The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-28 00:00:00

THE EXPECTED BOMBARDMENT.

Writing from the German position south-east of Paris,
December 23, the special correspondent of the Daily Nees
with the Crown Prince of Prussia, says :—The sharp
fighting of December 21st, towards St, Denis, was not
followed by a fight on the 22nd to the south eastward of
Paris, as had seemed very probaole. I passed along most
of the southern line of attack—line of blockade, if you
prefer the phrase—yesterday afternoon, and found only
the usual state of watchful attention on the part of
the Germans and of occasional firing from their
heavy guns on the part of the French. It was bitterly
cold, with a north wind and driving sleet, and the waggon
loads of blankets which came creeping up from the rail-
way at Lagny were welcome sights, I doubt not, to the
troops upon the road. Small detachments of infantry
were to be observed trudging through the wintry
weather to join their regiments, convoys of
ammunition followed the blankets, and grocery
stores of all kinds were being borne towards
Versailles. There was ample evidence of the
use of open communications. What stores and
convoys the French would be guiding into Paris if they
could 1 These things, which were going to sustain their
besiegers, would be invaluable to the garrison. These
melancholy looking sheep, in particular, dragged by some
of the infantry in their wake, would be highly esteemed
behind the ramparts of the city. In all this freedom of
circulation without the line of the blockade, in the
slow filing of waggons over the bridge at Ville-
neuve St. George, and the bringing of reinforce-
ments at pleasure to the scene of action, we see one side of
the great time race. There is another, in regard to pos-
sible relief from a distance, and possible improvement of
the garrison. But this blockading side i 4 all for the Ger-
mans. Amid the freezing gusts of sleety wind and
the shadows of the passing clouds, there were
gleamii of sunshine on the city. The prize of
the race looked fair as ever, white and unharmed
among its circle of foes. There it was in the clear
nipping frost of last night, with the reflected light above
it of its many lamps, a light munch fainter, say the
German outposts, than of yore, and with the boom of
guns sounding ever and anon in the dark. There was
a considerable amount of firing at one time during
the night, but it appeared to be a general firing round
the defences, as though the French gunners were
resolved to keep themselves awake, rather than
a concentrated attack upon any one spot. That
loud thunder of a well-supported cannonade from their
batteries which the besiegers have longed to hear, and
which has been so often whispered to be at hand, has not
yet begun. The bombardment has not been tried up to
the present time, and is put off by public rumour for a
few days more. If we put it off altogether, and base our
arguments on the chances of starvation, we have the time
race clearly before us. Week after week the siege has
continued, every expectation of an early surrender has
been long ago disappointed, and Paris is certain to hold
out into the New Year. But what then ? There must
be an end to the food, and each day makes it less
necessary to bombard at all. I cannot judge so well
as those at a distance of the movements in the
rest of France. Paris is the centre on which our
attention is here fixed, and we can see that the chances of
a sortie will not improve. The arrival of reinforcements
from Germany is about to make the task of coming out
harder than ever. The odds of the race are inclining
more to the Germans since this last sortie was repulsed,
only it is bitter weather in which to wait.

THE ASSAULTS FROM THE PARIS FORTS.
The Daily News elrrespondent at the headquarters of
the Crown Prince of Saxony, under date December 23,
writes :—Scarcely had I given up my letter to the Feld-
post in Gonesse (whence the post leaves at two), when
Aubervilliers fired a gun which seemed to be a signal, and
a furious cannonade almost at once began. La Bourget—
poor battered Le Bourget—with my friends of the
Queen Elizabeth Retriment, was again in receipt
of all the punishment. Instead of returning to my
post of the morning, which is ineligible as a view
point, I made for the high ground between Gonesse and
Arnoville, from which the whole scene lay spread before
me like a map, in the clear afternoon air. In a long
column, with its left resting on a clump of house =,
little in front of Courneuve, right athwart the plain be-
hind Drancy, and on as far as Baubigny—further, perhaps,
only I could not see it—stood the French infantry. There
must have been 30,000 of them at least. Behind, in front
of Courneuve, were two batteries of field artillery
continually firing; there was another near the farm
of Drancy, and at least two more in the village of Drancy
itself. Then the forts were all hard at work from Du
Nord away in the north, the lunette of Stains, its covered
way running across the inundation, de l'Est flashing out
its discharges so close to the water's edge that the smoke
might have been taken for jets of steam—Aubevilliers,
the grey and grim, squatting there like a gigan
tic toad in the middle of the green plain—
and Romanvilllers on the further brink of the
canal ; while the puff and curl of smoke which ever and
anon hung round the lofty summit of Noisy, far away on
the top of the ridge, and standing bluffly up against the
horizon, told that again to-day Clichy was experiencing
its tender mercies. But this was the only diversion ;
everything itself concentrated itself doggedly on
Bourget, if I except Mont Valdrien, which
away far to the right in the eye of the declining sun had
also his mantle of white smoke about his shoulders,
betokening annoyance to St. Cloud or Bougival. La
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one sided. The Guards' artillery between Gonesse
and Bulnay was profoundly silent ; I suppose the
French infantry were beyond range, and the forts, of
course, yet more so. On the tract between
Aulnay and Sevran the batteries of the 12th
Army Corps were very brisk, firing steadily across into
Drancy and the line toward Bondy, but making compara-
tively a poor show in comparison with the profuse
fire of the French bursting out from so many points
simultaneously. I am almost certain that I heard
the crashing of the shells into Le Bourget every
moment I saw the flash and smoke of their explosion.
With hardly an exception, every gun had the range