NOTES OF THE WAR.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume VI, Issue 85, 12 April 1871, Page 2

NOTES OF THE WAR.

The following extracts are from the letters of The Times special correspondent : — Very gallant fellows arc these Silesian riflemen to whom is entrusted the holding of this advanced position, and who have earned a post of honor by their conduct on many a hard-fought field, but especially at Sedan, when the second company of the stli Battalion repelled in the open three cavalry charges, and their brave commander, Captain von Strauz, received, for his brilliant conduct on that occasion, the exceptional honor of the first or highest class of the Iron Cross. At this moment he occupies the distinguished position of being the only captain in the German Army thus decorated. ; . The ordinance officers or "gallopers," as we irreverently call them in England, deserve a word of notice. They are generally young, good, horsemen, and well mounted. They must be intelligent, for they receive orders by word of mouth, and must understand them, or they could not deliver them properly. There is no hour of the day or night when they are not liable to be hurried off on an errand to places sometimes as much as 30 or 40 miles distant. The message seems to be turned carefully over in their minds, for they generally repeat it with the distinctness and tone of a set task. They are subjected to many hardships, aud their life is full of adventures. If they are clever they pick up much information and learn a good deal of the art of war. Such work is excellent for training staff officers. It was only an incident which checked the march for a few minutes. It is past, and the Prussians move on, looking sadly at the stretcher with its straw, and the fine young fellow with the pale face, trying to support his broken arm and save it from the swing of the bearers ; looking yet more seriously at those forms lyiug quietly by the side of the road, their faces For remainder of news see fourth page. r

covered decently from ihe light which they will see never more. It was only a parapet and trench thrown up across the road before Epuisay, and it was carried "with slight loss." Will they think so, those women in the little house in the Fatherland, when the news come to them? The news will come, for there is plenty of time to-day, and the corporal examines the bodies and makes entries against their names in his book. Not wounded, not missing, no room for doubt. Dead, dead, dead ! Count Von Moltke, it is believed by outsiders, became much impressed with the necessity of exireme measures at last. At first he was opposed to a bombardment, which Count Bismarck urged from the very first. The General thought that it would cost the German army a thousand men a day. The Major maintained that it would do nothing of the kind, and that even if it did tho endj would be cheaply earned in comparison' with the cost of prolonging the war. Perhaps it has been the extreme op-, position of Count Bismar/ck to the military policy of the Cabinet which has led to his being quite excluded from its deliberations. Events have proved that the great strategist was wrong, and that the great diplomatist was right. The losses of the/ German troops have been very small indeed as yet in the batteries. \ Two Dragoons found themselves surrounded and about to be taken prisoner by 30 Mobiles. One of them could speak a little French, and one of the French soldiers was an Alsatian who could speak German ; there was . thus no difficulty in communicating. The Dragoons refused to surrender on an entirely new and original ground. "If we go with you," said they, "we shall share your discomfort, but if you come with us you will share our comfort and escape all the dangers and hardships of the war. On the whole, you Avill gain far more by letting us take you than by making prisoners of us." This reasoning proved irresistible, and the two Dragoons rode back to their regiment with their 30 Mobiles following them like sheep. The Grand Duke was so much pleased with the readiness they had displayed upon the occasion that he made them each a handsome present, which alas ! one of them was not destined long to enjoy, for he was shot dead a few hours later. It seems beyoud a doubt that the most ardent wish of a large portion of the French nation is for peace on whatever terms may be obtained; but then there is also a very large party for war, and these are, of course, the most energetic, and, having arms and the Government on their side, they carry the clay and keep up the struggle. I say nothing of the Frenchmen who are out of France. Generally speaking, they are not the most estimable part of the population, and they will be coldly received, when they return to their own country. They are said to swarm in England and Belgium, aud a Marseilles paper quotes a letter from a person just returned from Italy which says that in that country there are not less than 200,000 Frenchmen who have fled from France to avoid military service, and who inhabit, for the most part, Florence, Milan, Turin, and Naples. This is propably an exaggeration, and a great number of French residents in Italy before the war are, perhaps, comprised in the estimate. The acquisition of Saigon, in French Cochin-China, for a German naval station, as part of the indemnity to be exacted from France, has been discussed from time to time by the German press, and the '' Berlin Geographical Society has ' just issued a report which is favorable to the project. It is -urged that the increasing . German trade in Eastern Asia renders the constant presence of men-of-war necessary, and that in so remote a part of the world the German fleet requires for its protection a. station where it can rendezvous, refit, and obtain the necessary war material. Germany cannot becomingly be indebted to the English or French flag for participation in the concessions wrung from Chinese and Japanese authorities, but ought to support its diplomatists and consuls by the presence of an armed force. The report combats the notion that the acquisition of Saigon might entail an expensive colonial policy, and contends that the settlement is well adapted either to remain a mere naval station or to develope into a colony, as circumstances may render advisable. It describes Saigon as tolerably healthy, and suggests that it might be garrisoned by German volunteers, who would be attracted by liberal pay. While here a party came with a group of 20 prisoners which they had just captured, in the next village, and among them were two captains and a lieutenant of Mobiles. Their account was that they had not been informed of the intended evacuation of Montfort and the -position near it, and that they were unsuspiciously awaiting ; orders in the village in. which they were quartered when they Were captured. The story was a lain© one, and there can he

littlo doubt that they were traineurs, j escaping, as usual from the hardships of the . war from this disgraceful method. Some of .the men seemed perfectly enchanted at finding themselves safely removed from (heir countrymen ; one in particular went into ecstacies of joy, shaking hands with the German soldiers as if they were the intimate friends of his youth, and laughing immoderately. He professed himself quite ready to change sides. One of the officers looked rather ashamed of the whole proceeding, and muttered the inevitable " Malheur ! " much to the amusement of the Germans, who have learnt to associate the French character with this plaintive word, and charged a French position with loud shouts of " Malheur ! Malheur ! " the other day. The woman in whose house I am quartered entered into'- a long history of her misery before I had been five minutes in the smoky little room which she provided, but on hearing that I am an Englishman and ready to pay for anything, she provided from her stores everything that hungry people could wish to have. When, later, soldiers came thundering at the door seeking lodgings for the night, because the place is crammed with troops, she took me confidently into a room supposed to be sacred to an old aunt, and behold a storeroom, the floor strewed with delicious apples. The stable-keeper in whose shed my horses were, said that he could not get a sack of oats for lOOf. A Prussianofficer came in, insisted on examining the lofts above, and the result ia that my horses have hay aud oats enough for several days. It is the same in every town we pass through. The people complain of tlreir wpeteked destitution, and when search is made turn out to be provisioned for the winter. The requisition system of the Prussian is, I am sure, a mistake. They could get anything by paying for it, and would not then cause such undying hatred among the French people. My landlady is a stanch Republican, and replied when I asked her Ci Why does not M. Gambetta make peace ?" " Monsieur, M. Gambetta cannot make peace without the permission of the Freuch Republic." When the sound of many German batteries \itf her door was heard I think she looked upon the peace question in another light. It was more pleasant to wander through the singular scene of havoc and departed splendour presented by the charred ruins of the Palace of St. Cloud, where the splinters of shells and the fragments of marble, and the remains of china and of glass are all mingled in mounds of rubbish, and elaborate cornices, and gilt balustrades, and quaint devices in sculpture and in carving here and there still stand unbroken, amid the surrounding chaos, as monuments of the vanished glories. It was impossible, while gazing at it, not to be reminded of another Imperial Palace, destroyed not by the shells of those who were defending their capital and the seat of their Government, but by the hands of those who were futeroducing the civilisation of the West. If, indeed, the Emperor of China were to stand on the ruins of the Palace of St. Cloud, he might be attempted to draw a moral by no means reassuring to the Allies who laid his own Summer Palace level with the dust. Let us hope that the destruction of one palace is enough to expiate the burning of another, and that another and happier fate is reserved for Buckingham and Windsor. "When the besieging armies restore these ruins .and the park which surrounds them to \M. Gambetta, or whoever may be the head of the French Government for the time, how strange will seem to him the aspect of these familiar places, with their barricades and their earth-works, and their loopholed walls. What, I wonder, will the future Board of Works do with the acres of prostrate trees, dexterously felled and intertwined so as to prevent the passage of troops. Nothing can be more picturesque than the combination of fortified camp and landscape gardening which the ornamental grounds of St. Cloud now present.