A REMINISCENCE OF THE SIEGE OF STRASBOURG.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 208, 30 March 1877, Page 15

A REMINISCENCE OF THE SIEGE OF STRASBOURG.

(From the French of M. Victor Tissot.) On the morrow I felt the need of breathing a little fresh air, for everything oppresses you in these streets, which are at once like a prison, a sewer, and a tomb. I went upon the platform surmounting the tower of the cathedral. It was eight o'clock in the morning. A distant rollinsr of a drum proclaimed the distant reign of order, and that M the Governor might prolong his slumbers without fear. The pigeons swarmed about the roofs, shaking their humid wings to the sun. To the left the Vosges prolonged the line of their calm verdure. It seemed as if a great peace had descended from heaven upon the murdered (suppliciee) city, belted in by the forts and ths soldiers of the emperor. The watchman approached me. " You come from France ?" he asked, with eager interest. " Yes, monsieur." " Do they still think of us there ?"

" Undoubtedly." " Ah ! when one looks at the for.c keeping guard below, and can see no other coming, one feels inclined to despair. We are here like the crew of a wrecked ship ; this tower i 3 the mainmast ; and for four years I have daily scanned the horizon, searching in vain for that little tricolor sail which will import our deliverance. Alas ! each day there is but the lengthening white line." " The white line ?"

" Yes, monsieur ; the line, or rather circle, within which we are enclosed. You can see the white points united to each other by a black thread. There are nine on the left bank of the river, and three on the right. The black thread is the railway which establishes communication between them. For a moment it serves to transport ths materials which hare been in part provided by the levelled works of Schelestadt and Phalsbourg. It is said that we shall have so wide a chain of forts as to render bombardment of the city impossible l'his will be no evil after all, for the cathedral cannot bear much more. In 1870 I thought it would crumble under me." " Then you were here during the whole of the siege ?" " Up to the burning, monsieur." "The 25th August?" "Yes, the day after the day of the destruction of the great library. Ah! what nights we passed then. I awaken sometimes still dreaming that I have below me a sea of flames and above me a livid heaven ridged with the burning shells. The Protestant church of the Temple-iSeuf, the hospital of the Protestant gymnasium, the library, and ten other house 3 blazed at once. The silsnce of death reigned in the city ; one would have said it was doomed to die, and, resigned to the sacrifice, was stretching itself upon the pyre. The cathedral stood out redly in the light of the conflagration, as though its walls were covered with blood. The enemy selected this as a guide to the aim, and very soon the shells j hissed all round me. They burst everywhere, disfiguring the columns and smashing the stony saints that seemed to be praying for the victims. At last the day dawned. The fires continued "burning, and the eye had vistas of ruin. In the afternoon the bishop went to the quarters of General Mundolsheim, where the Grand Duke of Baden was giving his amateur aid to this appalling tragedy. In the name of humanity the prelate besought the Grand Duke to solicit the sparing of the churches, the hospitals, the public edifices, and the suburbs, wherein there was a laboring and inoffensive population. But the prince did not receive him, and General Werder replied that the sick and the children were elements of feebleness to a besieged town which he could not allow to be removed. The moment night fell the bombardment recommenced with double fury, and it was now the turn of t'^e cathedral, against which the Germans flung bomb after bomb. I was on the staircase, when all at once an obus came with a hissing that made me tremble from head to foot. It came crashing through the roof and then burst. A column of smoke roße and enwrapped the spire, and from this black mass leaped out enormous tongues of flama. I thought all was over. The shells succeeded each, other with fearful rapidity, giving stroke on stroke to the rent, battered, and burning edifice. The glass of the windows was shattered to pieces ; the bells shook and clanged ; and the debris of iron and stone fell to the pavement below with a noise loud enough to waken the dead. We ran upon the platform and cried aloud to the city for succor. The tocsin pealed its lugubrious notes. The firemen arrived as the zinc roof was giving way, but they had nothing to do. The fire burnt itself out from want of food on which to live. Ah ! monsieur, what moments. Ten times I believed the cathedral was about to perish and disappear. It was the sight of the flag that cheered our spirits through the ordeal. It floated up there above the flames, victorious, and braving ihe projectiles of the enemy." I raised my eyes, but it was not the tricolor which reigned in air. The Prussian had planted his sombre standard on this cathedral where France, in vestments of mourning, never ceases to recite the Acts of Faith and of Hope. — ' N . Y. Tablet.'