News and Miscellany

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 30, 1871

News and Miscellany.

“Can ye not discern the signs of the times?”

NEW YORK, May 25.—A special dispatch gives the details of the fearful scenes enacted in Paris yesterday. The Tribune correspondent says the fighting in the boulevard Haussmann and Faubourg St. Honoré was very severe. Many houses are filled with the dead and wounded of both sides. The hotel of the Ministry of Finance is burning fiercely. The Tuileries and the north side of the Louvre are completely gutted. Four walls only of the Palais Royal are standing. The fighting is very severe around the Hotel de Ville, which is blazing with petroleum. The British Embassy building is much damaged, and the office of the archives is burned. The Place de la Concorde was terribly injured. No quarter is given. The Versaillists behave well to the inhabitants. Fire is raging in nearly every street. The Northern Railway station is in the hands of the Versaillists. There is a heavy bombardment of Paris from the barricade on top of the rue Fayette.

The Tribune's special correspondent, on Wednesday night, says the Place Vendome was definitely occupied at 4 o'clock this morning. The insurgents made a strong stand at the rue St. Honore. The Palais Royal was set on fire by retiring insurgents. The capture of the Place Vendome made the Tuileries untenable, and the insurgents saturated the premises with petroleum and set them on fire. The insurgents are fighting like fiends. The eastern Faubourg population seemed mad with joy, and the tri-color waves everywhere. The streets are quiet, and the Versailles troops are orderly. A hunt for Commune leaders has begun, and the police are searching houses, rooms, and cellars. Paris is enveloped in a dense pall of smoke, and is terribly damaged. The streets are smeared with blood, and are littered with debris.

Another Paris correspondent describes the burning of the Tuileries; another that of the Hotel de Ville, and the awful scenes accompanying. The Austrian Embassy and the property of the Empress Eugenie were also burned. The Caisse des Consignations is reported destroyed; likewise the Spanish Embassy.

Departure from Paris is impossible, and circulation through the city difficult and dangerous. The loss of the Versailles troops is small. Twelve hundred prisoners have been taken to Versailles. It is reported that Bellory was shot immediately after he was taken. The Versaillists are sending firemen from towns within a radius of twenty miles.

Another correspondent telegraphed last night: “Paris is being burned to the ground. Mad and frenzied insurgents deliberately fired the Louvre, Tuileries, Cour des Comptes, Hotel de Ville, Ministry of Finance, churches, and every public building in the city. The conflagration is rapidly extending. The correspondent tried to enter Paris, but found it impossible. In watching the fire he noticed a tremendous increase, and one-third of the city, he says, will be burned before night.—Det. Post.”