Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1870-12-07
PAST SIEGES OF PARIS.

ance In Former Years-Powi1ered Bones
Monks Fat all the Time, and How
Ohio, Emperor of Germany, at the
Gates.
A Liverpool journal publishes the fol-
lowing interesting resume of former
sieges of Paris:
While the world waits in listening ex-
pectation for the thunder of the guns
that are to rain down fire and hail upon
the fairest capital in Europe recollec
ton of the horrors of past sieges of Par
is may help to quicken the perception
of the terrible nature of that which may
be to come. We know the city in it's
beauty and it's pride; it's silver thread of
river glistening between the broad quays
that line its banks; it's tree-planted bou-
levards, gay with the life and pleasure
that found it's centre there; it's wide
streets and stately architecture; its mon
uments of art; it's cathedral, churches,
palaces and theatres; its fragments of
antiquity, hoary with eight hundred
years of time; it's Champ Elysees and
Bots de Boulogne; its pleasant gardens
and promenades, where light hearted
crowd, gathered from the four corners
of the earth, sauntered leisurely under
the clear sky of summer, as If peace
were eternal. But the picture has
changed.
At such crisis of her fortunes, the
student of HISTORY may naturally turn to
the records of former seiges of Paris to
see how she has stood this ultimate tri-
al of her fortitude in the past. A wri-
ter in the current number of the cotem-
porary Review has done so in well
written narrative, showing both knowl-
edge of his subject and good taste in its
treatment It will be sufficient to pass
over with a mention the first great siege
of Paris by the Normans, when Eudes,
Count of Paris, his brother Robert and
Archbishop Gozelin saved, by their he
roic efforts, the city, which the imbecile
Charles the Fat abandoned to it's fate
The event was a great one. It decided
virtually the fate of the Carlovingian
dynasty in France, and it is immortal
lied, under a thin veil of fiction, in the
great poem Of &C Ariosto."
A hundred years later Ohio IL, En-
peror of Germany, marched to the gates
of Paris, but returned after useless
bravado at Montmatre.
When Edward III. invaded France in
1859. he blockaded Paris for time; and
an incident of the siege, with its pleas
ant touch of human laziness, agreeably
relieves the testimony of the story
The Parisians were so fearful that the
noise of the bells ringing for mathis
should cover the sound of the enemy's
approach in the dark, that it was order
ed mathis should be sung in all the
churches and converts at curfew instead
of at midnight; a change found so
agreeable in some converts, says a
chronicler, that they continued to sing
mathis at curfew instead of at midnight
long after the English had departed.
Henry VS. occupation of Paris after
the treaty of Troyes, and the perma-
nence of an English garrison within its
walls for fourteen years after his death,
filled most disastrous period for
France, and the horrors of the country
were intensified in the city. Famine
and pestilence reduced the population
to one-half. In the Journal d'aaa
Bourgeois de Paris the writer says he
saw boys and girls lying on dirt heaps,
thirty and forty together, moaning, 81
am dying of hunger" Dogs became SO
dangerous that dog killers were appoint
ed and from the environs wolves entered
at night, and attacked people in the
street. Death itself became happiness
in the dreadful frost of one winter, when
it is said to have showed for forty days
and forty nights, and men lay down in
the open, air nerveless from hunger and
cold, to sleep the sleep which knows no
waking.
The last great siege of Paris was in
1890. At that date the city had been
for nearly two years under the dominion
of the League, composed of the Consel
DIES Seize, led by the Guises, swayed by
the intrigues of Philip III. Of Spain
Nine months before Henry ILL had fall
len by the knife of jacques Clement, as
as but few months earlier he had caus-
ed the Duke de GJlise to perish by the
daggers of MONTEREY and Loignac.
Joined with his cousin, Henry of Navar-
re, he had marched to subdue the city
from which he had been cast out, and
he is then said to have pronounced n
threat of determination that finds a par
tial echo now cit would be a great
pity to ruin so great city, but must
have my rights on the rebels within
it. 1t is the heart of the League
and 1t is the heart we must strike. Paris
head of the kingdom, but head too
large and too capricious, you want
bleeding, to cure you and all the rest of
France, to which you impart your mad
ness. But few days longer, and there
will be seen neither houses nor walls,
but only the place where thou hast been y
The death of the author OF this pious
aspiration compelled his cousin, now
Henry w., to withdraw for time, till.
no Df
mally began, lasting three months and
seven days, The city-then tenth of
its present Numbered over two
hundred thousand souls; it contained
eighty churches and sixty converts.
The investing army, fresh from the
battle field of Ivry, numbered fifteen
thousand; and inside the walls there
were fifty thousand militia and about
four thousand regular soldiers, besides
sixty-tive pieces of cannon. Paris was
Catholic and its assailants Huguenot,
and the antagonism of creeds was used
by the defenders to stimulate the popu-
lace to extraordinary endurance. The
investment was not complete, and |
though provisions, not being able to ar
rive by the Seine, rapidly rose in price !
till they could not be bought for money, |
yet some quantity of them was SNUG |
gled into the town. Henry never used 1
his artillery, so that the progress
Of the siege depended solely upon
the power of the inhabitants to with |
stand the gradual diminution of their
food supply. On the Goth of June-the |
wheat being exhausted and thep poor suf- /
tering severely, while the members of
,he religious communities retained their
sickness of condition-it was decided
hat religious houses should maintain
he poor On an inventory being taken
If the ecclesiastical stores, it was found .
hat the Jesuits had corn for more than I
/ year, the Capuchins had biscuit III
and generally the religious
houses were furnished for six months
nore-a fact that does not, OF course,