusade was being carried on against
sparraws in some parts of the city. Not only were boys,
equipped with nets or pea-shooters, engaged in the
foray, but grown up citizens and fathers of families
were taking part in it with the most serious air ima-
ginable.
The German engineers and military officers who have
visited Avron say it was admirably fortified. The
parapets were excellent, it was provided with crenellated
walls, and the ambuscades were extremely ingenious.
There were three or foie• series of trenches, one above tha.
other; fascines in abundance, and earthworks of admir-
able construction. No good artillerymen would have given
up such a position on one day's firing.
Until the weather set in so bitterly cold, elderly sports-
men, who did not care to stalk the human game outside,
were to be seen from morning to night pursuing the ex-
citing sport of gudgeon fishing along the banks of the
Seine. Each one was always surrounded by a crow
deeply interested in the chase. Whenever a fish was
hooked there was as much excitement as when a whale is
harpooned in more northern latitudes.
A special correspondent in Paris says that owing to the
intense severity of the weather, no fewer than fifty senti-
nels have been frozen to death at the outposts, and that
there are more than 1,200 cases of severe frost-bite in the
military hospitals, many of which cases are likely to
prove fatal. The sufferings of the people are also very
great. Typhoid fever is on the increase, especially among
the families from the suburbs, who are huddled together
in close rooms in a stifling atmosphere that breeds
pestilence.
From the 19th of September to the end of December
the city of Versailles has paid, for bread, meat, wine,
and articlei of food " required" for the army, between
1,300,000 f. aad 1,400,000 f. There are 600 officers and
5,000 soldiers quartered on the citizens, and up to. the
present time 60,000 men have been lodged in the city
for from three to four days each. The city has already
paid to the inhabitants for the keep of the soldiery
772,000 f., and owes for various sums borrowed to meet.
its wants nearly 1,000,000 f. In cases where no quarters
can be found, 6f. is paid to each officer and 3f. to each
soldier daily.
General Amienkow, the staff-general of the Emperor
Alexander's suite, has arrived at St. Petersburg from Ver-
sailles, and has given a long account at a military con-
ference of his impressions of the scene of war, of the or-
ganisation and equipment of the two armies, the part
played by the Prussian cavalry, the concentration of the
German forces by means of the railways, and other impor-
tant points. The lecture occupied three hours, and was
attended by officers of all ranks, who listened with the
greatest interest. The Invalide Busse believes the account
of the General will be published.

An address has been presented to the Czar from the
peasantry of the canton Gloubokovsky, in the district of
Opochka, in which they thank him for reclaiming the
rights of the Russian nation in the Black Sea. Some
States, they hear, have menaced him in return. The
nation does not tolerate a menace to its sovereign. Let
him give the order, and all, small and great, will arm
themselves against the insolents who dare to dispute the
rights acquired by the blood of their fathers. The Czar
ordered that the peasants should be thanked for the senti-
ments expressed by them.
A correspondent of the Times, speaking of the great
difficultyt
tholedfire
t no
poured
of
o none
forth
m an
fromficonstructingincthhe i‘eidoGe
fnrtormam Avron,t
Inieb la ntstdaeeyrirset
as:
—1
ciinyn
gef.
ta
`they
Ie of
haemy
sang while cutting the trenches and dragging up the guns.
The former were dug on the plans and under the personal
supervision, of Major Klemm, of the Saxon Engineers.
So complete a range of batteries has neVer, perhaps, been
executed in so short a time. The effect of their arrange-
ment was to expose Avron to direct fire from the front,
and to a powerful cannonade on each side, and partially
on the rear."
In a proclamation to the Parisians occurs this passage :
—" Since the cold has set in the mayors of Paris have
ordered that large quantities of fuel should be cut in the
woods of the city—viz., in the Bois de Boulogne and the
Bois de Vincennes, which have been set apart for that
purpose. The plantations which line the national and
departmental roads are sacrificed without distinction. The
large trees of our boulevards have also been cut and sold.
This work has placed at our disposal immense stores, and
is being accomplished with all the celerity consistent with
so great a work and with the necessary transport. At
the same time, all the timber-yards where the wood was
prepared for use have been placed at our disposal, and,
despite the enormous expense, we do not hesitate to de-
liver for consumption sawn planks usually reserved for
building purposes."

The Verite of Paris censures the Provisional Govern-
ment, and especially General Trochu, for stilliholding out
and sacrificing life to no purpose. It asks what they hope
for from continued resistance, and whither it will lead,
them, calls upon them to state whether they have anY.
plan that they are pursuing, and advises them to treat
while they are still able to insist on good terms. General',
Trochu, the article says, has frankly declared that if Paris.
capitulated he would shut himself up in one of the forts"
and there wait to be taken prisoner. As to the stores of
provisions, the Veriti jestingly tells the war party, " Yoo
add the horses to. the herrings, and multiply the codfisb
by the potatoes." The other Paris papers strongly con-
demn the article.

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