The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-09-29

at five p. M. on Monday last, the 26th inst,
having terminated in formal surrender of the
place, signed at two o'clock in the morning of
yesterday, the 2Sth. Thus within forty-nine
days the chief stronghold OF the French in the
vicinity of the Rhine has been compelled to
succumb, after siege the fame Of which will
live 80 long as the history Of our time sur
wives. The period of its terrible probation-a
few days beyond one month and half-has
more than suficed to span the brief respite
allotted to the empire of Napoleon ILL., after
the serious operations of the war. That
ponderous organization died weeks ago, and
Strasbourg outlived it as a French city just
twenty-four days, the republic having been
declared upon the 4th Of September.
! BY this event France loses seventeen thou
sand valiant fighting men in the ranks and
four hundred and ifty-one officers, the capitu-
lation apparently including the ten thousand
National Guards and Gardes Mobiles who raj
lied to assist the original garrison Of seven
thousand regular imperial troops. The Ger
mans have thus about eighty thousand men,
or the effective of the two army corps which
were charged with the siege, set free, with
the exception of moderate garrison, to rein
force the main body of King William now I'M
der the walls of Paris. Moreover, they get
rid of the last important obstruction on their
direct line of railroad transportation from the
French capital into Germany, and acquire I'M
trammelled access to the navigation of the
Rhine, and, to some extent, of the great canal
running from that river to the Rhone. Steam
ers ply up and down the river; on the one
hand to Basic, in Switzerland, and on the
other to Rotterdam and London, via Cologne
and the intermediate ports. The enormous
advantage of this opening to the invading
armies is strikingly apparent, especially when
we consider that it at the same time lays all
Alsace and Lorraine PROSTATE at the feet Of
the conqueror, the fortresses of Toul and
Phalzbourg having already surrendered, and
Metz being utterly isolated and in its last
agonies. An additional heavy concentration
of experienced spadesmen and bombardiers
will now be brought to bear upon the latter
place, and we may expect soon to hear of its
fall.
In the meantime Strasbourg goes back to
the possession of her German claimants, and
will once more become ere long what she was
for many generations, city of the German
empire. In other columns we have rapidly
sketched the importance, business activity,
literary and scientific value Of the place, with
some outlines of its varied and remarkable
history. 1t teemed with mementoes and asso-
Citations of the past and with the opulenoe and
wealth of our own period. In July last it was a
gay, beautiful, thriving, money making centre
of lively manufacture and international traffic
growing mart of commercial opulence and a
great resort of tourists, attracted thither
by its wonderful history. Its matchless
Doric church alone made it interesting to
all mankind. Now many of the edi-
| fees, monuments, libraries and museums
that enriched it are forever destroyed-an ire
parable loss-and some of its finest streets and
squares are but heaps of blackened ruins. Its
population, originally about eighty thousand,
was increased to one hundred thousand just
into the city for shelter. After the terrible
| overthrow of the French armies under Mac
| Mahon at Woerth the place was invested
by the Germans on the 10th of August. On
the 10Th the heavy artillery arrived, and was
planted on the north Of the beleaguered strong
hold, the country south Of it all the way from
the Ill to the Rhine having been inundated by
the French. From that period the lombard
ment was almost incessant, and the slaughter
havoc, anarchy and terror within the city
particularly awful days, and conhagration
broke out on all sides. Famine and fever
increased these horrors until amid the frantic
shrieks of the perishing townspeople and thu
crumbling walls ofhis citadel and forts, Genera
Urich, the commandant, having done al
that the most rigid duty could exac
or the most sensitive honor claim, Terminates
resistance beside which Magdeburg
Rochelle and even Saragossa might lose thei
military lustre aud gave over the city and al
its vast material to the victorious Baden ani
Saxon besiegers under General Won Werder
Thus the native city Of Kleber and Keller
man, and near which stands the proud ceno
taph dedicated to the heroic Desaix and hi
army of the Rhine, passes under the banner o
people whose language she speaks and who's
Protestant creed she owns, but to Whose
brotherhood she still prefers the Frencl
nationality that has cost her such fearful pur-
CATION with fire and tears and blood. By this
surrender the bounds Of France are made tc
shrink and those of Germany are morally ant
| physically widened by the measure of long
days journey and the number of some milio nj
| of souls.
Too MUOH FOR THE CRoToN D3ARD. One
of our fellow citizens complains that the Crotol
| water sunnlied In hia family and his tenement