p. 144 | The Struggle at Paris

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 18, 1871

The Struggle at Paris.

The horror excited by the fraternal strife which is going on around the walls of Paris is mitigated by the steady advance of the troops of the Assembly and the gradual crushing out of the insurrection. The Reds are slowly retreating within the city, where they vow they will continue the fight, and are making what resistance as they are able. But they cannot successfully cope with the well-served artillery and the forts in possession of the regular troops.

Within the city, if we may trust the accounts, the terrible days of the French revolution are repeated. The awful picture which we have been accustomed to look upon through the distance of more than half a century, and shudder as we gazed, is now unrolled before our very eyes. Yesterday and to-day they are doing, to some extent, at least, what they did when the prisons were crammed with the condemned, and the tumbrils emptied scores of human beings into the slaughter-pens of the guillotine. The rich men and the priests are the victims of the same wild passions which rose against all law and order and authority in the desperate effort of an oppressed and brutalized people to free themselves from degradation and despair . If the guillotine has not been erected yet, it is because the insurgents have all they can do, and more than they can do, to resist the progress of the regular troops. The spirit which animates the mob is apparently the same which ran riot in the days of Danton, Robespierre and Barrere.—Det. Post.