The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-29 00:00:00

Mt; SUN, LONDON, THU RSDAI, DECEMBER 29, Id7v.

THE MONEY MARKET.

CITY, Two o'CLocK

The Stock Exchange is occupied by the settlement,
which closes to-morrow. There is an active demand for
money at the Bank of England and elsewhere, the dis-
count broker obtaining 2g and 2i per cent. for Three
Months' bills.

Consols are 911 to 911 for money and account.
Foreign Stocks are slightly better ; Turkish Five per
Cents., 431 to 431; French Six per Cent. Defence Loan,
11 to 11 dis. ; North German Loan, I to 1 prem. ; and
Italian of 1861, 55i to 551.
At a meeting of the creditors of Messrs. Parke, Pittar
and Co., whose suspension in the East India trade was
announced on the 20th inst., an approximate statement of
affairs was submitted by Mr. Gibbons, of the firm of
Harding, Whinney, Gibbons, and Co., who explained
that further information was required from India before
the position of the estate could be accurately arrived at.
It was proposed and unanimously agreed that the meeting
should be adjourned, and that Mr. C. J. Leaf and Mr.
C. A. Stewart should act as inspectors in the interim.
The statement shewed unsecured liabilities to the
amount of £25,504, with assets apparently likely to realise
£21,834, and the possibility of receipts from other claims.
Barcelona appears to expectithat the King of Spain will
land at that port, as the first commercial town in the
kingdom, and the authorities have sent a deputatic n to
Madrid with a request to that effect.
With regard to Turkish finance, the Levant Herald
states :—" The negociations for the new local loan, an-
nounced on the 30th ult. as being then in course of treaty,
have been somewhat protracted by the late interruptions
in the telegraphic communication with the West, and it
was only during the past week that the transaction has
been closed in London through the agency here of Messrs.
Corondo and Co. The nominal amount of this operation
is £2,000,000, of which one-half serves to redeem the
October, 1869, loan of the Societ6 Gdndrale, while the
remainder is available in cash, less interest for the whole
term of fourteen months payable in advance at the rate
of 14 per cent. per annum. As security the Porte
pledges the surplus of the Egyptian tribute of the Sheep-
tax and of the Custom-house revenues, reserving the

)ption of repayment in General Debt stock at 47."

The last instalment of £2O per £lOO Bond of the Grand
Trunk " Equipment Mortgage Bonds No. 2 " will be due
and payable on the 31st instant, and the half-year's
interest on these bonds will be payable on the Ist of
January.

ME ASSAULTS FROM THE PARIS FORT
Continuing his previous letter, the special correspon-
dent of the Daily News at the headquarters of the Crown
Prince of Saxony thus writes from Margency, December
24 :—Yet another dies irce. The French seemed deter_
mined on fighting it out on this same Le Bourget line
even to the bitter end. God knows what the measurement
of bitterness that end may represent ; surely the inter-
mediate stages must be bitter enough for them
in bloody bivouacs, with the temperature
twelve degrees below freezing point. I left
them yesterday afternoon still standing in position
there athwart the plain from Corneuve to Bondy, with
the setting sun on their backs, and Le Bourget the un-
taken in their front, the guns of the forts still hurling the
projectiles high over the heads of the immobile soldiery.
When the evening lapsed into the long hours there was
a lull, and one thought, for sure, the guns would at •
least be given a few hours to cool. But at midnight
the dreadful din commenced again. There was no roll of
proviant columns or artillery tumbrils to deaden it—every
boom smote the ear as it'were with a blow. Then, as the
gunners warmed to their work,the separate and individual
booms merged in a concatenation of hellish noise. To-
wards five o'clock, through the air troubled with
the bellow of the firing, one could detect
another sound—the rumble of artillery wheels in
the rear. The Fourth Army Corps was contributing
its quota to the resistance of the expected onslaught. Six
batteries were on the road from Franconville to Gonesse,
on the ground beyond which they would be in position
before the darkness lifted. Then silent Montmorency
burst out into life and candle-light. A brigade of the 7th
Division was under orders to back up the sturdy guards-
men, and the men of Anhalt—Dessau, the square-built
soldiers of the Ludwig-Franz regiment, the 93rd of
the North German line, were turning ont of chateau and
cabin, of desolated restaurant and apartments, no longer
»a 444,149, and hoading for the front. Then it was time, for
me to go back to Margency, to get that poor, long-
suffering, much enduring, wiry, indomitable creature
of a horse of mine, for the Crown Prince and his
staff were bound for Gonese before daybreak, and
there were all the symptoms of a wild day's work.
The explanation of the persistence of the French in their
efforts on this face is believed here to lie in this—that
they have intelligence of the Army of the North having
made some head, and that they are battling on ever in
the expectation of hearing its answering cannon from the
woods of Chantilly or the slopes of Dammartin.
They do not know what we know, how
yesterday Manteuffel, the grim, the curt, the
astute diplomatist and able general, sent Faidherbe
reeling back with a facer, from which it will take
him some time to recover. Gonesse was reached by eight
o'clock. Again the Guardsmen of the 2nd Division were
out waiting for the foe that never came, gallant old Bud-
ritzki impatiently pulling his white mo,ustache as he
stamped up and down the road. The - whole
line was "alarmed," that is, ready to turn
out and fight in anything but alarm. On the
further side were the Royal Saxons of the 12th
Corps in reserve ; on the hither side the Prussian-
Province Saxons of the 4th Corps, also in reserve. The
forts thundered continuously—hapless Le Bourget still
their target. Major Kuene, of the Staff, was in that vil-
lage yesterday, to know how it fared with the garrison of
Guards, and he states that in all his experience he had
never seen anything that could give him power to
realise that such a rain of shells was possible. Yet
the case of Le Bourget only bears out all previous
experience regarding the comparatively little harm
to life and limb, which a shelling, however severe,
causes to a place in which there are houses of tolerably
strong construction. The Guards have sustained no great
loss—less than they would have done in half an hour's
skirmish in the open. By the way I must correct the
error I made when I yesterday stated that Le Bourget
was garrisoned by only one battalion of Queen Elizabeths.
In addition there were in it one battalion of the
Queen Augustas, and another of the Guard Schutzen
Regiment. The same garrison held it to-day. Hour
after hour passed monotonously as we stood listening to
the artillery fire. It would only have been wasting
ammunition to attempt a reply with field guns —for the
French infantry stood out of range, and concentrated
their fire at Gonesse, considerably to our front ; their artil-
lery had no occasion to come so far forward as to give ours
a chance of silencing it, while on the other hand had
ours been pushed forward, it would have to no purpose
come within the range of the heavy metal of the forts.
So there was nothing to do but stand watching the pound-
ing of Le Bourget, and a terrible pounding that La Haye
Sainte of our position got. But it became evident by one
o'clock that the French contemplated no active forward
movement, and the Crown Prince took the home-
ward road to Margency. The artillery and infantry of
the Fourth Army Corps followed him, leaving the Guards
to the enjoyment of the Christmas eve concert alone. In
very deep bass that concert still continued long after the
Ludwig Franz men were cooking their erbwurst in their
billets in Montmorency. It was still making the air pul-
sate when I left the position there, as the shadows of the
twilight were coming down.