THE ALLEGED BURNING OF A CAPTAIN OF FRANCS-TIREURS BY THE GERMANS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 814, 18 May 1871, Page 3

THE ALLEGED BURNING OF A CAPTAIN OF FRANCS-TIREURS BY THE GERMANS.

The whole of the facts as to the alleged burning of a captain of Francstireurs by German troops near Dijon have just been made public in a letter from a medical officer of the Baden division, which first appeared in the " Freiburg Gazette." This witness recounts the arrival of the body from Pouilly, where it was found after the German troops had captured and evacuated that place. The chief medical officer left with the German hospitals at Dijon was summoned to examine the corpse ("which was exposed several days for the satisfaction of the curious), and to verify to bis own satisfaction the barbarity of his country, men ; and he pointed out in vain that the captain had received an instantly mortal wound in the back, which was evidently not from a Prussian bullet. In spite of his protest, Garibaldi allowed himself to be so led away by the rumour as to publish the alleged atrocity as a fact in his general orders, and the local paper called on Frenchmen to avenge this dreadful barbarity. AVhen the German troops recovered Dijon after the annihilation of Bourbald's force, the trutb at once came out, and the explanation was simple enough. An acting Sergeant or Veitenslaufen, with part of the 4th company of the 215 th Regiment, forming part of Kettler's brigade of the 2nd Corps, had surrounded the Chateau of Pouilly, in which were the captain and his party. The captain came out and offered to surrender, and on his adversaries pointing out that the Francs-tireurs were firing from an upper floor, and declaring that the building would be fired if they did not desist and come down, he re-entered the chateau, and in the act of rushing up the stairs to call on them to surrender, was shot dead by a bullet from above. The fire being still maintained, preparations were made to burn the building. The smoke floating up the stairs soon forced the .defenders to descend and give themselves up ; but the captain's body meanwhile had been partially charred, and being left in that condition, became the origin of the report which has been the subject of comment all over Europe, and the untrustworthy foundation of many sharp strictures on the troops concerned. We have never defended these severities of the Germans, which we believe to be unnecessarily practised, and have chronicled them with unsparing comment whenever the testimony was to be relied on; but the actual incidents of the war have been quite bad enough without superadding myths originating in the imagination of frenzied patriots on either side.—" Pall Mall Gazette."