The Paris papers bring particulars of the catastrophe at the
spec- tktle in the Champ de Mars. The Messager des Chambres and Le Siicle contribute the following.
" It is impossible to ascertain the exact number of victims, but up to the period of our writing, the deaths are ascertained to have amounted to thirty. one. One circumstance, which might naturally lead us to fear that the los: es may yet be still more considerable, is the fact that the persons attached to tie hospital state that no fewer than three hundred persons have visited the hospital for the purpose of claiming their relatives or friends. The bodies were depo- sited in the amphitheatre; which, we need not say, was the scene of the saddest and most heart-rending recognitions. The greater part of the victims belonged to the working classes. Three persons of the same family, father, son, and nephew, fell by each other's side, and expired. Among the men who died, many were young. The women, on the contrary, with the exception of two, were rather aged. A mong the victims, one was a young collegian, who was separated in the crowd from the tutor by whom he had been accompanied ; and another was the wife of a rich merchant, who has recently retired from busi- ness. The person of this unfortunate lady was adorned by a number of jewels ; amounting, it is said in value, to upwards of 3,000 francs. Not one of these was missing when her husband came to claim the body. Within a short distance of the amphitheatre, a magistrate, assisted by a commissary of police, received declarations and prepared mortuary acts. The bodies were examined, and the causes of their decease stated by professional gentlemen deputed by the authorities. Rumours have been spread that several individuals, upon being pressed by the crowd, were barbarous enough to make way for themselves, by inflicting blows with their kuives. We are happy in being enabled to falsify these reports. It has been stated by competent surgical witnesses, that the deaths all took place by suffocation. Not one of the bodies bore the marks of wounds inflicted by a weapon. There were some of them disfigured, but dis- figured solely by contusions caused by the trampling of the crowd which passed over them. Among the killed or wounded, were several soldiers, who had been led by curiosity to the scene. " Amongst the persons who called at the hospital of Groscaillou on the fol- lowing morning to inquire after absent relatives, was a female who had the mis- fortune to recognise among the corpses her husband, her son, and her nephew. Madame X—, the wife of a solicitor in Paris, separated on the previous evening from her little daughter only four years old, rejoined her lost child at the hospi- tal ; having bad a leg and arm broken, and her ears nearly torn off by the thieves, in endeavouring to drag off her ear-rings. Amongst the men killed, principally by suffocation, were a tall cuirassier and two strong market-porters. Some of the females killed on this occasion exhibited shocking wounds on the chest and bead. Amongst the number, were three young women, from eighteen to twenty-two years of age, and who were elegantly dressed; one of them, when taken up, had a gold watch and chain round her neck.
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