The Sun.
London, England, 1870-10-21 00:00:00

IN FRONT OF METZ.

The special correspondent of the Telegraph, writin
from the headquarters of the First Army, under date
October 15th, says :—" To-morrow—so a French officer,
taken prisoner at Maison Rouge, and just brought in,
tells me—the Republic is to be proclaimed in Metz. As
yet General Bazaine and his colleagues have managed
to keep the townspeople in ignorance of the
true state of political affairs in France ; but, by some
means or another probably through exchanged
prisoners—the news has oozed out that the dynasty of
Napoleon uo longer exists. The people of Lorraine and
Alsace are nowise Republican ; but their dreams of
glory and accession of territory have received a rude
shock. They have seen the troops who but a short time
ago left Metz to conquer return to its sheiter, not
disgraced, but yet utterly defeated. They have
learnt that French soldiers are not invincible,
and that the incapacity of officers will defeat
an army composed of the best material in the
world. When, therefore, they hear that France is
governed by a Republic, and that Napoleon 111. is no
longer Emperor—that there in a chance of their getting
out of a pestilential city, and avoiding hunger and starva-
tion—a different state of feeling will, perhaps, spring
up ; and Metz la Pucelle may come to terms.
That Bazaine will hold out to the last I have

not the least doubt; and that he will do so in no very
gentle manner, I am also certain, from what this officer

told me. He will go to any lengths to compel the obe-
dience of the population; but the reaction will be trying
for him, and Metz may yet open her gates to Prince
Frederick Charles, and release his army from this trying,
wearying, death-dealing blockade. As to provisions, this
officer laughed when I suggested to him the possibility
that famine might compel the bravest army to succumb.
Ah, bah ! nous avons assez, allez I' he cried. La
farine est lh,, nous avons toujours des chevaux, et l'on ne
pent pas emp6cher la recolte de pommes de terre.' I
mildly suggested that salt, although a common and cheap
commodity, was yet most necessary. On fait la cuisine
sans sel, monsieur—voila tout,' was the answer.
In the abstract, this sort of argument, no doubt,
is all very well ; but, unfortunately, my friend's
face was a perfeet denial of his assertions. He

looked as if he had eaten nothing for a fortnight. I placed
sardines, bread, and a bottle of wine before him; and,
thinking h.o.uid-re.haps appease his hunger betteralone,
or that he would object to show a stranger how hungry
he really was, I left the room. In half an hour
I returned. The box of sardines was empty, the
oaf had disappeared, and the wine was—not. By way
of apology, he said, `Mon camarade, j'ai fait un petit
paquet de tout ca pour la route;' but I confess I saw
nothing like a packet about him. This afternoon I rode
with the young Duke of Mecklenburg and Prince Reuss
towards Mercy-le-Haut, and, as if to refute any
hopes that we might have had of the surrender of Metz,
the batteries were more than ordinarily noisy.
Arrived at the camp of the 9th Regiment at Orly, six
shells welcomed us one after another, killing two men, and
wounding six. Then came the roar of the big gun behind
the railway embankment by Montigny ; then Queulen
thundered away ; in fact, the fire from the batteries
around the town was more severe than ever.
The outposts suffer dreadfully, and, if you add
to the hardships which we suffer from the town itself
those we now endure from the miserably rainy, cold
windy weather, you will complete the chronicle of our
misfortunes. As I returned, a small batch of prisoners
and some horses were brought in from the
neighbourhood of Colomby and Ars Laquenexy.
Poor fellows ! they • looked anything but in good
condition ; and, as to the horses, they were nothing but
bags of bones. On my arrival at headquarters I heard a
rumour that $ French General, with a flag of truce, had
just gone through to the King. Indeed, some officers
most positively asserted that it was General Bourbaki
himself ; but from the description I hardly think so. I
had scarcely taken my seat beside a warm tire, when a
perfect rattle of musketry made me spring up and ask the
meaning of all the noise. Just then an ordurly
galloped past and said that the French were advancing
by way of St. Privat. In a moment we were in our
saddles, and as we clattered through the streets of Jouy,
the Gist and !Ist Regiments were getting under arms.
Riding along the road which leach into Metz by way of

Montigny, I met a company of the 2nd Jagers iu►
columns of sections doubling to the front. A dropping
fire was going on in front of Frascati, and as I pulled up
in rear of a garden wall I heard the whistle of a locomo-
tive in Metz. I thought we were in for another bad nhzht,
but, with the exception of a little smart shooting before
Frascati nothing occurred ; so I rode quietly back to my
quarters."

THE POSITION AT TOURS.
TOURS, OCT. 17TH.
The effects of the late defeats on the morale and disc

pline of the troops has been repaired in part, but by no

means wholly. Bands of men are still walking about this
place utterly unamenable to command. Some are
drunk, some are without uniforms, some have
half their uniforms ; all are worthless tor mili-
tary purposes. An insubordinate soldier is a
most formidable individual—to his friends. These
strictures apply to the Regulars chiefly. The
Mobiles are dispirited, but not disorganised, by their
defeats. They are still ready for battle, and very many
of them have not yet undergone the trial of a flight before
the enemy. The Army of the Loire is yet great in num-
bers and formidable on paper ; but the demoralisation of
a great part and the raw condition of the rest make
it no match for anything like an equal number of
Germans.

The officers are in great measure to blame for this state
of affairs. Good leaders make good men. The First
Napoleon always managed to get on very well with the
raw levies which formed so large a proportion of
his later armies. But the officers here seem
to pay very little attention to business. They
smoke in the cafés, flirt in drawing rooms, and wander
about the public promenades; but the parade ground is
little patronised by their presence. The petit verre is pre-
ferred to the manoeuvre. This is a time when the utmost
and incessant exertions of every officer, no matter of what
rank, are needed. If anything is to be made out of the
Loire army, it will not be by suffering it to make or un-
make itself at pleasure. Yet, with the exception of a few
worthy labourers at the thankless task, nobody rises
equal to the emergency. The demoralising, the bruta-
lising effects of the Second Empire are spoken of as the
cause of all this lassitude. Poor Second Empire The
fact exists, whatever may have produced it. Another diffi-
culty is the inexperience of the officers. The practical
men are inside Metz, or in German fortresses, or at large
their parole. Most of those at Tours are either very
old or very young. If they have been tried in war, it has
been in Algeria ; and experience of warfare, as practised
in the African colony, is perhaps worse than no experience
at all. It is to the habit of fighting with the wild tribes
of Algeria that the incurable carelessness of the French in
the matter of keeping guard, is to be ascribed. There is
no occasion to keep a look-out for Arabs. These
warriors always begin firing off their rifles
about . two miles before they get within range : the
Germans wage war on a different system. Some of the
papers notice the officer difficulty in very severe terms.
One, not published at Tours, even hints at the stern
rigour adopted by the First Republic. Unfortunately, a
bad system is scarcely to be amended in the middle of a
war carried on as rapidly as the present one. Even the
Revolutionary plan of degradation and death as the
penalty of inefficiency could scarcely restore victory to the
French arms.

However, another trial is to be made. More men have
been brought up, and some mitrailleuses are ready for
use. It is hoped that at the next battle, which is
expected every day, the artillery will arrive in sufficiently
good time to be fired at the Germans, which was not
the case at Orleans.

General Bourbaki is here, and his presence leads the
papers to vie with each other in their energetic efforts to
explain the remarkable incident of his departure from
Metz. Most of them agree that the theory of
Bourbaki being asked to take the Prince Imperial into
the fortress, there to be proclaimed Emperor by the
army of Bazaine, is the correct one ; but they differ as to
the personages to whom they attribute the de-
sign and attempted execution of that remarkable
scheme. Some allow that the Empress was a
party to it ; others that she was indignant
at the design, which was the work of M. Rouher and
Prince Napoleon. Certain it is that the Jersey cauldron
(M. Rouher and other Imperialists are at Jersey) is
boiling with intrigues of some kind or other. The theory
about the Prince Imperial has, moreover, this evidence :
it is next to impossible to conceive for what other
purpose Bourbaki could have passed the German lines.