The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-03 00:00:00

THE ARMY OF PARIS.

Now that the great effort for the relief of Paris has
been, or is being made, special interest attaches to the
strength and condition of the forces inside the capital.
On these points a resident in Paris who has recently re-
turned to England furnishes some apparently trustworthy
information. The actual effective strength under arms in
the French capital is considerably over 400,000 men. Of
these one good third may be called merely garrison
troops, and are available for purely defensive purposes
only. The remainder, say 300,000 men, are ready at any
moment for active service in the field. The whole force
may be readily divided into four separate component
parts—the Garde Nationale Seduntaire of Paris, the
Garde Mobile, the regular army, and th Marines. The
first named has existed nominally ever since the First Re-
public, but the Empire kept the strength of this body,
so formidable in revolutions, as low as possible.
The re-establishment of the Republic called the
National Guard into active existence. A month after
the fall of the Empire there was an army of inhabitants
of Pads numbering at least 200,000 men ; a month more
and the army had swelled to 250,000 ; and the greater part
of them were drilled, armed, and properly attired. The
Garde Nationale was organised in 260 battalions,
each nominally of 1,200 men. Few of them were
under 1,000 strong; several of them had their full
complement of men. It was about the fifth week of the
siege when General Troehu propounded his scheme
(which was instantly embodied in a decree of the Govern-
ment) for the organisation of " Mobilised " battalions of
the Garde Nationale. Volunteers were to be enrolled out
of each of the existing battalions, to be 'employed for
purposes of sortie and external warfare during the siege.
Various are the accounts of the success which attended this
voluntary movement. Some say that not one-half the
number required came forward ; but the " Returned
Resident" declares that whereas 40,000 were required,
not fewer than 80,000 offered themselves. Indeed this
writer calcuiates that the mobilised National Guard
cannot be much under 100,000. The number of the Garde
Mobile, not very easy to ascertain, is estimated in Paris (de-
ducting exaggerations) at 100,000 men. Their merits as
soldiers are as diverse as their names, varying from the
fresh, active, and loyal peasants of Brittany to the dissi-
pated and disorderly rascals representing the department
of the Seine, whose habits of pillage, cowardice, and
insubordination have been the opprobrium of the garrison
troops of the capital. The regular army consists
of Vinoy's corps, tolerably intact, and a whole maange
of the scattered fugitives of lost battles in the war.
Reofficered, reorganised, reformed, many of them by bit-
ter experience, they are very different troops from what
they were when they shouted noisily their boast of
"h Berlin !" Lastly, there are the Marines, the only
portion of the Imperial forces yet undefeated. This whole
array of different arms has been divided into
three armies. The first army consists of Garde Nationale
alone—that is of the mobilised battalions of the Garde
Nationale, which, as I said, are 260 in number, and fur-
nish an effective of about 100,000 volunteers. These
volunteers are, in point of age, patriotism, and courage,
the picked men of each battalion, They are all armed
throughout with chassepots, or perhaps in a very few cases
with tabatieres.

The second army is under the command of General
Ducrot, and is subdivided again into three army corps.
Embodied in the second army is about one-half of the
Garde Mobile. This force, as well as the cavalry and
artillery of the regular army, is pretty evenly distributed
between the second and third armies, which seem
to resemble, in point of fact, the several armies
which in the beginning of the war brought
about such confusion and ruin by their want of co-
operation and adhesion. The third army is under the
especial orders of General Trochu himself. It is, doubt-
less, destined as the army of reserve, and composed of the
most reliable troops and sub-officers that can be found.
Besides these different forces, there are the Eclaireuri,
the Freeshooters, and the Carabiniers Parisiens. The
Amis de la France, a corps of some 11,000 men, is enlisted
chiefly from the Belgian residents in Paris. But there are
Dutch, Italians, Americans, and several other nations in
smaller numbers.