ck, he was hustled and bonneted by the soldiery, threatened with
arrest, and summary military vengeance, and ultimately paraded from the
vicinity of the bivouac, by bayonets with sharp points.

With the merits or demerits of the struggle, I have nothing to do. But I
saw the horrible ferocity and brutality of this ruthless soldiery. I saw
them bursting into shops, to search for arms or fugitives; dragging the
inmates forth, like sheep from a slaughter-house, smashing the furniture
and windows. I saw them, when making a passage for a convoy of prisoners,
or a wagon full of wounded, strike wantonly at the bystanders, with the
butt-ends of their muskets, and thrust at them with their bayonets. I
might have seen more; but my exploring inclination was rapidly subdued by
a gigantic Lancer at the corner of the Rue Richelieu; who seeing me stand
still for a moment, stooped from his horse, and putting his pistol to my
head (right between the eyes) told me to "_traverser_!" As I believed he
would infallibly have blown my brains out in another minute, I turned and
fled. So much for what I saw. I know, as far as a man can know, from
trustworthy persons, from eye-witnesses, from patent and notorious report,
that the military, who are now the sole and supreme masters of that
unhappy city and country, have been perpetrating most frightful
barbarities since the riots were over. I know that, from the Thursday I
arrived, to the Thursday I left Paris, they were daily shooting their
prisoners in cold blood; that a man, caught on the Pont Neuf, drunk with
the gunpowder-brandy of the cabarets, and shouting some balderdash about
the _Republique democratique et sociale_, was dragged into the Prefecture
of Police, and, some soldiers' cartridges having been found in his pocket,
was led into the court-yard, and there and then, untried, unshriven,
unaneled--shot! I know that in the Champ de Mars one hundred and fifty-six
men were executed; and I _heard_ one horrible story (so horrible that I
can scarcely credit it) that a batch of prisoners were tied together with
ropes like a fagot of wood; and that the struggling mass was fired into,
until not a limb moved, nor a groan was uttered. I know--and my informant
was a clerk in the office of the Ministry of War--that the official return
of insurgents killed was _two thousand and seven_, and of soldiers
_fifteen_. Rather long odds!

We were in-doors betimes this Friday evening, comparing notes busily, as