complete collection may be lodged in the Germanic section of manuscripts
in the National Library. Meantime, the Marquis de Dampierre,
paleographer and archivist, graduate of the Ecole des Chartes, is
preparing, and will shortly publish, a volume in which the greater part
of these notebooks will be minutely described, transcribed, and
clarified. Personally, I have only examined about forty of them, but
they will answer my purpose, by presenting relevant extracts, furnishing
the name, rank, and regiment of the author, with indications of time and
place. Classification is difficult, mainly because ten lines of a single
text not infrequently furnish evidence of a variety of offenses. I must
take them almost at random, grouping them under such analogies or
association of ideas or images as they may offer.


I.

The first notebook at hand is that of a soldier of the Prussian Guard,
the Gefreiter Paul Spielmann, (of Company I, First Brigade of the
Infantry Guard.) He tells the story of an unexpected night alarm on the
1st of September in a village near Blamont. The bugle sounds, and the
Guard, startled from sleep, begins the massacre, (Figs. 1 and 2:)

[Illustration: Figure 1.]

The inhabitants fled through the village. It was horrible. The
walls of houses are bespattered with blood and the faces of
the dead are hideous to look upon. They were buried at once,
some sixty of them. Among them many old women, old men, and
one woman pregnant--the whole a dreadful sight. Three children
huddled together--all dead. Altar and arches of the church