Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris
Labouchere, Henry, 1831-1912
English
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Below is a summary of Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris
DIARY
OF
THE BESIEGED RESIDENT
IN PARIS.
REPRINTED FROM "THE DAILY NEWS,"
WITH
SEVERAL NEW LETTERS AND PREFACE.
IN ONE VOLUME.
Second Edition, Revised.
LONDON:
HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.1871.
The Right of Translation is Reserved.
LONDON:
BRADBURY, EVANS, AND CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
Transcriber's note: In this book there are inconsistencies in accentation andCapitalisation; these have been left as in the original. This book contains two chapters labeled XVII.
PREFACE.
The publishers of these letters have requested me to write a preface. Invain I have told them, that if prefaces have not gone out of date, thesooner they do, the better it will be for the public; in vain I havedespairingly suggested that there must be something which would servetheir purpose, kept in type at their printers, commencing, "At therequest of—perhaps too partial—friends, I have been induced, againstmy own judgment, to publish, &c., &c., &c.;" they say that they haveadvertised the book with a preface, and a preface from me they must andwill have. Unfortunately I have, from my earliest childhood, religiouslyskipped all introductions, prefaces, and other such obstructions, sothat I really do not precisely know how one ought to be written; I canonly, therefore, say that—
These letters are published for the very excellent reason that aconfiding publisher has offered me a sum of money for them, which I wasnot such a fool as to refuse. They were written in Paris to the DailyNews during the siege. I was residing there when the war broke out;after a short absence, I returned just before the capitulation ofSedan—intending only to remain one night. The situation, however, wasso interesting that I stayed on from day to day, until I found theGerman armies drawing their lines of investment round the city. Had Isupposed that I should have been their prisoner for nearly five months,I confess I should have made an effort to escape, but I shared thegeneral illusion that—one way or the other—the siege would not last amonth.
Although I forwarded my letters by balloon, or sent them by messengerswho promised to "run the blockade," I had no notion, until the armisticerestored us to communications with the outer world, that one in twentyhad reached its destination. This mode of writing, as Dr. WilliamRussell wittily observed to me the other day at Versailles, was muchlike smoking in the dark—and it must be my excuse for any inaccuraciesor repetitions.
Many of my letters have been lost en route—some of them, whichreached the Daily News Office too late for insertion, are nowpublished for the first time. The reader will perceive that I pretend tono technical knowledge of military matters; I have only sought to conveya general notion of how the warlike operations round Paris appeared to acivilian spectator, and to give a fair and impartial account of theinner life of Paris, during its isolation from the rest of Europe. My
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