of the Place are dreadfully smashed. The stone
balustrade is badly broken in a hundred places. The lamp posts are all
down, and this once charming spot presents a most melancholy
appearance. I found a crowd looking over the wall of the wharf beside
the bridge. I looked over and found a number of labourers digging a huge
square grave in which to bury some 25 Insurgents, who lay mangled and
dead along the wall.

The Hotel de Ville is still smoking. So are the ashes of the Tuileries.
Happily not very much of the Louvre is destroyed, and at the Palais
Royal the fire was extinguished when only a portion of that building had
been consumed. The Prefecture of Police is consumed, but the Palais de
Justice is not, and the Sainte Chapelle has suffered but little injury.
The greatest conflagration of to-day was that at the Grenier
d'Abondance. The flames and smoke from it rose high over the city. There
were other fires, but, happily, not in the centre of the city. I could
not learn in what particular buildings they were rising, but I believe
that a frightful fire is raging at the Entrepot des Vins, on the Quai
St. Bernard.

M. Thiers has addressed the following Circular to the Departements:--

"We are masters of Paris, with the exception of a very small portion,
which will be occupied this morning. The Tuileries are in ashes, the
Louvre is saved. A portion of the Ministry of Finance along the Rue de
Rivoli, the Palais d'Orsay, where the Council of State holds its
sittings, and the Court of Accounts have been burnt. Such is the
condition in which Paris is delivered to us by the wretches who
oppressed it. We have already in our hands 12,000 prisoners, and shall
certainly have from 18,000 to 20,000. The soil of Paris is strewn with
corpses of the Insurgents. The frightful spectacle will, it is hoped,
serve as a lesson to those insensate men who dared to declare themselves
partisans of the Commune. Justice will soon be satisfied. The human
conscience is indignant at the monstrous acts which France and the world
have now witnessed. The Army has behaved admirably. We are happy in the
midst of our misfortune to be able to announce that, thanks to the
wisdom of our Generals, it has suffered very small losses."

The troops have captured the Hotel de Ville, and have occupied Fort
Montrouge.

The military operations are being actively and energetically carried on
by the three Corps which are now in Paris. It is hoped that they will be
i