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 _République démocratique 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 to what we had seen during the day. We momentarily expected to hear the artillery again, but, thank Heaven, the bloodshed in the streets at least was over; and though Paris was still a city in a siege, the barricades were all demolished; and another struggle was for the moment crushed.