General Trochu has delivered his defence before the Assembly. We
have analyzed it elsewhere, but may here note that he accuses the 250,000 men of the National Guard of utter want of discipline, -of vanity, and of ignorance. They were brave, he says, but so ignorant of war, that at Buzenval out of 3,000 men killed on his own side 400 were killed by the National Guard. The charge is 'doubtless well founded, but then, is it not the first recommenda- tion of a general that he can enforce discipline? The Commune does not seem to have had much difficulty in doing it, and General Trochu had what the Commune had not, a strong nucleus of re- gular soldiers and marines. The weather seems throughout the siege to have been terribly against the Parisians. On one night 900 men were frost-bitten, and 20,000 men entered Paris suffering from anasmia, the result of cold acting on ill-fed and debilitated frames.
