It was not until three years after this--in April, 1865--that Richmond was evacuated by General Lee before Generals Grant and Sheridan. President Davis was in church when an orderly, splashed with mud, walked up the aisle and handed him a paper. In the first glance he saw that all was over, and a few hours after he was in full flight. On Monday morning Weitzel with his army, composed partly of coloured troops, marched into Richmond with bands playing. The city had been fired and the stores plundered. Main Street was in ruins, and the bridges over the river were broken. A thousand prisoners were taken and 500 pieces of artillery. It is said that the coloured troops entered Richmond with proud gait and shouts of ecstasy, welcomed enthusiastically by their dusky brethren who thronged the streets. They laughed and shouted, prayed and wept, and kissed one another in a delirium of happiness. They thought that now at last the white races would acknowledge their equality; but the world has not yet got rid of its old prejudices, and their sun of happiness was doomed to suffer an eclipse. In a few days Lee surrendered. The Federals first heard the news from the cheers of the poor famished army of the South. Twenty-two thousand--all that was left of them--stacked their arms and filed past in a great and solemn silence. The cruel, devastating war was over. Now was seen the strange spectacle of the enemy sharing their rations with a conquered foe. They were no longer North and South now: they were all Americans--citizens once more of the United States, destined, perhaps, in a not distant future to teach Europe that peace is better than war, love is stronger than hate, God’s kingdom supreme over the transient empires of this little world. CHAPTER XVII THE SIEGE OF PARIS (1870-1871) WITH THE GERMANS OUTSIDE The Germans invest Paris--Trochu’s sortie fails--The English ambulance welcomed--A Prince’s visit to the wounded--In the snow--Madame Simon--A brave Lieutenant--Piano and jam--The big guns begin--St. Denis--Old Jacob writes to the Crown Prince--A dramatic telegram--Spy fever--Journalists mobbed. After the French Emperor was defeated and taken prisoner at Sedan a revolution broke out in Paris, and the terms of peace which had been agreed upon were refused by the Parisians. So the Germans marched on Paris, arriving on the 18th of September. By the end of October 240,000 men began to encircle the ring of fifteen outer forts which guarded Paris. Trochu was the Governor of Paris. On the 30th of September he made a vigorous sortie across the Marne, to the south-east, where he hoped to join the French army of the Loire, and also at the same time to relieve Paris of some hungry mouths. But the grip of the Germans was too strong. They had been allowed time to strengthen their positions, and the sortie failed, though the great guns of the forts had boomed and crashed until they were glowing hot.