Year: 1870




Punctual to the minute at 8 the Ger
man army came and took up its position
/ at the gates, without entering them
while the French army piled arms inside
/ In two or three hours this operation wa:
at an end, and the humiliated, but no
! dishonored, troops stood disarmed to dC
the bidding of their conquerors. AnC
with the tap OF, drum and steady footfal
/ the Badeners marched in infantry
cavalry, and battery upon battery o
artillery, which made their way to the
Kleber Square, where they drew up
while the other troops took the wide
streets to the right. There was nothing
accidental in this immense display OF
guns and soldiers, OF, in the very note
worthy absence of superior officers at
the first entry ofthe troops into the town.
The accident-for believe it was MOTH
ing but an accidental Toul had made
deep impression on the German mind,
and every regiment entering Strasburg
after the capitulation had been signed
and all resistance was at an end, was
yet prepared, on the first signal from
their officers, to have swept every
thoroughfare with grapeshot, and to
have shot or bayoneted the population
to man. But happily nothing occurred
to excite their suspicion. The crowds
were far too great to admit of the least
possibility of treachery, unless the traitor
were prepared to overwhelm his own
townsmen in the ruin of his foes, and by
a little after noon, on Wednesday, Stras-
burg passed, without any further incident
of blood, from the French into the Ger
man keeping, pending the full dress -oc-
cupation on the goth, which was but a
tame affair. How shall I speak of the
condition of the town, when at length
found means to examine it at my leisure
Surely on all Gods earth was never be-
fore such destruction deliberately
wrought by the hand of war The
breaches in the solid walls of the citadel
and works were huge yawning chasms,
through which a couple of regiments
might pass abreast in loose order. The
nave of the glorious cathedral, happily
the rest of the structure IS intact,) had
received two shells near the roof, one
alarmIngly near the spire, and the whole
of the floor was covered with a mass of
debris, for the presence of which really
find it difficult to account, seeing that
the injuries have spoken of-the only
ones the cathedral has received-have
displaced but little of the actual material
of the building. suppose that for some
days the air itself must have been heav-
lily charged with floating rubbish from
the ever crumbling walls of the houses,
and that this had found its way through
the holes in the roof to the pavement be-
low. Happily broom and a pail of
water viii soon set all this to rights, and
with the traditional two men and a boy.
employed for a week on the roof, Stras-
burg cathedral will be ready for worship
ers and for visitors once more.


The Picture Gallery may be said to ex-
ist only in the memory the Temple
Neuf, containing the series ofthe Dance
of DEATH has been sorely knocked
about on the outside by stray fragments
Of shell, and the railway station IS a tan
gle of iron beams curled and twisted in
to all sorts of fantastic shapes by the ac-
ton of the fire which took place here
early in the siege.-Lette1 to tie Ne70
York Nl011a.