the Pussians, but were impatient of discipline and utterly demoralized.  Stragglers and fugitives from Sedan came in also, but these were still less to be depended on.  The National Guard had never enjoyed the favor of the emperor, and had been suffered to fall to pieces.  It was now reorganized and armed as well as the Government was able.  There was a body of Mobiles who had been sent away from the army by Marshal MacMahon because they were so insubordinate that he did not know what to do with them.  Ninety thousand Mobiles came up from the Provinces before the gates of Paris closed,—­excellent material for soldiers but wholly uninstructed,—­and finally about ten thousand sailors arrived from Brest, who were kept in strict line by their officers, and were the most reliable part garrison.

The male population of Paris remained in the city, almost to a man, except those known to the police as thieves or ex-convicts, who were all sent away.  Women and children also were removed, if their husbands and fathers could afford places of safety.

Around the city was a wall twelve yards high, forming a polygonal inclosure.  At each corner of the polygon was a bastion, in which were stationed the big guns.  The wall connecting the bastions is called a curtain.  The bastions protected the curtains, and were themselves protected by sixteen detached forts, built on all the eminences around Paris.  The most celebrated of these forts lies to the west of Paris, between it and Versailles, and is called Fort Valerien It is erected on a steep hill long called Mont Calvaire, from which is a magnificent view of the city.  This and stony hill for several centuries used to be ascended by pilgrims on their knees; the mount, where once stood an altar of the Druids, became a consecrated place before the Revolution.

Louis Philippe, in 1841, had planned the fortifications of Paris, but in his time they had been only partially constructed.  Even in 1870, as I have said, they were not complete.  When the siege became imminent, the first thing to be done was to put them in good order; but for a week the working-men in Paris were so intoxicated with the idea of having a republic that they could not be made to do steady work upon anything.  It was also considered necessary to cut down all trees and to destroy all villages between the forts and the walls of the city, so that they might afford no shelter to the Prussians.  The poor inhabitants of these villages flocked into Paris, bringing with them carts piled with their household goods, their wives and children peeping out aghast between the chairs and beds.  The beautiful trees in the Bois de Boulogne were cut down; the deer and the swans and other wild fowl on the lakes (long the pets of the Parisian holiday makers) were shot by parties of Mobiles sent out for that purpose.