[The Pall Mall Gazette, No. 1776, October 22, 1870] 


To form an appropriate idea of such a colossal operation as the 
siege and defence of Paris, we shall do well to look out, in military 
history, for some previous siege on a large scale to serve, at least 
in some degree, as an example of what we may expect to witness. 
Sebastopol would be a case in point if the defence of Paris took 
place under normal conditions; that is to say, if there were an 
army in the field to come to the relief of Paris or to reinforce its 
garrison, such as was the case with Sebastopol. But Paris defends 
itself under quite abnormal conditions: it has neither a garrison fit 
for an active defence, for fighting in the open, nor any reasonable 
hope of relief from without. Thus the greatest siege on record, 
that of Sebastopol, inferior only to the one we are about to see 
opened, offers no correct image of what will be done before Paris; 
and it will be at later stages of the siege only, and principally by 
contrast, that the events of the Crimean war will come in for 
comparison. 

Nor will the sieges of the American war °° offer better examples. 
They occurred during a period of the struggle when not only the 
Southern army, but also, following in its wake, the troops of the 
North, had lost the character of raw levies and had come under 
the description of regular troops. In all these sieges the defence 
was extremely active. At Vicksburg as well as at Richmond there 
were long preliminary struggles for the mastery of the ground on 
which alone the siege batteries could be erected; and, with the 
exception of Grant’s last siege of Richmond, there were always 
attempts at relief too.*’ But here, in Paris, we have a garrison of 


4 Written between October 19 and 22, 1870.— Ed.