TROCHU ON THE DEFENCE OF PARIS.

Westport Times, Volume V, Issue 871, 7 October 1871, Page 3

TROCHU ON THE DEFENCE OF PARIS.

Trochu reveals to the world that he never believed in the defence of Paris at all. He thought it a mere piece of heroic folly. He utterly disbelieved in all the efforts of the armies of the provinces. He kindly telegraphed to Gambetta, at the moment when the Army at the Loire was ready to act, that modern armies cannot be improvised ; and all that France and Paris did was done in spite of him and against his judgment. His famous plan turns out, as his critics so often insinuated during the siege that it would turn out, to have' been simply no plan at all. He describes himself as having had a vague idea that a sortie towards Eouen might be of some use; but at most he seems to have hoped that if he got to Eouen he could sendalittlefoodthencetostarvingParis. What would have happened afterwards or how he, with provincial armies in which he disbelieved, could have resisted the Germans, he seems neither to have known nor cared. He even got so far in childishness as to treat it as a grievance against the Germans that, when he tried to fight them, they would insist on using their artillery against his troops. If they would have played the game of war according to the rales he liked, and have abstained from using their guns, then he and his men would have done wonders. But they most unhandsomely kept firing away at his poor soldiers and so, of course, his plan failed. Paris is too miserable now to care much for what happened to it six months ago ; but those who suffered during the siege, who bore privation bravely, and sent those dearest to them to the ramparts and the field, must hear with profound indignation that their fortunes were committed to the guidance of a man who thought the whole defence a piece of heroic folly, and whose plan was that the enemy should abstain from bringing his artillery to bear upon the columns advancing to attack him. The republic is discredited in the most serious degree by such revelations, and the follies of the Man of Sedan are eclipsed by the follies of the Man of Paris.—" Saturday Review."