The Sun.
London, England, 1870-09-12 00:00:00

here has been no more startling and appal

ling catastrophe than the loss imme-
diately before daybreak, in a gale of wind, on
Wednesday morning last, the 7th inst., off Cape
Finistere, of H.M.S. the Captain, with almost
all on board, to the number of five
hundred. 'This was no ordinary foundering of a
great warship. The loss of the Captain was the loss
of the very last and the very grandest of all the
world's achievements in the science of naval arehi-

tecture. It was England's floating masterpiece.
The Captain was its inventor's and constructor's chef
d'ouvres. Of all the fighting men-of-war it was re-
cognised as being the most formidable. Improved
Captains there may be, but so far as ship-building
had yet gone here, in the Captain, was, until now, its
noblest achievement. Her burthen was 4272 tons.

ler nominal steam power was that of 900 horses.
She was a turret ship and—to the extent of nine and
ten inches of iron—armour-plated. She, was
double-turreted. Her complement of hands, all
told was five hundred. The only rival that was
deemed worthy to be brought in any way into com-
parison with her was the Monarch. Mr. REED, the
late Constructor of the Royal Navy, was the de-
signer of the Monarch. Captain CoLBs, the inge-
nious discoverer of the principle upon which the
shield ironclad warships have been called into exist-
ence, was the designer of the Captain, He had already
superintend the construction of the Royal Sovereign.
But the Monarch was his admitted masterpiece, He
had already distinguished himself professionally in
the assault upon Sebastopol. But his chief distinc-
tion has been won in the yards of the shipbuilders.
Born in the same year as the reigning sovereign,
he was only fifty years of age when he
" went down " as one of those five hundred
who were lost, in the twinkling of an eye, in the dead
of the night, between Tuesday and Wednesday last
on the foundering of his great maritime masterpiece
off Cape Finistere. And of those fifty years she had
been just forty years in the Royal Navy.
The incomprehensible suddenness of the disappear-
ance of the Captain is what renders the fate
of that wonderful vessel so peculiarly heartrending.
Without an instant's warning she must have gone
down. Admiral Sir ALEXANDER MILNE is the one
who telegraphs the information of the calamity to the
Admiralty. He says, writing his telegram from on
board H.M.S. Lord Warden, that the Captain
"must have foundered in the night." His reasoning is
simple, but unhappily sufficient. " She was close to
this ship at two this morning. Sudden S.W. gale;
very heavy squalls. At daybreak the Captain was
missing. This afternoon her boat (or boats) and
spars found. All have unfortunately perished."
In those laconic sentences what an epitome of
tragic and pathetic horror. Not one mo-
ment's warning, not one cry of alarm,
and the noble war ship with all her gallant crew,
nearly every one of them at the time of course lapped
in slumber, disappears from the surface of the great
deep. The sorrowing relations may be certain of
this, that in their great grief they have the profound-
est national sympathy. Those who were thus lost
died a s gloriously as though they had fallen in
battle. They died in the service 'of their country,
and at the post of duty and honour.

" AFTER me the deluge !" Such were the words,
often repeated since, which Louis XV. used when
pressed to construct the fortification s of Paris that
had been designed by the great VAUBAN. That
incarnation of selfishness, Louis • QungzE, of filthy
life, having passed away, the deluge was not long in
coming. Seventy-eight years ago this very
month Paris saw a mighty German host ap-
proaching her walls. The word is metaphorical.
Paris had no walls. She once had them but the
Gratid Monarque destroyed them. New walls had
been ordered eight yeais before the German.invasion,
but they had not been built. There was but time to
throw up redoubts at Montmartre, Saint Denis, and
Belleville. But these could not have offered any
effectual resistance. Paris knew it well. So
the great city sent forth her youth, in-
spired by patriotic ardour, and they offered
a rampart of human breasts far away
in the plains of Champagne. That rampart the
Coalition of Europe could not break through. Next
year, 1794, the attack was renewed, the allied ar taies
advanced within thirty leagues of the capi.a' out
they did not reach it. Revolutionary France proved
too si,rong for the Sovereigns. Unwalled Paris
beat them of}. The fire o Revolution
became extinguished by Imperialism, and
tywienty-one years later, twice within fifteen months,
Paris was entered bp hostile armies. On both occa-
sions there was a gallant resistance. It was not till
the forts that defended Payis had been steamed that

their guns turned against the city they were meant
to defend; it was not till the black Brandenburg
hussars had destroyed the French cavalry,
who attempted to check, by a brilliant
charge, the onward march of the enemy,
that Marshal ALtamoNT dispatched a flag of truce to
General BARCLAY DE TOLLY to arrange the terms of
capitulation. Paris surrendered on the last day
of March, 1814. When, in the following year, the
battle had to be fought again, the allies did not renew
the attack upon Montmartre, which had cost them so
many thousand lives before, but crossed the Seine
and assaulted the city on its undefended side.
General EXCELMANS made a brilliant attempt to de.
liver the place, but on the night of July 2nd and
3rd, 1815, an armistice was concluded, and the
capital once more surrendered.
It was not likely that Lours XVIII. restored to
his throne by the Allies, would think of construe.-
ing works intended to keep them out of Paris. But
almost the first step taken by the Government of
July was to demand the fortification of Paris.
Lours PHILIPPE constructed a vast entrenched camp
between the Marne and the Seine. It covered with
its works Fontenay-sous-Bois, Rosily, Noisy,
Romainville, a small portion of the Ourcq canal,
and was extended to St. Denis, where the canal
served as a foss. It was estimated that fifty
thousand men would suffice for this defence.
But, however well devised, it defended
only one side of the capital. It in
no way solved the problem of the defence of Paris.
In 1833 Marshal SOULT demanded of the Chamb r
of Deputies a credit of £1,400,000 to be devoted to
the erection of permanent works around
Paris. According to. the plans recommended
by the majority of the Committee of
Engineers seventeen pentagonal forts, each pre-
senting five bastioned points, were to be con-
structed, eleven upon the light and six upon
the left bank of the Seine. They were
to be supported by redoubts in masonry
with counterscarp and covered way, and to contain
casemates for the soldiers, and the guns and powder
and food magazines. Each fort was to contain 1,000
men and 80 guns. Beyond these forts and the en-
trenched camp, the wall which formed the limit of
the Customs district of Paris, was to be raised to
about twenty feet high, provided with
two ranges of . battlements, and flanked by
sixty-five towers or bastions, mounted with
325 guns. This plan was met unfavourably
received, Military men criticised it most severely.
Politicians saw in it an attempt to construct a
number of Bastilles in order to overawe the Parisians.
The project was abandoned, and for seven years
afterwards nothing more was heard about the
defences of Paris. In 1840 there was a panic in
France. It was believed that England, Russia, Prussia,
and Austria had determined to regulate the affairs of
the East without consulting France, and the last men-
tioned country saw in this intention a renewal of the
European coalition against her. There was great
excitement in Paris. 'The people chaunted the
" Marseillaise." The KING said that if necessary he
himself would don the red cap M. THIERS, at that
time Prime Minister, took advantage of the excited
state of public feeling to obtain from the
Ohainbers a credit of four millions far the con-
struction of defensive works arapnd Paris. But
what kind of works were they to be ? On the one
hand the KING insisted upon Marshal SOULT'S de-
tached forts, in order that he might be able to hold
his own subjects in check; on the other hand, the
people, suspicions of these, insisted upon a wall
around Paris which would give the Natio-
nal Guard an opportunity of defending
the capital in case of need. It was de-
termined to combine both works. But it soon
became apparent that the first were to be pushed on
at the expense of the second. The democratic
journals unceasingly called attention to the fact.
GUIZOT succeeded Tninns, and announced his desire
to carry out the combined scheme. At last, after
much agitation and discussion in the Chambers, the
continuous defence system was adopted. Great num-
bers of troops were set to work, and the whole line was
completed within the stipulated tune, 1844, and
within the stipulated amount, £5,600,000.

We now proceed to give sowe account of the
defences of Paris as they stand at the present time.
The first fort, situated at the top of the map, in the
centre, is the Fort de la Briche, close to the town of
St. Denis,whose famous church was the burial-place of
the kings of France. This fort, with the double
crown of the Nord, the lunette of the Maine, and the

fort of the Est covers St. Denis. A continuous
enceinte continues the line of defence to the forts of
Aubervilliers and Romainville. It then stretches
eastwards to Forts Noisy, Rosny, the redoubt of
Fontenay sous-Bois, and the Fort of Nogent-sur-
Marne, forming a half circle around the citadel of
Vincennes. The old castle has almost disappeared the
nine towers with which it used to be garnished have
disappeared, and the citadel is now constructed
on the most modern principles with a bastioned
enceinte, scarp and counterscarp in masonry, and a
covered way. The wood pf Vincennes is protected
on the South by the redoubt of Faisanderie and
the point of Gravelle which commands the peninsula
of St. Maur. The fort of Charenton, situated
between the Seine and the Marne, connects the works
on the right with those on the left bank of the
Lanier river. The works upon the left bank are far
less formidable than those upon the right. They
are farther apart, and are named Ivry, Maitre,
Montrouge, Vauves, and Issy. Between Versailles,
St. Germain, and St. Denis is the strong fortress
of Mont Valdrien. Its armament is not less
than 60 guns; it can lodge 1,500 infantry
in addition to the large force of artillery and
engineers indispensable to such an important strong-
hold. Its object, however, is not so much to pro;.
teet Paris against attack—for it is not from the
west that the enemy is likely to approach—as
to keep open the means of communica-
tion and the supplies of food. The detached forts
being outside the enceinte, it is supposed that the
army would be able to have its Operations so free as
to secure the provisioning of the city. The fortifi-
cations of the second line, all bastioned and continu-
ous, comprise, proceeding inwards, first the "zone of
servitude," about 770 yards wide, in which no
erection of masonry is allowed, and none of wood
without the express permission of the military authori-
ties; secondly, the military terrace, or zone of fortifica-
tions, which begins at the limit of the glacis, em-
braces the counter-scarp, the foss, the scarp, and
other works; and, thirdly, the military road. The
loss is about 48 feet wide, the wall about 31 feet

it means to submit thereto ; a point which becomes
more dountful every hour.

TOPICS OF THE DAY.