_Friday, December 16th._--In the morning I wrote several articles on M. de Chaudordy’s circular as to the barbarity with which we are alleged to conduct the war. They were to the following effect. In addition to the calumnies that have been circulated for months past by the French press with the object of exciting public opinion against us, a document has now been issued by the Provisional Government itself for the purpose of prejudicing foreign Courts and Cabinets by means of garbled and exaggerated accounts of our conduct in the present war. An official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at Tours, M. de Chaudordy, impeaches us in a circular to the neutral Powers. Let us consider the main points in his statement and see how the matter stands in reality, and who can be justly charged with barbarous methods of warfare, ourselves or the French. He asserts that we make excessive requisitions, and abuse our power in the occupied towns and districts to extort impossible contributions. We are further stated to have seized private property, and to have cruelly burnt down towns and villages, whose inhabitants have offered resistance, or have in any way assisted in the defence of their country. Our accuser says: “Commanding officers have ordered a town to be plundered and burnt down as a punishment for the acts of individual citizens whose sole crime consisted in resisting the invaders, thus misusing the inexorable discipline imposed upon their troops. Every house in which a franctireur had been concealed, or received a meal, has been burnt down. How can this be reconciled with respect for private property?” The circular states that in firing upon open towns we have introduced a procedure hitherto unexampled in war. Finally, in addition to all our other cruelties, we take hostages with us on railway journeys to secure ourselves against the removal of the rails and other injuries and dangers.