was surrounded by a splendid staff.  He is quite handsome, with large bushy beard and moustache.  He was dressed like his officers, and wore a cap such as they all wear, with a scarlet band; but he had lots of decorations and a splendid diamond star.  They all had most beautiful horses, and the effect was very kingly.  The bands played, and the troops presented arms.  The prince rode in first, then all followed him into the courtyard.  They took possession, and the gates were closed.  The next day the prince left to join the king at Ferrieres.  The palace is appropriated to the Prussian wounded.”

By September 23 the Prussians had completed their investment of Paris.  They were only two hundred and fifty thousand men, but, disciplined as we can see they were by the letter I have quoted, they were more than a match for the four hundred thousand disorganized and undisciplined crowd within the walls of the capital, who called themselves soldiers.

Strasburg surrendered on the very day that the Crown Prince of Prussia and his brilliant suite entered Versailles.  Strasburg is the capital city of Alsace, and is considered the central point in the defence of the Rhine frontier.  It has a glorious cathedral, and a library unsurpassed in its collection of historical documents of antiquity.  It is an arch-bishopric, and had always been defended by a large garrison.  With Paris, Lyons, Bordeaux, Marseilles, and Rouen, it had stood foremost among French cities.  It contained, when invested, twenty thousand fighting men, and it was besieged at first by a corps of about sixty thousand.  Its investment was one of the first acts of the Germans on entering France.  Strasburg made an heroic resistance for six weeks, and surrendered on the day when Jules Favre was assuring Count Bismarck that France would never repay the services of its heroic garrison by consenting to give them up as prisoners of war.  Before its surrender it suffered six days’ bombardment.  A bombardment is far more destructive to a small town than to a city of “magnificent distances” like Paris.  By September 9, a week after Sedan, ninety-eight Prussian rifled cannon and forty mortars were placed in position and directed against the walls of Strasburg, while forty other pieces were to bombard the citadel.  By September 12 the defences of the city were laid in ruins.  Two weeks after, it surrendered.  The Mobiles and National Guards, being Alsatians, were sent to their homes; the remaining five thousand men, who were regular soldiers, were marched as prisoners of war into Germany.  Hardly a house in Strasburg remained untouched by shells.  The ordinary provisions were exhausted.  The only thing eatable, of which there was abundance, was Strasburg pie, pate de foie gras,—­the year’s production of that delicacy having been stored in Strasburg for exportation.

The famous library was greatly injured, but the cathedral was not materially hurt.  A German who had been in Hamburg during the time of the great fire, assured an English reporter that the scene of desolation in that city on the morning after the conflagration was less heart-rending than that presented by the ruined quarters of Strasburg when the Prussian conquerors marched in.  And yet the inhabitants, had General Ulrich been willing, would have still fought on.