The Sun.
London, England, 1870-12-06 00:00:00

THE SORTIES FROM PARIS.

In a letter dated from the Headquarters at Versailles
November 30th, the special correspondent of the Telegraph
says :—Since the night of the 27th instant, we„have lived
in a constant row and racket ; our windows rattling in
the frames with the incessant concussions produced by the
firing of the forts. Sortie after sortie has been made upon
different sections of the investing circle—all ineffectual
not only because the dispositions of the German
are so admirable that their lines are vir-

;roop

tually impregnable, but because the forces em-
ployed by the French commanders are invariably alto-
gether inadequate to the task allotted to them. Two men
have been killed and twelve wounded, by an expo aditure
of ammunition that has probably cost France a million of.
francs. As if, however, to make up for the remarkable
exiguity of the losses caused by the cannon of Paris to the
besiegers, death has been unusually busy of late
in the German ranks. The three brigades of
the 10th Corps, with the 52nd Regiment
in support, engaged on the 28th with the
main body of the Loire Army suffered heavily, and the
Saxons, in this morning's affair—a most obstinately con-

tested fight—have had no fewer than seventeen officers put
hors de combat. Yesterday's repulse of the sortie from
Montrouge and Bicetre, which cid ninated in some very
hard fighting near L'Hay, cost the 6th Corps two
officers and 100 men ; and the number of
French killed and wounded in all
_the three
engagements cannot, according to the accounts
that have reached me this evening, be far short of nine

thousand. They left over a thousand dead on the field of
battle at Beaune-la-Rolande ; it is therefore more than
probable that their wounded amounted to four or five
thousand on that occasion. Both the sorties have
turned out disastrously for them ; in the smaller of
the two, that of yesterday, several of their officers
were killed while gallantly calling on their men to
follow them under a withering fire. A Prussian
General, who was present at the affair, says that he
distinctly saw the officers of the line troops engaged Aris-
ing the unwilling soldiers with the flat of their swords,
and heard them shouting "En avant 1 en avant 1" In
vain ; the men hung back, and nothing—not even the
splendid example their leaders set—could induce them
to advance beyond a certain point. A large number of
prisoners—between four and five hundred—were cap-
tured before L'Hay, and they al give very bad
accounts of the Moblets and Gardes Nationales that con-
stitute the inner defence of Paris. Prince Frederick
Charles took more than 2,000 prisoners on the 28th, and
nearly as many more have fallen into the hands of the
different corps engaged in the recent affairs before Paris.
On the morning of Dec. 1 the French gained the advantage of
establishing themselves in the villages near Brie-sur-
Marne, and will have to be expelled. At one time they
had occupied those to the right and left of Ormesson, but
were driven back with loss by the Wurtember,gers. The
order was given last night that the first-mentioned posi-
tions were to be retaken, which will be done with a force
of 50,000. Every hour we expect to hear the fire recom-
menced.