The Sun.
London, England, 1870-08-20 00:00:00

TEIE SUN, LONDON, SATURDAY EVENING, AUGUST 20, 1870.

superintendent, " I have nothing here but a third class
carriage." " / will content myself with that," said the
Emperor. He then asked for a glass of wine. The superin-
tendent passed the glass from which he had been drinking
and offered some wine to the Emperor. The Prince Im-
perial, extremely fatigued,, asked if he could wash his
hands and face. The affilerintendent could only offer
him the same glass with some water, and a pocket
handkerchief. The Emperor and the Prince did not even
appear to notice the excessive simplicity.

Flow completely the Emperor is set now aside the
French correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, an excel=
lent authority, sufficiently shews. He says that the
Minister of War received an order from head-quarters
forbidding the publication of any despatches that do not
come from Bazaine, even if the Emperor himself signed
them !

A lady in attendance upon the sick and wounded at
Hombourg relates horrible stories of barbarities committed
by Turcos. In the last engagement, she says, they scalped
several wounded Germans, flayed ' their faces alive, and
stabbed them with penknives. Three German officers
found in this state by their coniYades prayed to be shot
instantly to be relieved from their sufferings ; their wish
was complied with, as there was no chance of life. Of
three Hanoverian soldiers caught by the Turcos they cut
off the hands, noses, and ears. Another Turco, who had
both legs shot off, crawled with difficulty to a wounded
Prussian, and bit him in the neck ; another, also wounded,
shot an officer (from behind) dead through the neck. The
committed other atrocities in the hospital.

i (both lie between Metz and . the Prussian frontier), and
severe fighting took place at both towns.
Whoever won Borney it was a most desperate battle,
and ended in fearful loss on both sides. The Figaro says
that when Bazaine took command of the army, he made
great efforts to concentrate his forces, with the view, if the
occasion were favourable, of fighting before Metz. The
chief point of this concentration was Borney, a little village
situated at the junction of the roads from For-
bach, St. Avoid, and Boulay. Before Sunday
last it was decided to withdraw all the troops
behind the Moselle, and leave Metz, retreating to
Chalons, where the decisive battle was to be fought.
Some movements to this end were actually undertaken.
General Ladmirault prepared to withdraw across the
north of Metz. General Decaen was directed to take
his corps through Metz itself. Some of the former
general's troops had actually commenced on unday morn-
ing to defile through a ravine, when the news arrived
that the Prussians, who had stationed themselves
at Noisseville, Montoy, and Coincy, were coming
forward. Ladmirault at once turned round and
led his men towards the enemy. In a few mi-
nutes a tremendous fire arose all along a line
of some two leagues in length from Valibre
to Grigny (all these places are to be found near Metz on
the east side.) The cannonade was kept up, says the
Figaro, till between four and five o'clock. It was then in-
terrupted for an hour in order to allow the infantry and
the mitrailleuses time to do their work. From six o'clock
•until thirty-five minutes past eight the fire of artillery
continued. Before nine o'clock the enemy had abandoned
his positions. It was a glorious victory, adds the Figaro,
and beyond doubt the finest fight of the campaign. Eight
thousand German dead testified to the terrible nature
of the strife. Heaps of men were laid about
inall directions. Whole ranks fell here and there, in
the order which they occupied. Several soldiers were
found wounded, buried under heaps of dead, and unable
to extricate themselves. The mitrailleuse did all this';
nor was the operation of the Prussian steel gun at all to
be despised. General Picard, who commanded a division
of the Imperial Guard, said he had never seen such a
field.

It was of the battle of Borny that the
Emperor spoke in that famous despatch of
his which nobody in France or out of it could
understand. On that same Sunday the Em-
peror left Metz at half past three o'clock —just before the
battle commenced—and he arrived at Longville, a small
village near Metz on the westward, on the road to Ver-
dun. His Majesty therefore departed in ignorance of the
event that was on the point of taking place. At Longville
-he stayed with a landowner, Colonel Henocque, whilst
his staff camped out as best they might in the adjoining
fields. At this place the Prussians attempted an act of
daring astonishing even for them. They tried to capture
the Emperor ! Admirably informed, as they always
are, of the French movements, they knew the route

the Emperor had taken. A body of Uhlans and artillery
_bid themselves in the clumps of trees on the grounds of
a chateau and two farms just opposite Longville, on the
other side of the Moselle. There they remained all
Sunday night. On Monday the Uhlans crossed
the river, whilst the artillery directed its fire
upon the village of Monlins, situated to the
left of Longville, in order to prevent the arrival of
any help. But they altogether mistook the force the
Emperor liad with him, and were caught in their own
. _ _

trap. In spite of the German fire, some French engineers
blew up the railway bridge, by which the Uhlans had
crossed, and the retreat of the latter was cut off.
They were confronted by a considerable force, and were
obliged to surrender in a body, almost without firing a
shot.

Another account, from the Agence Havas, says that the
battle commenced about half-past four in the after-

noon of Sunday. The firing over a space o.
three leagues continued almost all night.
The number of the dead and wounded on both sides is
very great ; the Prussian loss is especially heavy. In

retreating they fired several villages, the position which
they defended most strenuously being that of
Sainte Barbe, which is a village with about 500
inhabitants. The Prussians were stationed on the hills
which form a kind of square, and were dislodged with

great difficulty, firing the villages as they went. All Metz
was in commotion during the fight, for every shot was
heard, and the women and children stood in the doorways
of their houses, while the military trains blocked up the

streets, and kept the gates. All night long fresh troops

were pouring through Metz towards the scene of action,
for the right began again on Monday morn.

mg in the direction of Montigny. The artillery

and cavalry passed through the town in the night
followed by the Chasseurs of Vincennes and the Imperia:

Guard, who took no part on Sunday. The colonel of the

fortress and the army round it are now invested on all
sides. Twice, and twice in vain, the French haye
attempted to fight their way through their foes. A thifd
or a fourth effort can scarcely bring better success ; and
the Army, even previous to its present close investment,
had already been placed on short rations. The alterna-
tive seems either starvation within the fortress) or release
by a capitulation. To this apparently inevitable conclu-
sion the French Commanders have been brought by their
inability to choose between a timely fight and a timely
retreat. —Times.

Neither commander employs the word victory, although
the Prussians speak exultingly of success. The Prussians
declare that, besides having taken 2,000 prisoneth,
two Imperial eagles, and seven cannon, they
have " completely succeeded, as the French have
been prevented from continuing their movement of
retreat." This is the critical point in the despatch,
and the Prussian statement is confirmed to a great extent
by Marshal Bazaine himself when he forbears that he is
master of his line of retreat. The Marshal gives one
most extraordinary reason for not moving ; he has used
up his ammunition. It was so at Woerth, where
it became impbssible to continue the battle because
the infantry had no cartridges. However the
fact may be explained, these despatches make it
clear that the French army, which three days ago we
were told had reached Etain, had got on Tuesday, before
this battle began, only nine or ten miles out of Metz.
The resistance it met with on Monday 'must have
been more effectual than was generally supposed.
It is important to consider the , effect of this
battle on the • assumption that the Prussian state-
ment is substantially true, and that Bazaine's retreat is
actually cut off. The Marshal's army was wanted
at Chalons to form a compact and well-or-
ganized body of seasoned soldiers, around which
the new levies of Garde Mobile, Gendarmes, Porn-
piers, and others might form themselves, and to give
stability to the line on the field of battle there. For
this purpose its presence is indispensable. No
stand can be made at Chalons if the Army of the
Rhine be not there. No. General would think of
opposing the enemy with only the raw troops to be
found at Chalons. But further, the Army of the
Rhine is not urgently needed at Chalons, because
another army than that of Prince Frederick Charles
that of the Crown Prince is fast approaching
that city, and Bazaine has been relied on to hold
it, in check. But Marshal Bazaine, if his position
has been correctly apprehended, can only get to
Chalons, or even to Verdun, by walking over the army
which he fought on Tuesday, Ora army holding the road
against him. Under these circumstances there must be
another bloody battle near Metz, for the army of France
will never fail in its 'duty by abandoning the defence of
the capital.—Daily News.

really a conjuror's trick. He put a little in his
knapsack for the morrow, thanked us with tears
in his eyes, and took the road to Saverne, without waiting
for his corporal, who had doubtless forgotten him. It is
a fact worthy of remark that all these conquerors are very
ready to cry. In every house where the soldiers have
eaten and slept there, have been tears. A good, heavy
old father, incorporated in the Landwehr or the Landsturm
—I don't know which—and posted in a bakery
of Saverne, said, tearfully, "Why can't I finish
the campaign around this honest kneading-trough? I am
head of a flourishing house ; I employ five journeymen; I
have a wife and three children. I ask you now, is my
proper place under a flag in front of the French bullets."
A musician, who has perhaps a comic opera in rehearsal
in his own country, shewed the photograph of his wife to
my valet, and cried, "She is' pretty, it seems, this little
German girl ; and she is all alone to look after two
cradles."—Edmond About in Le Soir.

Count Chotek, the Austrian Ambassador at St.
Petersburg, has arrived at Vienna. He reports that
Russia ardently desires the restoration of peace by means
of a united action of the neutral Powers.—Eastern
Budget.

The Metz correspondent of the Independance Beige says
on the 12th of August that it was reported that General
Froissard had been handcuffed and seated in a carriage.
This, he says, is not true, but a general has been seen
under such circumstances. He may have been another
Prussian spy.
The .North German Correspondent says :—While a

powerful and victorious German army holds possession
of the eastern departments of Prance, the barracks of
Germany are filled with the reserve forces. Prussia
alone can at this moment send 200,000 additional men to
join the troops now advancing on Paris.

The New Free Press of Vienna publishes some expres-
sions of the Emperor Napoleon as a proof of his desire
for war. He is said to have told an ambassador, before
the present campaign began, " I fear nothing except that
Prussia will draw back." When warned of the danger
of a war, and urged to desist from it, Napoleon replied,
" Behold the enthusiasm of all France for war ; I shall
never find it again."

The Liberte publishes a conversation with a Turco who
fought at Woerth. He said that himself and his two
brothers, with four others, had formed a group, and that
they had been shot down, one by one, by a Prussian
tirailleur, who was concealed in a wool close to them,
whom he, the sole survivor, despatched at length by a
bullet in the forehead. To effect this he had knelt down
on one of his brothers, and had hidden himself behind
the five others, who were in a heap.

Louis Blanc, in a letter to the Tenzps on the English
view of the present situation in France, asks what is the
question of the hour? France must be saved by the union
of all French:Men, which implies the substitution of a
state of things in which the country is everything for a
state of things in which it has been nothing. It is time
that one man should disappear behind the na-
tion. When France, great in her ideas, and
in the forces in which they originate, shall
have repulsed the enemy, when freed from the
influence of party passions, and closely united she has
discomfited the invaders, she will decide upon what is
most conducive to the regular and peaceable development
of her destiny. In waiting it is, by the absolute ascen-
dancy of the filial love of her children, that she will
emerge from this crisis free, glorious, and supreme.
The Cologne Gazette is hard upon Marshal Bazaine. It
declares that he has been guilty of most disreputable
tricks for the purpose of making money. In Mexico he
refused to pay his very considerable gaming debts, and
when politely reminded of them by Mexican gentlemen, he
gave the latter to understand that if they committed such
an indiscretion a second time he would have them ar-
rested by the military police as suspected persons. When
the Marshal retreated from Mexico with the French
troops, who, by the way, stole everything they could
possibly take away with them, he sold, in order to fill his
own pockets, guns and military stores to Juarez, the
mortal enemy of the unfortunate Maximilian, who had
gone to Mevico relying on the support of France. The
example of the General was not long in being followed by
his subalterns, and the Mexicans maintained that the
plans and positions of Maximilian's troops were sold to
them by French officers. The Cologne Gazette remarks
that Bazaine and Pallikao, the new French War. Minister,
are a nice pair. Very likely; but if Government selected
generals by their moral character, the names of certain
Prussian worthies would never have appeared on the
scroll of fame.

Edmond About in the Soh. thus mourns the position of
his country :—What must we think of the apathy on the
part of a people formerly so energetic ? It it that twenty
years of despotism have degraded the whole mass of
Frenchmen ? Has the Government of the last Bonaparte
succeeded beyond its wishes and caused all citizens to for-
get all methods of resistance ? As it took twenty years to
make us forget the " Marseillaise," has it caused us also
-to lose that civic spirit which is the mainspring of all
natural defence? A nation cannot with impunity be dis-
armed, enervated, smoothed down, and taught to believe
that soldiers in uniform alone have a right to handle
the musket. That mean prejudice, which for a time
assumes the necessity of a despotism, produces as
an ultimate effect the moral debasement which I have
just referred to. France wili soon recover herself ; the
people are but asleep ; the cannon will awaken them ;
men will again become citizens in the old and sublime
acceptation of that word. That fraction of the male
population of France which the men of the 2nd of De-
cember have sought, for their own purpose, to separate
from us as a distinct caste, has in a first outburst of
patriotism become reconciled with the civil element of
the nation. Mutual misfortunes have hastened and con-
summated their fusion.

AN ENGLISHMAN WHO' SAW WOEILTH.—I was
also favoured by much grave counsel from an English
gentleman, just returned from Woerth, where he
had the enviable good luck of witnessing the
whole action from a church steeple. He was arrested
about every five minutes by the Prussians—every
time, indeed, that he adventured his person in
the streets ; and had a narrow escape from
being shot as a French spy. tile told me that the
defence of the Zouaves was splendid, but that nothing
could stand the marvellous élan and persistence of the
German troops. MacMahon's retreat was really a rout
—an utter, hopeless, disorganised, frantic sauve qui
peat. There was no attempt at a rally after the panic
set in. The men, picked soldiers though they were, fled
for their lives, throwing away their muskets, shakos,
ammunition, and many of them even their great
coats. The Prussian cavalry launched. upon them as they
broke and ran, drove them on like sheep, and captured
thousands of prisoners, without encountering any resis-
tance. My informant, who has witnessed many a hard-
fought battle, assured me that he had never seen a defeat
so crushing inflicted upon such fine soldiers, occupying
so strong a position. The Germans were about
five to three to the French, certainly, and succeeded
in completely overlapping their enemy's right by
the more superiority of their numbers ; but for hours the
French defence was a desperately tough one, and the
hand-to-hand encounters, of which there were many,
were simply terrific. It was in these, and in the short.

but this is what they say amongst us. Your cavalry is
not half so good as ours, but your artillery is excellent,
and you have an infantry unequalled. Your soldiers of
the line, there are men for you ! Don't talk to me of the
Turcos ; they are tigers ! They have cut off the
heads of our wounded, they have torn out their
eyes ! Clh, the villainous black beasts ! Detestably
bad soldiers they are, firing without aim, running on
like madmen, and giving way without knowing why or
wherefore ! They did us a great deal of mischief with the
bayonet, but when the Wurtemburg cavalry charged them
they ran away. It is not like that that men should be-
have in war." " Did you lose many men ?" " Enormous!
The three officers of my company were killed." " How
do you explain our defeat ?" " They say that if
you were not sold you were, at least, very badly
commanded." Whilst talking, I studied the counte-
nance of this man. He had an honest face, long, and al-
ready furrowed with fatigue and privations ; the eye
very gentle, and a sad smile. If all the conquering host
that crowds on to the soil of France resembled this man,
the invasion would very soon be over. No enthusiasm,
a keen regret for his native country, and little strength
to resist the trials of marching, rain, and want.
.He leaned upon his heavy rifle with a lassitude
so apparent that I had a bottle of wine brought
to him. The little servant who brought it prepared
to drink first. He stopped him with a friendly gesture,
which meant we are all good fellows. The first glass
seemed to him to be good, he took a second, but no more.
"My head is not very strong," he said, " because I have
not seen any bread these four days." " Poor fellow ! you
are fasting." "No, sir : we have not yet wanted flesh
meat." They ran to fetch him a big piece of bread,
which he swallowed almost without masticating—