The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-01-30

Paris, the most astounding and momentous
military and political event of modern times,
is now matter of history. Paris has fallen
and France has collapsed for Paris still is
France: ISe single campaign Is 4 St s!E months :
she has suffered heavier losses and greater
! hsmiliations than in all her previous wars OF
| the last two hundred years. Her infatuation
in this war and her appalling punishment are
without precedent in history, excepting only
| the consequences to Mark Antony of the fatal
Establishments of his Egyptian syren. As 1.-THE
serpent of old Nile" was the ruin of Antony,
so the charms of the Rhine have been the rum
OF France. And what contrast have we
from this insane infatuatiOn between the gay,
brilliant, happy and fourishing Paris, when
Napoleon, in July last, in all
The PRIDE pomp and circumstance Of glorious war,
set out for the conquest of the Rhine, and the
| Paris of to-day, amid the terriers of famine,
| anarchy and subjugatlon, which recall the
frightful scenes enacted in Jerusalem under
the siege of Titus
Thus with all our modern inventions of
swift destruction, we have the barbarisms of
war of eighteen hundred years ago reproduced
in Paris, in the full blaze Of our boasted
civilization Of the nineteenth century. What
a subject is Paris and it's surroundings. what
theme is Paris and France to the moral
philosopher as they are to-day, shattered
nutilated, blackened by fire, and despoiled
and laid waste by destructive armies And
| all for what? All, as it appears, because
Louis Napoleon would not have Hohen-
zollera as King Of Spain. Was there ever
such bald pretence or such criminal folly?
! But it was not the Hohenzollern--it was the
| Rhine-that drew Napoleon into this war, and
| it was Paris, it was France, that urged him on.
! There was he, in the Tuieries, the absolute
| master of France, ''by the will of her people,
and the arbiter of Europe There was his
regular imperial army Of four hundred thou
sand effective men, supposed to be invincible
with the chassepot and the mitraileuse.
There were his arsenals and m ilitary
foundries and armories, equal to all demands
there was his Eastern frontier, bristling with
impregnable fortresses there was his iron
clad navy, hardly second to that of Great
Britain; there was proud, gay imperial Paris,
proof against Holy Alliance in arms and
unapproachable in the heart Of France, with
her forty millions of patriotic people, What
chance had Prussia and her feeble German
allies against such tremendous forces as these 2
France must have the line Of the Rhine, and
Paris shouted, s'A Berlin - for in erlin the
Rhine frontier of France was to be ''rectiied."
That was in July, and here at the end of
January who is Napoleon? What is Paris,
and where is France? Her unapproachable
capitalized by the enemy-looks to his
charity against the pangs Of starvation; the
legions still alive of her late iavincible impe-
rial army, more powerful than the legions
which her Little Corporal led VIGOROUSLY
to Moscow, are held az prisoners of war in
foreign land; her impregnable frontier
fortresses have changed hands; her iron-clad
navy against the German coast, rendered pow
erless by the torpedo, has done nothing, and
her forty millions of patriotic people, bewil-
dered, demoralized, cowed and exhausted by
their unparalleled disasters and losses, want
peace, and have had enough Of the Rhine
From Woerth, where MaeMahon's crack impe-
rial army column Of fifty thousand men was all
but destroyed to Gravelotte, where Bazaine
lest twenty thousand thence to Sedan, where
MacMahon's new army of one hundred and
twenty thousand men was destroyed or cap
tured, with the Emperor; thence to Stras-
bourg, where seventeen thousand men became
prisoners, and to Metz, where one hundred
and seventy three thousand were surrendered,
with the fortress, by Bazaine, aud thence from
score of smaller misfortunes to the astounding
captures with the surrender of Paris, we have
| the record of an unbroken series of defeats,
and schedule of losses in this astounding
| war, whereby France is practically disarmed
and reduced to second rate Power. Her
losses in property all told, from August last,
and within one-ffth Of the area, will probably
| exceed in cash valuation all the losses of our
late rebel States in their ruinous four years
war for Southern confederacy.
| We see, however, from the evidences before
us in our Southern States, how rapidly an
| Industrious people recover from the ravages of
| a wasting war. France, in her productive
industries, may during the living generation
repair her losses from these six months of the
destructive work Of the German armies. The
beauties of Paris and of its surroundings laid
waste may be restored, and in all her mutilated
cities and towns and ruined villages and fac
tories her damages may be repaired; but as
arbiter of Europe, and as the constant alarmist
and disturber of the nations around her,
| France will be no more. Louis Napoleen's
grand idea of the unity of nationalities, as
developed in Italy, has settled him and France
in the unity Of the German family Of States.
Under their new empire, more powerful than
France, they take the place of France, and
| they will bold it as the guardians of the peace
| of the Continent. Bismarck's great purpose