PARIS GOSSIP.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 739, 19 November 1870, Page 2

PARIS GOSSIP.

(nelson colonist corbespondent.) Paris, Sep. 16. There will be no bush fighting around Paris, no surprises from the woods. The city is encircled by a vast belt o l ' desert, effected the axe, and the crowbar, and not a human being can pass it without drawing down a concentrated fire from the batteries.

What will be the Prussian tactics? As yet no one perhaps but Moltke and his immediate circle knows. It must be rapid, and cannot long be an uncertainty. The city cannot be taken, if the defence is loyal, by a coup de main, and to attempt to starve it into capitulation is not seriously entertained by anyone. Paris has been scientifically made ready—has ten weeks provisions, an army of 700,000 men, every military resource, hands ready, and hearts brave. Not only must Prussia count with terrible sorties from the city, but with the reserves sent up by the country to harass her, perhaps, ultimately, drive her under \he guns of the fortifications, into the ditches filled with brushwood, with oil and petroleum ready to be poured on it and fired. The neighboring country has for miles removed its food resources, and the guerillas will intercept supplies from the Rhine. The longer the struggle is carried on before Paris, the more perilous the position of the foe. Look at Lyons, it proclaimed the ltepublic twenty-four hours before Paris even! Day and night volunteers are being enrolled. The office is a deal table in the streets, on which are large books called " The country is in danger." The volunteer, on signing, receives an order for a musket, and is marched to Paris. The women, being refused, have organised their own battalions, are armed with axes, hatchets, and butchers' knives, and the lower region has no fiends like these x\.mazons. Every half-hour the cannon is fired to remind the second city of France what Paris requires. Bordeaux and Marseilles act similarly. The latter city has decided that even the clergy must fight. The Government has voted millions for the purchase and manufacture of every description of slaying machine. Thore are 6,000,000 of men yet to be killed, aud these are being drilled and organised, for the Prussians before Paris. The Republic has accomplished the task of arming every citizen and making him a soldier, and impressed him with the duty of dying for his country. It has organised in a word a national insurrection, burning for revenge. The popular s soul marches to the combat.

Paris is but a camp or vast barrack. The military costume is the only one visible. Since three days, no women or children are to be seen in the streets. How could they, when the streets are too narrow for trotting squadrons and galloping artillery, with files of men marching to take up position, trains of ammunition carts, lines of omnibuses filled with, provisions and medical stores. There are no police; it is a word unmusical to the Volscian's ears, and order was never better observed. It is true, the " dangerous classes " of both sexes have been expelled the city, and the detenus of the prisons transferred elsewhere. It is rumored that should the enemy effect an entrance into the city, he must share the fate of the citizens in the common destruction. Burning oil, molten lead, and vitriol will be poured on the invaders from the houses by the women, while the men will fire from the house-tops and from behind formidable barricades. Tho houses may be knocked down by cannon, but there is more probability of their being blown up by their occupiers. Siuce the citadel at Laon business, it has become the fashon to mine every place Paris has every prospect of being a heap of ruins, another Niobe of nations; but if the last Prussian can be crushed beneath the last house and the last citizen, France not consider the victory dearly bought.