The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-08 00:00:00

THE FIGHTING ON THE OUTSKIRTS.

The correspondent of the Standard at the headquarters
of the Crown Prince, writing on the 4th instant, says :
By the courtesy of General Burnside I have an oppor-
tunity of writing a few lines, which will reach
you more quickly than one's communications
usually do ; but they will be very few indeed,
since I have barely an hour to put them en paper
and carry them to the General's quarters. Only
last night he returned from Paris, whither he had gone,
two days before, in company with Colonel Forbes, as the
bearer of dispatches from the Government. He has run
his risks, as everybody must do—even the bearers of flags
of truce—and more than once found himself within the
range of hostile bullets. But he has come out of his
perils safe and sound, bringing with him news of
the beleaguered capital, and dispatches which he
is sending by courier to London. His description of the
interior of the city is striking, and, I may add, sur-
prising. He says that on Sunday afternoon the
Champs Elysees wore almost their usual appearance
—at least as one knows it at this season of the
year. Women were abundant, and children by
no-
means wanting. The shops are all open, and buy-
ing and selling still go on as though no enemy
were at the gates. Articles not of immediate consump-
tion appear to be cheap, as might indeed have been
expected ; for a worse time may come, and money
is more portable than stock in trade. Altogether
I gather from his words that Paris is not
only in capital heart, but in that best frame of
body and mind which is described by the word
calm. The place is provisioned, he believes, for two
months ; flour and wine being in great abundance. I
give these reports of a most intelligent observer, in the
faith that they are strictly true ; and if they are, one
must begin to revise one's fore6.sts, and to acknowledge
that the Germans are at last in face of a serious diffi-
culty. Along with these brief but interesting details
our last courier from Paris brings us a batch of French
papers. Reading them, one is forced to ask oneself what
is really the truth concerning the fighting of the 30th.
You will, perhaps, remember that I rode up on that morn-
ing to the heights above Saint Cloud, and there received
from German lips the particulars of the encounter, as far
as it concerned Sevres and Issy ; but, as I after-
wards had occasion to add, the engagement spread over
considerably more ground than is represented by what
lies between those two points, and stretched as far as Bicetre
—if not, indeed, as far as Charenton. Now, upon what oc-
curred on what I may call the centre and the right of that
day's work I have not heard a single word fall from any
German lip. We may, therefore, conclude that, in what
tussle did take place, the besiegers got the worst of it.
But were they as badly mauled, and did they lose as much
ground as the French say they did? lam necessarily in
the dark as to the extent to which you receive news of
the siege from the French side; and knowing that it is
important you should have it, I translate their account
of the affair, as it is given in a journal published
the day before yesterday in Paris :—" This time
there has really been a battle, and though this
compte-renclu appears in the evening paper, we have not
fear lest we should fall into those exaggerations to which
the news-bearers of the first hour are too often liable.
It is known that the combat of Villejuif has had for its
consequence to make the Prussians retire to L'Hay
and Chevilly, villages situated pa the road from Choisy-
le-Roi to Versailles, by Sceaux and Plessy-Piquet. This
success would leave us masters of our advanced positions
of Saquet and Hautes-Bruyeres, which cover the forts of
Montrouge, Bicetre, and Ivry. But whilst occupying
Thiais, L'Hay, and Chevilly, the Prussians could at any
moment take the offensive, and the least surprise would
have replaced them in possession of the positions of Saquet
and Hautes-Bruyeres. It was therefore urgent to force
them further back, to make them abandon the plateau and
resume their former situation on the route of Fontainebleau.
For that purpose it was necessary to throw them back
into the valley of Bievre, by driving them from Chevilly
and L'Hay, and to
.repel them even as far as Bourg-la-
Reine. This result has been attained. Furthermore

L'Hay and Chevilly—those lurking-places of the Prussians
—have been destroyed by fire. This is the balance of the
day." To these precisely translated details I may
add that the French acknowledge a loss of from
200 to 300 killed and 600 wounded, but they
put the Prussian loss much higher. General
Dumoulin appears to have commanded in the early portion
of the day, but General Vinoy came up later, and Trochu
himself appeared when the victory was won. The
German prisoners are described as horribly dirty and
famished, and as complaining of the severity of their
officers, and of having nothing to eat but a few raw
potatoes. As, however, it is said immediately afterwards
that the sausages in their sacks were so far gone that they
had to be burnt as a measure of sanitary precaution
the potato touch seems a little far-fetched. Indeed, Ido
not hesitate to say that all I have been telling you, on the
authority of French journals, should, in my opinion be
taken with many grains of salt. Had we to take the ac-
count as literally true the position of the besiegers would
be serious indeed. It is quite possible that on the 40th of
September and the Ist of October certain and even consider
able advantages were obtained by the French, though in
that case our friends have kept it, as the phrase is, un:

commonly snug. But, unless what was done at first had
been undone ere this, I cannot believe that we should al

here be so thoroughly at our ease, and most of all, that
the King would be coming to Versailles from Ferrieres,
close by the very points which we are asked to

_ .. ----
believe are now in hostile keeping.— His Majesty
was to have turned up to-day, but this morning we
are informed that he is not to be here till to-
morrow. There is, however, not the slightest
reason to suppose that the delay has been caused
by military considerations. The Crown Prince,
who yesterday reviewed seven regiments of cavalry;
—a spectacle of which nobody heard of till it was all I
over—turns out of the Prefecture to make way for his
father, and goes to a Charming villa at the end of the Rue

des Chantiers. I regret that I have not time to add more,
save that dysentery is very prevalent among the troops
here. Some seven or eight hundred are lodged in
the I.4yae , suffering from that and other campaigning
ailments. I suspect abundant fruit has something to
do with their sufferings, and the remaining cause may be
set down to nights singularly cold after days singularly
warm.