THE WAR IN EUROPE.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 870, 18 November 1870, Page 2

THE WAR IN EUROPE.

HORRIBLE BATTLE SCENE IN THE TOWN OF DEU^Y. Thi; Times correspondent writes that in the fight outside the town of Deuzy, on the outskirts of Sedan, occurred one of the most deplorable incidents of modern warfare. The French troops, consisting principally of marines and Garde Mobiles, in contesting the possession of the place got into the houses as they retired, and fired upon the enemy from the windows, and the contest became of almost unparalleled fury. The French, who are said on this occasion to have surpassed their former deeds of valour, were evidently determined to do anything rathe" than surrender, and the German obstinacy and perseverance would appear to have been equally decided. When the contest was at its hottest the town was suddenly and simultaneously fired in a hundred places. The town looked afterwards a 3 if one great thunderbolt had fallen upon and in one moment destroyed it utterly. Charred remains of helmets and shakos and the stocks of rifles, with every here and there swords and bayonets and all sorts of weapons, showed .that while the flames were raging all round them, the helpless women and children were literally being roasted alive in the houses. In the streets the maddened combatants did not cease from the battle, but died, no doubt in numbers, ending by the fiame9, while they were fighting. There had been over 3,000 inhabitants in the.town, and as the Times correspondent walked through the dreary streets he saw but here and there wretched old men and women hanging about the ruins. There was a constant crashing sound of falling masonry in every street, and the smell from the burning flesh of cattle was offensive and overpowering. The completeness and sud? denness of the destruction were evidenced by numberless little circumstances such as the burnt remains of birds and animals, which one would have expected of all others to escape, dogs and pigeons, and even cats in large numbers. liundreds of the people betook themselves to the cellars, it is said, and there perished of suffocation. Nowhere could there have appeared an asylum for the miserable people, raging flames and suffocating smoke inside their houses, and outside, falling walls and roofs, and men like fiends incarnate, fighting amid the flames and the blazing wreck. We were not sorry to turn our backs on the scene of desolation and horror almost without parrallel in history.

HAZAINE'S PLAN OF CAMPAIGN,

Tip: following is supplied to the Argas by Greville $ Co., Reuter's agents : We find in the Paris correspondence of the Gazette de Lausanne a plan of campaign submitted by Marshal Bazaine to the Emperor, at the very beginning of hostilities, and in fact, immediately after the declaration of war; Prussia, said the general, may be compared to a clock —wound and set going, she keeps wonderful regularity and precision ; but before being wound and set going, she is a body without life. If I can get 40,000 soldiers, a corps d'elite, the greater portion of which good cavalry, with Zouaves and Turcos, I undertake to cross the whole of Germany like a storm, before any organisation can be effected by the enemy, upsetting everything on my way, railroads, telegraph, and administration of every kind ; burning registers and offices, sowing disorder and terror wherever I passed, and in fact, destroying the very springs of the Prussian clockwork. Jt will be the duty of the remainder of the French army —that is to aay, of a mass of from 350,000 to 300,000 men, to turn the contusion of the enemy to good account. I do not guarantee the return of one of my 40,000 men ; my sole object will be to disconnect and to destroy, rushing like a devastating torrent towards the Saltic, where our vessels will be ready to receive the debris of my phalanx. This rash, but not impracticable plan, was rejected ; and yet, what else was it than a repetition of Shermaq's bold march through Georgia, in the campaign of }BG4 -r-a march whicn brought on the fall of Richmond, the capital of ,the Slave States. After having tajcen and bunied several cities, turned those which were too well to be carried by assault, and having thus accomplished a distance of 300 miles in £7 days, Sherman, then master of Savannah, combining his efforts with those of the Federal iiec,t, forced

Charleston to capitulate, and caused Bicb? nlond to fall In the same way, Bazaine's bold conception, it carried out from the begining, might have fallen like lightning on Germany surprised, and have been productive of most decisive results."

TWO N4HES DO REMEMBER,

The liberie says that when the Emperor had been made prisoner, General Wimpffen assembled a council of war, composed of all the generals then in Sedan, in order to decide whether they should break through the enemy's lines or should accept a capitulation. All the generals, with two exceptions, were in favor of accepting the capitulation. Their names were Pelle and Carre de Bellemare. It was General Pelle who, at Wissemburg, took the com maud soon after the beginning of the fight, and who, without any instructions from his predecessor, General Pouay, killed 7,000 Prussians. It is said that when the Prussians offered him his liberty on condition of his promising not to fight again, he replied with energy, " I have always been under fire at the head of my soldiers, and when they are given up I will not abandon them, They shall still find me at their head to brave the enemy into captivity and exile." General Pelle wrote to his wife in these terms: —" I am a prisoner of war before Sedan with the whole of the army. Never has any people submitted to an affront as this before, Tell your brother that if he read the conversation of the meeting of the Council of war for the surrender of the army he will see that two generals were not willing to surrender, Tbey have not been mentioned by name, Tell him to write and say that these two generals were Pelle and Carre de Belle* mare."

BARBAROUS WARFARE,

The Pall Mall Gazette, says:—" If it is true, as stated in the Manchester Guardian, that two captive b .lloons are to be sent up, and from a height of 1,000 feet drop bombs into the powder magazine at Strasburg, under the superintendence of an Englishman named Walter, we trust that no patriotic scruples will prevent Mr Walter from sharing the danger as well as the glory of the enter-, prise. Indeed, as far as England is concerned, when once he goes up he need not trouble himself to come down again unless a bullet from a Cbassepot brings, him, bis balloon, and his nitroglycerine down without exertion to himself. Had be as a volunteer charged at the head of a regiment of Prussian, cavalry, we might have felt there was something in his mode of fjghting to claim respect; but to drop nitro-glycerine from a balloon into a powder-magazine is not an action tltat an. English amateur should be proud of."

TBE BRQSPECTS OF PEACE.

Tije Standard thinks the time has come when the neutral powers may call upon Germany to fulfil her own. solemn pro* inise, and show that she desires, according to the recent proclamation of King William, to live in peace, with the French people. The French Empire is no more, Germany is henceforth one of the leading powers, of Europe, able to majutain herself against any foreign enemy. Jt is a, people in arms which nows stands opposed to Germany. Jt \s they now who hght against the foreign aggressor. Prussian arms will now have opposed to them not the military system of the Empire, but the rage of a desperate people. Let the Germans then embrace the present time by concluding a peace which they have honorably won upon terms such as will not involve a humiliation of France. There can be no finer opportunity fur the nation to display that mural superiority of which it boasts. The Republic dare not couseut to the surrender of Alsace aiid Lorraine ; and for Germany to insist upon the annexation of those two proviuces is to make peace impossible and to declare that war shall las.t for ever between the two peoples of France and Germany. The Republic, says the Times, has been called into existence to save France from dismemberment. The German people have sworn to dismember France. The struggle henceforth is nation against nation. No minister, no dynasty stands between France and the invaders. From to-day every Frenchman is associated with the army, as it is, in fact a levy en. masse which is decreed. It is evidently thought that the miracle of 1792 wjll be again repeated. \( we do not share this belief, and we cannot, we caunot also withhold our sympathy from those tq

whom it is an article of religious faith. The German armies ai to day no more reproduce the miscellaneous hordes of uneducated and ignorant serfs which obeyed Brunswick than the strategy of Von Moltke reproduces the strategy of the Duke; France may be as earnest, as passionate, and as united in 1870 as in 1712, but opposed to her is a nation equally earnest, equally united, equally resolute, unmeasuredly armed, better drilled, and as far as the promise of the past may be trusted, better commanded. The conflict is too unequal, even though waged in France itself, far away from the <jt:rman base of operations, and it can have but one end, though that end may be delayed for two or three months more. There is no prospect before us but a bitter, savage, and desperate defence, ending in the sullen submission of absolute exhaustion.