NOTES AND INCIDENTS.

Grey River Argus, Volume X, Issue 823, 17 March 1871, Page 2

NOTES AND INCIDENTS.

The Times' special correspondentjsritea: — The frost broke up yesterday, ami the snow melted fast, but some few skaters still tempted fate on the trembling ice of the Palace waters in the afternoon. "The roads will now be in a very bad condition indeed — but anything must be better than the fierce wind and $ie excessively low temperature with it, which chilled the marrow in one's bones. It was on one of these hard days that Mr Young, who was left at St. Germain in charge of the last waggons of the English Ambulance, did a piece of. good .-. service which is worth recording. Baron Zensen, one of the King's Chamberlains, who is engaged in giving aid to the sick and wounded, informed Mr Young, on the 10th of December, that a Prussian was lying shot out in the cold at one of the advanced posts near Bezons. That gentleman, who is a commissary of stores, ■■'■ and was engaged in the Abyssinian expedition, at once got out a waggon and started, with some of his men for the place indicated, followed by Baron Zensen, in his carriage. They crossed the' pontoon bridge at Le Pecq and took the road to Chaton, through Vesinet, halting at the chateau occupied by the Prussian commandant to obtain a safe conduct along the Seine to Carrieres St. Dei»is,' which was granted after some delay. An escort of ten soldiers was provided to reply to any French skirmishers who ' might seek to annoy the little cortege from the other side of the river. They were so close that they could distinctly hear the French talking, but a fog concealed; them from view, and they arrived^t . the bridge of Bezons without interruption. Here the Prussian picket told Baron Zensen that the wounded man must be on one of the islands of the Seine, crossed to the other bank by the Havre railways 5 bridge, which they had already left on k. their way. They retraced their steps to the railway bridge, an arch of which was closed, to serve as a stable to the horses ' of a cavalry picket, and here Mr Young and Baron Zensen held a council, as it became evident that it would be necessary to venture in a boat to the island where the wounded man was supposed to be, and to run the gauntlet of the French sharpshooters. Baron Zensen did not think he would be justified in exposing . his escort to the risk, and Mr Young . volunteered to go in search of the wounded^ German, who must have been lying out for 20 hours without aid or food, in great agony from his wound and from the .. weather. He was accompanied by one' of ' the English attendants on the ambulance, whose name I do not know, and by a Prussian, and, finding a boat, they pushed across the stream for the island. The fog still continued, and it was well it did, for the voices of the French patrols on the other bank were very audible, and it would have been impossible to venture on the service in clear day. They landed on the island,' and there, sore enough, under an arch of the bridge of the railway, they found, the man still alive, shot through the thigh by a Chassepot bullet, which, had inflicted such a wound that amputation has since been necessary. They carried him to the boat, ferried him over, gave him food and stimulants from the waggon- provided by Mr Young, in which, he was deposited on a mattrass and carefully driven back, but night had set in, '■■ and it was one o'clock in the morning before they reached St. Germain. Here Mr Young and his aid carried the soldier on a stretcher up to the Prussian hospital in the Chateau and retired, I hope, to a - well-earned repose, with the consciousness \ of having done a good day's work, thus recorded for the: approbation of their countrymen.

It was stated that every shot fired hy the Parisians cost Ll4. If this is correct, large as the sums so expended may be, they are hus.jirifj|ng^in comparison with those of tlieir Ijerniafi eneoiiesV We have been favored by Mr Meyer, of .the "White Horse Hotel, with the following details ... translated from the, latest German papers. It seems, in tHe>firstvplace, that the numbeciof .^g^»voiii^K&inds now in posi- ; tion before Paris &;s©6j each of which fires fifty rounds per day ; so in all 25,000 shot and shell are poured into the unfortunate French capital every twenty-four /■ hours. In addition to these, Krupp's monster gun, nominally throwing a shell uf 10001 b was on its way to 1 Paris, by last ■ advices to hand, and has probably played its part in the terrible work before this. Though nominally, as we have said, a 1000 pounder, the weight of the loaded shell will be 11991 b. It is the largest gun in the worldj. indeed, none hitherto constructed approach it. Its cost exceeded the cost of maintenance for a twelvemonth of a whole German regiment 3300 strong. The expenses- of the different sized cannon are as follows : — Round balls, or shells, without powder, either for discharging or filling, cost each as follows, viz., fourpounder, 3s; six-^pounder, ss; twelvepounder, 8s ; twenty-four-pounder, 13s, These, of course, are the cheapest kind; : Conical shell of a new construction, filled and ready for firing, cost each as follows : — seventy-two-pounder, L3O ; ninety-six-pounder, L 45 ; 3000-pounder (the Krupp monster above referred to), Ll2O. The weight of ammunition consumed daily by the German besiegers is 500,0001 b. la other words, 250 tons, exactly, daily, or no less than 1750 tons of shot and shell are weekly hurled into the unhappy city.

The Germans dread death by disease even more than most men, their intense domesticity increasing the natural depression which every surrounding circumstance tended to deepen. " I must admit," writes to us a German correspondent ; ? who knows Germans and Germany as few . men know them, fmy decided impression, on first arrival before Metz, was that I had got into an army in course of destruction by disease. I heard of nothing but dysentery and typhus amongst men — and^ rinderpast amongst the countless herds of cattle driven together from the uttermost corners of Europe to give food to this great German host. A more utterly plague-stricken spectacle it is not within • human imagination to conceive, than that presented at first sight with rain pouring down in torrents, by Roinilly ; its streets one slough of thick chocolate-colored mud I reaching over the ankle, one ambulance | after the other with sick and wounded being dragged slowly by exhausted horses through the ruts of impassable roads, a dead cow fetid with the exhalations of distemper before the doorstep of your ' quarters, and the atmosphere redolent with a combined stench of purid miasma and carbolic acidr ■ The^-plaee seemed one cesspool and pesthouse, However, the cop? was removed, a #esE expenditure of carbolic was made iv the den allotted by

the Etajie Commandant. I have spent severWniglits with impunity — I can't say comfort— where at first I shuddered to Jutaioot ; and from here, at my leis\ire, have been able to look round myself." At leisure he found that the German surgeons were carefully forwarding every man struck by dysentery to hospitals within the border ; but this plan, though it saved the nation from severe loss, tended to reduce the besieging army. Nevertheless, through seventy days of these horrors, discipline, wariness, and even cheerfulness never failed ; the officers were always ready, the men snatched what little distraction they could from trifles, from letters, from searching boxes of home gifts, and when the hour of action came, tamed out, with uuwetted rifles, as firm as on parade, ready, if need be, to die rather than move without superior order. The Red Prince, a hard man, but a sound soldier, was everywhere ; the officers did their best for their men, venturing even to forbid useless exposure ; and it is a moral certainty that had duty required that army to lie there, wasting slowly away, the last battalion would have met the enemy as coolly as the first. It was a very triumph of morale, a far more conclusive proof than any victory of the strength of the weapon Germany now wields.

So far as there is to be any bombardment of Paris at all, it has actually begun in the attack upon the defences on the east and south of the city. These defenses have been frequently described in our columns, but another brief sketch of them will make current events more in telligible. There ia first a high thick wall enclosing the city, and about 22. miles long; then outside of this wall, which the French call the enciente, are fifteen strong forts at distances from it of a' mile to three miles and a half. Thirteen of the forts are on the south and east, beginning with Aubervilliers, half a mile north of the point where the canal del' Ourcq enters the city, and ending with Issy, rather in the south-west, where the Seine makes its elbow curve outside the walls. The western side is defended by Fort Mont Valerien, and the north by Fort St. Denis. The Germans had to reduce some of the forta before they could make a breach in the walls sufficient for an attack on the city proper. They began their bombardment to this end a week ago on the east, where there are seven forts, stretching over a distance of seven or eight miles betweeu the river Marne and the canal, and respectively from one to three miles from the wall. The capture of the outer earthworks at Avron was preliminary to the beginning of operations on this side, and enabled the Germans to advance their batteries. They have been bombarding Rosny and Nbissy, which are the strongest, and respectively two miles and one mile from the wall, and late despatches render probable the early reduction of one or both of these strongholds. More recently they have commenced bombarding Forts Vauvres or Montrouge, on the south or south-west, and claim to have silenced their fire with that of the supporting gunboats on the Seine. The chief forts on the east and south reduced, the Germans can plant their siege guns where they can command the city, at a range of from two to four miles, and may perhaps have it at their mercy without attacking the enciente at. all. A sortie of the Paris troops without support of the fire of these defences would be certain of defeat frorn-an enemy everywhere entrenched and provided with batteries sweeping tihe.jwhole field. Meanwhile the fighting power of Trochu's troops is being weakened by insufficient or improper food, and there is no prospect of relief from without.