New-York tribune., 1870-09-22
WAR TOPICS.

In France there is new embarrassment
added to the ordinary difficulties of horticul-
ture. The "trm parterre," which in other
countries has taken graceful shapes and laby-
rnthine curves, has in France acquired ten
dency to Imperialism. The new regime will
look with eyes askance on hower-beds that
represent the initials N. l., or dense foliage
that has been so clipped that n. and +. seem
gracefully to intertwne Tho most serious
case of this sort is, or perhaps was. in the
celebrated peach gardens of Montreuil, near
Paris, where scientific culture produces the
finest peaches from the most fantastic boughs,
and supplies the chief Partisan market from
"cordOnsn in the likeness of anything but
peach-trecs. The gem of this collection was
the Napoleon peach-tree, whose limbs are so
disposed as to present nothing but that i'm
perial name in q shape of leaf and flower and
fruit each year. "It is a healthy tree, though
ga little weak near the center" And what is
most remarkable, it has borne good fruit.
What shall tho unhappy proprietor do with
it nowf AT its present age it would never
take a Republican twist-it would die first.
In that species of training the inclinatiOns of
the tree are permanently bent in the twig
There is but one possibility. One of our re-
cent Cable dispatches mentioned that the walls
of those gardens were to be torn down to
make room for the play of artillery in the
Paris Notifications. Perhaps Provisional
Government shell may strike the phenomenon
and carry it off in blaze of glory, leaving
the proprietor the possessor of a valid war
claim against the Republic for one Napoleon
"tree.n
From every side rises chorus Of testimony
to the incompetence and carelessness of the
French officers. Frenchmen, Prussians, En-
glishmen, Americans, all tell the same story.
" 1t is of no use blaming Gen. de Failly in
PARTICULAR writes DR.. Russell; she is only
cone of many. The proceedings of MacMahOn
himself, and of all the principal commanders
under him, had for some time before the
"last great disaster been marked by simple
faulty. Destined to be destroyed, they GER
tainly went mad beforehand" 1t seems that
while MacMahOn was marching from Chalons
toward Metz, he had no suspicion that the
Crown Prince had turned to follow him, and
never knew the Prussians were at his heels
till he was actually Overtaken And during
this movement upon the celebrity of which
hung the issue of the war, the corps of Gen.
Ducros halted overnight at Douzy, in order to
give ball to a number of ladies who had
come to meet them from Sedan.
The difference in the way in which story
can be told is curiously illustrated in the con-
trast of the variations of the same facts
coming over the Cable from either side in the
present war. The Prussian accounts told of a
shell thrown by one of their little corvettes
upon the deck of French iron-cad near
Dantzic. The French account described
how nearly one of their iron-clads came
to being sunk by torpedo which
the Prussians attached to her. The immense
numbers of Prussians killed by the explosion
at Laon, according to French newspapers, is
marvelously diminished in Prussian statements.
" Eight to ten thousand was the number
which French accounts gave for the besiegers
who perished in the salles made by the garri-
son of Stnsbourg; $50 men during the entire
fortnight is all the loss the Prussans admit.
1t Is possible to explain differences in sea-going
stories, but are all the besieged cities of France,
as well as the forts of Paris, manned by
marines