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her son Sir Roger; but her death deprived the defendants of any opportunity for cross-examination. She had, however, arranged to allow him 1,000l. per annum till his claim could be established. In an interview with Gosford, the Claimant made no allusion to the sealed-packet, though they conversed about the will previously seen at Doctors' Commons. During a residence of some months at Croydon the Dowager was again with him, and also many old servants and friends of the family, as well as troopers in the Carbineers, the latter now the first witnesses produced to establish the identity of the claimant.

11.-Final Treaty of Peace signed between France and Germany.

Died at Collingwood, near Hawkhurst, aged 79 years, Sir John F. W. Herschel, the most distinguished of modern astronomers. The funeral took place on the 18th in Westminster Abbey, in presence of a great company of mourners. The place selected for the interment was near the grave of Sir Isaac Newton.

The property of M. Thiers seized by the Commune. A decree issued this morning set forth that "The Committee of Public Safety, considering that the proclamation of M. Thiers declares that the army will not bombard Paris, while every day women and children fall victims to the fratricidal projectiles of Versailles, and that it makes an appeal to treason in order to enter Paris, feeling it to be impossible to vanquish its heroic population by force of arms, orders that the goods and property of M. Thiers be seized by the Administration of the Domains, and his house in the Place St. Georges be razed to the ground. Citizens Fontaine, Delegate of the Domains, and Andrien, Delegate of the Public Service, are charged with the immediate execution of the present decree." In the Assembly to-day M. Thiers demanded a vote of confidence from the Assembly, granted by 495 to 10 votes. (See Feb. 9th, 1871).

12. Died at Paris, aged 89, M. Auber,

composer of " 'Masaniello," and forty other

operas.

13.-The Court of Session reverse a former decision in what was known as the "Paraguayan Case," and find Dr. Stewart liable in payment of the b ll, chiefly on the ground that, although it had been got from him through fear and force, yet he had acknow. ledged his liability by eighteen months afterwards writing a letter asking his brother to pay the amount of the bill from funds he had lodged in the Bank of Scotland. Madame Lynch was in the witness-box for five hours.

14.-In consequence of a revolt in the garrison, the Communists withdraw from Fort Vanvres, leaving it to be occupied by a portion of the investing force, who also retain the adjacent village after fighting through it house by house.

15. Mr. Muntz's amendment on the Army Bill, designed to limit its operation to reguiation prices, and to leave over-regulation and the bonus system untouched, rejected by 260 to 195 votes.

The Pope issues a Brief directed against the professors in the Roman University who had presented an address to Dr. Döllinger "overflowing with errors, blasphemy, and unbelief." His Holiness urged upon parochial priests the necessity of restraining the young from attending the lectures of such professors, and of opposing, at the same time, the torrent of unbelief into which they were likely to be driven.

16.-Destruction by the Commune of the Vendôme Column, erected by Napoleon I., principally of cannon taken at Ulm, to commemorate the victory of Austerlitz in 1805. It was covered with 425 bronze plaques, moulded in bas-relief to display the chief incidents in the Austrian campaign of that year. They were each 3 feet 8 inches high, and formed a continuous band, enclosing the column twenty-two times as it circled to the top, the entire length of the spiral being 840 feet. Instead of Charlemagne, as at first intended, it was surmounted by a statue of the First Napoleon in a Roman costume and crowned with laurel. After several postponements it was brought to the ground this afternoon in the presence of many thousands who had waited for hours to witness the spectacle. Owing to some engineering difficulties in cutting through the column at the base, it could not be brought down at the time originally fixed. The members of the Commune were installed in all their state in the balconies of the Etat Major of the National Guard and of the Minister of Justice, on the Place Vendôme, to witness the affair. Sentinels were posted about half way down the Rue de la Paix to prevent the crowd from approaching too close, as up to the last moment accidents were feared. After a good deal of intermittent drumming and trumpeting, and caracoling backwards and forwards of officers on horseback, and the continual ascent and descent of workmen-now of the column, now of its pedestal simply-and sundry flourishes of red flags, at about half-past five the ropes were tightened, and it was evident the end was at hand. Suddenly the column was observed to lean forward towards the Rue de la Paix, then finally to fall, with a dull heavy thud, raising, as it did so, an immense cloud of dust. Before it touched the ground it separated into three parts by its own weight, and on reaching the bed of dung and faggots spread to receive it, broke into at least thirty pieces. The statue of Napoleon, on reaching the ground, broke off from its pedestal at the ankles, then at the knees, the waist, and the neck, while the iron railings which surrounded the summit of the monument were shivered to pieces. Shortly after the column had fallen, spectators were permitted to traverse the Place to witness the

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The Commune threaten the lives of the Archbishop of Paris, and other hostages, Urbain, formerly a schoolmaster, who had installed himself, with his mistress, in the Mairie of The Seventh Arrondissement, demanding that ten of the number should be shot within twenty-four hours, in retaliation for the alleged murder of a woman attached to one of the Commune ambulances.

18. In an unusually crowded house, Mr. Disraeli calls attention to the "general conduct" of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Reviewing the various changes in the Budget, and the irregularities as regards the house-tax and tea duties with which it had been accompanied, he complained that the Government had vouchsafed no explanation of the reasons why they abandoned their first proposals, and threw the whole burden of the year on direct taxation, and especially on that particular tax which the highest authority had declared to be a most unpopular tax, and one which most severely pinched the poor middle classes. Mr. Lowe briefly replied, complaining that Mr. Disraeli had played off a practical joke upon him by threatening a general indictment of his financial policy, and sinking into a criticism of a few small isolated points, which he described as the "veriest pedantries of finance."

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In Committee on the Army Regulation Bill, Colonel Anson moved an amendment on Clause 2 with the object of permitting the purchase of Exchanges. Mr. Cardwell, in opposing it, explained that it was not intended to prevent exchanges, but merely to prohibit money passing in such transactions, except the payment of travelling expenses. To make an exception in favour of exchanges" would be to strike at the abolition of purchase. After considerable debate the amendment was negatived by 183 to 146.

19.-Prince Arthur falls through a window, imperfectly fastened, in the billiard-room of Marlborough House, and is slightly injured in the head and foot.

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19.-The Dutch iron steamship William III., intended to open up a new trade between Holland and Java, burnt in the Channel.

20.-Fire at Woolwich Barracks, the whole of the block forming the offices of the Quartermaster-General, the Brigade-Major, the Barrack Control Department Clerk's offices and stores being destroyed.

21. After a siege extending over nine weeks, the Versailles troops this (Sunday) afternoon succeed in entering Paris by the St. Cloud gate at Point du Jour, and by the gate of Montrouge. Captain Trèves, an officer of the navy, crept up quietly from the trenches to the rampart at the Point du Jour. To his astonishment he found the insurgents had retired. He immediately called up 300 sailors, who took possession of the gate. Other troops followed up, and before anyone really felt that the affair had commenced, it was all over. Not a rifle was fired at this point, nor was there a single man wounded. The insurgents at once run up a white flag over the Auteuil gate, but took occasion to strengthen a position of some importance they had taken up on the Arc de Triomphe. The division of General Douay entered by the gate of St. Cloud, and occupied the salient between the ramparts and the viaduct. Here there was a second bastion of considerable solidity. The soldiers entered the half-ruined barracks and casemates, and made prisoners of a number of insurgents whom they found concealed there. Immediate preparations were then made for the advance right and left, but as the enemy was still keeping up a fire from 7-pounders and mitrailleurs, along the bastions between Vaugirard and Montrouge, a regular assault of these positions by the division under General Cissey was determined upon. On the left General Ladmirault took the gates of Passy and Auteuil, and then still keeping to General the left seized the Arc de Triomphe. Vinoy, entering by the Point du Jour, passed the Seine, and opened the gate of Sèvres to General Cissey. By two o'clock General Cissey was master of the Faubourg St. Germain as far as Mont Parnasse, and General Clinchant was at the New Opera House. In the Assembly M. Thiers said :-"The slight resistance we have met with warrants us in hoping that Paris will soon be restored to its true sovereign-to France. We are honest men. We will visit with the rigour of the law those men who have been guilty of crime against France, and have not shrunk from assassination or the destruction of national monuments. The laws will be rigorously enforced. The expiation shall be complete."

23.-M. Thiers reports to the Prefects tha the Assembly has now 80,000 soldiers within Paris. "General Cissey," he said, "has taken up his position from the railway station at Mont Parnasse to the École Militaire, and is proceeding along the left bank towards the Tuileries. Generals Douay and Vinoy are enclosing the Tuileries, the Louvre, and the

Place Vendôme, in order subsequently to advance upon the Hôtel de Ville. General Clinchant, having made himself master of the Opera, the St. Lazare Railway Station, and the Batignolles, has carried the barricades at Clichy. General Ladmirault is approaching the foot of Montmartre with two divisions. General Montaudan, following the movement of General Ladmirault, has taken Neuilly, Le Vallois, Perrey, and Clichy, and is attacking St. Ouen. He has taken 105 guns and crowds of prisoners. The resistance of the insurgents is gradually declining, and there is every ground for hoping that, if the struggle is not finished to-day, it will be over by to-morrow at the very latest, and for a long time. With respect to the killed and wounded it is impossible to fix the numbers, but they are considerable. The army, on the contrary, has suffered but very slight loss." About 6 P. M., a second circular gave intimation that the tricolour flag was then waving over the Buttes Montmartre and the Northern Railway Station. These decisive points were carried by the troops of Generals Ladmirault and Clinchant, who captured between 2,000 and 3,000 prisoners. General Douay took the Church of the Trinity, and marched upon the Mairie in the Rue Drouot. Generals Cissey and Vinoy advanced towards the Hôtel de Ville and the Tuileries. The losses of the insurgents up to this time were put down at 12,000 killed and wounded, and 25,000 prisoners.

24.-The morning news from Paris was that the Communists still held out at the barricades of the Place Vendôme, and the Place de la Concorde. Later in the day the startling intelligence was spread abroad that the Louvre and Tuileries had been set on fire by the insurgents. The Commune, it appeared, determined to keep its promise of perishing in a sea of blood, and under a canopy of flame, fired the greater number of the public buildings in that part of the city through which they were now being driven by the Versailles troops. The glories of Paris, the Times correspondent wrote, are rapidly passing away in smoke and flame, such as have never been witnessed since the burning of Moscow, and amid a roar of cannon, a screaming of mitrailleurs, a bursting of projectiles, and a horrid rattle of musketry from different quarters which are appalling. more lovely day it would be impossible to imagine, a sky of unusual brightness, blue as the clearest ever seen, a sun of surpassing brilliancy, even for Paris, scarcely a breath of wind to ruffle the Seine. Such of the great buildings as the spreading conflagration has not reached stand in the clearest relief as they are seen for probably the last time; but in a dozen spots, on both sides of the bridges, sheets of flame and awful volumes of smoke rise to the sky and positively obscure the light of the sun. well as we can make out through the flame and smoke rushing across the gardens of the Tuileries, the fire has reached the Palais Royal.

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Everyone is now crying out, 'The Palais Royal burns!' and we ascertain that it does. We cannot see Notre Dame or the Hôtel Dieu. It is probable that both are fast becoming ashes. Not an instant passes without an explosion. Stones and timber and iron are flying high into the air, and falling to the earth with horrible crashes. The very trees are on fire. They are crackling, and their leaves and branches are like tinder. The buildings in the Place de la Concorde reflect the flames, and every stone in them is like bright gold. Montmartre is still outside the circle of the flame; but the little wind that is blowing carries the smoke up to it, and in the clear heavens it rises black as Milton's Pandemonium. The new Opera House is as yet uninjured; but the smoke encircles it, and it will be next to a miracle if it escapes. We see clearly now that the Palais de Justice, the Sainte Chapelle, the Préfecture of Police, and the Hôtel de Ville are all blazing without a possibility existing of any portion of any one of them being saved from the general wreck and ruin." Exasperated at the success of the Versailles troops, the Commune in the afternoon seemed fully determined to fire, with petroleum, as much of the capital as they had in their possession. One order found on a National Guard, set forth that "The citizen delegate commanding the barracks of the Château d'Eau, is invited to give the bearer the cans of mineral oil necessary for the chief of barricades of the Faubourg du Temple. Signed, Brunel, Chef de Légion.' In the evening, about nine o'c. Jck, and when they had possession of only a small part of the city in the east, the Commune posted up the last of its long series of decrees, No. 398

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Destroy immediately every house from the windows of which there has been firing on the National Guard, and shoot all the inhabitants if they do not give up and execute the authors of the crime. As many, it was said, as 12,000 were taken prisoners before midnight, and in some quarters, where the resistance was especially stubborn, piles of corpses were built up near the barricades.

24, Massacre of the hostages in the prison yard of La Roquette, principally at the instigation of Raoul Rigault, a ferocious profligate, whom the Commune had named ProcureurGénéral, and his subordinate, Ferré, who had arrived at the prison after firing the Préfecture of Police with the design of burning the prisoners alive. About half-past seven in the evening, the Director of the prison ascended at the head of fifty Federals to the gallery, where the principal prisoners were confined. officer went round to each cell, summoning first the Archbishop, and then in succession M. Bonjean, the Abbé Allard, Fathers Ducoudray and Clair, and the Abbé Déguerry, Curé of the Madeleine. As the prisoners appeared, they were marched down to the road running round the prison, on each side of which were arranged National Guards, who received the cap

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tives with insults and injurious epithets. They were next taken into the courtyard facing the infirmary, where they found a firing party awaiting them. Monseigneur Darboy stepped forward, and, addressing his assassins, uttered a few words of pardon. "Do not," he said, 'profane the word liberty; it is to us alone it Delongs, for we shall die for liberty and faith." Two of these men approached the Archbishop, and, in face of their comrades, knelt before him, beseeching his forgiveness. The other Federals at once rushed upon them, drove them back with insulting reproaches, and then, turning towards the prisoners, gave vent to most violent expressions. The commander of the detachment appeared ashamed of this, and, ordering silence, uttered a frightful oath, telling his men that they were there "to shoot those people, and not to bully them." The Federals were silenced, and, upon the order of their lieutenant, loaded their weapons. Father Allard was placed against the wall and was the first shot down. Then M. Darboy, in his turn, fell. The whole six prisoners were thus shot, all evincing the utmost calmness and courage. M. Déguerry alone exhibited a momentary weakness, attributable, however, rather to his state of health than to fear. After this tragical execution, carried out without any formal witnesses and in the presence only of a number of bandits, the bodies of the unfortunate victims were placed in a cart belonging to a railway company, which had been requisitioned for the purpose, and taken to Père-la-Chaise, where they were placed in the last trench of the "fosse commune side by side, without even an attempt to cover them with earth. The body of the Archbishop was afterwards recovered, embalmed, and laid in state. His funeral, together with that of Monseigneur Surat, Grand Vicar of the diocese, Father Déguerry, Curé of the Madeleine, and the Rev. MM. Bécourt and Sabatier, the Incumbents of Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle and Notre Dame de Lorette, was celebrated, on the 7th of June, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, by the Papal Nuncio and four of the French Bishops, in the presence of the ministers of State, generals of the army, and members of the National Assembly. The two immediate predecessors of Archbishop Darboy met with violent deaths-M. Sibour, assassinated by a priest in the Church of St. Etienne du Mont, and M. Affré, shot on a barricade in June, 1848.

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for I could not stand it. Mr. Moon said, ‘I will say it again, and if you are not silent I will fling the bottle at your head." She stated that she then jumped up with a knife in her hand. They struggled and fell, and she saw the blood pouring out but she could not tell how.

25.-The summary execution of many women, in Paris, on the charge of poisoning and fireraising by petroleum, caused much comment on the desperate measures found to be necessary for suppressing the Commune. A correspondent of the Times witnessed one such scene :-"I took a walk," he writes, "down the Rue Rivoli towards the Hôtel de Ville, to judge of the amount of damage done, and at the corner of the Rue Castiglione became aware of the approach of a great crowd of people yelling and shaking their fists. The cortége was headed by a company of mounted gendarmes, behind whom came two artillerymen, dragging between them a soiled bundle of rags that tottered and struggled, and fell down under the blows showered upon it by all who were within reach. It was a woman, who had been caught in the act of spreading petroleum. Her face was bleeding and her hair streaming down her back, from which her clothing had been torn. On they dragged her, followed by a hooting mob, till they reached the corner of the Louvre, and there they propped her up against a wall, already half dead from the treatment she had received. The crowd ranged itself in a circle, and I have never seen a picture more perfect and complete in its details than was presented by that scene. The gasping, shrinking figure in the centre, surrounded by a crowd who could scarce be kept from tearing her in pieces, who waved their arms crying 'A l'eau, à l'eau !' on one side a barricade, still strewn with broken guns and hats-a dead National Guard lying in the fosse-behind a group of mounted gendarmes, and then a perspective of ruined streets and blackened houses, culminating in the extreme distance in the still burning Hôtel de Ville. Presently two revolvers were discharged, and the bundle of rags fell forward in a pool of blood. The popular thirst for vengeance was satisfied, and the crowd dispersed in search of further excitement elsewhere."

26.-Miss Burdett Coutts gazetted Baroness of Highgate and Brookfield in the county of Middlesex.

The insurgent position at Belleville stormed and taken after a sharp struggle. One extraordinary feature in the street fights at this time, was that many of them were carried on with a crowd of non-combatants, men, women, and children, as close to them on both sides as if the whole affair were a theatrical representation of a sensational melodramatic kind, where a good deal of powder and blue lights would be burnt, bu. no bullets or lives would be spent. "In streets in which fighting actually occurs no one of course shows except combatants, and these

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show as little as possible, lying down or sheltering behind extempore barricades and windows. The people indoors, as may be supposed, do not keep near them, as the bullets fired down the sides of the streets under cover of doorways or corner houses glance and ricochet about in the wildest way. Scarcely a window escapes if the fight lasts long, but adjoining streets, running at right angles to the fighting ground, are for the moment comparatively safe, and the people crowd about the doorways in these, the more venturesome getting close to street corners, and every now and then cautiously craning their necks round to see, if possible, whether shots tell."

27.-The Newcastle engineers strike in favour of the nine hours' movement, about 9,000 leaving the works in Newcastle and Gateshead.

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28.-In Paris to-day, the Commune is described as dying hard," the fighting being unusually desperate in and around Belleville, Menilmontant, and Père-la-Chaise. Even the women fought savagely. "No quarter was given to any man, woman, or child found in arms. Numerous arrests are taking place in the streets of Paris, and military law is being applied with the utmost rigour in all cases. prisoners are immediately sent up for judg

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ment to the Provost-Marshal's court at the Châtelet. The executions now take place at three fixed points-the Champ de Mars, the Parc Monceaux, and near the Hôtel de Ville. Batches of as many as 50 and 100 at a time are shot. No person whatever is allowed to leave Paris on any pretext, unless bearing a special permit signed either by Marshal MacMahon or the chief of his staff. There is less difficulty in entering Paris, but all strangers are subjected to rigorous examination, and, if their papers are not satisfactory, to arrest. Great dread of incendiaries still prevails; all cellar gratings, and area openings, through which combustible matter might be introduced, hermetically sealed."

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-A proclamation, signed by Marshal MacMahon, announces the delivery of Paris. Inhabitants of Paris!" he wrote, "The army of France has come to save you. Paris is delivered. Our soldiers at four o'clock captured the last positions occupied by the insurgents. To-day the struggle is over, and order, labour, and security revive." The fighting appears to have ceased about 3 P.M. A few shots were fired from the windows at Belleville, where frightful scenes were said to have been enacted. The more desperate characters, felons and escaped forçats of the worst description, turned at the last moment on their own comrades because they refused to continue the fight. Some women murdered, with knives, two young men for the same reason. In consequence of the firing from the windows an immense number of executions occurred The park of the Buttes Chaurnont

was strewn with corpses. The soldiers were so furious that the officers found it necessary to warn strangers of the danger of incurring suspicion. Dombrowski died in the Hôtel de Ville, from wounds received at a barricade in the Rue d'Ornano; and Delescluze fell fighting at the Château d'Eau. Bisson and Tavernier were captured and shot.

29.-M. Thiers orders the disarmament of Paris, and the dissolution of the National Guard of the Department of the Seine.

Whit Monday kept, for the first time, as a Bank Holiday, under Sir J. Lubbock's Bill, recently passed.

On a petition being brought up in the National Assembly to-day relative to the capitulation of Metz, General Changarnier made a speech in which he detailed the facts that preceded the retreat of the Army of the Rhine into that fortress, and said he must reproach the Commander-in-Chief with indecision and loss of time on that occasion, faults which led to the fortress being completely invested by the Germans. Famine alone had been the cause of the army in Metz being reduced to powerlessness. Marshal Bazaine had not been fortunate; but the cession of Metz was neither preconcerted nor voluntary. General Changarnier concluded by urging the Assembly not to allow an odious suspicion to rest upon generals who were brave soldiers and honourable men. M. Thiers said he was happy to see General Changarnier undertake the defence of one of the most valiant soldiers of France. He assented to the proposal for an inquiry; which, indeed, had been demanded by Marshal Bazaine himself; but he left the decision upon this question to the Sovereign Assembly. General Le Flô, the Minister for War, then ascended the tribune and said :-"The I aw upon this subject is most formal. Every Commander who surrenders a fortress to the enemy must be tried before a Council of War. I shall do my duty with regard to all the capitulations-those of Metz and Sedan as well as the others which occurred during the war."

Victor Hugo expelled from Belgium for offering his home as an asylum to refugee Communists.

Père Hyacinthe, writing to the Gaulois, declares that in the recent calamities which had overthrown France the Church had not done its duty. "Instead of the promises and teachings of the Gospel to the disinherited of this world, the Church in the noisy echoes of the press, and sometimes even by the mouth of its bishops, treated of matters of bitter controversy about the Pope-King, the dogmatisation of in. tolerance, and the canonisation of the Inquisition. I do not calumniate the political and religious régime that we have submitted to for more than twenty years, and which is summed up in these two words--' Scepticism at Paris; fanaticism at Rome.'

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