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and a library unsurpassed in its collection of historical documents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